There’s a good piece (here) in the Economist on a whole new kind of country – the MIFFs (middle-income, failed or fragile states) picking up on a Global Dashboard blog last week (here).
Who are the MIFFs?
Home to 17% of the world’s poor and 40% of the world’s conflict they include a whole range of countries (see below) who are fragile and no longer so poor.
If the politics of climate change end up polarised, is that so bad? No – it’s disastrous. Or so I’ve long thought. Look at the US – where climate is even more polarised than abortion. Result: decades of flip flopping. Ambition under Clinton; reversal...
Official development assistance (ODA) – or aid – is a small but conspicuous pillar of the international order, and its frailties are being exposed by COVID as surely as those of the other foundations of this order. The assumptions underpinning aid and its management...
Since its onset, one striking feature of the coronavirus pandemic (COVID-19) has been the narrative power of its novelty. This global narrative depicts COVID-19 pushing humanity towards a ‘historical divide’ of BC and AC (before and after COVID-19), where unknown,...