Easing up on drug prohibition will not solve the plight of the thousands of people displaced by the drug wars in Colombia, Mexico and other countries.
What turned Guinea Bissau and other West African countries into drug-trafficking routes to Europe more than a decade ago? Why did the drug wars move from Colombia to Mexico?
With waning enthusiasm from the USA for the costly and failed war on drugs, experts detect a seismic shift under way at the global policy level.
Forget Gates. Move over Oprah. Emerging economies too have their own home-grown titans of philanthropy, providing a potentially better attuned and more sustainable income source for local humanitarian and development needs.
Traditional and faith-based forms of giving have been around for centuries and continue to play a major role in determining people’s giving patterns. There is much excitement about the pace at which formal philanthropy is taking hold in many developing countries, but some believe that understanding - and perhaps harnessing - indigenous traditions could make philanthropic initiatives more sustainable in the long run.
Better gender representation in the justice sector in Afghanistan will empower more women to take action against the men who abuse them. This is the reasoning of the International Development Law Organization (IDLO), which released a report last week documenting the gains - and considerable challenges that still lie ahead - in bringing more women into key legal positions in the country.
The emergence of a new breed of super-rich individuals in Africa has been accompanied by the steady growth of Western-style philanthropic foundations and other structured forms of giving.
An estimated US$7 billion is given away every year by Africa’s philanthrocapitalists – at least the ones we know about. These are the men (sadly no women yet on this list) providing home-grown solutions to local needs.
Despite growing acknowledgement that the war on drugs has failed, global consensus on the way forward remains elusive. Nevertheless, some detect a “paradigm shift” among many players at the forefront of the debate.
Organized environmental crime is known to pose a multi-layered threat to human security, yet it has long been treated as a low priority by law enforcers, seen as a fluffy “green” issue that belongs in the domain of environmentalists.
Following approvals in the US and Europe this month of a new drug to treat hepatitis C, activists are pushing for the medication to be made available in poor countries, a development reminiscent of the activism that forced down HIV/AIDS drug prices a decade ago in Brazil, South Africa and Thailand.
Drug users will avoid a needle exchange programme if they spot a police car cruising nearby, and sex workers will readily toss their condoms in the trash if they risk getting arrested for soliciting. Around the world, the most marginalized groups in society – from Roma to HIV-positive people to sex workers to drug users – are reluctant to access basic health services because they fear arrest, intimidation and harassment.
The United States may be the global leader in refugee resettlement, but so far it has opened its doors to a mere 1,000 Syrians looking for a safe haven from their war-torn country.
With the realization that corruption is undermining development and the achievement of the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs), experts are lobbying the UN to adopt goals and targets on good governance and transparency in the post-2015 development agenda.
A precarious gang truce brokered in 2011 in El Salvador has many crime experts wondering whether “talking to criminals” in other places could reduce criminal violence and help gangsters - and the communities who depend on them - find other ways to earn a living.