Activists | Peter Schulte

Kurdistan Workers’ Party agrees to peace deal with Turkey, ending deadly 40-year conflict

Peter Schulte / May 12, 2025

The decision promises to put an end to one of the longest insurgencies in the Middle East and could have significant impact in Turkey, Syria, and Iraq. In February, party leader Abdullah Ocalan, who has been imprisoned since 1999, urged his group to convene a congress and formally decide to disband. The call by Ocalan marked a pivotal step toward ending the decades-long conflict that has claimed tens of thousands of lives since the 1980s.

More than 100,000 pounds of trash removed from the Arctic since 2021

Peter Schulte / February 18, 2025

Over 50,000 pounds of trash have been removed from the Arctic in 2023 alone after a multilateral effort flooded critical northern ecosystems with volunteers. Working during the brief Arctic summer, clean-up operations were carried out in Alaska, Greenland, Norway, and Iceland. Nearly 2,000 volunteers were enlisted across the treaty nations of the Arctic Council, an inter-governmental panel on peaceful and sustainable use and protection of the Arctic zone formed by the nations that pierce its frozen bordersand the Indigenous peoples that call it home.

South African Native National Congress 1914

John Langalibalele Dube and other South African leaders form the South African Native National Congress to combat racial injustice

Peter Schulte / January 8, 1912

Decades later, the SANNC became the African National Congress (ANC) and was a prominent player in dismantling apartheid under leader Nelson Mandela.