Are Developing Countries Waving or Drowning?

More than five years since the outbreak of the global financial crisis, the world economy has shown few signs of stabilising and moving towards strong and sustained growth.

Tackle Malnutrition Now

Between 2010 and 2012, 868 million people worldwide were deemed hungry by a conservative definition. This figure represents only a small fraction of the world’s population whose health and lives are blighted by malnutrition.

Quantitative Easing: Impact on Emerging and Developing Economies

The global economy is awash with successive waves of liquidity generated over the past few years by the four most advanced economies, viz., the United States, the European Union, (EU), Japan and the United Kingdom, known as the G4. This liquidity has taken the form of “quantitative easing” (QE).

Africa Leading the New Patterns of Growth

The old theories governing the way that countries produce and trade are being replaced. The pattern of trade is being transformed by increasingly sophisticated technology and innovations in transportation; and the topography of actors is shifting to reflect new poles of growth.

Europe on the Edge of the Abyss

The economic crisis began in the United States under the administration of then-President George W. Bush, following the collapse of the Lehman Brothers Bank. It came as a result of unregulated globalisation and a neoliberal ideology that places usurious markets, offshore bank accounts, and money for the sake of money, above state power. It is an ideology that ignores citizens, even as they starve.

Civil Society Under Attack Around the World

In December 2011, 159 governments and major international organisations recognised the central role of civil society in development and promised to create an “enabling” operating environment for the non-profit sector.

A Federation Could Strengthen Europe’s Magnetism

The recent agreement for the normalisation of relations between Serbia and Kosovo has confirmed that the European Union (EU) is still acting as a “magnet”, attracting its external neighbours and transforming and integrating them. Thanks to its prospects for EU membership, the whole Balkan area has become more stable and secure. Unfortunately, this virtuous magnetism no longer exerts the same force of attraction on our own citizens.

Developing Resilience to Financial Shocks

The global repercussions of the 2007-2008 financial crisis are a stark reminder of the economic interdependence in our globalising world. No country was spared from the shock waves that originated in the financial systems of developed economies.

OP-ED: War and Peace in Colombia and Venezuela

The crisis in Venezuela caused by the violent opposition of followers of Henrique Capriles, who is accusing President Nicolás Maduro of election fraud, and peace talks between the Colombian government and the FARC guerrillas in Havana, are occupying the attention of national and foreign media.

Austerity is Dismantling the European Dream

The European Union (EU) has asked its citizens to brace for further economic misery. In a report on European economic prospects released on May 3, the European Commission said that further deterioration is expected to last at least until 2015. But, as every such report says, things will then get better.

The Free Market Fundamentalists Are Now in Europe

For a long time it was a given that while Europe was based on defending a more just society, with social values and solidarity, the United States was based on the glory of individualism and competition, and anything public was considered “socialist”.

Learn From the Children

“Recall the face of the poorest and weakest man you have seen, and ask yourself if this step you contemplate is going to be any use to him.”

Maduro, Capriles and Wayward Democracy

When the left was in opposition in Latin America, it never tired of repeating that true democracy was not limited to electing governments at the ballot box. Democracy was also needed in the distribution of rights and riches.

Defusing the “Three Against Two” Nuclear Pentagon

It has not been this bad since the 1950-53 Korean War. October 1962, the Cuba-USSR-U.S. crisis, comes to mind. There were horror visions of mushroom clouds. A proud Cuba, with a strong leader-dictatorship, a social revolution in the near past, was denied a normal place in the state system, bullied by the U.S. and some allies with sanctions and boycotts into isolation, which has lasted more than 50 years.

We Are All Thatcherites Now

The flood of elegiac articles on former British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher is in itself a good measure of how we have all become Thatcherites without realising it. Only those who are not graced by a young age can see how the world and politics have changed so deeply since her days that it is correct to call her a “great revolutionary”.

Why Focus on Babies?

I nearly died on the day I was born. My mother laboured for 24 hours in a bush hospital in northern Uganda that had no running water and no electricity. Fortunately, the midwife found a doctor, who had witnessed a Caesarian section, who managed to operate, saving my life and my mother’s. Today, had I been born in one of the many places across the world without adequate maternal and reproductive health care, I may not have survived my own day of birth.

Change in Cuba Comes in Stops and Starts

The reform process launched in Cuba by the government of President Raúl Castro has made several changes to the country’s rigid social and economic structure, with the ultimate aim of bringing this island nation out of its economic lethargy and making production, which is sinking under the weight of restrictions, controls and contradictions, more efficient.

The Two Faces of International Commodity Trade

For decades, commodity trade has been understood from the point of view of “commodity dependent” exporting countries, those whose revenues are largely generated by commodities exports. The trend of decreasing agricultural commodity prices was the focus of attention. However, from the beginning of the 2000s, there was an upward trend in agricultural commodity prices culminating in the price peak of 2007-08.

Latin American Integration, Post-Chávez

What is Hugo Chávez's legacy to Latin America? The best way to evaluate a head of state is to examine what is left behind after his or her death. In the case of Chávez, his image is obscured by a series of ideological and cultural prejudices that hide a clear perception of who he was.

World’s Poor Pharma

I recently spent a day in Mumbai with the man who arguably has done more than anyone else in the world to save millions of lives of people with AIDS and other diseases.

OP-ED: Stability Will Mark Post-Chávez Venezuela

Although there is plenty of speculation about what will happen now President Hugo Chávez is gone, the likelihood of change in Venezuelan politics and society is low.