Southeast Asia’s Big Land Grab

Conflict over land tenure in Southeast Asia’s rural areas has emerged as a key issue for the region. To achieve goals such as economic development and poverty reduction in rural areas, governments in the region have pursued policies to attract investment from large corporate entities both domestically and internationally, to undertake projects on “vacant” and […]

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A Fantasy From New Jersy

Is the “India Story” over, as many commentators have begun to observe? Actually, the more relevant question today is: How did it grow and circulate as widely and rapidly as it did? Unlike China, with which it was routinely and inaptly compared, India never undertook extensive land reforms, nor did it adequately train its workforce […]

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Prosperity And The Americans

If proverbial Martians descended on Earth and toured America’s crowded shopping malls, traveled its congested highways and sampled its technological marvels — from the many cable channels to ubiquitous smartphones — these visitors would be hard-pressed to describe the United States as poor or its economy as failing. The truth is that, even in its […]

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Nepal’s Tryst With…Well, Whatever

Dark clouds hang over Nepal, promising rain and rejuvenation, but at the same time, threatening a destruction of life and property. The political scene is no different. In the next five months before November 19, the date for the election of the second Constituent Assembly (CA), we will witness the full effect of this year’s […]

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A New Deal for Fragile States

Today, roughly one-quarter of the world’s population lives in conflict-affected and fragile states. Despite vast sums of money spent aiding such states over the last 50 years, armed conflict and violence continue to blight the lives of millions of people around the world. International and national partners must radically change the way they engage such […]

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The Rise Of The Internally Displaced

Wars in Syria and the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) pushed the number of people internally displaced by armed conflict, violence and human rights violations to 28.8 million last year, the highest figure recorded by the Internal Displacement Monitoring Centre (IDMC) in Geneva. More than 6.5 million people were newly displaced within their own countries in 2012, almost twice as many […]

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What’s The Future For the MDGs?

Since their inception in 2000, The Millennium Development Goals have revolutionized the global aid business, using specific targets to help mobilize and guide development efforts. They have encouraged world leaders to tackle multiple dimensions of poverty simultaneously and provided a standard for judging performance. As their 2015 expiration looms, the time has come to bank […]

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