Latest in Opinion Highlight
Latest in Opinion
Qatar gambles that labour reforms will satisfy critics
By James M. Dorsey 2022 World Cup host Qatar has announced a series of reforms to improve working and living conditions of its majority migrant labour population that address material concerns, but fall short of recommendations made in a government-sponsored study and demands of trade union and human rights activists. The litmus test for Qatar’s …
Curbing illicit financial flows: How to raise $770bn for African development
By Bjørn Lomborg If we think about development priorities for the next 15 years – with the Millennium Development Goals expiring in 2015 – adequate nutrition and basic education immediately come to mind. Illicit financial flows (IFF) would not be top priority, but in a paper for Copenhagen Consensus Center think tank economist Alex Cobham …
2014: The Sisification of Egypt
By Amr Khalifa If your wishes for 2014, in Egypt, included respect of human rights, a civil state and respectable judiciary, the year was an efficient delivery system of pain. The stark reality that this dark turn in history delivered, to analysts and dissidents alike: the majority of Egyptians prefer to exalt in Abdel Fattah …
Gulf-Iranian proxy war spills onto football pitch
By James M. Dorsey A Saudi-led proxy war against Iran playing out in Syria and Iraq has expanded onto the football pitch with a last minute decision by the Palestinian national team to cancel a friendly against Iran. The cancellation, officially on technical grounds, came barely two weeks before Iran meets two of its Gulf nemeses, the …
Funding pre-schooling has longer-lasting benefits
By Bjørn Lomborg As the United Nations is currently debating how to allocate about $2.5tr in development aid for the 2015-2030 period, education will most likely gain prominence. But do we fund early education or secondary school? In a paper commissioned by the Copenhagen Consensus Center, Economist George Psacharopoulos says the priority should be increasing …
Football’s Holy Trinity
By Dr Cesar Chelala With Lionel Messi’s last performances there should now be no doubt: he belongs in football’s Holy Trinity with Pelé and Maradona. Although there have been many outstanding players, those three are the most enduring stars in the world’s most popular sport. The three of them have been considered by different observers …
Potential UK club acquisition could help Qatar polish its image
By James M. Dorsey Qatar has booked two recent successes in what has become an uphill struggle to improve its tarnished image: a papering over of its rift with Saudi Arabia and the UAE sparked by Qatari support for the Muslim Brotherhood, and reports that it may be interested in acquiring London Premier League club …
Is there a peace partner in Israel?
By Fadi Elhusseini The Palestinian-Israeli peace process has again ground to a halt, and each party blames the other for this unfortunate failure. Israeli officials repeat continuously that there is no Palestinian peace partner, and accuse Abbas and his authority of flexing their diplomatic muscle in an attempt to isolate Israel internationally and making unilateral …
From Syria and Iraq to Iran: Kurdish minorities push for autonomy
By James M. Dorsey More than three years into Syria’s brutal civil war, Syrian Kurds have carved out an entity of their own close to the border with Turkey. Their battle against Islamic State (IS), the jihadist group that has conquered chunks of Syria and Iraq, for Kobani, a stone’s throw from the Syrian-Turkish border, symbolises …
Upgrading Egyptian mentality should take priority over expanding its infrastructure
By Mohammed Nosseir An annex to the Suez Canal is rapidly being built, thousands of new roads are under construction, bridges are being erected to overcome traffic bottlenecks, hundreds of schools are in the pipeline – these are just a few examples of exploits the Egyptian government has announced over the past few months. Other …
My 800 word torture report
By Ahmed Tharwat The release of the Senate Intelligence Committee torture report has brought back painful memories. Now everyone knows that our government has “tortured some folks”, as President Obama has put it when he wanted to be homey and cute. As someone who was tortured himself in an Egyptian jail, such charm is wasted …
Gulf human rights declaration increases heat on Qatar to act on migrant workers’ rights
By James M. Dorsey The adoption of a human rights declaration by the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) that was designed to shield wealthy Gulf monarchies including 2022 World Cup host Qatar from criticism by human rights and trade union activists is likely to increase pressure on the sports-focused Gulf state to significantly alter its controversial …
What next after the Millennium Development Goals?
By Bjorn Lomborg If you could come up with goals for the world to aspire to over the next 15 years, what would they be? What should we focus on? The United Nations is currently conducting an online survey, asking people from around the world what matters most to them. Over 5 million people have …
Government and fans battle in court and on the pitch in Egypt and Turkey
By James M. Dorsey Egyptian and Turkish football pitches are set to re-emerge as battlegrounds between militant, street battle-hardened fans and authoritarian leaders in a life and death struggle that involves legal proceedings to brand the supporters as terrorists and efforts to undermine their widespread popular base. Egyptian fans, barely a week after storming a …
Egypt looking to mend economy with energy moves
By Oxford Business Group Egypt has been making impressive progress in straightening up its balance sheet in recent months. Steep cuts in energy subsidies coupled with a drop in world oil prices have given the Middle East’s most populous country some fiscal breathing space, following three years of increasing budget deficits, mounting debt and …
Egypt between mediocrity and suspension of disbelief
By Wael Eskandar Very little has changed with regards to Egypt’s trajectory of descent into a social and political abyss ever since its security forces dispersed the Islamist sit-ins using great force and even much greater impunity. The slope of decline into a more oppressive police state has indeed been very slippery and while there’s …
What about Al-Sisi’s relationship with politicians?
In order to discuss Al-Sisi’s relationship with politicians and get to the root causes of this apparent acrimony between the president and those working in politics in Egypt, we must review how the heads of the 1952 family changed their relationships with politicians and the political process, in order to understand the constants of the …
Militant football fans reassert their key role in protest with storming of Cairo stadium
By James M. Dorsey Militant, street battle-hardened football fans stormed a Cairo stadium in advance of the second leg of crowned Al-Ahly SC’s African Confederation Cup final against Ivory Coast’s Séwé Sport in a reassertion of the fans’ key role in protests against the regime of toppled president Hosni Mubarak and subsequent governments. The storming …
Will Mubarak’s acquittal push Al-Sisi in a specific direction?
The vast majority of people were struck with the impression that the judgment acquitting Mubarak was not simply a court ruling issued by an independent judge acquitting Mubarak from specific crimes, but instead served to acquit the personality of Mubarak and his regime in general. We all witnessed how Mubarak’s supporters celebrated the ruling, while …
Which is better for Al-Sisi: Strengthening Egyptian society or neutering it
By Mohammed Nosseir President Abdel Fattah Al-Sisi, who is perceived as the strongman of Egypt, constantly claims that his goal is to lead a strong country – yet he is actually working on neutering Egyptian society. To ensure that it will not be the source of any solid opposition, steps have been taken to …
Angry Saudi football clubs pinpoint Gulf labour market contradictions
By James M. Dorsey Mounting anger among Saudi football clubs at their subjugation to quotas designed to encourage employment of Saudi nationals and reduce dependence on foreign labour illustrates problems encountered by wealthy Gulf countries in balancing the contradictory demands of labour markets, often lopsided demographics, social contracts involving a cradle-to-grave welfare state that creates …
Egypt and Gulf security equations
By Khaled Okasha At the end of last week, a statement was issued by the King of Saudi Arabia announcing the Riyadh supplementary agreement, whose goal is to clear the air in the Gulf. He hoped that moving forward with the agreement would bring about cooperation, free of past disagreements. Just one day before this, …
Messi’s other side
By Dr Cesar Chelala When almost everybody thought that Lionel Messi’s best times were in the past, the Argentine player became the top scorer both in the Spanish and in the Champions League – an extraordinary achievement – proving again his exceptional qualities. There is, however, another side to Messi that is as remarkable and …
Gulf agreement on improved migrant worker conditions unlikely to end activist pressure
By James M. Dorsey Wealthy Gulf nations have agreed on measures to improve the working and living conditions of migrant workers who constitute a substantial segment, if not the majority, in a number of Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) member states. The measures constitute a bid to fend off more far-reaching demands by human rights …
Likely Qatar deportation of striking workers raises concerns
By James M. Dorsey Qatar is signalling the rejection of demands of human rights and trade union activists to grant trade union and collective bargaining rights to its majority migrant worker population with the detention and likely deportation of more than 100 predominantly South Asian labourers who went on strike to protest low pay as …
The camera and the gun: Khaled Abol Naga
By Amr Khalifa In Egypt, the Al-Sisi regime wants opposition pens dry and artist’s mouths shut. Many Egyptian viewers expected Khaled Abol Naga to be more reticent after recently saying “we may soon need to be saying ‘leave’ to Al-Sisi” – those watchers couldn’t be more wrong. In an interview where he held nothing back …
Will Al-Sisi reproduce the Mubarak regime?
Mubarak’s regime entered into decline when contradiction and conflict reached their peak among the ruling class and junta, as with what happened previously within the 1952 family. The contradictions and conflicts were the main motivation behind the transition from one president to another. This issue reflected primarily on the ruling class’ movement toward saving their …
Israeli raid on Palestinian football club signals dangerous hardening of battle lines
By James M. Dorsey A football brawl in Israel’s politically most loaded derby and an alleged subsequent raid by the Israeli military on the offices of Israel’s foremost Palestinian football club reflects a hardening of the Israeli-Palestinian divide as Israel debates legislation that would emphasise the Jewish national rather than the democratic nature of the …
Empower women to end world hunger
By Dr Cesar Chelala A new report from the Bread for the World Institute entitled “When Women Flourish…We Can End Hunger” states that women and girls are disproportionately affected by hunger and poverty because of discrimination practices against them. The report calls on the US government to prioritise gender analysis in all US global health and development programmes to …
A rural community calls for an end to FGM
By Ignacio Artaza I recently visited the village of Beir Anbar in the district of Koft, Qena governorate, and listened to the powerful statement this community is conveying to the rest of the country to put an end to the practice of Female Genital Mutilation (FGM). The whole village, from young schoolchildren to village elders, …