26 December 2007

CHALLENGES 2007-2008: The Year Past, the Year Ahead

From war to efforts to build an alliance of civilisations; from people and their communities to the United Nations and multilateral debates; from the expanding fight against climate change, to deep-rooted energy interests; and from dictatorship and repression, to freedom, human rights and democracy,
IPS continues to track the pressing issues that define our globalised world.

Read our year-end special features at: www.ipsnews.net/new_focus/challenges/index.asp
…or click on the story links below.

Climate Change Gives Rise to New World Order
Analysis by Mario Osava
RIO DE JANEIRO – Once again, humanity is facing the risk of catastrophe. The terror of destruction by nuclear missiles ready to be launched at the touch of a button has given way to the disturbing possibility of global warming going past the point of no return, and this is turning traditional international coalitions and geopolitical concepts upside down.
www.ipsnews.net/news.asp?idnews=40597

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Darkness Surrounds Spotlight on Mideast Peace Talks
William Fisher
NEW YORK – In the aftermath of the Annapolis peace conference, foreign policy analysts and human rights advocates are finding considerable irony in Israel’s Arab neighbours pressing for freedom for Palestinians while their own citizens continue carry a heavy burden of unrelenting political repression.
www.ipsnews.net/news.asp?idnews=40350

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Short Shrift for Human Rights in South-east Asia
Marwaan Macan-Markar
BANGKOK – For nearly 30 years Cambodians have grappled with a question that no one in the country could answer with certainty: will the surviving leaders of the Khmer Rouge regime face justice for the genocide they perpetrated on their own people in the mid-1970s?
www.ipsnews.net/news.asp?idnews=40582

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Spate of Suicide Bombings Auger Ill for Pakistan
Ashfaq Yusufzai
PESHAWAR – As hundreds prostrated in prayer on one of Islam?s major festivals in Pakistan?s North West Frontier Province (NWFP), last week, a powerful bomb exploded inside the mosque killing 48 worshippers and wounding close to 200.
www.ipsnews.net/news.asp?idnews=40587

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Human Rights in Argentina – Progress and Pending Tasks
Marcela Valente
BUENOS AIRES – Identified with a generation hit hard by Argentina?s 1976-1983 military dictatorship, former president Néstor Kirchner won the respect of human rights organisations through his support of trials of military human rights abusers. Now his successor, his wife Cristina Fernández, faces new challenges on that front.
www.ipsnews.net/news.asp?idnews=40570

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Still Outsiders After a Year in EU
Claudia Ciobanu
BUCHAREST – Bulgaria and Romania joined the European Union Jan. 1 2007 under the toughest conditions ever imposed on new member states. Although the two countries barely met the criteria for membership, their strategic location, between the Western Balkans and the Black Sea, as well as their relatively trouble-free domestic politics, made them an asset for the stability of EU’s eastern front.
www.ipsnews.net/news.asp?idnews=40596

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Regional Integration in Tatters Due to EPAs
Sue Scott
LONDON – The spectre of regional fragmentation is haunting the negotiations on the finalisation of interim economic partnership agreements between the European Union and the African, Caribbean and Pacific countries. This is despite one of the stated goals of the EPAs being www.ipsnews.net/news.asp?idnews=40550regional integration.

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Different Kind of Battle for Sierra Leone
Wurie Bah
FREETOWN – Sierra Leone’s economy has, over the years, relied heavily on the mining sector in general and diamonds in particular. However, between 1991 and 2000 the country was comprehensively destroyed in a brutal civil war that engulfed the West African state.
www.ipsnews.net/news.asp?idnews=40549

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Lowering Mexico?s Drawbridge to US Maize and Beans
Diego Cevallos
MEXICO CITY – On Jan. 1, the Mexican market will be thrown wide open to imports of maize, beans, powdered milk and sugar from the United States, completing a process that began 14 years ago, in which its impoverished rural sector must compete with a powerful and heavily subsidised foreign rival.
www.ipsnews.net/news.asp?idnews=40542

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‘Rudd’s Policies Won’t Hurt US-Australia Ties’
Stephen de Tarczynski
MELBOURNE – Analysts argue that while the new Australian government of Prime Minister Kevin Rudd will charter a more independent course from the United States, the bilateral relationship is likely to remain strong in the coming year.
www.ipsnews.net/news.asp?idnews=40494

And much more global news at: www.ipsnews.net/

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