GLOBAL AFFAIRS
When COVID-19 struck the world in early 2020, few cities were prepared to withstand the shockwaves it was going to impose on urban systems. In the offices and boardrooms of decision-makers, the number of hospital beds, intensive care units, or the time taken for...
A world on the brink 2020 was a bad year for many reasons, but especially for Earth’s climate. 2021 may turn out to be an even worse one. Germany, Haiti, China and Greece, among many others, all suffered at the hands of the destructive rage of our rapidly warming...
What does the International Day of the Girl Child mean for Malala Fund and how do you celebrate it? Young women and girls are passionate and eager to contribute to a better future. Some are advocating for curriculum reform and inventing climate solutions, while other...
From the time, when in 1919 the first Secretary General, Sir Eric Drummond started working out of a small London office with a staff of only three, until the handover of the League of Nation’s assets to the United Nations, by Sean Leister in Geneva on 18 April 1946,...
The phrase jumps out of the text of a resolution adopted by the UN General Assembly on 23 December, 1989. The resolution proclaimed the International Decade for Natural Disaster Reduction (IDNDR), beginning on 1 January 1990, and declared the second Wednesday of...
My co-authors and I reached the same conclusion in our book entitled The Future of Diplomacy After Covid-19 : Multilateralism and the Global Pandemic, released by Routledge in May 2021. Each in our own chapter, my fellow co-authors -- Hana Alhashimi, Andres Fiallo,...
You are the first Director of the IMF who comes from an emerging economy. How has this experience influenced your understanding and action on the challenges of developing countries? If there is one clear lesson from my experiences, it is the importance of building a...
D’où vient votre vocation pour la défense des droits humains ? Elle est le fruit d’un ensemble d’éléments. Il y a l’éducation que j’ai reçue. Très engagée dans les questions de justice sociale et dans le combat moral, ma famille a toujours eu le sens de ce qui est...
Over-consumption, ravaging of natural resources, mindless materialism….and waste. Even if you don’t agree with me that our society – at least in the developed world – is characterized by the first three scourges on this list, you’ll probably concur that waste is just...
GLOBAL AFFAIRS
The notions behind public service, as we know it today, appeared with the creation and evolution of nation states in Europe, although it went to develop across the world. In France, for instance, it went from the concept of the common good to common utility and...
What do mountains of e-waste and the ocean floor have in common? They contain precious metals like gold, silver, nickel, cobalt, and copper, some of which are also found on the seafloor of the largest habitat on earth: the deep sea. The deep sea is the entire ocean...
« (…) il n’y a plus de quartier, c’est une boucherie, un combat de bêtes féroces, furieuses et ivres de sang ; les blessés même se défendent jusqu’à la dernière extrémité, celui qui n’a plus d’armes saisit à la gorge son adversaire qu’il déchire avec les dents. »...
M. Seth (*), what are the most effective tools to fight corruption? On the largest level, there is the creation of effective institutions, such as independent and specialized anti-corruption agencies and audit institutions on the national and international scales;...
Against a backdrop of the events of the past 12 month, this year’s theme “Together: Resisting, Supporting and Healing” serves a rallying call. Together we can resist homophobia, biphobia, intersexism and transphobia in our workplaces, we can continue to support one...
One of the principles of the International Press Freedom Day is based on the independence of the media. A media company would have internal conflicts if a journalist wants to publish a report that goes against one of its main advertisers. What is your view on this? I...
If we all went to a confinement, politics and repression were never in a lockdown. Nowhere. Soon, we discovered that the pandemic was being used and misused to crack down on journalism and silence criticism. Presenting his report on freedom of expression to the Human...
Si je dis “abeilles”, c’est probablement le mot “miel” qui vous vient à l’esprit. Le miel n’est pourtant pas le seul bienfait de ce petit insecte. L’abeille travaille sans relâche, dans nos jardins, nos champs et nos prairies, à la reproduction des plantes. Comme tous...
The book, published by Amazon, is filled with scores of anecdotes– from the serious to the mostly hilarious. An award-winning journalist, Deen shared the first prize, two prestigious gold medals for excellence in development reporting in 2012 and 2013, at the annual...
We are witnessing a loss of biodiversity and natural habitats on an unprecedented scale, which in turn affects every sphere of our lives: from the air we breathe, water we drink, soil that grows our food, and climate. Entire ecosystems are disappearing; and the...
