Sustainable Goals: One more unfulfilled pledge?

As global business and political leaders gather in Davos for the World Economic Forum’s annual meeting, they should ask themselves one big question: Will the world achieve the ambitious Sustainable Development Goals for 2030?

20 January 2020
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Cambodia is criminalising democracy

The sham trial of Kem Sokha, the leader of the Cambodia National Rescue Party (CNRP), is underway in Phnom Penh. How the international community responds will send a powerful signal to Hun Sen, the world’s longest-serving prime minister, about his ability to continue to trample on Cambodia’s democracy and its people’s human rights.After Kem Sokha and I founded the CNRP, Cambodia’s first united democratic opposition party, in 2012, we quickly gained strong public support.

18 January 2020
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Trump’s blind march to war

Before United States (US) President Donald Trump decided to withdraw his country from the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) in May 2018, Javad Zarif, Iran’s foreign minister and the nuclear agreement’s chief Iranian architect, was the most popular public figure in his country.

12 January 2020
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Why Australia is burning

Owing to the smoke from nearby wildfires, Canberra in December had the world’s worst air-quality index, with readings 20 times above the official hazardous threshold. The city also recently experienced its hottest day on record (111°F/44°C). Meanwhile, Delhi had its coldest December day on record.

11 January 2020
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How truth survived 2019

“Truthiness,” a concept coined by the American comedian Stephen Colbert, involves saying things that you want to believe are true even if there is no factual evidence to support these assertions. And without doubt, truthiness has had a great run in 2019 - from US President Donald Trump’s Washington, to the Brexit campaign in the United Kingdom, to events in Asia.This disturbing trend was partly reflected in Time magazine’s choice of candidates for its 2019 Person of the Year.

28 December 2019
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The illusion of a rules-based global order

When the Cold War ended, many pundits anticipated a new era in which geo-economics would determine geopolitics. As economic integration progressed, they predicted, the rules-based order would take root globally. Countries would comply with international law or incur high costs.Today, such optimism looks more than a little naive.

22 December 2019
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Why we strike again

For more than a year, children and young people from around the world have been striking for the climate. We launched a movement that defied all expectations, with millions of people lending their voices – and their bodies – to the cause. We did this not because it was our dream, but because we didn’t see anyone else taking action to secure our future.

7 December 2019
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Hong Kong says no to China dream

At the beginning of his satirical novel China Dream, which has a cover designed by the dissident Chinese artist Ai Weiwei, Ma Jian expresses his gratitude to George Orwell, author of 1984 and Animal Farm. Orwell, he says, “foretold it all.”Ma, whose work is banned in China and who lives in exile in London, is of course reflecting on Orwell’s warnings about the threat of a totalitarian future in which dictatorships brainwash people.

30 November 2019
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The most important story you missed in 2019

According to the most recent tally, The Washington Post, The New York Times, and The Wall Street Journal publish a combined total of 1,000 stories every day. Although the report didn’t say how many people read all of them, it’s safe to assume that nobody managed to do so.Each of us probably overlooks tens of thousands of important news stories every year.

24 November 2019
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Nationalism after the fall of the Berlin Wall

The fall of the Berlin Wall on the night of 8 November, 1989 dramatically and suddenly accelerated the collapse of communism in Europe. The end of travel restrictions between East and West Germany dealt a death blow to the closed society of the Soviet Union. By the same token, it marked a high point for the rise of open societies.I had become involved in what I call my political philanthropy a decade earlier.

10 November 2019
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The fall and rise of Cambodia’s opposition

Nearly seven decades after Cambodia gained independence from France, its people are still struggling for the right to determine their future. But today, it is not an outside power that is stealing Cambodians’ autonomy, but their own authoritarian government, led by Hun Sen, the world’s longest-serving prime minister.

3 November 2019
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Is saving the earth’s oceans a priority?

The Earth’s oceans face many threats, none of which have quick fixes. Still, the solutions are known, and with a sufficiently broad coalition of partners, we can get the ball rolling on a number of fronts.A wide range of human activities – from burning fossil fuels to over-fishing – have been degrading the oceans for years.

27 October 2019
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