Category: OPINION

By Jonathan Power

LUND, Sweden (IDN-INPS) – The great immigration debate has to become the great re-thinking and re-structuring debate. Charlie Brown is right when he says, “No problem is too big and complicated that it can’t be run away from”.

In both the US and the EU the focus is increasingly on the problem of immigration. President Donald Trump talks of them being criminals, drug traffickers and scroungers. And then he wants to build a very expensive wall on the border separating countries that for a long time have not countenanced war or terrorism against each other. (By the way, there is a funny Mexican joke: “Yes, it’s a good idea to build the wall – it will keep Trump out”!)

By Phumzile Mlambo-Ngcuka, UN Women Executive Director

Note: This is the text of message by UN Women Executive Director as part of a series on International Women’s Day, 8 March 2017

NEW YORK (IDN-INPS | UN Women) – Across the world, too many women and girls spend too many hours on household responsibilities – typically more than double the time spent by men and boys. They look after younger siblings, older family members, deal with illness in the family and manage the house.

In many cases this unequal division of labour is at the expense of women’s and girls’ learning, of paid work, sports, or engagement in civic or community leadership. This shapes the norms of relative disadvantage and advantage, of where women and men are positioned in the economy, of what they are skilled to do and where they will work.

By Patricia Espinosa, UNFCCC Executive Secretary

Note: Following are excerpts from opening address on February 18 at a discussion on human security and climate security by the UN’s top climate change official at the annual Munich Security Conference 2017, in which she called for a reframing climate change as a “security story”, given its far-ranging implications for global peace and stability. For full text please click here.

BERLIN (IDN-INPS) – Climate change is a security issue. Our current refugee crisis, when seen through the lens of climate change, brings this into sharp focus. And the security community, which is renowned and revered for their ability to assess and address future threats, understands that our current crisis pales in comparison to what is coming if climate change is left unchecked.

By Dr. Patrick I. Gomes, ACP Secretary-General

Following are extensive excerpts from a presentation by the ACP Secretary-General during launch of the book AFTER BREXIT – SECURING ACP ECONOMIC INTERESTS by The Ramphal Institute on February 17, 2017 at King’s College London.

BRUSSELS (ACP-IDN) – Eight months have passed since the British voted in a referendum to leave the European Union. A lot has since been written and debated on the impact and implications of the vote. This is yet another occasion to join the discourse on BREXIT and to acknowledge and appreciate the work done by the Ramphal Institute by this seminal study.

By Jonathan Power

LUND, Sweden (IDN-INPS) – Eleven hundred years ago Europe was a backwater. There were no grand cities, apart from Cordoba in Spain which was Muslim. The Middle East was much further ahead, still absorbing the intellectual delights and challenges of Greek science, medicine and architecture which Europeans were largely ignorant of. In southern China agriculture advanced and trade in tea, porcelain and silk flourished.

By 1914 it was a totally different world. The Europeans ruled 84% of the globe and they had colonies everywhere. How was it that Europe and its offspring, the United States, became the dominant dynamic force in the world, and still are today in most things?

By Jonathan Power

LUND, Sweden (IDN-INPS) – Reporting on President Donald Trump’s new energy policy which plans for a big increase in domestically produced oil and gas, the Financial Times reported: “Exports of gas have begun, with the first shipments of Liquefied Natural Gas leaving the Sabine Pass facility on the border between Texas and Louisiana a year ago. Since then trade has grown and the U.S. now supplies a dozen different gas markets around the world.” The U.S. is all set to speed this up.

By H. M. G. S. Palihakkara

HMGS Palihakkara is Sri Lanka’s former Permanent Representative to the UN and a former Foreign Secretary at the Sri Lanka Ministry of Foreign Affairs.

COLOMBO (IDN) – Commentators may have a rich diversity of views about costs and benefits of the American footprint on world affairs. That apart, there is no denying that America remained the major role player in the global scene in its many dimensions – strategic, security, economic, technological and more.

Rightly or wrongly, the American outreach and influence over global affairs has been so complex and overarching, any attempt to define it, let alone analyze and assess it, on a brief time frame, would indeed be a very ambitious enterprise even when conditions are normal in Washington DC. Anyone having TV access will know that conditions are far from normal these days in that powerful Capital. This naturally renders any quick-fire, balanced assessment of the U.S. global role in the current context, an even more complicated proposition.

PARIS (IDN | SWAN) – The world is becoming “more violent, and violence is occurring in surprising places,” says a recent report by the Paris-based Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD).

Some 3.34 billion people, or almost half of the world’s population, have been affected by violence over the past 15 years, according to the report. But many regions have also known violence for decades, if not centuries, and the arts have particularly borne witness to the issue.

In the Caribbean, writers and other artists are known for portraying societal violence in their work, and this depiction is now increasingly the subject of scholarly research.

By Jonathan Power

LUND, Sweden (IDN-INPS) – So what does President Donald Trump think about NATO? Twice during his campaign he rubbished it publically, saying it was “obsolete”. Yet early February when he met the UK’s prime minister, Therese May, it was all hunky dory. He told her he supported NATO 100%.

There are some – a few – influential people who have argued that NATO is indeed obsolete. One of these was William Pfaff, the late, much esteemed, columnist for the International Herald Tribune. Another is Paul Hockenos who set out his views in a seminal article in World Policy Journal. Their words fell on deaf ears.