Resources Archive

Switzerland’s Social Democratic foreign minister Micheline Calmy-Rey has a subtle approach to the issues that fall within her area of responsibility. When it is a matter of deciding between Swiss business interests and the upholding of human rights, her answer is: “we can do both!” The latest example is the gas deal between the Laufenberg Electricity Company (EGL) and Iran that was signed last week in Tehran in the foreign minister’s presence. Calmy-Rey let it be known that she used the visit to Tehran to explain matters of particular concern to her: among them the “pursuit of the human rights […]

OUAGADOUGOU, Burkina Faso — Although it has received scant coverage in the international press, the year-old rebellion in the northern half of Niger has exacted a tremendous cost in the West African nation in both human and economic terms. For starters, at least 50 government soldiers have been killed by the Niger Movement for Justice (MNJ), the Tuareg-led group spearheading the rebellion. The MNJ also has captured more than 50 soldiers and, in January, they grabbed a regional governor during a daring raid on a northern town. The rebels have also been blamed for laying land mines throughout the northern […]

Last month, a remarkable transformation occurred in the controversial Nabucco gas pipeline project — or at any rate in the public perception of the project in the English-speaking world. As recently as last fall, in fact, there was barely any public perception of the Nabucco project in the English-speaking world because there was barely any coverage of the project in the English language media. (For a rare exception, see “Iran-Turkey Gas Deal Gives New Hope for EU Nabucco Pipeline” on World Politics Review.) In the central European press, on the other hand, the project was widely heralded as a crucial […]

Late last month, the executive director of the World Food Programme (WFP) told the Financial Times that the U.N. agency would soon be forced to consider “cutting [its] food rations or even the number of people reached.” This comes as soaring inflation in staple food items such as wheat, corn, rice, and soybeans has produced hunger riots in developing countries and left governments grasping at straws for a solution. Over the past eight years, the price of food worldwide has increased 75 percent; the price of wheat has gone up a dramatic 200 percent. Struggling to keep up with inflation, […]