Int’l Affairs

Turkey’s Economic Reforms Turkey’s president Recep Tayyip Erdogan has pledged to rein in government spending and bring the inflation rate below 10 percent as part of efforts to rebuild credibility with investors after years of economic turbulence. The government is prioritising efforts “to achieve single-digit inflation” and will create a price-stability committee, Erdogan said on March 12, in what had …

Trump’s Four Years in the White House How will the world remember President Trump? Donald Trump stunned the political world in 2016 when he became the first person without government or military experience ever to be elected president of the United States. His four-year tenure in the White House revealed extraordinary fissures in American society but left little doubt that …

Saudi Arabia’s Labour Reform Initiative An end to decades-old kafala system In addition to ensuring career mobility by doing away with the sponsorship system, the new initiative offers services to employees, including job transfer (transfer to another employer), exit/re-entry, and final exit that are available via Absher and Qiwa platforms. The job mobility service allows mobility of expatriate workers between …

A Look at China’s 14th Five-Year Plan On March 11, the National People’s Congress (NPC), China’s top legislature, concluded its annual session. In this meeting, the lawmakers approved, besides many other plans and policies, the Outline of the 14th Five-Year Plan (2021-2025) for National Economic and Social Development and the Long-Range Objectives Through the Year 2035. The Plan, which includes …

Crisis in the Indus Basin Water plays a critical role in the economy, politics and national security of Pakistan. The country’s is the world’s most water-intensive economy as the amount of water utilized per unit of GDP here is the highest in the world. Agriculture contributes 19.3% to the national GDP, offers employment to 44.5% of Pakistan’s total labour force, …

The Indo-Pacific Region After Trump The Indo-Pacific region will remain the most important foreign policy direction of the new US administration. This means a continuation of the strategy started by Donald Trump, albeit with important changes in goals and mode of operation. It can be expected that the US will increase engagement in the region, tighten cooperation with allies, strengthen …

Israel’s War Crimes in Palestine The ICC’s Gavel Strikes Judges at the International Criminal Court (ICC), on February 05, announced a decision whereby they ruled that the court has jurisdiction over war crimes committed in the Palestinian territories, paving the way for the ICC to investigate alleged war crimes committed in the 2014 Israeli-Palestinian conflict in the besieged Gaza Strip …

Global Cooperation on Climate Change We live in what many scientists call the Anthropocene Epoch, an era of geological time characterized by human impact on Earth’s geology and ecosystems. As the earth’s temperature rises and natural disasters occur with alarming frequency, the environment is quickly careening toward a breaking point from which we can never turn back. No matter where …

Coup in Myanmar After two months of disputes over November 2020 election results, the military of Myanmar has overthrown the country’s fragile democratic government in a coup d’état, and has arrested Aung San Suu Kyi and other democratically elected leaders. The military is now back in charge and has declared a year-long state of emergency, and the power has been …

America’s Place in the World On February 04, newly-inaugurated President of the United States, Joseph Robinette Biden Jr. (commonly known as Joe Biden), gave his first foreign-policy speech. In a wide-ranging address at the US State Department in Washington, Biden outlined his new foreign policy vision, declaring that “America is back. Diplomacy is back at the center of our foreign …