Articles by Georgios Kostakos
Dr Georgios Kostakos is Co-founder and Executive Director of the Brussels-based Foundation for Global Governance and Sustainability (FOGGS). He has been a UN staff member, including with the Executive Office of the UN Secretary-General, the High-level Panel on Global Sustainability, the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC), and field missions for political affairs and human rights. He has also worked with think tanks, academic institutions and as a consultant on global governance and sustainability, peace and resilience.
Israel-Palestine: A monumental failure of leadership and humanity
The carnage in Israel and the Gaza Strip seems to have no end, with hundreds if not thousands of fatalities on both sides and a region ready to explode. Who is to blame and how can this end? Peace or justice first, under whose interpretation and on what terms? For people like me who have…
Global Resilience (Council) – If not now, when?
- World , Global Governance , UN , Editorials , Dialogue , Op-ed
- 2 responses
It has been a hot, unbearable summer in the Northern Hemisphere. Wherever the temperatures are not breaking new records and the forest fires are not filling the air with suffocating smoke and other pollutants it is the floods that are hitting the high mark, including in places where water is becoming worryingly scarce over time….
The Unbearable Lightness of Being UN Secretary-General*
The news about the United States spying on United Nations Secretary-General António Guterres and his deputy, Amina Mohammed, revealed dissatisfaction in leaked US intelligence documents over Guterres’s perceived lack of toughness regarding the Russians and their invasion of Ukraine in 2022. One would expect the Russians, undoubtedly also spying on Guterres, to have different views, annoyed by…
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…
Consultations and Summits aplenty – Is any-body bringing all this together?
- Editorials , Global Governance , UN , Dialogue , Op-ed
September 2023 is forecast to be heavy in summiteering, as already two summits and a ministerial meeting are scheduled to take place in the space of a few days, around the high-level “UN Week”, namely: an SDG Summit, another Climate Summit, and a Ministerial Meeting in preparation of the September 2024 Summit of the Future….
ANOTHER KIND OF ASSERTIVENESS FOR EUROPE: Peacebuilding Past, Present and Future
Whom to call when you want to talk to Europe was the famous question attributed to Henry Kissinger that pointed to the lack of a central node of international contact and decision-making in the European integration project. The question remained unanswered for decades, despite earnest efforts to provide a credible answer, notably with the establishment…
Is a new confidence-building architecture possible as a response to the Ukraine crisis?
By Tapio Kanninen and Georgios Kostakos* After the Russian invasion of Ukraine that started on 24 February 2022, the world was horrified at the prospect of a new major war in Europe. Condemnation for the invasion rightly goes to President Vladimir Putin of Russia. An overblown Western reaction, though, may have dangerous consequences for the…
Looking for mediators to end the war in Ukraine
As the war in Ukraine approaches the one-month mark – (the Russian invasion started on 24 February 2022) – and in view of the escalating destruction and human suffering, plus the potential for a wider confrontation and even nuclear war, the need to put an end to it becomes ever more urgent. This article looks…
Ukraine: The Syria of Europe?
The images of residential blocks hit by Russian missiles or artillery fire in Kiev, Kharkiv and other Ukrainian cities brought back memories of similar scenes from cities in Syria some years ago. Initially, it was news that something like that had happened. Then it became a commonplace, the lines of who did it – the…
