POLITICAL DIALOGUE

Improving literacy, basic education and adult education in Arab countries © UNESCO/Hany Ali Ahmed – Cairo. Literacy centre for girls and young women  During a regional consultation meeting in Sharjah (United Arab Emirates, 10–12 July 2011) organised by UNESCO Beirut, around 60 decision-makers and practitioners in basic education, literacy and adult education from 15 countries in the Arab region agreed to reinforce efforts in meeting the Education for All targets. There was agreement on the need for a closer coordination of activities undertaken within a number of inter-related frameworks and UNESCO initiatives such as Education for All (EFA), the United Nations Literacy Decade (UNLD), the Literacy Initiative for Empowerment (LIFE) and the Follow-up to the Sixth International Conference on Adult Education (CONFINTEA VI). One of the overall goals of the meeting was to discuss how CONFINTEA VI can be more systematically followed up in the Arab Region. The...

The search for cleaner fracking Justin Gerdes August 25, 2011 With federal regulation looming, US energy firms are rolling out technologies to reduce the environmental impact of shale-gas drilling. Justin Gerdes looks at one of the key challenges: wastewater. “The rest of oil and gas exploration is an extremely well-established art, but the people who invented fracturing for natural gas are doing it right now. To be quite honest, you have a lot of people who have made this up as they’ve gone along.” Fracking now so dominates the energy debate in the United States it’s easy to forget that, until five years ago, not only was the word itself virtually unknown, but just a handful of shale-gas deposits had actually been fracked. In Pennsylvania alone, 2,700 natural-gas wells were drilled between 2006 and March of this year. It’s not a benign abundance: fracking – full name hydraulic fracturing – entails sending as much as 19 million litres...

Protecting China’s wetlands Malcolm Tait August 24, 2011 Increasingly, the wonders of the country’s waterfowl — and their green and blue habitats — are being revealed. To help safeguard them, the UK conservation group WWT works with Chinese authorities, writes Malcolm Tait. “The wetlands we have been working on in China provide opportunities for setting up environmental-education programmes and really getting people inspired by nature, which can only be a good thing for the long-term protection of these special habitats.” Related articles A path to environmental harmony November 30, 2006 China’s evaporating wetlands August 28, 2008 Slideshow: China’s wetland crisis November 22, 2010 [This article first appeared in the Wildfowl & Wetlands Trust’s magazine Waterlife and is republished here with permission.] To many in the general public in ...

The growing importance of Islamic finance in the global financial system Remarks by Mr Malcolm D Knight, General Manager of the BIS, at the 2nd Islamic Financial Services Board Forum, Frankfurt, 6 December 2007. Abstract Although there are differences between Islamic banking and “conventional” banking, there are some fundamental principles that apply equally to both. In particular, rigorous risk management and sound corporate governance help to ensure the safety and soundness of the international banking system. In the light of the growing importance of Islamic banks and Sharia-compliant financial innovation, the increasing integration of Islamic financial services into global financial markets serves to strengthen this point. The Basel II framework improves the risk sensitivity and accuracy of the criteria for assessing banks’ capital adequacy...

War-a Tool for Political Ends The Evolution of Israel’s Military Psychology Written by Saleem Zafar    Policy Perspectives , Volume7 , Number 1, Special Issue 2010 War is an act of violence, which in its application knows no bounds; as one dictates the law to the other, there arises a sort of reciprocal action, which in the conception, must lead to an extreme. Carl von Clausewitz, On War Abstract [The history of Zionist Movement and its role in the establishment of the State of Israel traces the importance of war, violence, and use of force from the very start. Considering the challenges to the project of creating a Jewish State in an area which was inhibited by an overwhelming Arab majority, the Jewish leaders developed militant groups for providing security to illegal Jewish immigrants and settlements and fighting off the Arab resistance. With the help of British...