The World Today

Not a single vote has been cast or counted and the next American president will not take office for over a year. But the early campaign produced a front runner for the Democratic Party and for the presidency. It is not too early to assess what future foreign policy might look like.

The question of financial turbulence in the global economy is very much to the front of people’s minds. We live in a world where financial markets have become very complex, how best can financial risk be managed in such a complicated world?

Mogadishu is a broken city on the verge of humanitarian catastrophe. The international community’s set piece strategy – intervention, the establishment of a government, a peacekeeping force, and stabilisation – is failing to deliver peace and stability in Somalia. At the heart of any new approach should be an early exit for the Ethiopian forces and a Somali-led process of political reconciliation.

The issue of our ability to act justly and wisely when human beings in other nations suffer, is back in the public eye because of the twin challenges of Iraq and Darfur. The extensive Security Council debates that led up to the Iraq invasion seem to have left the international community unprepared for the chaos that has followed. In Darfur, we are again witness to atrocities on a massive scale while conducting painstaking negotiations. Have we once again prioritised humanity, or are we just obeying the law?

At the beginning of December, media reports put the violence which had plagued Algeria since the 1990s at an all time low.