Diplomacy & Defense Think Tank News

Die Menschenrechtslage auf den Philippinen bleibt weiterhin schwierig. Es ist nicht ungefährlich, Projekte zu diesem Thema vor Ort durchzuführen oder Kritik zu äußern.

Article highlights gap between stated objectives and assessment

Bonn, 25.09.2017. Unter dem Motto „Trade: Behind the Headlines“ treffen sich vom 26. bis 28. September 2017 in Genf Handelspolitiker, Wissenschaftler und Vertreter von Unternehmen und Nichtregierungsorganisationen aus aller Welt zum alljährlichen Public Forum der Welthandelsorganisation (WTO). Die Schlagzeilen der letzten Jahre waren bestimmt von der Unfähigkeit der WTO-Mitglieder, die vor 16 Jahren begonnene Doha-Verhandlungsrunde zu einem erfolgreichen Abschluss zu bringen. Wichtige Mitgliedstaaten wie die USA sprechen sich sogar für einen offiziellen Abbruch der dahinsiechenden Verhandlungen ab. Als Reaktion auf das Stocken der multilateralen Verhandlungen wichen viele Länder auf die Verhandlung von Handelsabkommen außerhalb der WTO aus. In Deutschland wurden die Verhandlungen zu TTIP, der Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership, kontrovers diskutiert. Viele Bürger fürchteten, dass Abkommen wie TTIP dazu führen, Sozial- und Umweltstandards aufzuweichen. Blickt man jedoch hinter die Schlagzeilen der aufgeheizten handelspolitischen Debatte, wird deutlich, dass die neuen Handelsabkommen eine Vielzahl von Regelungen enthalten, die über den Abbau von Handelsschranken hinausgehen. Aktuelle Daten der kanadischen Laval Universität zeigen: 85 Prozent aller Freihandelsabkommen enthalten Umweltklauseln. Die jüngst abgeschlossenen Abkommen warten dabei sogar mit mehr als 60 unterschiedlichen umweltrelevanten Klauseln auf. Umweltklauseln – mehr als nur Protektionismus Dieser Anstieg von Umweltklauseln in Handelsabkommen mag zwar bekannt sein, Akteuren in der Handelspolitik fehlt jedoch oftmals ein tieferes Verständnis über ihre Entwicklung und Vielfalt – und zwar über Sektoren, Regionen und Ländern hinweg. Dieser Trend begann Anfang der 1990er Jahre mit dem Abschluss des wegweisenden nordamerikanischen Freihandelsabkommens (NAFTA), das umfassende Umweltregeln und ein Nebenabkommen für Umweltbelange enthielt. Die NAFTA-Mitgliedsländer schrieben Umweltaspekte natürlich nicht allein aus altruistischen Motiven in das Abkommen. Für die USA spielte insbesondere die Furcht vor Wettbewerbsverzerrungen durch laxe Umweltstandards in Mexiko eine Rolle. Zudem diente die Integration von Umweltregeln der US-Regierung, neben Arbeits- und Sozialstandards, als Mittel zur Besänftigung der heimischen NAFTA-Kritiker. Umweltklauseln in Handelsabkommen als versteckten Protektionismus zu kennzeichnen, greift allerdings zu kurz. Dagegen spricht insbesondere die zunehmende Diversität dieser Klauseln. Das Deutsche Institut für Entwicklungspolitik (DIE) hat zusammen mit Jean-Frédéric Morin von der Laval University das interaktive Online-Tool TREND analytics aufgebaut, welches auf Basis aktueller Daten einen detaillierten Blick in die Feinheiten von Umweltklauseln in Handelsabkommen ermöglicht. Dabei zeigt sich, dass mittlerweile nahezu 300 verschiedene Umweltklauseln in Handelsabkommen zu finden sind. Hierzu gehören Verpflichtungen zur Umsetzung von nationalen Umweltgesetzen oder die Ratifizierung von internationalen Umweltabkommen. Es gibt aber auch Klauseln zu Klimaschutz, nachhaltigen Fischereimethoden, oder der verbesserten Partizipation von zivilgesellschaftlichen Akteuren in umweltrelevante Politikprozessen. Chancen und Risiken Es sind bisher vor allem die großen Handelsmächte, insbesondere die USA, EU oder Kanada gewesen, die die Integration von Umweltaspekten in Freihandelsabkommen vorantreiben. Entwicklungsländer dagegen fürchten einen „grünen Protektionismus“, dass also diese Umweltklauseln von Industrieländern missbraucht werden, um günstige Produkte aus Entwicklungsländern vom Markt fernzuhalten. Doch in letzter Zeit sehen sie verstärkt auch die Vorteile solcher Klauseln und Länder wie Costa Rica setzen sich zunehmen aktiv dafür ein, Umweltaspekte in neue Handelsregeln zu integrieren und so den Umweltschutz zu stärken. Das US-Peru-Abkommen hat beispielsweise stark zum Schutz des peruanischen Waldes und seiner Artenvielfalt beigetragen. Umweltklauseln sind mehr als nur ein Feigenblatt der Handelspolitik. Auch in Zukunft sollten daher Umweltklausel in Handelsabkommen genutzt werden, um Handel und Umweltschutz besser in Einklang zu bringen – nicht zuletzt, um zur Umsetzung der 2030 Agenda beizutragen. Die Diskussion über den Beitrag von Handelsabkommen zur Förderung nachhaltiger Entwicklung sollte stärker in den Fokus der öffentlichen Debatte gerückt werden. Das WTO Public Forum in Genf kann eine wichtige Rolle dabei spielen. Gerade in Zeiten polarisierter und häufig ideologisch geprägter Kontroversen über Handelspolitik ist es wichtig, evidenzbasiert zu argumentieren und mit vielen der bestehenden Vorurteile aufzuräumen. Hierdurch kann nicht nur dazu beigetragen werden, dass umweltpolitisch sinnvolle Klauseln in mehr und mehr bilateralen und regionalen Freihandelsabkommen aufgegriffen werden, sondern auch in die multilateralen Verhandlungen der WTO ihren Eingang finden. 

Sorry, this entry is only available in Greek.

Seit Ende des Kalten Krieges besteht das zweite nukleare Zeitalter, in dem sich nicht zwei nukleare Supermächte, sondern eine größere Zahl nuklearer Akteure gegenüberstehen. Einige Tendenzen lassen darauf schließen, dass ein gefährlicheres drittes nukleares Zeitalter bevorsteht, das durch die weitere Verbreitung und gar den Einsatz von Atomwaffen gekennzeichnet ist. Die Analyse zeichnet diese Trends nach und spricht der nächsten Bundesregierung Empfehlungen aus, wie sie diesen Entwicklungen entgegenwirken und die zukünftige nukleare Ordnung mitgestalten kann.

Three experts including IPI Visiting Fellow Alexandra Novosseloff discussed UN Security Council reform in this TRT World segment, touching on the divisive issues the world body faces such as nationalism and a lack of political will.

Ms. Novosseloff noted that, “the Security Council is a reflection of the divisions of the world,” but still believes that we should remain optimistic of the Security Council’s ability to adapt. Though the possibility of reform was discussed by all three experts—Ms. Novosseloff was joined by Mona Khalil of Independent Diplomat and Salman Shaikh of the Shaikh Group— she argued that expanding the Security Council would mean more voices which could complicate the process further.

Despite these shortcomings of the Security Council to act in situations such as Syria and Myanmar, the three experts remained optimistic that the change was possible, with Ms. Novosseloff arguing that the “UN has been reforming itself for decades.”

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IPI and the Federal Department of Foreign Affairs (FDFA) of Switzerland co-sponsored a policy forum on September 22, 2017 to share and discuss the conclusions and recommendations of the second regional conversation on “Investing in Peace and Prevention in the Sahel-Sahara” held in N’Djamena, Chad four months ago.

That meeting, which addressed the nature of violent extremism in the region as perceived by those directly affected by it (main conclusions here), had followed the first one, in Dakar in June, 2016, and a precursor seminar in Tunis in November, 2015.

This latest discussion featured a panel of participants from the N’Djamena talks, one of whom, Jean-Daniel Biéler, Special Adviser for Central Africa, Human Security Division of the FDFA, acknowledged that violent extremism in the Sahel had not diminished since the Dakar meeting 15 months ago but asserted that he now saw “a lot of advances that are important for our understanding of what could be a preventative approach.”

“We have seen that there is no specific profile for a violent person,” he said, “but there is a profile of the groups who use violence to get to their goals, and they will use all cracks and gaps in our social structure to get through.”

To forestall that, he said, “we need to re-anchor our own political values where we are practicing them–from representative elections, to access to political expression, to environmental preservation. Communities, NGOs, and states have to take our responsibilities and open the door for dialogue wherever it is.”

Olivier Zehnder, Switzerland’s Deputy Permanent Representative to the United Nations, said the N’Djamena talks had shown that “there are more and more voices that want to gain in preventing violence. The main thing that comes out of these conversations is that we have to speak, and to speak, we have to meet.”

Steven Siqueira, Deputy Director of the UN Office of Counterterrorism, said that while it had become clear that “harsh crackdowns and heavy handed approaches can be counterproductive,” more emphasis needed to be put on developing alternative approaches. “We’ll only succeed in addressing the increasingly transnational threat of terrorism if we develop a new and comprehensive agenda for multilateral cooperation with a focus on prevention,” he said.

Specifically, he said, “the international community must do more to address the roots of radicalization including real and perceived injustices, high levels of unemployment, and grievances among young people.”

Involving women directly in negotiating for peace and preventing violence was the fervently uttered demand of Madeleine Memb, journalist and representative of MediaWomen4Peace in Cameroon. The fact that women in the region are burdened by living with debilitating personal loss and in real distress does not inhibit their ability to make a meaningful contribution, but quite the opposite, she argued.

By way of example, she said, “We questioned a woman who saw her child beheaded in front of her, and she said, ‘What I am looking for is that women need to be supported.’”

“Can women play a role in investment policy?” she asked. “I say, ‘Yes.’ At the high level, understand feminist existence, women participating actively in decision-making levels, to orient policy to take into account what they are seeing, what they are living.”

Asserting that when women go into politics, policies become more effective, she contended, “It’s time now that we give women the means, which, contrary to what you might think, is not a question of material means, but it’s psychological solutions, answers, words to reflect on their suffering, to try to understand what’s happening to them, to try to understand why their child is being radicalized.”

Aliyu Gebi, Senior Special Adviser of the Nigerian Ministry of Interior, said that though his region suffered from “weaponized poverty, layered with weaponized religion and weaponized politics,” he believed peace was still possible if organized society adjusted itself to the “reality on the ground.”

He defined peace as “the ability to allow my children to go outside and play, to go to the mosque, park, market, movies, to come back home without my worrying about where they are. Peace means mothers allowed to be mothers, fathers to be fathers, and children to be children,” he said. But he warned, “At any point in time that this balance is disturbed, there will be problems in society.”

An optimistic note was sounded by Gali Ngothé Gatta, parliament member from Chad. “The Lake Chad region is being rebuilt even though a few Boko Haram fighters are sowing death and destruction,” he said. “The first sign of progress I observed in Chad was the actors associating themselves together to help communities reorient themselves.”

Among them, he identified agricultural workers, religious leaders, women’s organizations, local politicians, members of civil society, and the international community including NGOs, the European Union and the UN.

He concluded: “The state had a monopoly on the debate, but now it’s an open debate, discussing what is going on, why they are mobilizing young children in violence.”

Youssef Mahmoud, IPI Senior Adviser, moderated the discussion.

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“It’s a place with hope in very short supply, Yemen,” said Jamie McGoldrick, the United Nations Resident and Humanitarian Coordinator in Yemen, opening his presentation at an IPI Humanitarian Affairs Series event on “Addressing the Humanitarian Situation in Yemen” September 22nd.

“There is no citizen in that country spared by what’s going on,” he said. “What you’ve got is a man-made crisis with people touched by it who have no power to stop it.”

A two-and-a-half-year-old conflict in Yemen has turned the country into what the UN says is now the world’s largest humanitarian crisis and largest food insecurity crisis.

The current hostilities erupted in March of 2015, just months after the arrival of Mr. McGoldrick, a seasoned UN humanitarian official with past service in places like Nepal, Pakistan, Georgia, and Lebanon. The conflict pitted a Saudi-led coalition loyal to the internationally recognized government of President Abdrabbuh Mansour Hadi and those allied with the Houthi rebel movement and widely thought to be supported by Iran.

As a result of fighting since then–much of it involving devastating attacks from the air–the economy is now near collapse, public and private services have all but disappeared, and average citizens, having lost their livelihoods and whatever savings they had, face tremendous hardship while the most vulnerable are struggling simply to survive.

Supplying the stark details, Mr. McGoldrick said that 7 million Yemenis faced the threat of famine, and that there are already 650,000 cases of cholera, a statistic he said was expected to rise. Food insecurity, already critical, has jumped 20 percent this year; 50 percent of all health structures have been destroyed; 1.2 million civil service workers, 30,000 of them health workers, have not been paid, and up to 10,000 people, by the count of the Norwegian Refugee Council, have died prematurely without treatment or because travel out of the country is blocked.

“People go in villages and die because there’s no health service for them,” he said. “They die because the cancer services don’t work, the blood bank doesn’t work, dialysis doesn’t work, insulin’s not available.”

Air strikes in the first six months of 2017 equal the number in all of last year, and military activity is “heavily stalemated,” he said. “There are many instances of armed clashes, shellings and IEDs, and their indiscriminate nature is unparalleled.”

There is an overall disdain for international humanitarian and human rights law by all parties in the conflict, with killing and wounding of civilians, recruitment of child soldiers, destruction of civilian infrastructure, and unlawful restrictions on the passage of humanitarian assistance.

“The belligerents understand their obligations under the Geneva Conventions, but there’s a blatant disregard for them,” Mr. McGoldrick declared. “No matter what we do to talk to the parties, we get silence, we get indifference, and until that changes, we will have this recurring humanitarian nightmare.”

Everyone realizes that the war is a “massive failure,” he said, “but we still have to get the parties to be much more willing to accept a political solution.”

In a final commentary on the inhumanity of the situation, he said, “You never hear any of these parties ever say caring statements about the population. That’s not what they care about. What they care about is political gain, and that has to change.”

He said the only way a humanitarian response can get through is “to end the war.”

The moderator was Warren Hoge, IPI’s Senior Adviser for External Relations.

Until recently, environmental concerns have played only a marginal role in trade policy. The rulebook of the World Trade Organization (WTO) rarely touches upon environ­men­tal concerns and mainly features an exception clause for the protection of the environment (GATT, Art. XX). How­ever, the rising number of modern preferential trade agree­ments (PTAs) covers an ever-broader array of policy areas, going far beyond the traditional reduction of tariffs by also including environmental provisions. Numerous PTAs nego­tiated on a bilateral and regional basis have compre­hen­sive “green” components. For example, many PTAs include ob­li­ga­tions not to lower environmental standards, the right to regu­late for the benefit of the environment, and the com­mit­ment to implement multilateral environmental agreements. The inclusion of environmental provisions can spark con­troversies. For some, the inclusion of environmental pro­visions offers untapped potential for actual environ­mental protection, making these agreements more compatible with environment and climate policies. However, trade critics often see these provisions as mere “fig leafs” that are included in modern PTAs in order to make them less controversial in the eyes of the public and legislators. For other critics, they represent an instrument of “green protectionism” in order to keep cheaper products from developing countries out of the market. Given the newness of the widespread inclusion of environmental provisions in PTAs and the heated debate that is raging about the nature and effects of trade policies, better data and research is needed to understand and analyse this development. Firstly, we need to improve our understanding of the specific design of these new rules and the related policy initiatives of PTA signatories. What drives the inclusion of environmental provisions in trade agreements? Which are the most innovative agreements and which the most innovative countries in terms of including environmental provisions in PTAs? Which environmental provisions are diffused more often than others into subsequent PTAs? Secondly, there is a need to understand the interplay between PTAs and other environmental or climate agree­ments. To what extent do PTAs with environmental pro­visions serve the purpose of multilateral environmental agree­ments (MEAs) or the Paris Agreement on climate change? Last but not the least: What are the implications of environmental provisions? Does the inclusion of these provisions in PTAs help the contracting parties to implement domestic environmental laws? The innovative and interactive online tool TREND analytics based on the Trade & Environment Database (TREND), which tracks almost 300 different environmental provisions in the texts of about 630 PTAs, offers new ways of going further and of undertaking research to generate fine-grained information on the interplay between trade and the environment, providing fresh insights into a number of relevant policy discussions. This Briefing Paper summarises recent research results based on TREND, along with providing new insights into these questions and policy discussions at the interface of international trade and the environment.

When Alice in Wonderland wonders which way she should take, the Cheshire Cat responds that it depends on where she wants to go! Researchers and policy-makers considering a country’s long-term development path also have to know where they want to go. Typically, they seek to determine the realistic growth potentials for a country’s economy and how to reach them, and identify the key assets that could make the country competitive and the economic sectors that should be prioritised to drive structural change. Most critically, they have to find out how to reconcile narrow goals regarding com­petitive­ness and productivity with broader goals related to social inclusive­ness and environmental sustainability. The challenge is to design a methodology for evidence-based anticipation of future competitive advantages that merit industrial policy measures. The sectors that could create viable growth must be understood. Identifying a country’s competitive advantage in five to 10 years presents a thorny methodological challenge and a complex set of factors to consider, including: avail­able domestic resources, institutional capabilities, production costs relative to other countries, geographic conditions, the country’s position within the global trade and investment system (including expected changes in relevant regulatory regimes), and also long-term shifts towards new technological domains. More often than not, the analytical, conceptual and institutional preconditions for such an exercise exceed the capabilities of developing countries and constitute a core area of advisory services provided by develop­ment cooperation partners. Against this backdrop, we explore three aspects of possible methodologies: 1.   The strengths and weaknesses of various contempo­rary methodologies, all of which fail to include im­portant determinants of future competitive ad­van­tages. Since they do shed light on various comple­men­tary aspects, however, we suggest combining them to create a more complete picture of emerging opportunities. 2.   The growing role of disruptive structural change. We are already confronted with radical and rapid structural change that impacts virtually all economic sectors and disrupts the prevailing techno-economic trajectory (seemingly the case for both decarboni­sation and digitalisation). What are the method­logical implica­tions for predicting future competitive advantages? We recommend a stronger emphasis on using ‘open’ qualitative forecasting methods. 3.   Evidence-based approaches for measuring compete­tiveness and anticipating its future direction must be embedded into a political economy framework that connects analytical tools to societal objectives and accounts for the different imple­mentation capabilities of various countries. Essentially, we argue that there is no ‘silver bullet’ method­o­logy for predicting emerging patterns of competitiveness. However, a variety of tools can be used to reduce the number of promising options and inform policy-makers about how to exploit emerging opportunities.

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On Thursday, September 21, 2017 IPI held its fifth Ministerial Dinner on Peace Operations in its Trygve Lie Center for Peace, Security, and Development. The dinner was attended by foreign and defense ministers, a United Nations senior official, and former members of the High-Level Independent Panel on Peace Operations (HIPPO), who discussed the recent debates on the reform of peacekeeping operations and adoption of Security Council Resolution 2378, as well as the broader reforms proposed by Secretary-General António Guterres.

The event was chaired by Terje Rød-Larsen, President of IPI, and co-hosted by Finland, Uruguay, Indonesia and Rwanda, represented respectively by Timo Soini, Finland’s Minister of Foreign Affairs; Enrique Loedel, Uruguay’s Vice-Minister of Political Affairs; Dian Triansyah Djani, Indonesian Permanent Representative to the United Nations, and Valentine Rugwabiza, Rwanda’s Permanent Representative to the United Nations and Member of the Cabinet.

In a roundtable debate, conducted under the Chatham House rule of non-attribution, attendees had an open discussion on the most pressing issues confronting contemporary UN peace operations, while taking into account the recommendations contained in the High-Level Independent Panel on Peace Operations (HIPPO) and the reforms proposed by Secretary-General António Guterres.

The discussion began with Arthur Boutellis, Director of the Brian Urquhart Center for Peace Operations at IPI, briefly presenting the (forthcoming) IPI Peace Operations Reform Scorecard 2017, which analyzes the implementation of the recommendations from the HIPPO.

Jean-Pierre Lacroix, Under-Secretary-General of the Department of Peacekeeping Operations, presented some of the progress made and challenges remaining on peace operations reform, and how the reforms proposed by Secretary-General António Guterres will help address some of the latter.

The ensuing discussion stressed the importance of political strategies guiding peace operations, the need to increase women’s participation in peacekeeping and in peace processes, the need to further institutionalize consultations with troop-contributing countries during the mandating process, and the importance of regional partnerships (especially the African Union). Many also emphasized the importance of training, performance and accountability, and for a change in mindset to accompany the reforms proposed by the Secretary-General. Member states represented included Korea, Italy, Canada, Germany, United Kingdom, Croatia, Namibia, Norway, Sweden, Ghana, Japan, Estonia, France, Mexico, Netherlands, Turkey, Nigeria, Argentina, Azerbaijan and the Slovak Republic.

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Joan M. Larrea, The Chief Executive Officer of Convergence, said that when she was first asked to participate in conversations about how business interacts with peace processes, she thought everyone knew that peace is good for business, “and I also thought it was obvious that business is good for peace.”

“But,” she said, “apparently it’s not that obvious to all parties, hence this report.”

Her reference was to the report “A New Way of Doing Business: Partnering for Peace and Sustainable Development,” a collaboration between IPI, the Sustainable Development Goals Fund and Concordia, and the focus of a September 21st IPI policy forum on “Changing the ‘Business as Usual’ Model: A New Way to Partner for Peace and the 2030 Agenda,” sponsored by the same three organizations.

“We’re long past everybody thinking of business as a rapacious race to the bottom,” Ms. Larrea told the forum. “Economic growth is a prerequisite for peace, and economic growth comes from business, it comes from companies, it comes from investment. So for me the link is obvious.” With emphasis, she concluded, “Peace is really good for business, but business is really, really good for peace.”

Terje Rød-Larsen, President of IPI, said the institute had decided to explore the linkages as part of its research into applying the Sustainable Development Goals “because without business, implementation of the SDGs is not possible. In the end the UN needs the business community, and vice-versa.”

Matthew Swift, co-founder, Chairman and CEO of Concordia, said his organization felt there was a need for translating the public and private sectors to each other.

“Those sectors speak very different languages, but as an institute that focuses on what public-private sector cooperation can achieve, it’s important to get both on the same page,” he said. “And the SDGs do a very nice job communicating to CEOs around the world ways in which they can follow this framework of the seventeen goals towards both changing the way they do business but also thinking about the role the private sector has in various communities.”

Paloma Durán, Director of the SGD Fund, said putting into effect these synergies in the context of the UN presented a particular set of challenges.

“How to engage the private sector, keeping in mind that the private sector is not one homogenous actor and there are different sizes, different regions with different practices,’ she said. She also emphasized that businesses needed to be responsible partners and to incorporate the 2030 Agenda into their core business strategies and policies.

While it was important for the UN to engage big corporations with large resources, she said, “we need to work with small and medium-sized business; not because we want the private sector only as a donor, but because we want a real actor working with us.”

Peter van der Vliet, Director of Multilateral Organizations and Human Rights of the Netherlands, said he was encouraged by the opportunities for collaboration offered by the SDGs and by the growing interest of business in having an impact beyond simply making money. “Whether it’s big multinational corporations or small enterprises, the private sector is increasingly not only about making a profit,” he said. “And try to find one SDG where the private sector does not have an impact, just one. From goal one to goal seventeen, the role and conduct of business is crucial.”

Hedayetullah Al Mamoon, Senior Secretary in the Ministry of Finance of Bangladesh, said that “we should be careful about the difference between developed countries and developing countries because our private sector is not so strong.” He stressed that less developed countries need support to use and scale up innovative financial mechanisms to attract more private investments. The report highlights how new partnerships can be forged to finance the SDGs.

Mats Granryd, the Director-General of GSMA, the trade body that represents the interests of mobile operators worldwide and is focused on leveraging broad-based technologies for sustainable development, said members of his group reached more than 5 billion people in their effort “to connect everyone and everything to a better future.”

“There’s no better way of describing that better future than the SDGs,” he said.

Tonye Cole, co-founder and Executive Director of the Sahara Group, said the SDGs had shaped a defining rationale for his business operations, particularly in Africa.

“The SDGs in themselves have created a tool,” he said, “a mechanism for business so we can look at ourselves and say we actually have a voice.”
“And now we can itemize them and say, ‘I do SDG five, I believe in SDG eight, I actually have for years been doing SDG one’,” he said. “Now businesses can actualize it and put words to it.”

To meet the scale and ambition of the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development, the private sector will have to play a central role. The agenda provides a window of opportunity for the private sector, governments, the UN, and civil society to collaborate with each other through a new global partnership.

This report explores what is needed to make this new partnership a reality, including the steps that both the UN and the private sector need to take. It also seeks to understand how the private sector can contribute to achieving peace as both an enabler and an outcome of the 2030 Agenda. Finally, the report aims to address how to mitigate the risk companies face in investing in countries facing challenges in attracting private domestic and international investments.

The report offers a number of recommendations for the private sector, the UN, and governments to engage in new forms of collaboration:

• To make the 2030 Agenda’s call for a new global partnership a reality, businesses should embed the SDGs across their supply chains and in their core business strategies and improve reporting. The UN, governments, and businesses should all deepen their engagement with each other and in particular with small and medium enterprises. Engagement of the private sector should be based on the recognition that investing in the 2030 Agenda is not only good for people and the planet; it can also improve bottom lines.
• Businesses should take a sustaining peace approach to all operations and investments. They should assess not only how to avoid contributing to conflict but also how to support efforts to build and sustain peace, including by working closely with national governments, building trust with communities, engaging with local small and medium enterprises, and striving to be more inclusive in their own policies and practices.
• Lack of resources is not the main challenge to financing the 2030 Agenda. Achieving the agenda requires expanding the scale of projects related to its implementation and reducing the risks for greater private sector engagement. The UN, governments, and businesses should partner to scale up investments in countries that need it most through innovative, long-term, self-sustaining funding models and a wider diversity of investors.

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Speaking at the 10th annual Trygve Lie Symposium on Fundamental Freedoms at IPI, Norwegian Foreign Minister Børge Brende said that religious minorities are the “most vulnerable people in the world” and that it was impossible to “separate freedom of religion from other civil rights like the rights to privacy and assembly and expression.”

The title of this year’s symposium, co-sponsored by IPI and the Norwegian Ministry of Foreign Affairs and held on September 21, 2017, was “Promoting the Freedom of Religion or Belief,” and Mr. Brende noted that “collective religious hatred is not a natural phenomenon, it is man made.” Therefore, he argued, we have the power to end it, and “it is our moral obligation to work for a solution.”

Pointing out how widespread religious persecution is, IPI President Terje Rød-Larsen opened the meeting by noting that three quarters of the world’s population “still live in countries with high restrictions when it comes to freedom of religion or belief.”

Zeid bin Ra’ad Al-Hussein, the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights, said that religious systems have been “among the roots of human rights law and International Humanitarian Law” and that he was convinced that “religious leaders with their considerable influence over the minds of millions can be consequential human rights actors in the world today.”

He added that religious minorities must be “free to fully participate in all areas of society, though it must be clear that they cannot impose their beliefs on others.”

Retno Marsudi, the Minister of Foreign Affairs of Indonesia, noted that her country, the world’s largest Muslim nation, also was home to Christians, Hindus, Buddhists, Confucianists and many other faiths. “Freedom of religion is in the DNA of Indonesia,” she said. “Tolerance is what holds us together as a nation.”

In a reference to the dangers of both Islamic fundamentalism and Islamophobia, she said, “Religious extremism has falsely used religion to justify their inhuman policies and they abuse the guarantee of freedom of expression promised by democracy.”

Lord Ahmad of Wimbledon, the British Minister of State for the Commonwealth and the UN, said the key to tackling extremism was resisting intolerance. “You must be intolerant of intolerance,” he said. “If we nip it in the bud, that intolerance will not rear its ugly head as discrimination, and that will not turn into persecution, and persecution will not turn into human suffering.”

Mark Lattimer, Executive Director of Minority Rights Group International, warned against treating religious identity as something separate from a human right.

“When we speak about freedom of religion and belief, it is not just about freedom to worship,” he said. “Those are vital rights, but if you look at the face of religious rights, what you see is targeted persecution based on religious identity.”

He said that “the individual right to freedom of religion and belief, the collective persecution on account of identity, the mobilization of communities for political purposes all are different phenomena with different solutions, and we need to be careful about abandoning human rights solutions in favor of others.”

Ulrik Vestergaard Knudsen, Denmark’s Permanent Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs, reported that his government raised the issue of religious freedom in international meetings “as much as possible” and at home was about to create the new post of ambassador for religious minorities.

Norwegian parliamentarian Abid Raja said that the three-year-old International Panel of Parliamentarians for Freedom of Religion or Belief, of which he is a member, now had representatives in more than 65 countries and was growing.

Several speakers referred to persisting instances of religious persecution, particularly the forced expulsion of the Rohingya Muslim minority from Myanmar. In his comment, Mr. Borge said, “The fact that we are using the words ‘genocide’ and “ethnic cleansing’ to describe events unfolding in 2017, 70 years after the adoption of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, is a disgrace.”

IPI President Terje Rød-Larsen moderated the discussion.

DIIS bidrager til fællesnordisk forskningsprojekt

Die Länder des Westbalkans kämpfen mit politischer Instabilität, schwachen Institutionen und Korruption. Einzig Kroatien etablierte sich bisher als Mitgliedsland der EU und der NATO und könnte ein Vorbild für andere Balkanstaaten sein.

Pres fra Tyrkiet og Iran kan hæmme varig stabilitet

Joining the debate on the role of President of Russia Vladimir Putin in international politics and the relations between Russia and the West, the Hellenic Foundation for European and Foreign Policy publishes (in Greek) a relevant working paper written by Mr Alexandros Mpoufessis. You can access it here.

President XI Jinping’s “Belt and Road Initiative (BRI), launched in 2013, seeks to expand and secure maritime routes, road networks, railway and bridge infrastructure projects for China from Asia across Africa to the Middle East and Europe. The Chinese blueprint includes a mosaic of infrastructure investments, trade agreements, energy cooperation and establishing a financial footprint through extensive lending arrangements. The Balkan Silk Road initiative connects Beijing with Athens and establishes further infrastructure links with Belgrade, Sarajevo, Skopje, Budapest, Tirana, Podgorica, etc.

Seen from a southeast European perspective, the BRI has major repercussions in countries as diverse as Greece, Serbia, FYR Macedonia and Bosnia and Herzegovina. Port infrastructure, highway projects, high-speed railway links and thermal power plant renovation form the constituent elements of the BRI in southeast Europe.

The report – written by the independent economic analyst Dr. Jens Bastian – was commissioned by the EBRD in London. It was presented and subsequently made available as a public document on Thursday, 14. September 2017. On the invitation of the South-East Europe” and the “Asian Studies” Programmes of ELIAMEP, Dr. Jens Bastian presented the report at the Office of the European Parliament in Athens.

Prof. Loukas Tsoukalis, President of ELIAMEP, chaired the event.

Dr. Peter Sanfey, Deputy Director for Country Economics and Policy at the EBRD made introductory remarks.

Dr. Plamen Tonchev, Head of Asia Unit at the Institute of International Economic Relations (IIER), Athens  served as a discussant to Dr. Bastian’s report