Yoriko Yasukawa is the Vice-President of the Foundation for Global Governance and Sustainability (FOGGS) that publishes Katoikos.world She has worked for over 35 years in efforts to advance inclusive and sustainable development, human rights and cultures of peace, within and outside the United Nations system. She is currently a member of the roster of mediation experts for the Inter-American Development Bank Independent Investigation and Consultation Mechanism, and is a part-time lecturer at the Meiji Gakuin University in Yokohama. She also works as an independent journalist and consultant based in Costa Rica.
It is broadly accepted that business as usual is not enough to effectively address the urgent global crises confronting humanity today, which range from wars of the traditional, geopolitical kind in Ukraine, Gaza, Yemen, Sudan and many other places to non-military threats like climate change, pandemics, food insecurity, inequalities and a self-serving global financial system….
Panel Discussion Summary by Yoriko Yasukawa* Today, over 3 billion people worldwide play video games, which span a hugely diverse range of forms and content. The industry generates more than US$ 180 billion a year in global revenues – about seven times as much as the global music industry. On 29 June 2022, I had…
Costa Rica is an exceptional country in a number of ways. It is a small nation in a region, Central America, torn by civil wars well into the 1980s, that abolished its army over 70 years ago and has lived in peace ever since. The country has achieved exceptionally high levels of human development despite…
India – one of the cradles of human civilization, an economic powerhouse with the fifth-biggest GDP among all countries, the largest and most diverse democracy in the world. Yet recently, the COVID-centred coverage of international media has reduced this enormously complex nation into an endless series of calamitous scenes of death and suffering wrought by…
On 24 March, I had the privilege to moderate a fascinating virtual conversation on the role of narratives in shaping societies. Titled ‘Stories of Love and Hatred – Narratives that Shape our Present and future,’ (Historias de amor y odio – las narratives que dan forma a nuestro presente y futuro), the panel was made…
Para leer este artículo en español, haga clic aquí People all over the world tell one another – and ourselves — stories, both explicit and implicit, that shape the way we look at the world around us. Narratives about how that world came about and how it works, who its heroes and villains are,…
Many times, over my long career with the United Nations system, I quoted these lyrics from the Doobie Brothers song, ‘Takin’ It to the Streets,’ to explain the meaning of human rights. These lyrics paraphrase in clear and simple terms the principles embodied in Article 1 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights which we…
The corona virus pandemic has sickened nearly 2 million people, killed over 100,000 and wrought economic ruin around the world within the space of a few months. It is a global calamity such as humankind has not witnessed since the Second World War. It is also an opportunity and an imperative for the United Nations…
