Marginalisation of the majority world

A complex interplay of discrimination, global poverty, inequality and deepening socio-economic divisions, together make for key elements of global insecurity. While overall global wealth has increased, the benefits of this economic growth have not been equally shared. The rich-poor divide is actually growing, with a very heavy concentration of growth in relatively few parts of the world, and poverty getting much worse in many other regions. The ‘majority world’ of Asia, Africa and Latin America feel the strongest effects of marginalisation as a result of global elites, concentrated in North America and Europe, striving to maintain political, cultural, economic and military global dominance.

Global Security after the War on Terror

Paul Rogers | Oxford Research Group | November 2009

Issues:Climate change, Global militarisation, Marginalisation

This paper examines the context of the decision to go to war after 9/11 and the anticipated results. It goes on to analyse the actual  consequences and seeks to explain why they have been so radically different to original expectations by the United States and its closest coalition partners such as the UK. The paper then updates the analysis of the major global challenges that Oxford Research Group has previously discussed and the need for a new paradigm focused on sustainable security. It concludes by assessing how the experience of the eight years that have followed the 9/11 atrocities might make a change of paradigm more likely.

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Posted on 1/12/09

Multiple Futures Project - Navigating Towards 2030

Issues:Competition over resources, Global militarisation, Marginalisation

In March 2008, the Supreme Allied Commander Transformation called for NATO to consider "that different views of future worlds will strengthen our endeavor to develop a more rigorous and holistic appreciation for future security challenges and implications for the Alliance."

The result, a Multiple Futures Project (MFP), acknowledges that in a rapidly changing global security environment, the landscape we know may be very different in 2030. It puts forward four plausible worlds upon which structured dialogue on  risks and vulnerabilities can occur: Dark Side of Exclusivity, Deceptive Stability, Clash of Modernites, and New Power Politics.

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Posted on 23/11/09

India's 21st-century war

Paul Rogers | Open Democracy | November 2009

Issues:Climate change, Global militarisation, Marginalisation

Tagss:India, Maoists, Naxalite insurgency

In an age of climate change and deepening inequality, the spreading Naxalite insurgency in India - not al-Qaida - may show the world its future.

This article was originally posted on openDemocracy.

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Posted on 11/11/09

Gorbachev - Twenty years after the fall of Berlin wall the world is no fairer

Mikhail Gorbachev | The Guardian | November 2009

Issue:Marginalisation

Twenty years have passed since the fall of the Berlin wall, one of the shameful symbols of the cold war and the dangerous division of the world into opposing blocks and spheres of influence. Today we can revisit the events of those times and take stock of them in a less emotional and more rational way.

Original article published in the Guardian and based on an address delivered to the World Political Forum conference, 'Twenty Years After: The World(s) Beyond the Wall' held in Italy, 9-10 October 2009.  

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Posted on 8/11/09

The heart of India is under attack

Arundhati Roy | guardian.co.uk | October 2009

Issues:Climate change, Competition over resources, Marginalisation

Odd, isn't it, that even after the Mumbai attacks of 26/11, the government was prepared to talk with Pakistan? It's prepared to talk to China. But when it comes to waging war against the poor, it's playing hard

This article was originally posted in the guardian.co.uk's comment is free section.

Picture: Dongria Kondh’s Sacred Mountain in Orissa (angryindian.blogspot.com)

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Posted on 4/11/09

Women debate a new way forward for the World's financial system

Ruth Sunderland | The Observer | October 2009

Issue:Marginalisation

Many in the west are blind to the fact that poverty and social injustice create a breeding ground for conflict. "An Iraqi youth recently said to me that if he and his family were hungry and he couldn't get a job, he would go to fight with whoever will pay him".

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Posted on 18/10/09