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EDITORIAL: Misinformation or Disinformation?
Call it misinformation or disinformation. The industrialised countries continue to insist that the Kyoto Protocol expires in 2012 and that the foundations of a new treaty, the so-called post-Kyoto agreement, should be laid at the Dec. 7-18 UN climate change conference.
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MIND THE GAP: ‘Just Let Them Die’?
"La matematica non e un’ opinione," Italians say. And they are right: mathematics is not an opinion.
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CONSIDER THIS: Cuba Deserves Better Than A Cold War Embargo
For the eighteenth consecutive year, the international community as represented at the 192-member United Nations has urged the U.S. to end its vendetta against Cuba. The world body’s urging came in the form of the annual “Cuba resolutionö which seeks to normalize economic relations between the two nations. Voting on the resolution was a lopsided 187 to 3 (U.S., Israel, and Palau) with two abstentions (Marshall Islands and Micronesia).
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PERSPECTIVES: 21st CENTURY PARTNERSHIPS - ‘Pacific President’ on First Visit to Asia
Much has happened since President Barack Obama made his four-nations-in-eight-days visit to Asia. The first state visit of a foreign leader (India’s Prime Minister Manmohan Singh) hosted by Obama, and the ninth round of strategic consultations between the president and his advisers on which direction to take in Afghanistan, are behind us. The groaning tables and travelling travails of Thanksgiving Day are more on people’s minds than Obama’s walk up the majestic Great Wall of China.
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PERSPECTIVES: Peace Laureate Calls Out the Troops for Afghanistan
Washington DC (IDN) - The imminent dispatch of some 30,000 additional American troops to Afghanistan reflects the spirit of a campaign pledge by President Barack Obama. So why is he currently being assailed from both the left and the right?
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PERSPECTIVES: Saying It in Pakistan ‘Like It Is’
Washington DC (IDN) - Secretary of State Hillary Clinton's recent public relations push (Oct. 28-30) in Islamabad and Lahore brought into open the distrust that bedevils the relationship between Pakistan and the U.S. The tone was generally polite but comments sometimes were on the borderline of hostility. The spirit of those exchanges was captured best by Andrea Mitchell, Chief Foreign Affairs Correspondent of NBC News, who was an on-the-sport observer.
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PERSPEKTIVEN: 'Militärische Lösung schadet der Entwicklung' in Afghanistan
Von Karina Böckmann in Berlin
Aziz Rafiee ist ein umtriebiger Mann. Als Leiter des Afghanischen Forums der Zivilgesellschaft (ACSF) in Kabul vertritt er die Interessen von 137 Nichtregierungsorganisationen, ist Gründungsmitglied zahlreicher Vereinigungen und ständig auf Achse, um die Belange seines Landes zu vertreten. Am 24. November ist er in Berlin, um auf einer Konferenz seine Sicht der internationalen Afghanistan-Politik darzulegen: dass er die geplante Verstärkung der ausländischen Truppen in Afghanistan für einen Fehler hält.
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ECONOMY: INDIA - Begging Bowl Gives Way To Growth Hub
It‘s a far cry from the days when India‘s finance ministers hopped from one western capital to another wielding begging bowls. The fact that the Indian economy grew at a respectable rate of 6.7 percent in 2008-2009 and is poised for at least 6.5 percent expansion in 2009-2010 is a source of just pride to government leaders and captains of industry.
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ECONOMY: ‘Put Development First’
A leading think-tank has called for a moratorium on preferential trade agreements between the industrialised and developing countries, arguing that such accords curtail the ability of developing countries to deploy effective policies for development.
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COVER STORY: China, India Lead South-South Cooperation
NEW YORK - China and India have been singled out as two countries that have established vibrant economic and financial links with the developing world and played key roles in strengthening South-South cooperation over the last 10 years.
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COVER STORY: No 'One-Size-Fits-All'
NEW YORK - "There has been a steady upward trend across all dimensions of South-South economic integration over the past two decades," says Supachai Panitchpakdi, secretary-general of the Geneva-based UN Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD).
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COVER STORY: The Unnoticed Reality
Developing nations are faced with huge economic and financial problems and need funds and technical cooperation from Europe and the United States. But this is only one aspect of reality. They have meanwhile acquired a high profile in world economy and in global decision-making.
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COVER STORY: Developing World ‘Comes of Age’
The governments of dynamic emerging economies are ready to improve socio-economic conditions at home and help raise development prospects across the global South, senior officials assured at the United Nations High-level Conference on South-South Cooperation, thus underlining that that many developing countries were now capable of taking the lead in designing and implementing their own long-term development plans.
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NUCLEAR ABOLITION: U.S.-Japan Accord Seeks a Nuke Free World
WASHINGTON DC - Japan, the only country to be the target of atom bombs, and the U.S., the only country to drop them, firmly committed themselves to working towards a nuclear weapons free world, when President Barack Obama visited Japan during his first presidential tour of Asia.
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RIGHTS: ‘Girls Discovered’ Highlights Plight of Teenagers
Together with the Coalition for Adolescent Girls, the London-based Maplecroft has launched the first online resource that spotlights plight of 600 million teenager girls around the world.
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RIGHTS: Afro-Brazilians Victims of Violence and Discrimination
Millions of Afro-Brazilians, who in some states like Bahia account for 75 per cent of the population, are mired in poverty, lack access to basic services and employment opportunities, and face serious discrimination, injustice and violence.
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DEVELOPMENT: Morocco, Egypt Greet OECD-MENA Declaration
MARRAKESH (IDN) – Morocco and Egypt have welcomed a new ‘Declaration on Governance and Investment’, adopted at a ministerial conference titled ‘beyond the crisis: business and citizens at the centre of policy responses’ in the Moroccan capital.
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ENTWICKLUNG: Entwicklungspolitik neu denken*
IST DIE KRITIK AN DER ENTWICKLUNGSPOLITIK BERECHTIGT? Das führte zu oft widerstreitende oder zumindest einander behindernden Aktivitäten der Geber. Dazu entstand eine Eigendynamik der Vereinten Nationen, der Internationalen Finanzinstitutionen, auch der Europäischen Kommission, die den gesetzten Zielen nicht immer und jeder Hinsicht dienlich war.
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DEVELOPMENT: Aid 'Darlings' and 'Orphans' Block Coordination
PARIS (IDN) - The pattern of aid distribution across countries is insufficiently co-ordinated. This pattern generates inefficiencies and inequities. Actual aid allocations are still driven mostly by factors other than need and merit. These are the highlights of a new ‘development brief‛ by the OECD Development Cooperation Directorate.
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STRAY THOUGHTS: Bureaucracy Way Out of ‘Catch 22’?
Catch 22, the title of the novel by U.S. author Joseph Heller, has become since the book's publication in the early 1960s a synonym of for a no-win situation. The title refers to a fictive, absurd military rule, which in the novel states that soldiers who declare themselves insane must be healthy to do so and consequently have no excuse to fulfil their dangerous army missions. However, in its popular interpretation, catch 22 epitomises the perplexity of a situation in which whatever you do is wrong.
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