Henning Melber

The 47-member Geneva-based United Nations Human Rights Council has adopted a landmark resolution on “Protection Against Violence and Discrimination Based on Sexual Orientation and Gender Identity”.

On June 27, 2016 the eleventh edition of the Fragile States Index was published by the Fund for Peace.

Since the turn of the century the middle classes of the global South have taken centre-stage in economic policy circles.

Since coming to political power, the anticolonial movements of Angola, Mozambique, Zimbabwe, Namibia and South Africa have remained in control of the former settler colonies’ societies. At best their track record of running the countries they helped liberate is mixed.

On 16 February 2016 the Egyptian diplomat Boutros Boutros-Ghali died aged 93. He was so far the only Secretary-General of the United Nations who served in office one term only (1992-1996). But this should not be mistaken as a failure.

In 1837 Hans Christian Andersen wrote the fairy tale of an emperor who in his vanity only cared about clothes. Two weavers promised him to tailor the finest outfit from a fabric invisible to anyone who is stupid or unfit for his/her position.

Once upon a time, anti-colonial movements were fighting for human rights against oppression and injustice. Representatives of these agencies claimed a moral high ground.

I am ashamed of the inconceivable act of transgression that happened in multiple forms when at the Carnival in Swakopmund some dressed in costumes of the Ku-Klux-Klan; the German “Allgemeine Zeitung” pictured these as an attire of “originality”.

The Economic Partnership Agreements (EPAs) have been negotiated for just over a decade between the EU and the ACP countries without satisfactory results. Most of the ACP countries have refused to enter or implement the agreements.

Once upon a time there was a country, whose people endured and braved more than a century of colonial minority rule. Their resistance against foreign domination resulted at the beginning of the 20th century in forms of genocide against parts of the people.