Tous les articles et traductions

, by Foreign Policy in Focus

The Political Economy of Earthquakes

The survivors of the devastating earthquakes in Haiti and Chile are still scrambling to deal with the damage. Here, however, pundits are still scrambling to explain the dramatic difference in impact. Haiti’s quake on January 12 came in at 7.0 on the Richter scale, leveled the capital city, and (…)

, by Tomdispatch.com

Afghanistan as a Drug War

Since Afghanistan now grows the opium poppies that provide more than 90% of the world’s opium, the raw material for the production of heroin, it’s not surprising that drug-trade news and war news intersect from time to time. More surprising is how seldom poppy growing and the drug trade are (…)

South Africa: Progressive constitution, conservative country

As much as those who identify themselves as social progressives would like to believe otherwise, writes Dale McKinley, ‘the reality is that South Africa is a bastion of social conservatism’. One of the most glaring contradictions of South Africa’s post-apartheid ‘transition’, says McKinley, ‘is (…)

, by Common Dreams

We Cannot ’Techno-Fix’ Our Way to a Sustainable Future

This week, California will host the Asilomar International Conference on Climate Intervention Technologies. The conference follows hearings last week in the US House of Representatives and a report from the UK Committee on Science and Technology, as well as a recent report from the Government (…)

, by IPS

Africa’s Success Stories in Gender Empowerment

Whenever gender empowerment is a vibrant topic of discussion internationally, some of the countries in Europe, Asia and Latin America are invariably singled out for their success stories in politics, education, health care or civil liberties even as Africa is mostly left out of political (…)

U.N. Report Presents a Richer View of Poverty

What does it mean to be poor in 2010? In monetary terms, the number of people living below the official extreme-poverty threshold of $1.25 per day in developing nations has declined. In fact, according to the World Bank’s benchmarks, the extreme poverty rate worldwide has tumbled from about 50 (…)

, by IPS

Beijing+15

IPS - TerraViva reports on Beijing+15 Conference with articles on the situation of women and women’s rights worldwide as well as reports on women’s issues progress in international institutions. Read more

, by Pambazuka

Africa, geology and the march of the development technocrats

Jason Hickel asks whether ‘environmental determinism’ – the theory that Africa’s development has been hindered as a result of ‘the environmental conditions that Africans inhabit’ – accurately explains Africa’s poverty. While he commends its attempt to stop blaming underdevelopment ’on the (…)

The Cleveland Model

Something important is happening in Cleveland: a new model of large-scale worker- and community-benefiting enterprises is beginning to build serious momentum in one of the cities most dramatically impacted by the nation’s decaying economy. The Evergreen Cooperative Laundry (ECL)—a worker-owned, (…)

, by Himal Southasian

Good on paper

With the government incapable of designing Nepal’s school education, bilateral and multilateral donors are forced to step in. As a result, Nepali education has for decades lurched from one internationally assisted mega-project to another. Read more

, by Pambazuka

African Views and Solidarity with Haiti

Under the title “Haiti: Microcosm of the crisis of development”, issue 467 of Pambazuka News, "the authoritative electronic weekly newsletter and platform for social justice in Africa", features several articles on the Haiti quake, its causes and the political lessons to be drawn from this (…)

, by The New Economics Foundation (nef)

Economic growth ’cannot continue’

Four years on from nef’s “Growth isn’t Working”, this new report goes one step further and tests that thesis in detail in the context of climate change and energy. It argues that indefinite global economic growth is unsustainable. Just as the laws of thermodynamics constrain the maximum (…)

, by Pambazuka

South Africa: From rights to commons

While the achievement of universal ontological rights in South Africa has been a marvellous step forward, writes Jason Hickel, the paradigm of a rights-based revolution is seriously and fundamentally flawed, and cannot serve the ends that South Africa intends it to. Cautioning that the state can (…)

, by Social Watch

Bad news: no progress in the global fight against poverty

The countries and regions of the world are becoming increasingly polarised in spite of their international commitments to fight poverty. This is what emerges from the 2009 Basic Capabilities Index (BCI) published today by Social Watch, an international network of citizens’ organizations whose (…)