NO WORLD PEACE WITHOUT RELIGIOUS TOLERANCE

In principle, religion is against violence, yet historically intolerance has reigned, and without tolerance and respect for those who are different, conflict and war are inevitable. Thus it was in the past and probably will be so in the future unless there is a revolution in the thinking of religions and dialogue and peaceful co-existence prevail, writes Mario Soares, ex-President and ex-Prime Minister of Portugal, and President of the Commission for Religious Freedom of Portugal. In this article, Soares writes that we have a moral duty to fight against all forms of violence and to build a global culture of peace. Violence is harmful for religions, in the short term and the long term, as well as to relations between believers and non-believers, who necessarily live together in our modern societies. A world without violence could be our magnificent utopia of the 21st century - if we were able control the myriad forms of violence that daily enter our homes through the television, movies, and the Internet and if all religions were convinced that the fight for peace, for human rights, and respect for those who are different was the best way to express the love for God.

IS HUMANITY BRINGING ABOUT ITS OWN EXTINCTION?

Given the grim developments of our age, biologists, bioanthropologists, and astrophysicists are weighing the possibility that our species, homo sapiens/demens, may go extinct even in this century, writes Leonardo Boff, a Brazilian theologian and member of the Earth Charter. In this analysis, Boff writes that their arguments should be taken seriously. The most substantial seems to be overpopulation aggravated by the difficulty of adapting to climate change. Population growth has been exponential. It took humanity a million years to reach a population of 1 billion in 1850; at the current ever-increasing rate, this figure is set to reach 10 billion in 2050. Is this a triumph of the species or a danger for all humanity? What could end is not human life but this unthinking human life that loves war and mass destruction. We have to bring about a humane world where true justice is practiced, which respects life, desacralises violence, loves and cares for all beings, and which venerates the mystery of the world we call the Originary Source, or God. Or simply, we must learn to treat all human beings humanely and with compassion and respect for all creation. Everything that exists deserves to exist. Everything that lives deserves to live. Especially the human being.

INDIA: LAND REFORM BACK ON AGENDA

The month-long march that brought 25,000 of India\'s poorest peasants and farmers to Delhi on October 29 was a dramatic indication that in the midst of its runaway economic growth, India is at war with itself over land and natural resources, writes Aruna Roy and Nikhil Dey, founder members and activists working with the MKSS - a peoples organisation in rural Rajasthan. They are also members of several National Campaigns human rights and democratic rights in India, including the Right to Information and Right to work campaigns. In this analysis, the authors writes that over 170 million are estimated to be landless in India, and another 250 million own less than a fifth of a hectare. Approximately 40 million people have been displaced by land acquisition. The marchers demands, encapsulated in a \"Draft National Land Reform Policy\", included distribution of land to the landless, protection the land rights of farmers affected adversely by the onslaught of development and industrial projects, implementation of land ceiling provisions, tenancy rights, the right to homestead land for all citizens, and women\'s rights to land titles. The government agreed to the adoption of a National Land Reform Policy and to the creation of a \"National Land Reforms Council\" headed by the prime minister. If the new land reform policy is enacted and its mechanisms work as they should, the October march will be a land mark remembered for turning the tide.

A NEW APPROACH TO INTERNATIONAL CO-OPERATION

This is a crucial moment for the fight against world poverty. Given how far we still are from success, it is essential that we make a critical and honest assessment of the strategies and lines of action we have used thus far, writes Patrizia Sentinelli, Italy\'s vice-minister for foreign affairs. In this article the author writes that while the international climate is not favourable to this endeavour, we have seen an evolution of global public awareness of the importance of intensifying the fight against poverty. These indications of a new sensibility should be, especially for donor countries, the departure point for building a more ambitious mode of international co-operation that transcends the sectorial logic that has limited it thus far, places it alongside the major public policies, and fully integrates it into foreign policy. Only in this way can international co-operation work to make dialogue a method not only of resolving disputes but also of preventing conflicts. Co-operation must provide support for pacifist activism, the protection of common goods, and the participation of civil society of the North and the South.

SANITATION SAVES LIVES AND HELPS THE ENVIRONMENT AND THE ECONOMY

Recognising how fundamental sanitation is to children\'s health, social and economic development, and environmental sustainability, The UN General Assembly has declared 2008 the International Year of Sanitation (IYS), writes Therese Dooley, Senior Advisor for Hygiene and Sanitation at UNICEF In this article, Dooley writes that every year, diarrhoea from inadequate sanitation and unsafe hygiene practices kills more than 1.5 million children under five, or one child every 20 seconds. Improved sanitation can also reduce illness due to diarrhoea by 35 percent, averting up to 190 million cases each year. Hand washing with soap, another key issue linked to sanitation, can decrease diarrhoea by over 43 percent. Improved sanitation and hand washing would also have significant impact on cholera, dysentery, worms, and trachoma. The economic cost of not having toilets and not practising good hygiene is also significant. Lost productivity and time, preventable health costs, lost school fees, and the longer term costs of environmental impacts can seriously affect a country\'s growth and economic development. It is estimated that every dollar spent on sanitation yields approximately nine dollars in benefits; thus investing in sanitation makes good economic sense.

CUBAN FUTUROLOGY

The recent hardening of Bush\'s policy towards Cuba comes at a time when there are discussions underway on the island of what might accurately be called a possible transition: the search for structural and conceptual changes that Raul Castro himself demanded in an exhortation that spurred a population reticent about expressing its opinions to reject obsolete policies and propose possible changes, writes Leonardo Padura Fuentes, a Cuban writer and journalist whose novels have been translated into a ten languages. In this article, the author asks whether the government of Cuba, in an atmosphere of belligerence from the US and serious economic problems at home, has the possibility (and the will) to make these changes and how far it will go with them if the conservative forces opt for immobility. In a country where for decades no solution has been found to shortages and the lack of housing, where the leaders have recognised that interest in work has fallen in direct proportion to the impossibility of meeting daily needs with one\'s salary, and where there has been for years ethical deterioration, corruption, prostitution, etc, the introduction of \'\'structural and conceptual\'\' changes is clearly advisable if not already indispensable.

EU REFORM WILL AFFECT LATIN AMERICA AS WELL

The current state of the European Union since approval of the Reform Treaty could affect integration processes in the rest of the world and especially in the Americas, writes Joaquin Roy, \'\'Jean Monnet\'\' professor and Director of the European Union Centre of the University of Miami. In this analysis, the author writes that once again the European constitutional impasse has revived Latin America\'s sense that the true reason underlying the \'\'no\'\' vote by France and Holland in 2005 was the fear of a \'\'loss\'\' of sovereignty. This fear is deeply rooted in the Latin American imagination and has been identified as a threat to nationalist centralism. The need to focus on correcting the negative impact of the French and Dutch \'\'no\'\' and the subsequent compromise of the Reform Treaty suggest that the EU\'s priorities in the future will be directed more inward than outward, and towards the strengthening of its natural limits. Those alarmed by the lack of interest in distant areas of the planet argue, therefore, that Latin America is a sure candidate for future cuts in Official Development Assistance, though current assistance levels have been approved and are locked in through 2014.

SUBSIDIES DRIVE US CORN ETHANOL BOOM DESPITE MAJOR DRAWBACKS

The fuel source the US has chosen to start replacing petroleum, corn-based ethanol, is expensive, inefficient, and both environmentally and economically destructive, writes Mark Sommer, who hosts the award-winning, internationally-syndicated radio programme, \'\'A World of Possibilities\'\'. In recent years, giant agricultural commodity distributors like Cargill and Archer Daniels Midland have successfully pressured both the White House and Congress to extend lavish, long-standing corn subsidies largely benefiting their corporate farming partners. But corn-based ethanol turns out to be a bad bargain: it causes just 13 percent fewer greenhouse gas emissions than petroleum, and a recent OECD report found that \'\'the overall environmental impacts of ethanol and biofuel can very easily exceed those of petrol and mineral diesel\'\'. The pressure on corn supplies exerted by ethanol demand has contributed to a 50 percent rise in the price of tortillas in Mexico in the past year, sending this staple food beyond the reach of the poor. China and India are starting to suffer from food price inflation rippling out from rising corn and soybean prices. Food is fundamentally a human right, not a mere commodity to be traded like any other at the expense of those who can\'t afford it. Not until we acknowledge this fact will we design both a fuel and a food system driven more by human values than shareholder value.

RESTORING ACCOUNTABILITY IN THE UNITED NATIONS

For the first time in its six decades of existence, the United Nations\' internal system of administrative justice has been significantly reformed, writes Kingsley Chiedu Moghalu, a member of the Redesign Panel on the United Nations System of Administration of Justice. The author writes that in the new system, independent judges with legal training and real judicial powers will review and issue decisions that are binding even on the Secretary-General, who was previously considered essentially above UN administrative law. Justice - including alternative methods of dispute resolution such as mediation -- will be accessible not just for UN staff in New York, Geneva, and Vienna, but also personnel in far-flung field outposts. There is still some distance to travel before the new system formally comes into effect in early 2009. But perhaps the innovative reforms will ultimately help create the culture of accountability in the UN that is so necessary if the organisation is to attract stronger political support. In addition, without this kind of reform, it might be impossible to achieve others - including restructuring the Security Council in a manner that reflects the realities of the 21st century rather than those of 1945.

THE DANGERS OF GOOD INTENTIONS

Respect for the ways that other peoples think is an important issue and vital to designing strategies of communication. For it to be effective, the language, symbols, and logic of a message must be aligned with the world vision, beliefs, attitudes, and practices of the population you are trying to communicate with, writes Leticia Artiles, a Cuban anthropologist and co-ordinator of the Latin American Network of Gender and Collective Health of the Latin American Association of Social Medicine. In this article, the author writes that approaches to communication of western organisations trying to reach non-western cultures are still based on the concepts, designs, and advancement of particular groups and fail to include the \'\'real\'\' thinking of the \'\'other\'\' that they are trying to affect. Programmes that do not consider context, location, and gender relations will always miss their target. In this \'\'global\'\' world where the market and consumption cuts across everything, where foundations and financial organisations put together the funding for intercultural projects to improve the conditions and quality of life of these groups, we should remember that \'\'the road to hell is paved with good intentions\'\'.

BEYOND GDP: MEASURING REAL NATIONAL PROGRESS

Will the 27 nations of the EU be the first to adopt a new GDP that can integrate all the factors that comprise our quality of life? asks Hazel Henderson, author of Ethical Markets: Growing the Green Economy and other books, co-creator of the Calvert-Henderson Quality of Life Indicators with the Calvert Group and member of the Organizing Committee for the \'\'Beyond GDP\'\' conference in the European Parliament, November 19-20 in Brussels. In this article, Henderson writes that GDP ignores all non money- measured aspects of national progress and even tacitly encourages bad behaviour. For example, since ecological assets like forests and ocean fish stocks are not valued in GDP, a country could chop down its forests and record the sale of the wood as an addition to GDP with no losses recorded anywhere. Similarly, GDP treats education as a cost, instead of the basic investment societies make in developing educated, productive citizens. GDP still sets at zero the value of vital ecological assets: clean air, water and biodiversity, as well as the value of healthy, productive citizens and their unpaid work (raising children, maintaining households, caring for the sick and elderly, serving as volunteers, etc.) which accounts for some 50 percent of all production, even in industrial societies.

THE RISE OF CUBAN CIVIL SOCIETY

It is almost impossible to understand Cuba without examining the dynamics of Cuban civil society, writes Rafael Hernandez, a political analyst, editor of the journal Temas, and researcher at the Juan Marinello Institute in Havana. His latest book is The History of Havana. In this article, the author writes that in the early 1990s the island was struck by a perfect storm of accumulated domestic problems, the collapse of the socialist bloc, and reform. This created a whole new constellation of problems that rose from the bottom of Cuban society. The new situation unleashed an array individual and family strategies -- self-employment, economic emigration, remittances from abroad from family members, the search for employment in the dollar sector-- which competed with the established collective approaches. Although there was no movement beyond the centralised system, the crisis did spur the use of more decentralised mechanisms which in turn reactivated the community. The neighbourhood and its social and family networks, formal and informal organisations, and religious associations helped to repair housing, care for elderly pensioners, preserve hygiene, and provide scarce medication, accessible food, and spiritual support. In the vortex of this storm, Cuban civil society appeared in a new light.

GLOBALISATION: NEW CHALLENGES OF AN ANCIENT PHENOMENON

It is a commonplace today to say that the policies of President Bush have resulted in total disaster both domestically and abroad. This is the opinion not only outside of the country but also of a sizeable majority of Americans as well, writes Mario Soares, former President and former Prime Minister of Portugal. In this analysis, Soares writes that meanwhile, the planet is in the grips of accelerating change. The nine emerging countries, in particular the so-called BRIC (Brazil, Russia, India, and China) represent uncontrollable forces in the context of the international order, which rapidly shifted from bi-polar to uni-polar and is now on the way to a multi-polar arrangement. This is the reality that the West must now accept if it wants to contribute to the establishment of a new global order. To achieve this, there must first be a restructuring of the UN to make it more democratic and more capable of intervening to address the major challenges facing humanity: addressing threats to the health of the planet, the eradication of poverty, fighting organised crime at the global level, regulating and guiding globalisation, and in general bringing about a system marked by greater justice, equality, and solidarity such that the future is more human and less fraught with conflict.

WHY A WTO DEAL MATTERS

The Doha Round of multilateral trade negotiations are in much the same place that they were last fall. The central issues keeping the talks at a stalemate continue to be the lowering of agricultural subsidies by developed countries and the reduction of industrial tariffs by developing countries. This type of headline we have read during each of the last few years, and some observers argue that multilateral trade negotiation are not that important after all. World trade is growing anyway, economic growth is strong and tariffs on industrial goods in the developed world are already fairly low, writes Mats Hellström, former Minister of Trade and Agriculture of Sweden But the Doha Round does matter - for two reasons. First; when the rules are not adapted to new circumstances, protectionism takes new forms. In particular subsidies harmful to consumers and taxpayers proliferate and expand to new fields. Second, there is an even stronger reason for wishing the Doha Round to succeed. Since the mid-nineties there has been a dramatic change in the structure of world trade. All through modern times before that, the bulk of trade has flowed to and from and between North America and Europe. Africa, Latin America and Asia have been peripheries in this sense. Totally new is, that there is now a critical mass for South-South and East-East trade.

POLITICAL LANDSCAPE OF ARGENTINA ABOUT TO CHANGE

If Argentina\'s October 28 presidential elections come off the way the polls indicate, the political reality of the country as of 2008 will be sharply different from what we see in the current campaigns, writes Horacio Verbitsky, Argentine journalist and writer, president of the Centre for Social and Legal Studies (CELS), and author of Robo para la corona, El vuelo, and other books. In this analysis, Verbitsky writes that Cristina Fernandez de Kirchner (CFK), as president, and right-wing Mauricio Macri, as opposition leader, will emerge as the defining poles of the political system, while three of the other current candidates -Roberto Lavagna, Elisa Carrio, and Ricardo Lopez Murphy- will fade from the scene. The historical radical and justicialist parties will give way to the PRO of Macri and the Victory Front, which supports current president Nestor Kirchner and is backing CFK, his wife, in the election. Polls show CFK winning with 39 to 55 percent of the votes, leading the runner up by no less than thirty points. Macri was elected governor of the Federal Capital on June 24 with a 61 percent majority. After this overwhelming victory, he ignored pressure to run in this election but did not hide the fact he is preparing to run in 2011. He is the big missing factor in this campaign, but after the elections he will emerge as the primary non-Kirchnerian political figure. The system imagined by the government with a centre-left force opposed to a centre-right seems about to come into existence as none of the political leaders of the last quarter-century are still viable.

AFRICAN COUNTRIES SHOULD MOVE SLOWLY IN SERVICES TRADE TALKS WITH EU

The outcome of Economic Partnership Agreement (EPA) negotiations, set for this December, will change a decades-old reciprocal trading regime between the European Union (EU) and African Caribbean Pacific (ACP) countries. Specifically, negotiations on trade in services under the EPAs have important development implications for Eastern and Southern African (ESA) countries, writes Joy Kategekwa, Programme Officer, trade in services, at the South Centre\'s Trade for Development Programme. In this article, the author writes that the EU is seeking Most Favoured Nation (MFN) status for its service suppliers in the ESA region, which would not only give EU companies unlimited access to the ESA market on terms similar to those enjoyed by ESA countries, in the context of their various regional integration initiatives, but also automatic access to the treatment that ESA countries give to all other trading partners, with whom they have services economic integration agreements, or with whom, the ESA process of liberalisation has led to some form of services liberalisation. In making national treatment commitments for the EU, ESA countries lose the ability to retain any measures that favor local/ESA service suppliers, over EU ones. In sum, the outcome of the EPA on services, along the lines proposed by the EU,would bar ESA countries from implementing certain policy instruments or regulations that could increase the participation of local services suppliers particularly in the context of intra-regional trade. ESA countries should move slowly and cautiously on services liberalisation with the EU. Instead, they should focus on strengthening development cooperation in services with the EU, aimed at developing capacity to strengthen the sector domestically and for export, such that over time, they can have ability to benefit from a reciprocal services trade Agreement with the EU.

CURRENT PACE TOO SLOW ON UN MILLENNIUM POVERTY GOALS

The 2007 UN General Assembly will have to make the honest admission that the world community of nations has not lived up to the solemn undertakings it made to the poor in Africa and the rest of the world in the 2000 Millennium Declaration, writes Thabo Mbeki, President of South Africa. In this analysis, Mbeki cites the grim assessment made by the United Nations Economic Commission for Africa (ECA) about how many of the 53 African countries are likely to achieve the MDGs by the 2015 target date. The ECA says only 13 African countries are likely to reduce poverty to the required degree, 14 to achieve universal primary education; just 7 are likely to achieve gender parity at the level of secondary school education; a mere 8 are likely to reduce child mortality. The ECA tells the dismal and distressing story that the overwhelming majority of countries on our continent will, for the foreseeable future, remain mired in deeply dehumanising poverty, misery, and underdevelopment.

BIO-FUELS: NO SILVER BULLET AGAINST FOSSIL FUELS

While increasing the proportion of biofuels in the fuel mix for motor vehicles is a step in the right direction, it is not the \'\'silver bullet\'\' that will break the world\'s dependence on fossil fuels, writes Vicente Paolo Yu III, Coordinator of the Global Governance for Development Programme at the South Centre. In this article, Yu writes that biofuels should be seen as a part of a broader strategy of diversifying the energy mix that allows society to shift to more sustainable energy sources with minimal economic and social disruption. It is crucial that biofuel production does not compete directly with food production, especially in developing countries, and that the latter\'s poor not be made to vie for food with the livestock and automobiles of those in developed countries. More research, development, and investment needs to be made in other climate-friendly energy alternatives (i.e. biogas, solar, wind, tidal, water, geothermal, hydrogen), for power generation, transportation, and daily consumer use, to expand the use of these alternatives as future replacements for fossil fuels.

VAN GOGH, STALIN AND THE TRAPS OF THE FUTURE

The macabre contrast between the multi-million-dollar transcendence of Van Gogh\'s paintings and the life the painter led, of privation and uncertainty, reveal in an exemplary fashion that the present is not always able to render individuals even a small measure of justice, not to mention a glimpse of what the future would hold for his work and memory, writes Leonardo Padura Fuentes, a Cuban writer and journalist whose novels have been translated into a ten languages. In this article, the author writes that although the events of the past cannot be changed in the present, when we see that a few of Van Gogh\'s irises and a self-portrait have become symbols of the beauty of human creation across the world, we understand that the memory of the future is adjusted with a perspective and equity that the present lacks. How many of the owners of the truth or the adored of the moment will be denied \'\'not three but many more times\'\'? However much they try to reinforce their pedestals, many of their statues will be gone tomorrow. Will those who live only for posterity ever learn this lesson? I doubt it, but the lesson will have an effect, in general sooner than later.

THE HIDDEN COSTS OF CHEAP FOOD

The industrial agriculture system that supplies Americans their cheap food is predicated on cheap labour, lax enforcement of already weak labour regulations, often hazardous working conditions, and physical and sexual abuse, writes Mark Sommer, host of the award-winning, internationally-syndicated radio programme, \'\'A World of Possibilities\'\'. In this article, Sommer writes that this is not just an American problem. In an increasingly integrated global food system, affluent consumers in North America, Europe, and elsewhere have come to expect low prices for food from far away and far out of season, much of which is grown and harvested by marginal farmers in distant places who receive a tiny portion of what we pay for it. Driven from the land by impossibly low commodity prices, they crowd the cities of the developing world in search of work. Failing to find it, their desperation becomes a breeding ground for extremist movements. Our abundance must not be built on their indigence. How much are we willing to pay for the food we eat to assure that those whose labour brings it to our tables are paid enough to eat it too?

ABRIDGED VERSION OF THE 2960-WORD ORIGINAL ARTICLE, ALSO AVAILABLE FOR PUBLICATION: EUROPE SELF-SERVING IN TRADE TALKS WITH AFRICA

The European Commission is pursuing a hidden agenda in its negotiations of Economic Partnership Agreements (EPAs) with African countries, writes Demba Moussa Dembele, Director of the African Forum on Alternatives. In this analysis, Dembele writes that the EC, claiming it wants to promote trade and investment in Africa, included the so-called \'\'Singapore issues\'\' dropped from 2003 WTO discussions following the strong opposition of African and other developing countries, which do not want to lock themselves into binding agreements on elements that are key policy instruments in their development process, particularly for industrialization. Such binding investment agreements would straightjacket African countries for the foreseeable future. This is why African and other ACP countries have emphatically reiterated their opposition to including these policies in the EPA negotiations. The best way to promote trade and investment in Africa is to address the fundamental issues of development raised by African countries, by assisting them in capacity- and infrastructure- building, in strengthening the process of regional integration, in developing the capacity to transform their raw materials domestically, and in building strong regional markets.