Switzerland and the pandemic: Does the economy matter more?
UPDATED 9 December, 2020: Unlike most Europeans and North Americans, East Asians take their masks seriously. From China, Taiwan and Thailand to Singapore, people have tended traditionally to wear face gear in...
Focus: Steve McCurry – merging art with photojournalism (Part I)
View podcast by America's Editor William Dowell and Edward Girardet with Steve McCurry. See Link.
As aspiring young reporters, both Steve McCurry and I began covering the war...
Peter Jouvenal: Held – and released – by the Taliban
Now back in the United Kingdom with his Afghan wife and three daughters, Peter Jouvenal shows few signs of his six months incarceration by the Taliban. Smiling and confident, Jouvenal, 64, sports...
Steve McCurry (Part II): The complications of photography
Feature Photo: Copyright Steve McCurry
Steve McCurry has earned fame as a
photographer who produced some of the most exquisitely beautiful colour images
in the past several decades. McCurry’s critics, and...
The ex-monk and the Thai sex mafia: helping victims find another way
We have selected Hartanto Gunawan as one of our Global Genevans. These are inspired individuals, such as French water wizard Alain Gachet, Danish environmentalist Inger Andersen or Swiss ornithologist Luc Hoffmann,...
Philip and Sadruddin: Two extraordinary visionaries
PERSONAL VIEW
BUCKINGHAM PALACE, 27th January, 2017
Dear Ms.Willday,
The Duke of Edinburgh has asked me to write and thank you for...
Letter from Switzerland: An expat’s concern over our Covid deaths
We have to talk about deaths in Switzerland, where over 8,000 people have died of COVID. In a country of eight million people, one person in every thousand has succumbed to...
Afghanistan: time for a more representative peace with Swiss mediation
By Edward Girardet & Peter Jouvenal
Editorial Note: Please note that all U.S. troops are now expected to quit Afghanistan by 11 September 2021 although some contractors may remain....
Whitney Azoy’s Afghanistan: A Partial Comprehension – tales and photos from the pre-war
When National Geographic Magazine commissioned me during the early 2000s to do a story that would ‘reveal’ Afghanistan in the wake of the U.S.-led NATO occupation, I was somewhat panicked. As with...
Focus on Afghanistan: Peter Jouvenal – A journalist veteran held by the Taliban
Peter Jouvenal was visiting a western-style house that he was considering to rent in Kabul when he was seized on Saturday morning, 11 December 2021 by a group of armed Taliban. The...
Murder in Room 117: How the assassination of one of America’s top diplomats helped...
As a young foreign correspondent, I undertook my first reporting assignment to Kabul in October 1979, seven months after the killing of Adolph ‘Spike’ Dubs, America’s ambassador to Afghanistan, and two months...
Afghanistan: the abandonment of a nation
In autumn 2001, having returned from Afghanistan just prior to the 9 September assassination by Al Qaeda of northern Afghan resistance commander Ahmed Shah Massoud and before its World Trade Center attacks,...
The Geneva Film Festival & Censored Chinese History: The Story of Chi Xiaoning and...
Before the 1980s, documentary films in China were mostly propaganda made to serve the ideological purposes of the Communist Party. Views critical of the party were prohibited. Only one official voice could...
Focus on Afghanistan: How the Afghan president helped his brother secure lucrative mining deals...
A longer version of this article was originally published by the Organized Crime and Corruption Reporting Project.
Afghanistan’s crags and valleys hold at
least a trillion dollars’ worth...
Basel’s uneasy cross-border relationship with Nazi Germany 1933-1945
As a baby boomer of Swiss origin born in the United States, I was always fascinated by Switzerland’s survival role as a neutral country during World War II. My British-educated father, who...
Focus on Afghanistan: The West’s abandonment of Afghanistan: A story of arrogance, ineptitude, and...
Political cartoon by Jeff Danziger, contributing editor to Global Insights and a member of our media partner Cartooning for Peace.
See additional articles on Afghanistan in Global...
Switzerland’s proposed responsible business reforms: no great expectations
Agent Provocateur is Global Geneva’s oped section.
The campaigners for the initiative were attempting to end the impunity of Swiss multinational corporations against human rights abuses and environmental...
Bruno Barbey: Disappearance of a photographic great
For over five decades, Bruno Barbey photographed across five continents for major international magazines, such as TIME-LIFE, Paris Match and Stern. He also published over 30 books. What he has left is...
The Hindu Kush Himalaya: An endangered “water tower” in a warming world
Mountain systems have long played a vital
role for ensuring replenishable water resources for both human survival and
natural ecosystems, for drinking, farming, hydroelectrical power, irrigation,
transportation and fishing, among other human activities. Inhabitants of...
Amanda Gorman: The vital power of youth and words
A Rock, a River, a Tree Hosts of species long departed Marked the mastodon, The dinosaur, who left dried tokens Of their sojourn hereMaya Angelou, On The Pulse of Morning
America’s – and NATO’s – Afghanistan disaster: Still a possible peace solution with a...
By Edward Girardet & Peter Jouvenal
The following article was shortlisted but not finally selected by the Geneva-based Oslo Forum as part of its 2021 Peace Writer Prize. A...
The Balkans Wars: Return to Slavonski Brod
Mladen Vladetić is standing in his old local park. It is called the “blue field” and it is surrounded by grim-looking tenements, their outer walls still scarred by shell impacts with great...
Business as usual: no longer acceptable for young people
For my 20 year-old son, who is studying finance at Edinburgh University, engaging with business investment and social entrepreneurship is what matters. In other words, unlike his father, he is a born...
Chappatte plonge ‘Au cœur de la vague du coronavirus’
EDITION FRANCAISE: La deuxième vague de Covid-19 frappe de plein fouet des millions de citoyens sur tous les continents. À l’incrédulité ressentie depuis mars dernier a succédé l’angoisse. Pour tenter de comprendre...
Switzerland’s re-opening: Everyone for themselves
Agent Provocateur is Global Insight Magazine's oped component. This is open to invited writers or those organizations that contribute to Global Geneva Group. All content, however, must meet our editorial standards.
International Switzerland’s gold mine of knowledge: an unexploited global asset
Despite the promise, Switzerland is doing relatively little about getting the rest of the world to understand what this incredible community of international aid workers, academics, entrepreneurs, researchers, policymakers and advocates has to...
Crimes and punishments of radical artists in Putin’s Russia
“All political prisoners face a Golgotha, a crucifixion,” Krisevich said. “There are thousands of them.” The burning papers in his November 5 performance, Krisevich explained, represent the volumes of indictments fabricated by...
Eliminating nuclear weapons before they eliminate us
Last month on 24 October 2020, the Treaty
on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons (TPNW),
adopted in July 2017 by 122 states at the United Nations, reached 50
ratifications. This triggered the treaty's entry into...
Focus on Afghanistan: The country’s ‘Businesswoman of the Year’ escapes from Kabul.
Like a Horror Movie
It is Monday, 16 August 2021. Hassina Syed, who is 41, is in central Kabul when her mobile phone rings. Her friend screams, shouting into...
‘Roger Federer, welcome home!’
Finally he did it. The dreaded moment of his retirement, much anticipated over the past decade.
It came just after midnight on 24 September...
Navalny’s Gambit: Can the imprisoned opposition leader have a role in Russia?
Editor's Note: Alexei Navalny, who returned to Russia from Germany in late January 2021 was jailed for three and a half years by a Russian court for ostensibly violating the terms...
2020 Jan Michalski Prize for Literature: Mia Couto
The Jan Michalski Foundation jury noted the “exceptional quality of the writing, which subtlely mixes orality and narrative, letters, tales, fables, dreams and beliefs, all in the heart of a historical reality,...
The Ethiopian-Tigray Conflict: View of a worsening situation from the other side of the...
Fleeing violence in Tigray, Ethiopia, more than 61,000 people have registered as refugees after crossing the border into Sudan since November 2020. Recently, I visited two refugee camps - Al Hashabat and...
The long road to the women’s vote in Switzerland
In the Council of States, one of the two
chambers of the Swiss parliament in Bern, one wall is dominated by a fresco in
five panels. Die Landsgemeinde by Albert Welti was completed between
1907...
Agenda 2021: a youth cure for the UN
Any new hire entering the United Nations these days must be struck by the fact that not only is the institution showing its age, but its top management is too. The UN...
A Swiss initiative to redo the Internet: crypto scepticism abounds
You may have caught a whiff of last month’s explosive climb into cryptocurrencies' top 10 valuations by a mammoth Swiss-based project to replace the Internet we know today. One crypto analyst described...
Nepal’s Covid Doctors
Politics are feeding the fire. For the second time in five months, Nepal’s government was dissolved on 22 May 2021, furthering bureaucratic paralysis. Nepal risks becoming an imploding catastrophe. It is already...
Valéry Giscard d’Estaing: his ‘personal’ American photographer reflects
All photos ©2020 David Burnett/Contact Press Images
Valéry Giscard d'Estaing, or VGE as he was known, served as president of France from 1974 to 1981, just as oil...
Goodbye – at last
From Ruth Bader Ginsburg to Kobe Bryant, Chuck Yeager, and Diego Maradona, the major figures who left us in 2020 were memorable personalities whose accomplishments helped define the last century. Think of...
American Kompromat: Russia’s attempt to undermine US democracy
There’s no question that the Kremlin played a critical role edging Donald Trump across the finish line in the 2106 election. Virtually all US intelligence agencies agree that after hackers working for...
Digital nomads, Caribbean revolutionaries and making the best of lockdown through NBN
Growing numbers of British and other European students have opted to travel abroad as digital nomads in lieu of remaining for the pandemic winter lockdowns of their universities. Here British students in...
Tibetan-Swiss artist Kesang Lamdark: Highlighting China’s repression
It was a decade ago. Fabio Rossi
told me I have to meet his artist friend Kesang Lamdark. I called Lamdark and
arranged to meet him in a pub in London where he was...
COVID-19: Anti-vaccine paranoia, disinformation and disregard for others undermine end to pandemic
The refusal by so many to vaccinate is not only endangering lives but also subverting global efforts to turn the pandemic around. As the World Health Organization, GAVI, UNICEF and a host...
Biden Takes over
UPDATED 21 January, 2021
In contrast to past inaugurations, Biden’s ceremony was attended by only around 2,000 carefully selected guests all spaced out to maintain social distancing. Everyone...
Biden’s new America: Where do we go from here?
Democracy may be the best form of government we have, but there’s never a guarantee that the government it produces will be a good one. While it looks as though Joe Biden’s “Blue...
Trump’s followers: same as they ever were
French philosopher Jean Baudrillard nearly 40 years ago gave us the insights we need to understand today's Trumpery. (See Peter Hulm's companion article on Hillbilly Elegy)
If French philosopher...
Focus on Afghanistan: “We tried to tell you”
The following column by contributing editor, journalist and author Mort Rosenblum is from his regular comment The MortReport.
FLAYOSC, France — Here we go again. Americans clamor for the...
Focus on Afghanistan: The Essential Field Guide to Afghanistan. 4th fully-revised edition. (2014) –...
See additional articles on Afghanistan in Global Insights Magazine (search www.global-geneva.com) plus our specialised updated collection of good pieces on Afghanistan by other media. (See Nusereal link: https://www.nusereal.com/afghan.php)
Tackling poverty and ageism post-COVID, if you can’t join Nomadland
We don't all have the courage to join Bob Wells, founder of the Rubber Tramp Rendezvous and CheapRVLiving. And sociologically, the film Nomadland distorts the common experience of ageing and poverty-afflicted Americans....
Focus on Afghanistan: Afghan Waterloo: Graveyard for the British, Soviet, and US Empires
See additional articles on Afghanistan in Global Insights (search www.global-geneva.com) plus our specialised updated collection of good pieces on Afghanistan by other media. (See Nusereal link: https://www.nusereal.com/afghan.php)
Biden’s...
