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22.11.2016
Beginning with the 2010 Seoul Summit, the G20 has embraced global development as a key concern. On that occasion, the leaders established a Development Working Group (DWG) as part of the Sherpa track. In recent years, the DWG has focused on important issues, such as inclusive business, vocational skills and cost reduction for workers’ remittances. However, the overall impact of such measures has been quite limited. The DWG should not be faulted for this. The reason ...
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19.11.2016
Sustainable development has become one of the animating norms of world politics. The Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) were adopted by the United Nations in 2015 as the framework for international development agenda through 2030. Sustainable development can only be pursued through multilateral cooperation. Cooperation is necessary in order to capture the multiple externalities between issues and their governance within and between countries. Because of the technical ...
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18.11.2016
In June 2015, the AIIB was officially launched, with 57 founding members and an initial capital of US$100 billion, to finance infrastructure and sustainability projects in the Eurasian region. As of November 2016, it has officially approved six projects in two batches of loans (see the table below). Although it may be too early to make a conclusion about the lending practices of this nascent organization, two preliminary observations are noteworthy. First, most of the ...
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13.11.2016
Understanding Chinese politics is a matter of the utmost importance in terms of geopolitical, economic, and strategic stakes, especially given that the weight of the Middle Kingdom on the world stage is getting heavier day by day at the expense of Western countries. What’s better then than looking back into China’s history that reveals useful clues that can be decoded to understand the present and to help anticipating the future? China’s history is captivating. When we ...
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8.11.2016
Chinese, Latin American, and other observers of the China-Latin America relations largely agree that the relationship is entering a new phase. Although much remains the same, there is evidence of remarkable divergence from China’s model of engagement with the region over the past two decades. Continuity in the China-Latin America dynamic is most evident in macroeconomic analysis of the relationship. Recent reports confirm that China-Latin America trade still primarily ...
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7.11.2016
On 20 October the South African government officially confirmed that it would be withdrawing from the International Criminal Court (ICC). This follows in the wake of last year’s dispute between South Africa and the court, after the government’s refusal to arrest Sudanese President Al-Bashir while he was in the country attending an African Union (AU) summit. While the announcement has not come as a surprise, there is concern about the fact that it has not been endorsed by ...
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31.10.2016
Forget about the Middle East, Syria, or renewed NATO tensions with Russia over the Arctic or Ukraine. When you Google search ‘World War 3 in …’ it auto-completes either as China, or the Pacific, or the South China Sea. This is the result of a proliferation of op-eds and reports that predict a renewed superpower conflict in the region, potentially spilling over into a wider, systemic confrontation. There are several reasons why such analyses are proliferating. Territorial ...
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27.10.2016
With India reiterating that all five BRICS (Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa) member states were united in acknowledging the global threat posed by terrorism, and that those who perpetrate acts of terror are no more dangerous than those who support them, the latest edition of BRICS summitry came to an end last week in the Indian resort state of Goa. The BRICS leadership tried to move the agenda forward a bit by declaring their intent “to establish (a) BRICS ...
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26.10.2016
The Islamic Republic of Iran is rapidly embarking on a new phase in its post-sanctions era. Upon the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA)’s confirmation that Iran has fulfilled the relevant requirements under the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA, or the Iran Nuclear Deal), on January 16, 2016, all nuclear sanctions on Iran were lifted by the United Nations, the European Union, and the United States, excluding the latter’s primary sanctions on Iran. Amidst ...
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16.10.2016
The word philanthropy dates back to the Greek word φιλανθρωπία, which means the love of humanity. Today the OECD defines private philanthropy as non-official development assistance (ODA) to developing countries. Such assistance can be through large philanthropic foundations such as the Rockefeller or Clinton Foundation, or through ‘direct giving’ platforms such as Global Giving or Kiva. But does what we call philanthropy today deserve its name? Rather than focusing on ...
