By Fadi Elhusseini Regularly, when spring comes, people expect flowers and green shoots and optimism prevails. Alas, things in the Middle East are quite different. With every spring that comes, people recall the outbreak of the first spark of the current “Arab Spring” that started in Tunisia 2011 and swept Arab countries, wondering what will [...]

By the World Food Programme BRUSSELS – A contribution of €10 million, announced today, from the European Commission’s Directorate for Humanitarian Aid and Civil Protection (ECHO), has been welcomed by the United Nations World Food Programme, and brings the Commission’s total assistance to WFP for its Syria operations to almost €42 million since the crisis began two years ago. [...]

By Nelly Stratieva, Project Coordinator at a management consultancy in Kuala Lumpur Malaysia, one of the best performing Asian economies and an example for ethnic and religious tolerance, is poised for the most hotly contested elections in its history.  For 56 years, since its independence from the British Empire, Malaysia has been ruled by one [...]

By Fadi Elhusseini As we are approaching spring, it reminds us of Israel’s Benjamin Netanyahu theatrical gesture at the United Nations General Assembly last September, while holding up a cartoon-like drawing of a bomb with a fuse as he drew the famous “red line” for Iran’s nuclear program. That red line represents this spring and [...]

By Fadi Elhusseini Breaching U.N. Charter and violating territorial sovereignty of countries through quick air strikes is not a newfangled product. Major Powers have adopted such a practice in order to achieve quick, clean and accurate goals, avoiding any unnecessary complications of ground operations, which may bring about some unforeseen consequences. U.S. strikes on Sudan and [...]

By Marko Bucik As second inaugural speeches go, over-ambition can prove self-defeating. Witness the Franklin Delano Roosevelt’s forceful entry into his third term in 1941, later tainted by battles with the Congress tightly controlled by his own Democratic party. More recently, George W. Bush Jr. advanced the partial privatization of Social Security in his second inaugural [...]

By David Heap and Ehab Lotayef. One year after the Greek government bowed to pressure and enforced he outsourced Israeli blockade of Gaza, the international movement to challenge the blockade is still very much afloat: we may change our tactics, but not our objectives. Our new campaign to challenge the blockade from the inside out [...]

By Fadi Elhusseini, Diplomat at the Embassy of the State of Palestine in Turkey, responsible for Political and media affairs Since 1990, both Arabs and Palestinians from one side, and Israel from the other side, decided to go through a peace process- presumably-aiming that it would bring about peace and stability to the region, and [...]

By KAVALJIT SINGH As India grapples with the Vodafone and 2G fallout, the Bilateral Investment Treaties it signed a few years ago are coming back to haunt it. On April 17, British telecom giant Vodafone issued a notice of dispute to the Indian government, as a first step towards launching investment arbitration proceedings under the [...]

Guest Post by Alexander Misharin, Governor of the Ekaterinburg region For Russia’s regions and citizens last month’s EU-Russia summit has cleared away a lot of the obstacles that made building closer ties with Europe a challenging undertaking. Europe’s support for Russia’s WTO membership will strengthen trade, the reform of the visa requirements will make it [...]