In collaboration with the Social Science Research Centre Berlin, the Heinrich Böll Foundation organised a panel discussion on the subject "Pakistan and the West" on October 26, 2009. The main focus was the ongoing “Talibanisation” of the country.

A few days before the Climate Summit in Copenhagen it is still not clear how much substance, and how much show there will be. The Briefing Paper identifies main dangers for a Greenwash agreement in Copenhagen and provides background information about the conference topics.

A group of Afghan women activists from politics, media and civil society in Afghanistan met in the office of the Heinrich-Böll-Foundation in Kabul. Now they adress an open letter to the Members of Parliament.

South Africa officially entered recession in May 2009, its first in 17 years. This issue of Perspectives discusses the implications of the global economic crisis for South Africa, and analyses the government’s responses in relation to social justice, gender equity and sustainable development principles.

Pakistan is a war zone facing serious threats from militants and terrorists besides a number of other problems and difficulties that urgently demand the establishment of democratic structures as well as rule of law. In the light of the current crisis, high-ranking guests from Pakistan and various German experts discussed structures and deficits of rule of law as well as the current state of affairs.

The destruction of tropical forests contributes between percent of the greenhouse gases generated by human activity. Donor governments consider Congo Basin countries to be prime candidates for REDD (UN Collaborative Programme on Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and Forest Degradation in Developing Countries), and national governments in the region are eager to seize the opportunity.

Open letter from brazilian environmental organisations, networks and social movements calling on the Brazilian Government to reject the idea of using REDD as a carbon market-based mechanism and of accepting it as a means to compensate the emissions from Northern countries.

Analyses of the crisis are likely to show that the response redistributed wealth upward. The social, economical and ecological challenges are enormous and demand a broader analysis and a different kind of public debate that reaches beyond the classical economic thinking.

In a recent lecture for the United States Institute for Peace, US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said the world cannot afford to continue to rely on recycling ideas from the Cold War era. Unfortunately, the vast majority of Czech politicians and media think in Cold War terms, and as a result Czech society does as well.

Roberto Martínez Castañeda,  Ambassador of Honduras to Germany and the EU, describes the situation in Honduras from a constitutional perspective. "Brutal and illegitimate from the origin" he calls the de facto government and tells us why.