Europe
Europe
Fair Observer provides insightful and informed analysis about important European issues, events and trends.
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360° Analysis / Anwar Akhtar / Balakot Project / British Pakistanis / Civil society / development / Edhi Foundation / Elections / Pakistan / Pakistan Calling / Pakistani Diaspora / PK Calling / RSA / The Samosa / Europe / Global Change / Central & South AsiaBy Anwar AkhtarWhat is the biggest challenge facing Pakistan? This is the last of a two part series. Read part one here. In a conversation with Fair Observer's Nishtha Chugh, the Director of The Samosa, Anwar Akhtar, discusses the origins of Pakistan Calling: a film project in collaboration with the Royal Society of Arts that shows links between civil and cultural organizations in Pakistan and the UK. Nishtha Chugh: So your program is, for example, going to go to Pakistan, collaborate with role models like Asma Jahangir, Hina Jilani, and then where is the filming going to take place? Anwar Akhtar: We work with Karachi University film school; we work with SZABIST University film school; we work with...
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360° Analysis / Anwar Akhtar / Balakot Project / Civil society / development / Edhi Foundation / Elections / Nishtha Chugh / Pakistan Calling / Pakistani Diaspora / PK Calling / RSA / The Samosa / Europe / Global Change / Central & South AsiaBy Anwar AkhtarWhat is the biggest challenge facing Pakistan? This is the first of a two part series. In a conversation with Fair Observer's Nishtha Chugh, the Director of The Samosa, Anwar Akhtar, discusses the origins of Pakistan Calling: a film project in collaboration with the Royal Society of Arts that shows links between civil and cultural organizations in Pakistan and the UK. Nishtha Chugh: Nawaz Sharif is the new prime minister of Pakistan. What kind of changes are you expecting to take place, or what will happen in his leadership — he's a changed man, of course — with respect to your initiative? Anwar Akhtar: I think the most important thing about the recent Pakistani...
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Arms Trade Treaty / global arms trade / government corruption / government role in arms trade / North America / Saudi Arabia / Tony Blair / Europe / Focus Article / International Security / Middle East & North AfricaBy Barnaby PaceThe clandestine nature of the arms market makes it ideally suited for corruption. The arms trade accounts for as much as 40 percent of corruption in global trade. It is fair to call it “hard-wired for corruption,” operating as it does in a shadowy world of its own. Corruption represents a theft from the people of a country; it is their money funneled into secret bank accounts or used to pay a company for a product it could not sell without bribe. In the arms trade, it is not only money that is stolen but also security that is manipulated. The arms trade is today made up almost entirely of private firms whose primary motivation is profit. They may claim to act in the...
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anti-corruption strategies / Arab Spring / Brazil Protests / bribery / corruption / Egypt / Global corruption / John T. Noonan / malaysia / North America / Qatar / Robert Klitgaard / Singapore / Taksim Square / Europe / Focus Article / Middle East & North Africa / Global Change / Latin America / Africa / Central & South Asia / Asia PacificOne day, corruption will be as unthinkable as slavery. Corruption is the misuse of a trusted position for illicit private ends. Corruption ranges across phenomena, including bribery, extortion, fraud, nepotism, and outright theft. Corruption is difficult to measure, of course. In perceptions of people around the world, corruption is closely related to administrative efficiency, rule of law, and ethics in the private sector. We can spend days or even academic lifetimes debating definitions and the deeper causes of corruption and weak governance. Let’s instead focus on a separable, practical question: What can be done to reduce corruption? Here there is good news. Even in...
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2030 / climate change / Food Scarcity / future / North America / Shahbaz Shaikh / United Nations / Water Scarcity / Europe / Focus Article / Global ChangeWhat challenges does the world face for 2030? By 2030, technology will have advanced at a rate far beyond the predictive capacity available today, as technology expands in efficiency at an exponential rate. As a result, this will meet limits in terms of physical constraints; it will create a new need for organizational structures that do not promote discrimination or abusive cyclical patterns, which are a feature of today’s marketing system — especially in agriculture and other markets whose products are necessary to the sustenance of the nation. Issues of planning are often understood in goals and timeframes available for achieving them. The primary problem of scarcity in any...
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360° Analysis / abolitionism / Forced Labour / Human Trafficking for Sexual Exploitation / North America / Second Wave Feminism / UN Convention for the Suppression of the Traffic in Persons / White Slavery / Europe / CultureBy Donna HughesSex trafficking has existed since the dawn of civilization. The practices of sexual exploitation and sexual slavery are older than recorded history. Whenever a woman or girl — or man or boy — was without status or protection, he or she could have been subjected to sexual exploitation. The same is true today. Debates and Protocols “Sex trafficking” is a modern term. It was coined during the second wave of the women’s movement in the 1980s, when female activists started protesting the exploitation of women and girls in prostitution and pornography. Debates raged for years among feminists about “free” and “forced” prostitution, and whether...
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al-Shabab / Fair Observer / Golden Dawn / Human Trafficking / Iran / Kenya Attacks / Nairobi / North America / Obama UN General Assembly / Obama-Rouhani / Politics / Rachel Lloyd / Rouhani / Syria / Tariq Ramadan / United States / Europe / Focus Article / Middle East & North Africa / Latin America / Africa / Central & South Asia / Asia PacificPledge $1 to keep us going. Back in 1939, September was the month when World War II broke out. So in 2013, it is reassuring to see that the US and Iran might be beginning their first tentative steps to rest the ghosts of 1953 and 1979. The former scarred Iran because the CIA was influenced by the British to conduct a coup against a democratically elected Iranian government. The latter scarred the US because Ayatollah Khomeini came to power in a revolution and caused a hostage crisis that led to the fall of Jimmy Carter. After the saber rattling of the last few years, perhaps Barack Obama and Hassan Rouhani might give diplomacy a better shot to resolve their difference, leading...
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American Healthcare / Britain / British Healthcare / Bruce Newsome / Care Quality Commission / Healthcare / Labour Party / National Health Service / NHS / North America / Europe / Focus Article / ScienceIs the British healthcare service a model for the United States? This is the last of a two part series. Read part one here. Here is the most consequential truth: Even though British healthcare is largely public, it is effectively unaccountable. You might naturally assume that the Ministry of Health is accountable for public healthcare – not so. The Labour government (1997-2010) had set up an incestuous system of “quasi-non-governmental organizations” (QUANGOs) that effectively hid epidemic malpractice and allowed government deniability. QUANGOs are largely self-regulating bodies, even though almost all their funding comes from the taxpayer. Enforcing Accountability The...
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360° Analysis / Arab Spring / Bashar Al-Assad / Chemical Weapons / Citizen Empowerment / Diplomacy / Egypt / John Kerry / North America / Russia / Sergei Lavrov / Syria / Syrian Civil War / Tartus / Tunisia / United Nations / US Foreign Policy / Yemen / Europe / International Security / Middle East & North AfricaToo many Syrians have been killed for a deal to contain chemical weapons. Quite apart from the current fury in the West over the use of chemical weapons by Bashar al-Assad, the Syrian Civil War has been the latest chapter in the continual collapse of ersatz national sovereignties in the Middle East since the notion of the nation-state was first imposed upon them a hundred years ago. In a political rendition of "if the right fist don't get you, the left one will," the eminent transnational forces of Islam and Facebook have taken to leap prescribed country borders in a single bound. All this while Big Oil still maintains a series of overweight...