Today is Union Day in Myanmar, which marks the historic Panglong Agreement in February 1947 when the principles of equality and unity were drawn up for the future union. In 2021, however, it is not a day of celebration but one of protest as peoples across the country take to the street to demonstrate against the assumption of power by the military State Administrative Council. In this commentary, TNI analyses why the present crisis is so profound and why the patterns of military rule, state failure and ethnic conflict are in grave danger of being repeated. Peace and national reconciliation are required today, not at some indeterminate time in the future.
Discussions of the threat to liberal democracy have neglected perhaps the most surprising source that is one of the major arcs of history of the last three decades: globalization. It promised the promotion of liberal democracy encapsulated in neoliberal economics whose components include free movement of capital and finance, free trade, free movement of people, and the free transfer of ideas through social media. While globalization has achieved many of these four freedoms, it has also fostered its precise opposite: a borderless world that has stripped the principal source of political democracy – the nation state -- of much of its political and economic legitimacy for the liberal democracy that created globalization. Governments became weakened by the very fraying of its borders wrought by a globalization they promoted.
Nuestro webinario, Realidades feministas, transformar la democracia en tiempos de crisis, analizó los modos en que la pandemia se entrecruza con el patriarcado, el poder corporativo y una división mundial del trabajo racializada y de género. ¿Puede esta crisis brindar una oportunidad para reorganizar y desplazar el poder, con el fin de construir sistemas democráticos radicales que cuiden de verdad del medioambiente y nuestro bienestar colectivo?
No recuerdo exactamente cuándo conocí a Miguel Teubal, pero fue hace varias décadas, probablemente en una conferencia o taller. Tuve la oportunidad de conocerlo mejor cuando el Instituto Internacional de Estudios Sociales le ofreció una beca como investigador invitado en 1992. Durante su estancia, publicó dos artículos de investigación: uno sobre seguridad alimentaria y regímenes de acumulación, y el otro sobre el nuevo sistema alimentario agroindustrial.
Recibimos con mucho pesar la noticia del fallecimiento de Miguel Teubal el 19 de enero de 2021. Miguel fue uno de los primeros académicos asociados del TNI. Desempeñó esa función durante 23 años, desde 1976.
I cannot recall exactly when I first met Miguel Teubal, but it was decades ago probably at a conference or workshop I came to know him better when the International Institute of Social Studies (ISS) invited him for a six month Visiting Research Fellowship in 1992. During his stay he published two working papers, one on food security and regimes of accumulation, and the other on the new agroindustrial world food regime.
We at TNI are saddened to hear of the passing away of Miguel Teubal on January 19, 2021. Miguel was one of TNI's earliest fellows, serving for 23 years from 1976, and remained associated since.
In the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic, transnational corporations are seeking to cement their control of global governance, ensuring it serves the interests of business and profits rather than the wellbeing of humanity. From January 25-30, social movements and international civil society will focus on the processes underway at the dialogues at Davos. We have collected here an overview of the main civil society activities during the week of Davos, as well as key resources for everyone interested in learning more about the crisis of global governance, the transnational corporations' false solutions, and the possibilities for new forms of global democratic governance
This webinar is the first of a series - each with a different focus and angle -and will focus on Tunisia and Egypt, the birthplace of the magnificent revolts. The aim is to revisit these historical moments with some of the finest scholar-activists, participants and witnesses from those very contexts.
The post COVID-19 world presents a new opportunity to deepen the corporate plans of capturing global governance and ensuring it serves the interests of corporate business and profits instead of putting in place policies for the wellbeing of humanity. It is urgent to unmask this global and systemic trend by showing how it operates in key sensitive sectors as well as taking the challenge to generate peoples power towards building a strong public and participatory governance for a world beyond the health, climate, inequality and democracy crises. Is there a future for another multilateralism?
The Agrarian Conversations series aims to address strategic and urgent issues in and in relation to the rural world today. The format is conversational: 15 minutes input from the main speaker, 15 minutes from a panel of discussants, and 50 minutes open plenary (Q&A) discussion. A background paper is provided in advance to help facilitate a conversational format.
TNI’s work is in the news almost every working day of the year. Together with our partners, we enjoy wide coverage in national and international news outlets from around the world. Here are some of the highlights from 2020 of which we are particularly proud.
The 2020 general election was one of disappointment for ethnic nationality parties in Myanmar. Prior to the polls, expectations were high that they would win a larger number of seats than in previous elections. In the event, the National League for Democracy won another landslide victory. NLD gains were largely at the expense of the military-backed Union Solidarity and Development Party. The position of ethnic parties, in contrast, will remain relatively the same.
Amidst growing concerns that the Energy Charter Treaty (ECT) undermines urgent climate action, and a growing backlash against the treaty, its profiteers are spewing propaganda, promoting falsehoods about how the ECT attracts clean investment and how its 'modernisation' will fix any flaws. Cut through their rhetoric with our new myth-busting guide.
Yesterday, on International Human Rights Day, the Embassy of the Kingdom of the Netherlands announced that Saw Eh Say, the coordinator from the Kayah Earthrights Action Network (KEAN), received the 2020 Human Rights Tulip Myanmar Award for his great efforts to promote the right to land in Myanmar. The Human Rights Tulip is an annual award of the Dutch government for outstanding and courageous human rights defenders.
Edição brasileira publicada pelo Comitê Nacional em Defesa das Empresas Públicas e pela FENAE - Federação Nacional das Associações do Pessoal da Caixa Econômica Federal,mediante autorização do Transnational Institute. (Brazilian edition published by the National Committee for the Defense of Public Enterprises and by FENAE - National Federation of Personnel Associations of Caixa Econômica Federal, with authorization from the Transnational Institute.)
