“The new face of hunger” is what UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-Moon called the recent food crisis. Its main feature is not scarcity but urban masses who can’t afford food anymore due to the spectacular price-rise. Consequence: social unrest, aggression, riots.

Ghana used to be called the Gold Coast. It’s still worthy of the name, especially now the price of gold is breaking every record. Beneath the Anjenjua Bepo Forest reserve in Ghana -a piece of rainforest- lies a big amount of gold. The giant American mining company Newmont wants to start up the Akyem mine.

According to Lester Brown, we, as a civilisation, are in danger of decline. Not only is global warming threatening our existence, but also a multiplicity of unsolved problems. Browns New book Plan B 3.0 is a crisis call, however it also offers hopeful perspectives.

“Afrika, the final frontier” - with this slogan the Dutch bank ABN Amro is trying to bait investors into buying a 10 euro-share in the Africa-certificate, which was launched early February. Already last year the bank marketed a Africa Raw Materials certificate, as well as a cerficate for Egypt, Morocco, Nigeria and South Africa. Not surprisingly th ...

Breaking news two years ago: American intelligence had access to information about financial transfers of millions of people worldwide using a company operating from Brussels. At the request of Belgium, the European Commission and the US tried to resolve the problem of the so-called Swiftgate. But up to now not with satisfactory results.

The American president George W. Bush is ready for the cherry on the cake of his second tenure: a peace solution between Israel and the Palestinians and the establishment of a Palestine state. Far away from the White House, Israel celebrates his sixtieth anniversary and the Palestine refugees commemorate the Nakba, the “catastrophe” of 1948.

Gorik Ooms, director of Doctors Without Borders and soon working for the Institute of Tropical Medicine in Antwerp, appeals for the startup of a worldwide system for social security. ‘Because health is a basic Human right, also for those who cannot afford it!’

Sant’Egidio celebrates it's 40th anniversary. The Catholic movement is probably best known for its peace work. 'You should be ready to sit down with people who have blood on their hands', says Mario Giro.

The massive deal that China signed with the Democratic Republic of Congo last year is not the "second colonisation" that some Europeans allege it is. The agreement appears, in fact, a promising way to kick-start an economy.

This year Al Gore and the IPCC, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, will share the Nobel Peace Prize. The “former would-be president of the US” is laurelled for having put climate change on top of the international agenda. The IPCC receives the prize because it has provided the scientific base for a global climate policy. MO* had an excl ...

After Paul Wolfowitz of the World Bank, Jacques Diouf of the FAO and many others, Director General Brunson McKinley of the International Organization for Migration (IOM) is under internal accusation of nepotism, intimidation and bad management. Is there anybody who cares about the apparent structural problems in the management of international inst ...

During that cruel spring of 1994, almost a million Tutsi`s and moderate Hutu`s were killed, in 100 days. Traditional Gacaca jurisdiction had to bring truth and reconciliation. But the absorption of the traumatic genocide is problematic genocide remains problematic. Half of the Hutu population lives as a defendant and reconciliation is hardly see ...