European Student Think Tank

December’s topic of the month invites your con­tri­bu­tions! “Chinese invest ments in Africa – how to com­pete with the dragon?” is what we ask this time. Sub­mit your con­crete topic proposal!

Pro­test­ers and free­dom fight­ers in the Arab world can count on the sym­pathy, and some­times the sup­port of West­ern demo­cratic nations. But this sym­pathy clouds our judge­ment, because we auto­mat­ic­ally con­ceive the rioters as her­oes. The vil­lains are those res­ist­ing change, some­times will­ing to give their lives for the dic­tat­ors. Yet, we hardly under­stand why. The demo­cratic prin­cipals that we hold dear and that we wish new regimes will adopt should make us want to know the whole story.

It has been stated many times by human­it­arian organ­isa­tions and the UN: Europe is no longer the safe haven for refugees it used to be. The EU-member states seem to be more obsessed with clos­ing of their bor­ders than uphold­ing the ‘uni­ver­sal’ human rights. But instead of for­ti­fy­ing the wall of Fort­ress Europe, it might be wise for the EU as a whole to reflect upon the deeper causes of refugee flows.

Inter­net usage is an undeni­able part of the mod­ern world. If a soci­ety wants to take a place in this mod­ern world, it’s inev­it­able to make big invest­ments in that area. But what kind of invest­ment is this? On the one hand, there are coun­tries which make pos­it­ive invest­ments to increase free­dom of inter­net usage and to make it more qual­i­fied. The E-G8 Forum is a good example. On the other hand, there are some coun­tries which try to restrict the usage of inter­net, such as Turkey.

When we talk about the weak pro­gress of demo­cracy, the first place that comes to our mind is undoubtedly Middle East. What are the reas­ons that make the Middle East the castle of author­it­arian gov­ern­ments? The debates on the reas­ons of this demo­cracy defi­cit have focused on espe­cially reli­gion, eco­nomy and social struc­ture. There­fore, in this art­icle, I will try explain the dra­matic situ­ation in the Middle East and then advance my argu­ment about the future of this region.

A topic that is quite often dis­cussed on this web­site con­cerns the incon­sist­ent Human Rights agenda of the EU. Recently, I’ve taken a closer look on the concept of the ‘White man’s bur­den’, that was pop­u­lar in the neo-imperialistic times. The sim­il­ar­it­ies between this concept and our mod­ern day Human Rights agenda is quite shock­ing. Below you’ll find an explanation.

On this web­site we have devoted a good amount of art­icles to the incon­sist­ent Human Rights agenda of the EU. While the EU is try­ing to turn the globe into a ‘Human Rights Para­dise’, its own Mem­ber States don’t seem to be very com­mit­ted to this agenda when it comes to their own internal policy: com­mon know­ledge for every edu­cated reader. Even though you might get tired of this con­stant, mono­tone, mes­sage of our blog­gers, I’d like to add another para­graph to the Mem­ber States’ ‘crim­inal record’: It con­cerns the Roma in Italy.

The par­lia­ment in Lithuania is treat­ing an anti-gay law, which has drawn the EP’s atten­tion. They claim that if the law is enforced, Lithuania will fail to pro­tect human rights. This threats the pro­tec­tion of minor­it­ies and is restrict­ing diversity in Europe. It is a viol­a­tion of the Fun­da­mental Rights. It is quite sur­pris­ing that this story has not received more atten­tion. The lack of media interest and atten­tion from the EU is very disappointing.