Marina Urquidi ¤ This author's Web site: Marina Urquidi ¤
Cross-cultural communication consultant
Articles by this author in français
April 2014
Greetings! ¤ Marina Urquidi ¤ 9 April 2014 After the recently released Part II of the IPCC report and its alarming, no longer deniable findings, and in the run-up to COP 21, we have put the Alternatiba project in the spotlight (see article on the left) and salute it for its creative action to federate and mobilize European grassroots movements, building bottom-up pressure to weigh on the outcome of this critical “last-chance” summit expected to come up with a binding agreement on global environmental governance. One of the lessons we (...) read more
Call to Multiply the Village of Alternatives ¤ Marina Urquidi ¤ 9 April 2014 COP 21, the international summit on climate change, will be held at the end of 2015 in Paris, where all countries, including of course the major greenhouse-gas emitters, are supposed to commit to a last-chance, binding universal agreement on climate. COP 21 will not be able to ignore the IPCC report, Part II of which was released on March 31, its extremely alarming projections and its finding that no person and no corner of the globe will escape the devastation caused by global warming. (...) read more
Towards a World Citizens Movement ¤ Marina Urquidi ¤ 9 April 2014 In July 2013, 200 active citizens from around the world met in Johannesburg to start “Building a Global Citizens Movement.” The conference was organized by DEEEP/CONCORD in collaboration with CIVICUS (World Alliance for Citizens Participation) and the GCAP (Global Call to Action against Poverty). The conference released the statement “Towards a world citizens movement” and launched a platform to build the movement over time.
“What is global citizenship? We believe global citizenship means that (...) read more
Assemblies Emerging in Turkey: A Lesson in Democracy ¤ Marina Urquidi ¤ 9 April 2014 Something quite amazing happened in Turkey during the months of May to September 2013. In addition to the silent “standing man” actions around the country, people’s assemblies emerged in different neighborhoods across the city. As in Spain, Greece and the Occupy encampments before, the protesters in Turkey counter-posed their own form of direct democracy to the shame of a democracy proposed by Erdogan’s authoritarian neoliberal state. If there was ever any doubt, this shows how deeply (...) read more
Beyond 2015: Media as Democracy and Development ¤ Marina Urquidi ¤ 9 April 2014 How democratic governance contributes to development is dependent on the right to freedom of expression, a right recognized as a basic human right in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, the European Convention on Human Rights, the American Convention on Human Rights, and the African Charter on Human and Peoples’ Rights. As such, it lends itself to universal recognition and application. The right further subsumes freedom of information and of the press. The importance of the former to (...) read more
Education Policy Paper: Building the Future through Quality Education ¤ Marina Urquidi ¤ 9 April 2014 Currently, countries receiving international aid to reach the UN 2015 Millennium Development Goals, are being strongly encouraged to orient education to match the needs of the private sector. Education International (EI), the world’s largest federation of unions (representing 30 million education employees in about 400 organizations in 170 countries and territories across the globe) begs to differ with this narrow view of education. The future can only be built through quality education, and (...) read more
Environmental Governance and Managing the Earth ¤ Marina Urquidi ¤ 9 April 2014 Put together in 2008 by Germà Pelayo, this file contains in the form of information sheets a series of discussions and proposals developed around the environmental dimension of world governance. These have been categorized according to the following themes: rebuilding the environmental balance; managing energy, mineral, and ocean resources; farming, and food security and sovereignty; sustainable development; and the relationship between humankind and the biosphere.
The file pools a variety (...) read more
Ukraine, Russia ¤ Marina Urquidi ¤ 9 April 2014 The Forum for a new World Governance launched the World Governance Index (WGI) project in 2008. The idea was to develop a “tool” that would allow the players in charge of governance to visualize emerging issues and problems and help them to reflect on the necessary solutions.
In this issue of the FnWG newsletter, we are offering the 2011 WGIs for two countries in the news, Ukraine and Russia, as compared to their respective 2008 WGIs, the first having just had a change of regime caused by a (...) read more