World - Katoikos

BRICS: Navigating a Complex Economic and Political Landscape

Johnatan Santos
Russia , World , India , Peace & Security , Foreign Affairs , Analysis
28 August, 2024

Initially formed as “BRIC” – Brazil, Russia, India, China – and subsequently becoming “BRICS”, with the addition of South Africa,[1] this group of countries constitutes a unique coalition of emerging economies that collectively represent a significant counterbalance to the established economic powers of the West. Despite their collective identity, BRICS members are markedly different in…

The Birth of the Confederated Alliance of the Sahel States

On Saturday, 6 July 2024, in Niamey, capital of Niger, during the first meeting of the Alliance of Sahel States[1] (ASS/AES) a new agreement was signed to mark the beginning of the Confederated Alliance of the Sahel States[2]. According to the communiqué final of the summit, the former military Alliance of the Sahel States has…

The Hidden Crisis of Lake Chad: How Environmental Degradation Fuels Boko Haram

Situated in Central Africa, Lake Chad was once a flourishing freshwater reservoir that sustained the lives of more than 30 million people across Chad, Cameroon, Niger and Nigeria. However, the lake has drastically shrunk by around 90% since 1963. This diminishing body of water crucial for irrigation, fishing and drinking is now at the heart…

The Iran Nuclear Deal – A Missed Opportunity ?

Alejandro Zurita
World , Middle East , Peace & Security , Analysis
One response
28 May, 2024

After twenty months of multilateral negotiations, the Iran nuclear deal, formally called Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA), was signed in Vienna on 14 July 2015. The signatories were, on one side Iran, and on the other side the five permanent members of the UN Security Council, i.e. China, France, Russia, UK and US, together…

A Global Perspective on Responsible Democratic Citizenship

The modern notion of “citizenship” is connected to the nation state and has emerged to a large extent from the struggle for civic rights in Western societies. In recent years the term “citizenship” or “citizen” is occasionally used in a broader sense, informally as in “citizen of the world”, or even formally, as in “citizen…

Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant. Photo: REUTERS

Nuclear Facilities as Military Targets – The Zaporizhzhia Case*

For the first time in history, a nuclear power plant has become a military objective during a war. While previous military operations at the Iraqi Osirak reactor (1981), the Iranian Bushehr plant (1987) and the Slovenian Krško plant (1991) were somewhat ad hoc, the Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant continues to be contested between the parties…

PRAYING FOR THE END OF HISTORY…

When in the late 1980s and early 1990s, Francis Fukuyama evangelized “the end of history,” he did it in the context of a widely held belief that the collapse of Communism and the victory of Liberal Democracy was a major milestone in human evolution. Beyond the end of the Cold War, this was supposed to…

Brazil – Risks of Reversed Elections

More than support for the candidates, it seems that voters’ rejection of Bolsonaro or Lula will decide the presidential elections. A ‘country-continent’ with 215 million inhabitants, twice the size of the European Union and the leading power in Latin America. This is Brazil, a federal republic with a presidential system made up of 26 states…

China’s zero-Covid policy and why is it still there?

Since the COVID outbreak in Wuhan in 2020, China has blocked its borders and implemented a zero-Covid policy. It has been proven effective in the past two years. China has successfully limited its cases to around 5 million, and the deaths to only 21,761. This is very low compared to America, whose cases have been…

Humanitarian Crisis in Venezuela: The challenge of understanding a complex scenario

The Venezuelan opposition assigns full responsibility for the crisis in Venezuela to the Maduro government but in reality it is a question of shared responsibilities, since the main leaders of both the Right and the Left are great financial operators benefiting from the situation.