Pugwash President Jayantha Dhanapala reflects on the life of Pugwash Council Member Miguel Marin Bosch.
KANDY - I am personally grieved to learn of the death of Ambassador Miguel Marin Bosch, a redoubtable champion of disarmament throughout his distinguished career as Mexico’s Disarmament Ambassador in Geneva and other multilateral fora.
Miguel Marin Bosch was closely associated with me in several Review Conferences of the Treaty for the Nonproliferation of Nuclear Weapons (NPT) where he stood steadfast against any compromise on fundamental principles. With his prodigious expertise and mordant wit, he was the bane of some of the nuclear weapon states who shamelessly lobbied to silence him, especially at the NPT Review and Extension Conference of 1995.
Analysis by Aldo Caliari *
WASHINGTON DC (IDN-INPS | Center of Concern) - Due to UNCTAD's decidedly pro-South and uncompromising development-focused mission, its quadrennial conferences have traditionally been North-South showdowns.
Coming a few months after the adoption of the ambitious and universal 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development and its 17 associated goals, the theme of the XIV Quadrennial Conference of UNCTAD (the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development) was “From Decisions to Actions”.
There was, therefore, reason to expect that this time members would bridge their differences for the sake of reinforcing mandates of the organization critical to the Agenda’s implementation. But that was not the case, and the dynamics were a lot more akin to the difficult ones witnessed in the inaugural Financing for Development (FFD) Forum in April 2015.
PHILADELPHIA (INPS | AFSC) - Islamophobia is at work in our national media, according to an original content analysis by the American Friends Service Committee (AFSC), a Quaker peace and justice organization. The analysis shows a disturbing narrative link between Muslims and extremism, and then over-represents violent responses to politically motivated conflict.
The report, Mixed Messages: How the Media Covers “Violent Extremism” and What You Can Do About It, reviewed more than 600 news items from 20 major U.S. news outlets. Articles were sampled during April-June 2015 from 15 national media outlets such as the New York Times and NPR, and five “influencer” outlets such as Politico and CQ Weekly that reach audiences of policymakers and government staff.
WASHINGTON, D.C. - At the Civil Society Forum at the Spring Meetings, the Arab Network for Development & the World Bank MENA Team organised on April 14, 2016 a panel discussion on the socio-economic impacts of the Syrian crisis, the outgoing flow of migration and the World Bank’s model on how to tackle these issues following its new report. Highlights of the discussion are reflected here.
Speakers were: Björn Rother, Advisor Middle East & Central Asia Department, International Monetary Fund; Samir Aita, President of the Cercle des Economistes Arabes: Rabie Nasser, Researcher at the Syrian Center for Policy Research; Ahmad Awad, Director of the Phenix Center, Jordan; Shanta Devarajan, MENA chief Economist of the World Bank; and Michel Samaha, Affiliated Researcher at the Arab NGO Network for Development (moderator)
