The Importance of the MDGs: The United Nations Leadership in Development
The Millennium Development Goals are the international community's most broadly shared, comprehensive and focused framework for reducing poverty.
Our Aspirations Must Become Achievements: From the Millennium Summit to 2015
In March 2000, then UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan published his report, 'We the Peoples': The Role of the United Nations in the 21st Century, listing the major challenges in the world.
Water and Sanitation: The Silent Emergency
In December 2006, the UN General Assembly declared 2008 as the International Year of Sanitation. The intention was to raise awareness of the importance of sanitation and encourage Governments, partners and communities to embrace the need for urgent action to reduce the number of people living without this basic service.
Confronting The Legacy Of Slavery And The Slave Trade: Brown University Investigates Its Painful Past
In April I had the privilege of participating in a scholarly panel at the United Nations, one in a series of events sponsored by the CARICOM Secretariat to commemorate the 200th anniversary of the abolition of the transatlantic slave trade by the legislatures of the United States and Great Britain.
Racial Discrimination and Miscegenation: The Experience in Brazil
In 1888, Brazil, with a mostly black and mixed race or mulatto population, was the last country in the Western Hemisphere to abolish slavery. During more than 300 years of slavery in the Americas, it was the largest importer of African slaves, bringing in seven times as many African slaves to the country, compared to the United States.
Looking Forward To The Future: Europe's Societies Are Undergoing Change
At the end of my nine years as Director of the European Monitoring Centre on Racism and Xenophobia -- now the European Union Agency for Fundamental Rights -- I would like to share my experience in addressing racial discrimination.
In the Wake of Xenophobia: The New Racism in Europe
Europe was torn apart by fascism in the 1930s, and when the Second World War ended in 1945, remnants of extreme right parties re-emerged on the margins of politics. By the 1980s, when the forgetting had started, some began to pick up protest votes as immigrants became an issue, driven by tabloid journalists looking for a cheap story.
The Trans-Atlantic Slave Trade And Slavery: The Psychic Inheritance
The Caribbean is arguably the living laboratory of the dynamism of the encounters between Africa and Europe on foreign soil, and both with the Native American who had inhabited the real estate of the Americas during periods of conquest and dehumanization and the corresponding process of struggle and resistance.
Double Standards of Justice: The Case of Gernarlow Wilson
Four years ago, in Douglasville, Georgia, a 17-year-old high school senior made a fateful mistake, one that would cost a surprising price. During a New Year's Eve celebration, Gernarlow Wilson participated in consensual sexual act with a 15-year-old girl.
The Decade of Roma Inclusion: Addressing Racial Discrimination Through Development
The Decade of Roma Inclusion is an unprecedented pan-European initiative that channels the efforts of Governments, as well as inter-governmental and non-governmental organizations, to eradicate racial discrimination and bring about tangible improvement to the plight of the world's most populous marginalized community.
Between Past Failure and Future Promise: Racial Discrimination and the Education System
The focus of this article is to examine the theme of racial discrimination within the context of education policymaking. It will draw on an ongoing conceptual debate that analyses contemporary education and social policy evidence within an integrationist/multicultural framework, but also analyse the extreme concepts of assimilation and anti-racist education policy.
Combating Racism and Racial Discrimination in Europe
In today's world, contemporary forms of racism and racial discrimination are complex and disturbing. In Europe, these issues increasingly lie at the heart of political and social concerns. Faced with persistent expressions of racism and xenophobia, the Council of Europe Member States have, for several years now, been taking firm and sustained action to combat these trends.