Headlines

Barcelona chosen to hold the IOPD presidency to organise the 18th Conference in 2018.

Ada Colau is the new IOPD president.   

Montreal, July 3 (DP.net).─ More than 400 people from 30 countries took part in the 17th IOPD Conference in Montreal, Quebec, Canada, from 16 to 19 June. Over the course of these four days, 80 speakers spoke and debated in various plenary sessions, workshops and other events on the theme of “Participation without exclusion”. 

Montreal is putting together documents on the content of the conference but you can already see videos (at the foot of THIS PAGE) of some of the sessions, as well as videos containing interviews with some of the speakers. You can also see more photographs of the conference at THIS LINK. 

A consensual Final Declaration was adopted on the issue of "Participation without Exclusion", supporting "the commitments made by the international community through various international agendas, including the Sustainable Development Goals and the new program for cities and human establishments, to promote the implementation of institutional, political, legal and financial mechanisms to establish inclusive platforms allowing effective participation by everyone in decision-making".  

Cairo, July 4.─ The dialogue continues between the Vatican and the Al-Azhar Authority of Sunnite Islam of Cairo, Egypt, stresses a statement of the Pontifical Council for Interreligious Dialogue, this Tuesday, July 4, 2017.

“Following the previous Agreement of May 28, 1998, and in the light of addresses of Pope Francis and of the Grand Imam of Al-Azhar, Ahmed Mohamed al-Tayyeb during the historic peace conference at Cairo last April 28, the common engagement is express to pursue the shared reflections, geared to promoting a fruitful and effective inter-religious dialogue, centered in particular on the promotion of peace and the building of a more just world,” specifies the press release.

In fact, a meeting took place yesterday, Monday, July 3, 2017, at the Apostolic Nunciature in Egypt, between the Pontifical Council for Interreligious Dialogue (PCID) and Al-Azhar’s Center for Dialogue (ACD).

Located between giant economies, Nepal has remained poor for centuries   

Kathmandu, July 2.─ Switzerland has a highly specialised export economy consisting of banking, finance and tourism. Its neutrality is known globally. The two greatest features of Swiss foreign policy are neutrality and trade. Following this guideline, Switzerland developed rapidly, and today it is the most innovative European power with a high GDP and per capita income. Switzerland’s GDP is $664.7 billion and its population is 8.2 million (Nepal’s GDP is $20.8 billion and the population is 28.5 million). It has an area of 41,285 square kilometres, which is about two-thirds the size of Nepal. According to the Global Innovation Index 2016 developed by the World Intellectual Property Organisation, Switzerland tops the list of the most innovative countries followed by Sweden and United Kingdom.

How Switzerland achieved such enormous economic growth is a topic of debate and there is no perfect answer. Daron Acemoglu and James Robinson famously mentioned in their book Why Nations Fail that economic and political institutions need to be inclusive, but it is not definitive. Switzerland’s economic prosperity was inherited in the historical evolution process, and it is also due to political stability, direct democracy and neutrality. Nepal has just started discussing inclusiveness and participatory democracy.

 How to promote freedom, advance U.S. interests, and show strength to Russia

Washington DC, June 29.─ President Trump’s trip to Poland next week is an exceptional opportunity to reassert U.S. leadership and American greatness. In Warsaw Mr. Trump can reaffirm the U.S. commitment to European security by giving Ukraine the weapons it urgently needs to defend itself against Russia’s continuing aggression.

Russia’s violations of the 2015 Minsk II accords grow daily in both number and intensity. Moscow has reconstituted four armies on Ukraine’s borders, rebuilt the Black Sea Fleet, created a powerful antiaccess and area-denial bubble in the Black Sea, militarized Ukrainian energy installations there, and prepared the logistical infrastructure for a major war with Ukraine, including potential amphibious operations in the South. It is building nuclear bunkers in Feodosiia and Sevastopol. The Russian military clearly regards large-scale, protracted conventional war, backed by mounting nuclear threats, to be a real possibility.