STOCKHOLM / ROME, Apr 29 2019 (IPS) – Just before nine o´clock in the morning of April 21st, Christians in Sri Lanka were in their churches peacefully celebrating Easter Sunday, while tourists were waking up in their hotel rooms. Suddenly explosions…
By Dilip Hiro It’s still the most dangerous border on Earth. Yet compared to the recent tweets of President Donald Trump, it remains a marginal news story. That doesn’t for a moment diminish the chance that the globe’s first (and…
Continuing our Europe2025 series, Marija Bartl argues that the metaphor of Europe as a ‘project’ foregrounds market integration and forestalls the emergence of a European public sphere. In his recent, widely-circulated programme for Europe, the French president, Emmanuel Macron, affirms: ‘Europe is not just…
NEW DELHI, Apr 22 2019 (IPS) – Our acceptance of climate change doesn’t keep pace with our energy consumption reduction. However, the latest International Energy Agency’s (IEA’S) Global Energy and CO2 Status Report for 2018has some good news. It offers where possible…
KUALA LUMPUR, Malaysia, Apr 23 2019 (IPS) – At the risk of reiterating what should be obvious, the question of private or public ownership is distinct from the issue of competition or market forces. Despite the misleading claim that privatization promotes…
by Brendan Donnelly Director, The Federal Trust It is easy to sympathise with last week’s reluctance of President Macron and other EU-27 leaders to endorse an extension of the Article 50 Brexit negotiations until the end of October 2019. There…
Léonce Bekemans initiates a ‘Europe 2025’ series on Social Europe, which will look beyond the May elections to the challenges in the next term, with a call for a mobilising vision. Throughout its shared history, Europe has always developed as a…
by Werner Raza, Jan Grumiller and Bernhard Tröster The European Union’s disproportionate pressure for trade liberalisation risks exacerbating political strains in the last democracy of northern Africa. Tunisia is the only country in northern Africa in which a democratic political…
By Tharanga Yakupitiyage UN, Apr 16 2019 (IPS) – Increasingly facing restrictions and assault, civil society from around the world have come together to celebrate and promote people power. Organised by CIVICUS, International Civil Society Week (ICSW) brought together civil…
By Jomo Kwame Sundaram and Anis Chowdhury Kuala Lumpur and Sydney, Apr 16 2019 (IPS) – The World Bank’s Enabling the Business of Agriculture (EBA) project, launched in 2013, has sought agricultural reforms favouring the corporate sector. EBA was initially…
VIENNA, Apr 16 2019 (IPS) – The past seventy years since the end of the second world war have been marked by profound changes in our international system. Relations between states have become more horizontally structured interactions with a rising significance…
Can government deficits be financed directly by central banks, as modern monetary theory suggests? The question should not be if but how much. All things are poison, and nothing is without poison, the dosage alone makes it so a thing…
CASTRIES, Apr 12 2019 (IPS) – Jua Kali is a social enterprise tackling waste management and helping to reduce reliance on St. Lucia’s only landfill, which will reach the end of its lifespan in 2023. The company, with its slogan ‘Trashing the…
UNITED NATIONS, Apr 11 2019 (IPS) – While figures have dropped, the “inhuman” use of the death penalty still remains too common worldwide, a human rights group said. In a new report, Amnesty International found that global executions fell by almost one-third last…
Europe can remain a manufacturing hub if it ensures early adoption of game-changing technologies, engages with global supply chains and manages the green transition. Manufacturing is dead, they said. But after four years, ten research reports, 47 case studies, an…
UNITED NATIONS, Apr 10 2019 (IPS) – A former UN Secretary-General, the late Kofi Annan, once described civil society organizations (CSOs), as “the world’s new superpower” – perhaps ranking behind the US and the former Soviet Union. But that political glory…
The American congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez recently shook up environmental politics by releasing a broad outline of a Green New Deal—a plan to make the US a carbon-neutral economy in the next ten years, while reducing both poverty and inequality. Lauded by…
I zoomed back 42 years into the past as I was looking at my new portrait taken only yesterday as the old ones do not resemble me in full right now. I did go to make some copies of an…
Raval, Barcelona, March 2019. The streets are full of young people (and not just students)—sitting, sipping drinks, gazing more at laptops than into each other’s eyes, talking quietly about politics, making art, looking cool. A time traveller from their grandparents’…
ROME, Apr 5 2019 (IPS) – Paris, Milan, New York, Tokyo… These are just some of the world’s most prestigious fashion catwalks. There, and elsewhere, perfectly – and often unrealistically – silhouetted young women and men graciously parade to impress elite…
UNITED NATIONS, Apr 5 2019 (IPS) – The Republic of China (Taiwan) withdrew from the United Nations in protest when it was ousted from its highly-prized permanent seat in the UN Security Council (UNSC) about 48 years ago. But according to…
BANGKOK, Thailand, Apr 4 2019 (IPS) – Three years of implementation of the transformative 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development in Asia and the Pacific shows the region has some catching up to do. Despite much progress, the region is not on…
Within the Democratic Party in the United States there is a flourishing of initiatives, promoted by Bernie Sanders, regarding ‘guaranteed work’. This recognises the urgency to concentrate every effort on the revival of public and private investments. The Democrats reaffirm…
KUALA LUMPUR, Malaysia, Apr 2 2019 (IPS) – In most cases of privatization, some outcomes benefit some, which serves to legitimize the change. Nevertheless, overall net welfare improvements are the exception, not the rule. Never is everyone better off. Rather, some…
Governments built the current systems and institutions of international cooperation to address 19th- and 20th-century problems. But in today’s complex and fast-paced digital world, these structures cannot operate at ‘internet speed’. Recognising this, the United Nations secretary-general, António Guterres, last year…
Collective memory has always been a symbolic political battleground. Historians and politicians have long been aware that shared representations of the past constrain political choices in the present by shaping communal ‘horizons of expectation’ of the future. The link between…
Recently I attended a seminar in Stockholm on the Future of Work, hosted by a major trade union. A representative from Google was present and asked the seemingly sweet and constructive question: what can we do to help? The trade…
At the time of writing it seems unlikely that the Withdrawal Agreement will be accepted by Parliament on 29th March, the day originally set for the UK to leave the EU. Parliament has decided that in these circumstances it will hold…
Danielle Nierenberg Greetings from Baltimore! Today, we’re highlighting ways to prevent food waste. Last week, Winnow Solutions announced a new artificial intelligence technology that will help reduce food waste significantly in commercial kitchens. It is estimated that between 5 and…
KUALA LUMPUR and SYDNEY, Mar 26 2019 (IPS) – The World Bank has successfully legitimized the notion that private finance is the solution to pressing development and welfare concerns, including achieving the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) through Agenda 2030. A recent McKinsey…