How Brexit will change the world
The results of the Brexit referendum are in, and it is chaos. The United Kingdom is leaving the European Union. Prime Minister David Cameron is stepping down. The Dow Jones has fallen 611 points in a day. The decision has rattled the world, and even the pro-Brexit British voters seemed stunned. “I’m…
With or Without the E.U., Europe Is Still Connected
Britain has voted to exit the European Union in a historic vote on Friday, the first country to ever leave the bloc. The European Union is a club binding 28 countries by treaty but split by how much the members really want to do together. Take the example of Britain, long one of the more demand…
Let’s Make Global Goals Local Business
Today, more than 1,000 leaders from business, finance, civil society and academia will gather in the UN General Assembly Hall to kick off the 2016 UN Global Compact Leaders Summit. They come to the Summit with a better world on their minds and the new Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) on their ag…
What is Missing on the Global Health Front?
The last World Health Assembly (WHA) in Geneva (23-28 May) discussed the manifold global health crises that require urgent attention, and adopted resolutions to act on many issues. We are currently facing many global health related challenges, and as such multiple actions must be taken urgently to p…
Rethinking Robin Hood
International development aid is based on the Robin Hood principle: take from the rich and give to the poor. National development agencies, multilateral organizations, and NGOs currently transfer more than $135 billion a year from rich countries to poor countries with this idea in mind. A more forma…
The distance to school is not only about the distance you walk
In a recent major survey undertaken by the Campaign for Female Education (Camfed) in Tanzania and Zimbabwe, low academic self-esteem was the second most frequently expressed reason for dropping out of school among marginalized girls, after poverty-related issues. Girls lack the confidence to engage …
Unaccompanied child refugees: ‘These children aren’t seen as children’
Human smugglers increasingly combine smuggling with exploitation and their victims are often children,” says Federica Toscano. “At chaotic border situations, it happens that smugglers deliberately separate refugee children from their parents to exploit them.’’ “We also hear that families at the bord…
UN Secretary-General 2016: Top candidate Vuk Jeremić says UN needs to regain trust
For a frontrunner for the post of the world’s top diplomat, Vuk Jeremić is rather candid about how he thinks the United Nations should change. “If you look at the UN’s speeches and compare it to an average Ted Talk, there’s quite a difference. I would like more Ted Talk and less UN diplomatic niceti…
How 3-D Printing Could Decrease Carbon Emissions. Or Maybe Increase Them.
One of the most exciting areas of advanced manufacturing is 3-D printing. While it has been around for many years to produce crude prototypes, 3-D printing is now being used to make everything from jet engines and complex machine parts to bridges and buildings, artificial limbs and biomedical tissue…
New ideas for development effectiveness
Almost two years ago, I alerted readers to a contest, sponsored by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation through the Global Development Network, to develop new ideas to improve the impact of development cooperation. The Next Horizons Essay contest 2014 received 1,470 submissions from 142 countries, …