Quality Education

Image: Buddhism – which has shaped Asian civilizations for over 2000 years – has much to offer in guiding Asia's development path.

Asia's Buddhists Should Step Forward to Pave the Way to Sustainable Development

Viewpoint by Kalinga Seneviratne*

SINGAPORE (IDN) – Buddhists across Asia are going to temples, bathing the baby Buddha, giving food to monks, lighting lamps and offering incense sticks accompanied by chanting paying homage to the Buddha on Vesak day, May 29 this year. While keeping with these traditions is important, Asia's Buddhists are letting go a great opportunity to shape the global development path in an ecologically friendly, compassionate and a sustainable manner.

As the centre of gravity of the world’s economy shifts to Asia, Buddhism – which has shaped Asian civilizations for over 2000 years – has much to offer in guiding Asia's development path. Buddhist philosophy has a rich reservoir of ideas on living sufficiently and comfortably without exploiting nature and people, ideas that anyone can adopt irrespective of your religious affiliations, as the mindfulness fad in the West shows. Mindfulness itself is rooted in the age-old Buddhist meditation practice of 'Vipassana Bhavana'.

: Kalinga Seneviratne; OPINION; 29 May 2018

Photo: UNAOC High Representative Al-Nasser addressing the event at the UN Headquarters in New York on May 2, 2018, co-organized with the UNAI and the Kazakh Permanent Mission to the UN. Credit: UNAOC.

Global Citizenship Education Vital For Intercultural Literacy

By Santo D. Banerjee

UNITED NATIONS (IDN) – Educating younger generations on global citizenship through intercultural literacy is a serious civic educational and moral issue, said Nassir Abdulaziz Al-Nasser, High Representative of the United Nations Alliance of Civilizations (UNAOC) in his opening remarks at an event co-organized with the United Nations Academic Impact (UNAI) member institution Al Farabi Kzakh National University (KazNU) with the support of the Permanent Mission of Kazakhstan to the UN in New York.

Introducing Abu Nasr Mohammed Al-Farabi, after whom the UNAI member institution in Kazakhstan is named, Al-Nasser said Al-Farabi is known as a bridge builder between classical Occidental civilization and the Islamic civilization. His influence and teachings in the Arab world have closed many gaps and eliminated many misunderstandings between the two civilizations.

: Santo D. Banerjee; UN INSIDER; 27 May 2018

Photo credit: The Financial Gazette, Zimbabwe

European Development Fund Comes to Rescue as Backyard Schools Swamp Africa

By Jeffrey Moyo

HARARE (ACP-IDN) – Enrolment in primary education in developing countries has reached 91 per cent but 57 million children remain out of school. More than half of children that have not enrolled in school live in 48 countries from Sub-Saharan Africa, which are members of the 79 African, Caribbean and Pacific Group of States (ACP). An estimated 50 per cent of out-of-school children of primary school age live in conflict-affected areas.

Sub Saharan Africa is home to 17 of the 33 countries and territories the International Finance Corporation (IFC) of the World Bank Group classifies as 'fragile or conflict affected'. The IFC Conflict Affected States in Africa Initiative (CASA) is active in Burundi, the Central African Republic, Cote d'Ivoire, the Democratic Republic of Congo, Guinea, Liberia, Mali, Sierra Leone, and South Sudan.

: Jeffrey Moyo; GLOBAL GOVERNANCE; ACP Group of States; 12 May 2018

Photo: Seventeen-year-old Mathias Bragi Ölvisson lives in the agricultural village of Fludir, South Iceland, where his family have a large farm. He has known about the SDGs since these were agreed in 2015. Credit: Elin Hannibalsdottir.

Young People Head SDG Publicity in Iceland

By Lowana Veal

REYKJAVIK (IDN) – Iceland has decided to spearhead publicity for the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) by setting up a 12-person council of young people aged between 13 and 18, under the auspices of the Prime Minister’s Office (PMO).

Over 140 young people applied for the 12 places and, according to Nilsina Larsen Einarsdottir, coordinator of the project, “all of them had many brilliant ideas, so the choice was extremely difficult.”

Einarsdottir, who works with UNICEF in Iceland as a specialist in child and youth participation, has teamed up with the PMO for the project.

: Lowana Veal; SUSTAINABILITY; Quality Education; 03 May 2018

State of Emergency for Press Freedom in Europe

By ECPMF

BERLIN (IDN) – The European Centre for Press and Media Freedom (ECPMF) in Leipzig, Germany, is warning against the dismantlement of freedom rights and the increasing threat against journalists in the EU.

"Demagogues and autocrats are fighting the free press because they cannot stand democratic control. Under a corrupt administration the work of an investigative journalist is life-threatening," says Lutz Kinkel, ECPMF's managing director. "We have to defend ourselves with all our might to protect journalists. Otherwise the EU will lose its democratic substance."

The ECPMF was founded in 2015 to publicise violations of the European Charter on Freedom of the Press.

: IDN-INPS UN Bureau; THE WORLD; EU & Europe; 25 April 2018

Image: Can search engine rankings swing elections? Source: New Internationalist. © Illustration by Livio Fania.

Democracy à la Google, Facebook & YouTube: Some Reflections

Viewpoint by Lucas Malaspina*

ROME (IDN) – When Mark Zuckerberg decided to offer emerging nations Internet.org, anger was not long in exploding. As Daniel Leisegang writes in ‘Facebook is saving the world’, this project which emerged in 2013 was a humanitarian masquerade: to allow Internet access to a huge number of Third World citizens who still remained outside the global village.

The idea was to break the barriers that prevent, for example, two-thirds of the Indian population from joining Facebook. However, besides India, the project was aimed at a total of 100 more nations.

: Phil Harris; HUMAN RIGHTS; Democracy; 05 April 2018

Photo: Live on the 21st of September, 2010, ad:tech, London (at Olympia). CC BY-SA 3.0

Learning from the Facebook Data Scandal

By Nakshatra Pachauri

Nakshatra Pachauri is Controller, Finance and Administration of the South Centre. The views in the article are solely those of the author. This article first appeared in No. 167 of SouthViews – a service of the South Centre to provide opinions and analysis of topical issues from a South perspective – on 28 March 2018. – The Editor

GENEVA (IDN-INPS) – Recent news about the collusion of Facebook, Cambridge Analytica and the Trump election has brought forward one of the more covert and often insufficiently discussed problem of Social Media platforms to the fore. Instead of calling out Facebook alone, I prefer to use Social Media platforms as the problems related to big data enterprise and privacy are as much a Twitter/Whatsapp/Instagram/Snapchat issue as it is for Facebook.

: IDN-INPS UN Bureau; SUSTAINABILITY; Quality Education; 30 March 2018

Obama Foundation To Launch Leaders Africa Program in July

NEW YORK (IDN) – The Obama Foundation, which aims "to inspire and empower people to change their world", is launching a 'Leaders Africa Program', and is seeking to identify a group of emerging African leaders from all sectors – government, civil society, and the private sector.

They should have demonstrated a commitment to advancing the common good, reports New York based africa.com. "The objective of the program is to build a growing network of innovative and ethical changemakers, who seek to drive positive change in their communities."

: Santo D. Banerjee; NEWSBRIEFS; 16 March 2018

Gifted African Filmmaker Leaves Behind an Impressive Legacy

By Lisa Vives, Global Information Network

NEW YORK (IDN) – Just days before a major retrospective of his cinematic work in Brazil, Idrissa Ouedraogo passed away in his home country of Burkina Faso on February 18. He was 64.

"We talked two weeks ago," said a grieving Janaina Oliveira of Brazil's Center for Afro-Brazilian and Indigenous Studies in a Facebook post. "I was bringing him to Brazil. Tickets, screening, tribute…it was all set. He was so happy."

Ouedraogo was born on January 21, 1954, in Banfora, Burkina Faso. His parents were farmers, and he grew up in a village outside Ouagadougou.

: Global Information Network; THE WORLD; Africa; 27 February 2018

UNESCAP, Islamic Development Bank Sign Landmark Agreement

By Santo D. Banerjee

NEW YORK (IDN) – One of the world’s largest multilateral development banks, the Islamic Development Bank (IsDB), has launched 'Engage', a new digital platform which will promote technological and scientific solutions to accelerate progress towards the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs).

IsDB President Dr. Bandar Hajjar announced on February 21 the launch of the new platform at an event hosted at Bloomberg's European Headquarters in London, together with UN Under-Secretary-General and Executive Secretary of the UN Economic and Social Commission for Asia and the Pacific (ESCAP), Dr. Shamshad Akhtar, Dr. Hayat Sindi, Chief Scientific Advisor to IsDB, and a group of business, innovation and development experts.