In Host Country Lebanon, Refugee and Rural Women Build Entrepreneurship, Cohesion and Future

“When we were forced to leave our country, I never thought that a community in Lebanon would accept and treat me as an active member, the way I have been at the Kfeir Women’s Working Group,” says Hiba Kamal, an 18-year-old refugee from Syria who travelled to Lebanon with her family five years ago fleeing instability in her own country.

European Security with or Without Russia?
Consequences of the Chinese-Russian Alliance on the Relationship Between USA and EU

The joint military manoeuvres between the Russian and Chinese navies, armies, and air forces has kicked off. It's a clear message for Washington, which has recently strengthened its action in Asia, indicating that as a country that overlooks the Pacific, it wants to play an important role in the continent, aimed at containing the Chinese expansion.

Poverty Cut by Growth Despite Policy Failure

At the UN Millennium Summit in September 2000, world leaders committed to halve the share of people living on less than a dollar a day by 2015. The World Bank’s poverty line, set at $1/day in 1985, was adjusted to $1.25/day in 2005, an increase of 25% after two decades. This was then re-adjusted to $1.90/day in 2011/2012, an increase by half over 7 years! As these upward adjustments are supposed to reflect changes in the cost of living, but do not seem to parallel inflation or other related measures, they have raised more doubts about poverty line adjustments.

Fossil Fuels: At What Price?

We often read comparisons between the prices of solar energy or wind energy with the prices of fossil fuels. It is encouraging to see that renewables are rapidly becoming competitive, and are often cheaper than coal or oil. In fact, if coal, oil and natural gas were given their correct prices renewables would be recognized as being incomparably cheaper than fossil fuels.

Rousseff’s Ouster Won’t Clear Up Uncertainty in Brazil

The dismissal of now ex-president Dilma Rousseff brings to a close a turbulent chapter of Brazil’s crisis, but does nothing to clear up the doubts that threaten the political system and the economy of Latin America’s powerhouse.

Youth Key to the Success of the SDGs in Kenya

Consider this: in 1956 Sweden and Kenya’s population was roughly at 7 million. Today Sweden has about 9.8 million, while there are about 44 million Kenyans.Fertility levels are declining gradually and Kenyans are living longer. It is estimated that there will be 85 million people in Kenya by 2050, with three quarters of these being below 35 years. While Kenya’s median age is 19, Sweden’s is 42.

Youth Employment: Turning Workplace Partnerships into Opportunity

Many of us can remember the difficulties of getting our first job – the searching, the frustration of rejection, the nervous wait for an interview or the first day of work. Today’s staggering unemployment rates in many countries make it an especially difficult time for young job-seekers.

Expansionary fiscal consolidation myth

The debt crisis in Europe continues to drag on. Drastic measures to cut government debts and deficits, including by replacing democratically elected governments with ‘technocrats’, have only made things worse. The more recent drastic expenditure cuts in Europe to quickly reduce public finance deficits have not only adversely impacted the lives of millions as unemployment soared. The actions also seem to have killed the goose that lay the golden egg of economic growth, resulting in a ‘low growth’ debt trap.

An Unequal Country

One of the world’s great achievements of the past decades has been the significant fall in global poverty. Between 1990 and 2012, the proportion of humanity living under $1.90 a day fell from 37 per cent to only 13pc, driven in large part by the efforts of China. South Asia also witnessed a major decline in poverty, from 51pc to 19pc, with unequal progress across countries.

Blame It on Cronyism, Not the Free Market

The current condition of global economic inequality should be of concern to all. An Oxfam report published this year titled, An economy for the 1%, revealed that “the richest 1% now have more wealth than the rest of the world combined.” It also said that "62 of the richest people now own more wealth than the bottom half of the world's population. In 2015 it was the 80 richest, in 2014 it was 85 and in 2010, only six years back, it was 388 richest that owned similar wealth”, showing that inequality is actually growing at an increasing rate. This is also made evident by the fact that “the wealth of the poorest half of the world's population has fallen by a trillion dollars since 2010, a drop of 38 percent" while “the wealth of the richest 62 has increased [during the same period] by more than half a trillion dollars to $1.76 trillion.”

Thinking Global? Act Provincial

The least populated, northernmost province in North America even its own citizens dread to go has a per capita GDP of C$58,452 compared with C$3,439.28 for the entire Philippines.

Poverty, Vulnerability and Social Protection

According to the World Bank, the MDG target of halving the share of the poor was achieved by 2008, well in advance of 2015, the target year. However, increased unemployment and lower incomes in recent times remind us that poverty is not an unchanging attribute of a shrinking group, but rather, a condition that billions of vulnerable persons risk experiencing.

Olympic Games End Decade of Giant Mega-projects in Brazil

An era of mega-events and mega-projects is coming to a close in Brazil with the Olympic Games to be hosted Aug. 5-21 by Rio de Janeiro. But the country’s taste for massive construction undertakings helped fuel the economic and political crisis that has it in its grip.

Preventing the Next Panic

The hostility toward Wall Street remains so great that both political parties say, in their platforms, that they’d like to break up America’s biggest banks. But before engaging in this drastic economic surgery, it’s worth examining whether Dodd-Frank is working. Recall that the law, named after its congressional sponsors, former Sen. Senator Christopher Dodd and former Rep. Barney Frank, overhauled the financial system to make it more panic proof. Is it? The answer may surprise.