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30th october 2006, Odeen Ishmael, Venuzuela Analysis The leaders of South America will meet with their African counterparts at their first summit on November 30-December 1 in Abuja, Nigeria. If all the 54 African and the 12 South American leaders attend this historic event, it will be one of the largest gatherings of world leaders at any single two-day event. |
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One’s opinion of the United Nations reveals a lot about political consciousness; and because perception is usually based on experience, it’s only natural that people from different countries have opposing views about the UN and its pillar institutions— the International Monetary Fund (IMF), World Bank, and the World Trade Organization (WTO).
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 Yesterday, the Eastern Michigan community celebrated United Nations day, the anniversary of the adoption of the U.N. charter in 1945. The day has come to symbolize the power of countries working in concert and setting the course for work left to be done. While the concerns of global scope can seem insurmountably abstract, and while the general conservative antipathy for the U.N. has been made incarnate under President Bush with his appointment of John Bolton, we at the Echo are glad EMU has taken the time to reaffirm the successes of the U.N. and pledge itself to supporting this most important international organization. The main charges repeated, even sometimes in these pages, against the U.N. are that it is too weak to effectively prevent armed conflict, that it is a "talking shop" where little of substance is accomplished and that it is corrupt and bloated. To take the third point first, the recent scandal over the Oil For Food program was a serious black eye for the institution of the U.N. However, it is worth noting both that serious investigations have been ongoing and that proposed reforms are moving through the organization regarding transparency and oversight from member nations.
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 Women Make Up Half of All Migrants But their Controbutions Often OverlookedToday, half of all international migrants—95 million—are women and girls. Yet, despite substantial contributions to both their families at home and communities abroad, the needs of migrant women continue to be overlooked and ignored. This year’s State of World Population report, A Passage to Hope: Women and International Migration, examines the scope and breadth of female migration, the impact of the funds they send home to support families and communities, and their disproportionate vulnerability to trafficking, exploitation and abuse. The report, produced and published every year by UNFPA, the United Nations Population Fund, reveals that although migrant women contribute billions of dollars in cash and services, policymakers continue to disregard both their contributions and their vulnerability—even though female migrants tend to send a much higher proportion of their lower earnings back home than their male counterparts. |
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 In October, elections will take place for five non-permanent UN Security Council seats to be held in 2007. One of them will be for the Latin American seat now held by Argentina. The two leading regional contenders vying to fill the opening are Venezuela and Guatemala, and the other countries in the region comprising Latin America and the Caribbean (GRULAC) will vote on which one gets it. If they're unable to reach a consensus, which may happen, the choice will be up to the General Assembly where it will take a two-thirds majority secret ballot vote process to select the winner. It's not hard to know which country the US supports and why it's doing all it can to subvert the chances of the other one. Guatemala has been a close US ally ever since the CIA fomented a coup in 1954 to oust the country's democratically elected leader Jacobo Arbenz Guzman. Ever since, the country has been run by a succession of oppressive military and civilian governments that turned Guatemala into pariah state compiling the hemisphere's worst human rights record that never ended even after the 1996 UN brokered Peace Accords that officially ended a brutal 36 year civil conflict waged mainly against the country's indigenous Mayan majority that resulted in the state-sponsored murder of 200,000 or more of its people. |
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 The United States, which pays 22 percent of the U.N.'s regular annual budget of 1.8 billion dollars, has arrogantly demanded a dominant voice in management and administration -- primarily because it is the biggest single financial contributor to the world body. "U.N. member states, and particularly its largest contributors, want to know if they are getting the most value for the dollars they contribute," says Mark P. Lagon, the U.S. deputy assistant secretary for international organisation affairs.
"People who look to the United Nations for help want to know that, too," he told the Committee on International Relations of the U.S. House of Representatives early this year.
But what he failed to tell the committee is what the United States, in turn, extracts from the United Nations -- financially and politically. |
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 Humiliation in a Globalizing World: Does Humiliation Become the Most Disruptive Force?
Executive Summary
In order to understand a globalizing world, we need "global" research, as well as the participation of researchers who have a global outlook and global experience. In my case, a specific biography made me acquire a profoundly global perspective and identity. This experiential background has led me to conceptualize psychology in a specific way, firstly as being embedded within broader historic and philosophical contexts, secondly as being profoundly intertwined with global changes, and thirdly as currently gaining significance. I avoid single interest scholarship, work transdisciplinary, and probe how even local micro-changes may be embedded within larger global changes.
In my case, the lack of a clear sense of belonging during childhood (being born into a family of displaced people) made me particularly sensitive to identity quests and urged me to learn about and become part of the rich and diverse world culture that belongs to all of us, as opposed to being part of any particular national sub -culture. Nagata, 1998, wrote an article, Being Global: Life at the Interface, whereby living at the interface means living as an immigrant in another culture. In my case, I have accustomed myself to living in many cultures and in many interfaces, more so, have made the very interface my home.
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