In April 2018, at New Delhi International Airport, I boarded the flight heading to Kabul, along with a couple of my colleagues from The Dais. Initially filled with excitement as I entered the flight, the realization that I was going to Afghanistan sunk as I boarded the flight and saw before me a plane filled…
This is a republished version of the original article published on the Global Challenges Foundation website, which you can access here. The climate crisis and the Covid-19 pandemic harshly highlight that there is a lack of an “all-of-government” and an “all-of-multilateralism” approach to addressing contemporary global threats of a non-military nature. But there is…
Reimagine. Recreate. Restore. Those are the watchwords of World Environment Day, an annual day of celebration and contemplation taking place globally on June 5th every year. In 2021, Pakistan is playing host to the official events of the day, which this year also mark the beginning of the United Nations Decade on Ecosystem Restoration. According…
By Stuart Best and Péter Kakucska After being postponed a year for the first time in its 65-year history, the curtains will finally part this weekend for one of the world’s largest annual shows, the pan-European event of song, music, and dance – the Eurovision Song Contest. As last year’s event was rescheduled due…
A few months ago, two-time sailing Olympic medallist Sofia Bekatorou was the first to break her silence and publicly reveal that she had been sexually assaulted by a high-ranking Hellenic Sailing Federation (HSF) official in 1998, when she was 21 years old. In January 2021, speaking at an online event aiming to raise awareness on…
Last week, 24 world leaders published an open letter in leading publications around the world calling for a new global treaty. This would “foster an all-of-government and all-of-society approach, strengthening national, regional and global capacities and resilience to future pandemics”, paving the way for a new approach to global health governance having learned the lessons…
We marked the International Day of the Elimination of Racial Discrimination this year with the theme ‘Youth standing up against racism’. It seems only right, therefore, to acknowledge the Black Lives Matter demonstrations that erupted across the world in 2020. Research shows that Generation Z and Millennials were at the forefront of the movement and…
With the European Union’s publication of its Communication on The European Green Deal in December of 2019, a proposal for a Carbon Border Adjustment Mechanism (CBAM) was promised. The declared intention was to ‘level the economic playing field’ globally and adjust the price of carbon emissions on imported goods to match the EU carbon price. This way ‘carbon leakage’, the relocation of production processes to countries with more lenient greenhouse gas emission…
On March 20, 2021, we celebrate the 9th annual International Day of Happiness, a day commemorated by the General Assembly of the United Nations to acknowledge the inextricable connection between well-being and human development around the globe. On this day, the international community – including world leaders, policymakers, and economists – are reminded that well-being must be measured through determinants far more complex than income and wealth accumulation. This idea is not modern in any sense. Quoting Aristotle from his book Nicomachean Ethics, “wealth is…
If there is one aspect of life that is largely entrenched with gendered expectations, it is the role of women in social reproductive work – all the domestic care and childcare that is essential for a family to function. Due to the traditionally gendered nature of this unpaid work, it is often invisible and expected,…
