UN Youth | The Netherlands
I’m happy to present to you a new website which I developed & designed together with the UN Youth Representative Wouter Thiebou. This new website, vnjongeren.nl, aims to build a community for Dutch youths interested in the work and themes of the United Nations. Visitors can make their own account and start publishing articles, reviews...
The forgotten refugees who wait for justice after 60 years
The continuous attention in the media for the latest news can sometimes cause painstaking forgotten issues. West Bengal’s Cooper Camp, a ‘forgotten’ refugee camp in India, is such a forgotten story. Coopers Camp is the sub-continent’s oldest and least-known refugee camp. A hangover from another era, it represents a major embarrassment for the progressive West...
10 Stories the World Should Know More About
From the hidden world of stateless people to the often overlooked advances in malaria protection to the steps taken to bring peace after separate conflicts in southern Sudan and Uganda, the United Nations Department of Public Information (DPI) has compiled its fourth annual list of stories it believes deserve greater public and media attention. “Ten...
Robert Fisk: The only lesson we ever learn is that we never learn
Five years on, and still we have not learnt. With each anniversary, the steps crumble beneath our feet, the stones ever more cracked, the sand ever finer. Five years of catastrophe in Iraq and I think of Churchill, who in the end called Palestine a “hell-disaster”. Read more in The Independent… People who looked at...
Kosova and Albania: history, people, identity
The creation of an independent Kosovar state highlights the singular relationship between the Albanians of this former Yugoslav territory and their cousins in the Republic of Albania. The scholar and translator Robert Elsie reflects on a turbulent, unfinished history. Read more at openDemocracy… or take a look at the BalkanInsight website… Related items HOME: It’s...
The Clash of Peoples
Americans generally belittle the role of ethnic nationalism in politics. But in fact, it corresponds to some enduring propensities of the human spirit, it is galvanized by modernization, and in one form or another, it will drive global politics for generations to come. Once ethnic nationalism has captured the imagination of groups in a multiethnic...
Kosovo: the day after
The cost of Kosovo’s independence is the permanent embitterment of its Serb minority. When the tears of joy and despair dry, a fresh diplomatic solution will be needed, says Timothy William Waters. After a decade of waiting and months of intense manoeuvring, Kosovo’s assembly unilaterally declared independence on the afternoon of 17 February 2008. The...
Obama: The Religion Question
Is he a Muslim or an atheist? Did he take his oath for office on a Bible or a Quran? Is he sympathetic towards Arabs and Muslims? These are some of the questions being murmured by bloggers across the Middle East about presidential hopeful Barack Obama. Tunisian blogger Mohamed Marwen Meddah discusses the relationship between...
Developing Countries / Globalization & Global Culture / Politics & International Relations / Society / Sustainable Development / World
26,500
Around the world, some 26,500 children die every day. That is equivalent to: 1 child dying every 3 seconds 18 children dying every minute A 2004 Asian Tsunami occurring every week An Iraq-scale death toll every 15–36 days Almost 10 million children dying every year Some 60 million children dying between 2000 and 2006 The...
New Idealism
(By Farid Tabarki) Just a few years ago Dutch youngsters were seen as lazy, disconnected from society and media junkies. The Dutch Coolpolitics Foundation was founded because it knew better. By undertaking several projects in line with giving a platform to the rise of ‘new idealism’ amongst young people in the Netherlands youngsters are not...
Goodbye to All That: Why Obama Matters
Normally, I’m not very much in favor of contributing to an already over-dosed blogosphere of the US presidential campaign, but I can’t spare you this item. It’s a well-written essay by Andrew Sullivan about what Barack Obama could be the just the essential man for: first and foremost, bridging the widening gap of the cultural...
Earth & Environment / Globalization & Global Culture / Politics & International Relations / Sustainable Development / War & Terrorism / World
Climate War
Britain’s International Institute for Strategic Studies (IISS) warned last month that fears about stability — once hidden by smoke from the debate over the scientific evidence for global warming — are bound to rise to the top of the agenda. “The security dimension will come increasingly to the forefront as countries begin to see falls...
