InDepthNews, Author at IDN-InDepthNews

Middle East2013-12-292023-07-10

Implications Of Beirut Bombing

By Tahmineh Bakhtiari* | IDN-InDepth NewsAnalysis

TEHRAN (IDN) – The December 27 explosion in front of the headquarters of the March 14 Alliance in Beirut targeting some of the party’s senior members such as former finance minister, Mohammad Shatah, reveals another plot against the Middle Eastern countries.

Named after the date of the Cedar Revolution, the Alliance is a coalition of political parties and independents in Lebanon, formed in 2005, that are united by their anti-Syrian regime stance, led by MP Saad Hariri, younger son of Rafik Hariri, the assassinated former prime minister of Lebanon, as well as other figures such as Amine Gemayel, president of the Kataeb Party – the Lebanese Phalanges Party, a traditional right-wing political-paramilitary ultranationalist organization.

SYNDICATION, UNITED NATIONS2013-12-272023-07-12

HRE 2020 To Promote Human Rights Education

By Jaya Ramachandran | IDN-InDepth NewsAnalysis

BERLIN | GENEVA (IDN) – “Everyone has the right to know, seek and receive information about all human rights and fundamental freedoms and should have access to human rights education and training,” says Article 1 of the United Nations Declaration adopted by the General Assembly on December 19, 2011.

Europe2013-12-262023-07-10

German Tycoons Want The Cake And Eat It Too

By Julio Godoy* | IDN-InDepth NewsAnalysis

BERLIN (IDN) – Several recent economic news from the Eurozone illustrate the way the German industry bosses want to have their cake and eat it too: As the German federal statistical office (Destatis) informed earlier in December, the country’s export reached a record of some 100 billion euros, some 135 billion U.S. dollars, the highest amount ever measured in a month.

This record followed another – of surplus in the German trade balance – of more than 20 billion euros, beating the top score of June 2008 by more than one billion, as the Destatis stated in a press release on November 8, 2013.

Middle East2013-12-242023-07-10

Investment in Iran’s Oil And Gas Will Benefit India and Iran

By Erfan Ghassempour, Hamidreza Ghanei Bafghi, Abdollah Ale Ja’far and Samira Fatemi

IDN-InDepth NewsAnalysis

TEHRAN (IDN) – India and Iran have had economic relations for centuries. However, their relations entered into a new era after the partition of the Indian subcontinent into India and Pakistan, the Iranian Islamic republic revolution and the Iranian nuclear issue.

Following the partition of the Indian subcontinent, India lost its adjacency with Iran and the two countries followed divergent foreign policies arising out of the post-partition political developments ([i]). On the other hand, Iranian Islamic revolution changed Iran’s relation with the world including India. In the recent years and after the international sanctions against Iran’s economy, Iran and India are experiencing a new and complicated political and commercial relationship. Read in Persian

Europe2013-12-232023-07-10

Swiss Aid Helps UN Agencies Ban Hunger

By Richard Johnson | IDN-InDepth NewsAnalysis

GENEVA (IDN) – The Swiss Agency for Development Cooperation has come up with a Christmas and New Year gift that has the potential of feeding some 2 billion people around the world. The international cooperation agency, based in Berne, is placing $2.7 million at the disposal of three United Nations agencies – the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO), the International Fund for Agricultural Development (IFAD) and the World Food Programme (WFP) – to launch a joint project to tackle the global problem of food losses, beginning with pilot programmes in Burkina Faso, the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) and Uganda.

Asia-Pacific2013-12-212023-07-10

Imparting Dignity To Bangladesh Garment Workers

By Tithe Farhana* | IDN-InDepth NewsAnalysis

DHAKA (IDN) – Salma Khatun (25), a victim of early marriage divorced by her husband, came to Dhaka, the capital of Bangladesh, in 2009 along with her two daughters, accompanied by her sister Shikka, a worker in a local Ready-Made Garments (RMG) factory in the city’s Mirpur area.

“I was very vulnerable due to getting divorce from my husband and also thinking about my daughters’ future. Subsequently, my sister insisted that I come with her.” With her help, she got a job in the factory, which gave her economic freedom and appeared to ensure the future of her daughters.

ECONOMY2013-12-202023-07-10

Developing Economies’ Myths and Realities

By World Economy Desk | IDN-InDepth NewsAnalysis

BERLIN (IDN) – The South Centre, an intergovernmental organization of developing countries, has good news about developing economies. Contrary to the view promoted by ‘establishment institutions like the IMF’ (International Monetary Fund), recent events show that major developing countries have not “decoupled” their economies from those of advanced ones, avers Yılmaz Akyüz, chief economist of the Geneva-based organization.

GLOBAL ISSUES2013-12-192023-07-10

Revisiting Nine-Eleven Twelve Years On

By Eric Walberg* | IDN-InDepth NewsAnalysis

Congressmen Walter Jones and Stephen Lynch introduced a resolution early December 2013 urging President Barack Obama to declassify the legendary “28 redacted pages of the Joint Intelligence Committee Inquiry of 9/11” issued in late 2002, which point to official Saudi involvement in a series of four coordinated terrorist attacks on September 11, 2001. After much lobbying, and under an oath of secrecy, Jones was allowed to read the censored document: “I was absolutely shocked by what I read. What was so surprising was that those whom we thought we could trust really disappointed me.”

HUMAN DEVELOPMENT2013-12-182023-07-10

Local Knowledge Vital For Global Experts

By Pranab Bardhan* | IDN-InDepth NewsAnalysis

BERKELEY (IDN |Yale Global) – For quite some time the economic development profession has gone global in a rather grandiose way. Those quick with pronouncements on global development issues get the maximum attention, rise to the top of the profession, and may even get to hobnob with international celebrities and philanthro-capitalists.

The premium has been on finding global patterns in fighting poverty – in promoting comprehensive development strategies meant for a broad range of countries, with the Washington Consensus or alternatively the so-called Beijing Consensus – and pronouncing overarching policy judgments on the hot issues of the day on a global scale, including austerity or stimulus, free trade, capital flows, global inequality, migration, intellectual property rights, the development NGO movement and the like.

ARMAMENTS2013-12-162023-07-10

No-Nuke Australia Thwarts Nuclear Free World

By Neena Bhandari* | IDN-InDepth NewsAnalysis

SYDNEY (IDN) – Australia has been expressing support for a nuclear weapons-free world, but documents obtained by disarmament advocacy group, the International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons (ICAN), reveal that the Australian Government sees the increasing international focus on the humanitarian impact of nuclear weapons as “rubbing up against” its reliance on the United States nuclear weapons.

ICAN has obtained declassified diplomatic cables, ministerial briefings and emails under freedom-of-information laws, which show that the Australian Government plans to oppose efforts to ban nuclear weapons.