‘If we can improve the images of the world, perhaps we can improve the world’
Wim Wenders
Wim Wenders’ words have perhaps never been more relevant to a movie than in the case of Home.
Following directly on from Al Gore’s An Inconvenient Truth, Home is, of course, a film with a message that sets out to shift [...]

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Today marks the 60th Anniversary of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.

Some places you should definitely take a look:

Official UN website
Know Your Human Rights
Amnesty International
Opendemocracy | Human Rights at 60: early retirement or another chance?
International Herald Tribune; China hails ‘progress’ but quells protest on human rights anniversary
Right Now (Dutch language, festival, accessible flyer handed out to [...]

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A young people’s summary of the  United Nations Human Development Report 2007/2008
The young people of the world have produced a Youth Booklet that includes drawings, poems and human stories on climate change and development, entirely made by and for young people!
The booklet has been developed by Peace Child International jointly with HDRO, and launched on Youth Day 2008.
Read [...]

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Usually I’m quite an optimist when talking about future-related trends, how to act on climate change etc. But this article in The Guardian struck me quite a lot…
Time is fast running out to stop irreversible climate change, a group of global warming experts warns today. We have only 100 months to avoid disaster. Andrew Simms [...]

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For the last three decades, it’s been more or less assumed that globalization was a force that moved in only one direction — towards ever-greater integration.
And due to the logic of global trade, the assumption of ever greater integration led to the prediction that manufacturing would continue to move from countries with low labor costs [...]

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The Biggest and probably most controversial games in history.

It’s a big day for China today. With its opening ceremony of the Beijng Olympics, it hopes to definitely settle its desired image of superpower in a world of shifting power, scarce resources, diverging trends of democracy and varying definitions of human rights.
While several world leaders will [...]

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- By Sandra van Beest, Youth Representative to the United Nations, 2007-2008.
As youth representative of the Netherlands I have had the opportunity to represent Dutch young people at the United Nations. Through writing proposals for UN resolutions, negotiating to get the proposals in the UN Resolutions and through addressing the General Assembly, I hope I [...]

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The Monocle Global Quality of Life Index may one day graduate to adopt a scientific methodology that considers a larger spectrum of cities around the world, but I’m happy to settle for their current coverage and play the my-city-is-better-than-yours game, using the tidbits of quick facts they’ve compiled. For those who don’t buy [...]

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The refugee challenge in the 21st century is changing rapidly. People are forced to flee their homes for increasingly complicated and interlinked reasons. Some 40 million people worldwide are already uprooted by violence and persecution, and it is likely that the future will see more people on the run as a growing number of push [...]

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Adbusters invite everybody to create a flag – free from language and well-worn clichés – that embodies the idea of global citizenship. A symbol that triggers pride and cohesion, whether worn on a backpack, displayed on a door, or flown on a flagpole. A symbol for anyone to declare membership in a growing and [...]

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