By Paula Harrison, Pamela McElwee and David Obura
BONN, Mar 2 2023 – When global crises are interlinked, they overlap and compound each other. In such cases, the most effective solutions are those that work at the nexus of all these challenges.

In September, almost every Government on Earth will gather at the UN Sustainable Development Summit in New York to take stock at the halfway mark of the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) of what has been achieved and what remains to be done.

Despite some progress, global development efforts have been hamstrung by unprecedented environmental, social and economic crises, in particular biodiversity loss and climate change, compounded of course by the COVID-19 pandemic.

Tackling these interlinked challenges separately risks creating situations even more damaging to people and communities around the world, and exacerbates the already high risk of not meeting the goals and targets of the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development.

This is especially true because the myriad drivers of risk and damage affect many different sectors at once, across scales from local to global, and can result in negative impacts being compounded. For example, when demands for food and timber combine with the effects of pollution and climate change, they can decimate already degraded ecosystems, driving species to extinction and severely reducing nature’s contributions to people.

The global food system offers another example of this negative spiral of interlocking crises – where food that is produced unsustainably leads to water overconsumption and waste, pollution, increased health risks and loss of biodiversity. It also leads to excessive greenhouse gas emissions, contributing to climate change.

Yet policies often treat each of these global threats in isolation, resulting in separate, uncoordinated actions that typically address only one of the root causes and fail to take advantage of the many potential solution synergies. In the worst cases, actions taken on one challenge directly undermine those needed to tackle another because they fail to account for trade-offs, resulting in unintended consequences, or the impacts being externalised, as someone else’s problem.

This is why almost 140 Governments turned to the Intergovernmental Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services (IPBES) – requesting IPBES to undertake a major multiyear assessment of the interlinkages among biodiversity, water, food and health in the context of the rapidly-changing climate. This ‘Nexus Assessment’ is among the most complex and important expert assessments ever undertaken – crossing key biophysical domains of climate and biodiversity and elements central to human wellbeing like food, water and health. It will also address how interactions are affected by energy, pollution, conflict and other socio-political challenges.

To fully address this ‘nexus’, the assessment is considering interactions across scales, geographic regions and ecosystems. It also covers past, present and future trends in these interlinkages. And, most importantly, it will offer concrete options for responses to the crises that address the interactions of risk and damage jointly and equitably – providing a vital set of possible solutions for the more sustainable future we want for people and our planet.

One example of the mutifunctional solutions that will be explored is nature-based solutions – such as coastal wetland protection and restoration. When coastal wetland ecosystems are healthy – whether conserved or where necessary, restored – they are a refuge and habitat for biodiversity, improving fish stocks for greater food security and contributing to improve human health and wellbeing. They can also sequester carbon, helping to mitigate climate change, and protect adjacent communities and settlements from flooding and sea level rise.

To develop and implement these kinds of multi-functional solutions, responses for dealing with the major global crises need to be better coordinated, integrated, and made more synergistic across sectors, both public and private. Decision-makers at all levels need better evidence and knowledge to implement such solutions.

Work on the nexus assessment began in 2021 – with the final report expected to be considered and adopted by IPBES member States in 2024. A majority of the 170 expert authors and review editors from around the world are meeting in March in the Kruger National Park in South Africa to further strengthen the draft report, responding to the many thousands of comments received during a first external review period.

The assessment will also include evidence and expertise contributed by indigenous peoples and local communities – whose rich and varied direct experiences and knowledge systems that consider humans and nature as an interconnected whole have embodied a nexus approach for generations.

The Paris Agreement on Climate Change and the recently-agreed Kunming-Montreal Global Biodiversity Framework provide the roadmaps for tackling the climate and biodiversity crises. The IPBES nexus assessment will offer policymakers a practical guide to bridge the vital interlinkages across the two challenges, to other relevant frameworks, and link to the sustainable development agenda.

For more information about IPBES or about the ongoing progress on the nexus assessment, go to www.ipbes.net or follow @ipbes on social media.

Prof. Paula Harrison is a Principal Natural Capital Scientist and Professor of Land and Water Modelling at the UK Centre for Ecology & Hydrology, United Kingdom.

Dr. David Obura is a Founding Director of CORDIO (Coastal Oceans Research and Development – Indian Ocean) East Africa, Kenya.

IPS UN Bureau

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By Charles Mpaka
BLANTYRE, Mar 2 2023 – Researchers have found that cheaper and more accessible blood testing methods can improve the care of patients with chronic hepatitis B in Africa.

In a study published in Nature Communications, the researchers recommend revising the current World Health Organization (WHO) guidelines on managing the condition.

“Our data are important for informing clinical practice in [Sub-Saharan Africa] and should be considered in the next revision of the WHO hepatitis B guidelines,” say the researchers who make up the Hepatitis B in Africa Collaborative Network (HEPSANET).

Lead author of the study, Asgeir Johannessen, tells IPS that clinicians working in Africa have “repeatedly reported that very few patients in Africa” are eligible for treatment using the current WHO guidelines published in 2015.

“The lack of data from Africa is a major challenge, and we wanted to use African data from African patients to inform African treatment guidelines,” says Johannessen, a specialist in internal medicine and infectious diseases at the Institute of Clinical Medicine, University of Oslo in Norway.

According to the study, Africa represents one of the high-burden regions for chronic hepatitis B virus. Of the estimated 316 million people that live with chronic hepatitis B virus infection worldwide, 82 million are in Africa.

The research further says that antiviral therapy effectively reduces the risk of complications resulting from hepatitis B virus infection.

But with current WHO-recommended guidelines, early diagnosis and treatment are impacted because often only picked up when there is advanced liver damage.

The challenge in clinical practice in Africa has been to identify patients at risk of progressive liver disease who should start antiviral therapy in good time.

“In resource-limited settings, however, these fibrosis assessment tools are rarely available, and antiviral treatment is therefore often delayed until the patients have developed symptoms of advanced chronic liver disease,” the research paper says.

So, the researchers set out to deal with this question: “Can we diagnose advanced liver fibrosis in the Africa region, using routinely available and low-cost blood tests for patients with hepatitis B?” says Alexander Stockdale, a member of the team and senior clinical lecturer at the University of Liverpool and Malawi Liverpool Wellcome Programme.

In the study, the 23 researchers reviewed data for 3,548 chronic hepatitis B patients living in eight sub-Saharan African countries, namely Burkina Faso, Ethiopia, The Gambia, Malawi, Nigeria, Senegal, South Africa, and Zambia.

They evaluated the existing WHO treatment guidelines and a simple liver damage biomarker developed in West Africa.

They established that the conventional hepatitis B care standards are unsuitable for patient management in Africa. They found that the diagnosis level as set by the WHO “is inappropriately high in sub-Saharan Africa,” which is often constrained by a lack of resources.

The problem, the researchers say, is that the existing WHO guidelines are not adapted for the African population.

The study that informed these guidelines was performed among active chronic hepatitis C patients in the USA, much older than Africa’s hepatitis B virus population and on a very different patient population compared to African chronic hepatitis B patients.

“Our data are important for informing clinical practice in SSA [Sub-Saharan Africa] and should be considered in the next revision of the WHO hepatitis B guidelines,” says Johannessen.

He says they have shared their findings with the WHO and the Centre for Disease Control (CDC) in Africa.

“We believe our findings will inspire the first ever African hepatitis B treatment guidelines, and even the WHO is now changing their guidelines because of our work,” he tells IPS.

“Africa is now the epicenter of the hepatitis B epidemic. In fact, 2 of 3 new infections occur on the African continent. To combat the hepatitis B pandemic in Africa, we need African data to inform practice,” Johannessen says.

Initially, the researchers thought their main challenge would be to get people to share data.

“But in fact, everyone we reached out to were eager to participate. It is obvious that this is a topic that feels like a priority to colleagues working throughout Africa,” he says.

The study is the largest, most comprehensive, and geographically representative analysis ever conducted in Africa.

“We, therefore, believe our results are generalizable,” the researchers conclude.

However, they admit some limitations of their study. For example, the method used to assess liver damage has been associated with technical limitations, including unsuccessful measurements reported in patients with certain health conditions such as obesity. The researchers did not ascertain the rates of failure of these tests.

“This may affect the overall applicability of our findings to the entire population with HBV,” they say.

But Adamson Muula, Professor and Head of Community and Environmental Health at the Kamuzu University of Health Sciences (KUHES) in Malawi, says in terms of the methodology used in this study, the systematic review of data was relevant in answering the question at hand.

“In the hierarchy of evidence, systematic reviews and meta-analyses are high up with respect to the rigor of the findings,” says Muula, who was not part of the research.

He noted, however, that there are downsides to this approach, including the fact that in the interpretation of the findings, there is an implicit sense that Africa is one place. Muula argues that African health systems can be different even within the same country.

Within a country, you can find a health system comparable with developed countries; others are more closely aligned to developing countries. The studies applied more to those with less sophisticated health systems.

Regardless, the study is vital, he acknowledges.

Hepatitis B diagnosis on the continent has been a luxury. In Malawi, for example, where 5 percent of the adults are estimated to be infected, virtually no screening or diagnostic system exists.

Individual patients may interact with the health system, but more so when things are already out of hand when irreversible liver damage has already happened.

“Efforts to reduce the time at which diagnosis can happen are therefore commendable. This study adds guidance as to when such earlier diagnosis may be attained.

“However, research is one thing, health systems strengthening another. Studies like this one add to the impetus and arm the policymakers to make the right decisions,” he says.

But he urges communities to take charge of these findings instead of leaving action in the hands of “sometimes incapacitated policymakers’ hands.”

“The question should be, what is the community saying about findings such as these? If we wait for policymakers to decide when they are going to invest in hepatitis B interventions, we will wait for the rest of our lifetimes.

“Time has come for community groups to work with the duty-bearers to the extent that hepatitis B is not a neglected tropical disease anymore,” he says.

The WHO’s goal is to have hepatitis eliminated by 2030.

IPS UN Bureau Report

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By Joseph Chamie
PORTLAND, USA, Mar 2 2023 – Israel of today as a Jewish and democratic state is a contradiction of terms and as such may possibly become transformed into a genuinely democratic Israel tomorrow with justice and equality for all.

In Israel today, citizens who are not Jewish are treated differently than those who are Jewish, who benefit from certain rights and privileges. In a national opinion poll, most Jewish Israelis, about 80 percent, say Jews should get preferential treatment in Israel. Also, nearly half of Jewish Israelis say that Arab Israelis should be expelled or transferred from Israel.

In Israel today, citizens who are not Jewish are treated differently than those who are Jewish, who benefit from certain rights and privileges. In a national opinion poll, most Jewish Israelis, about 80 percent, say Jews should get preferential treatment in Israel. Also, nearly half of Jewish Israelis say that Arab Israelis should be expelled or transferred from Israel

In addition, several years ago Israel passed the “nation-state law”, which among other things, states that the right to exercise national self-determination in Israel is unique to the Jewish people and also established Jewish settlement as a national value. While embraced by many Jewish Israelis, the nation-state law was considered apartheid by the country’s non-Jewish population, ostensibly making them second-class citizens.

In a democratic Israel, in contrast, all Israelis irrespective of their religious affiliation would have the same rights and privileges. In such a state, justice and equality would prevail across the entire country’s population, not just for a single dominant religious group.

A democratic Israel would be similar in many respects to Western liberal democracies such as the United States. In that democracy, all religious groups, including Jewish Americans, have the same rights, privileges and equality under the law.

Most Jewish Israelis, some 75 percent across the religious spectrum, continue to believe that Israel can be a Jewish state and a democracy. In contrast, non-Jewish Israelis, including the majorities of Muslims, Christians and Druze, generally do not believe Israel can be a Jewish state and a democracy at the same time; it’s simply viewed as inconsistent.

Further complicating political, legal and human rights matters for Israelis as well as Palestinians are the new government’s recent proposals for judicial reform, which would impact the independence of the Israeli Supreme Court.

Many Israelis have gone to the streets to protest the proposed reform. Objections to the reforms are being raised by former government officials, military officers, business investors and others. Foreign allies, especially officials, Jewish leaders and journalists in America, have also expressed concerns over the proposals. In addition, the majority of Israelis, about two-thirds, oppose the proposed judicial reform.

Turning to demographics, Israel’s population stood at 9.656 million at the end of 2022. The composition of the population was 74 percent Jewish, 21 percent Arab (largely Christian and Muslims) and 5 percent others (Figure 1).

Source: Israel, Central Bureau of Statistics (CBS).

In 1948 when Israel was established, the country’s proportion Jewish was 82 percent of its population of 806 thousand. By the 1960s the proportion Jewish reached a record high of nearly 90 percent. Since that high, the proportion Jewish in Israel has been steadily declining to its current level of 74 percent.

In addition to Israel’s changing demographics, the Jewish Israeli population has not been confined to its 1948 borders. Large numbers have expanded to settlements in East Jerusalem and the West Bank.

Israel’s Jewish settler population in the West Bank, for example, is now estimated at more than half a million. Many of the estimated 700 thousand Jewish Israelis now living in the West Bank and East Jerusalem are motivated by their religious mission to restore historic Israel to the Jewish people.

The Jewish settler population is continuing to increase rapidly in the West Bank, which is a top priority of ultranationalist parties who oppose Palestinian statehood.

The Israeli government has also pledged to legalize wildcat outposts and increase the approval and construction of settler homes in the West Bank.

In contrast, the United Nations Security Council and much of the international community of nations, including the United States, the European Union and the United Nations, continue to support the idea of an independent Palestinian state. However, the changing demographics in the West Bank have virtually eliminated the possibility of the two-state solution.

Without the two-state solution, Jewish Israelis face a major challenge affecting their majority status, namely the possibility of the one-state solution.

The one-state solution would involve the entire Israeli and Palestinian populations now living between the Mediterranean Sea and Jordan River. In such a population numbering approximately 15 million inhabitants, the Jewish population would become a ruling minority of approximately 47 percent, a fundamental change from the sizable Jewish majority of 74 percent in Israel today (Figure 2).

Source: Times of Israel.

Even today the Israeli government is confronting human rights issues with its expansion throughout the occupied Palestinian territories. International, Israeli and Palestinian human rights organizations as well as independent observers have found Israeli authorities practicing apartheid and persecution in the occupied Palestinian territories.

According to those human rights organizations, Israeli government policy is to maintain the domination by Jewish Israelis over Palestinians as well as the abuses and discriminatory policies against Palestinians living in the occupied territories.

Israel rejects those accusations, saying it is a democracy and committed to international law and open to scrutiny. The government cites security concerns and protecting the lives of Israelis for its imposition of travel and related restrictions on Palestinians, whose violence in the past included suicide bombings of Israeli cities and deadly attacks against Israelis.

Many have come to the conclusion that given the policies of the current Israeli government, a political path for Israel and an independent Palestinian state to coexist peacefully is simply wishful thinking. For some the two-state solution is effectively dead and it is simply waiting for its formal funeral.

In addition, the human cost of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict has been high and is rising. So far in 2023, the conflict has resulted in the deaths of an estimated 63 Palestinians and 13 Israelis.

From 2008 to 2020 the numbers of killed and injured from the conflict among Israelis and Palestinian documented by the UN were 251 and 5,590 deaths, respectively, and 5,600 and 115,000 injuries, respectively. In brief, over that time period approximately 95 percent of those killed and injured due to the conflict were Palestinians (Figure 3).

Source: UN Office for Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA).

It is evident that the Israeli government and many Israelis would like to continue the Jewish settler expansion in the West Bank. That expansion clearly has serious consequences for the resident Palestinian population and the Israelis as well as the prospects of an independent Palestinian state.

The demise of the two-state solution and the possible one-state solution also creates a major foreign and domestic dilemma for the United States, Israel’s major political, military and economic supporter and biggest ally.

Israel is the largest recipient of U.S. foreign assistance, estimated at more than 3 billion dollars annually and more than 150 dollars cumulatively. Also, America has vetoed scores of United Nations Security Council resolutions critical of Israel, including at least 53 since 1973.

Given America’s commitment to democratic values, freedom of religious beliefs and equality of citizenship, the White House, U.S. Senators, Congressional Representatives as well as the nation’s citizens will be faced with how to respond to the absence of a possible Palestinian state and Israel’s treatment of the Palestinians.

In the absence of the two-state solution, it will become increasingly difficult for the United States to continue its unwavering commitment and unequivocal support in light of Israeli policies and treatment of the Palestinians. Perhaps, consistent with its values and laws, America will decide to support the one-state solution with equality of all inhabitants, regardless of religious identities.

More importantly, in the absence of a truly independent Palestinian state, Israel may slowly come to embrace the one-state solution. Eventually then, especially given the unavoidable demographic realities strikingly visible on the ground, Israel may possibly come to realize that it’s time to transform the Israel of today into a truly democratic Israel of tomorrow with justice and equality for all.

Joseph Chamie is a consulting demographer, a former director of the United Nations Population Division and author of numerous publications on population issues, including his recent book, “Population Levels, Trends, and Differentials”.

By Marc Saxer
BERLIN, Mar 2 2023 – When tectonic plates shift, the earth shakes. Tsunamis race around the globe in the form of shock waves. The global economy has experienced three such earthquakes in recent years. The Covid-19 pandemic has made us aware of the vulnerability of a globally integrated economy.

When important components are stuck in quarantine in China, production lines in Germany come to a halt. Thus, in the organization of global supply chains – which for decades have been trimmed down for efficiency (‘just in time’) – resilience (‘just in case’) will play a more important role in the future.

After the end of the unipolar moment, larger and smaller powers are vying for the best positions in the new world order. In the hegemonic conflict between China and the United States, the government under Joe Biden has verbally disarmed, but its export controls in the high-tech sector have all the more bite.

This politicizes the framework conditions for investment decisions. Market access, infrastructure projects, trade agreements, energy supplies and technology transfers are more and more being evaluated from a geopolitical point of view.

Companies are increasingly faced with the decision of choosing one IT infrastructure, one market and one currency system over the other. The major economies may not decouple from each other across the board, but diversification (‘not all eggs in one basket’) is gaining momentum, especially in the high-tech sector. As this develops, we cannot rule out the possibility that economic blocs will form.

Marc Saxer

The experience with the ‘human uncertainty factor’ in the pandemic is also resulting in the acceleration of digital automation. Robots and algorithms make it easier to protect against geopolitical risks.

In order to bring these vulnerabilities under control, the old industrialized countries are reorganizing their supply chains. It remains to be seen whether this is purely for economic or logistical reasons (re-shoring or near-shoring), or whether geopolitical motives also play a role (friend-shoring).

Bloc formations

China must respond to these challenges. The fate of the People’s Republic will depend on whether it succeeds in charging to the head of the pack in worldwide technology, even without foreign technology and know-how. Anyone who believes that Beijing has no countermeasures up its sleeve will soon be proven wrong.

In order to compensate for the closure of the developed export markets, the Silk Road Initiative has been opening up new sales markets and raw material suppliers for years. At the last party congress, the Chinese Communist Party officially approved a reversal of its development strategy.

From now on, the gigantic home market will be the engine of the ‘dual circular economy’. Export earnings are still desired, but strategically they are being relegated to a supportive role.

One impetus behind China’s massive build-up of gold reserves serves is the goal of having its own (digital) currency take the place of the US dollar as the world’s reserve currency. Because China benefits more than anyone else from open world markets, it is continuing to rely on a globally networked world economy for the time being. Alternatively, Beijing could also be tempted to create its own economic bloc.

The foundations for this have already been put into place, with the Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership (RCEP), the BRICS Development Bank (NDB), the Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank (AIIB), the Silk Road Initiative (BRI) and bilateral cooperation in Africa, Latin America and the Middle East.

The difficulties that Western companies face in the Chinese market should provide just a sample of what is looming if China makes market entry into such a bloc contingent on good political will.

But it is not just China. Generally, for all of Asia as the new center of the world economy, these geoeconomic disruptions are tantamount to a tsunami. And the disruptions could hit developing countries particularly hard.

Whether they are being cut from global supply chains for the sake of resilience or due to geopolitical factors, this brings equally devastating results. Of course, some economies are hoping to benefit from the diversification strategies of developed countries (i.e. the ‘China plus one’ strategy).

But digital automation neutralizes what is often their only comparative advantage – cheap labor costs. Why should a European medium-sized company have to deal with corruption and power cuts, quality problems and sea routes lasting weeks, when the robots at home produce better and cheaper?

Algorithms and artificial intelligence are also likely to replace millions of service providers in outsourced back offices and call centers. How are developing countries supposed to feed their (sometimes explosively) growing populations if, in the future, simple jobs are to be performed by machines in industrialized countries? And what do these geoeconomic disruptions mean for the social and political stability of these countries?

As with Europe, most Asian states depend on China’s dynamism for their economic development – and on the guarantees of the US for their security. Therefore, to varying degrees, they resist pressure to choose sides.

Whether it will be possible to escape the pull of geoeconomic bi-polarization over the long term, however, is still an open question. If the splitting of IT infrastructures continues, it could be too costly to play in both technological worlds.

American regulations prevent products with certain Chinese components from entering the market; but those who want to play on the Chinese market will not be able to avoid a steadily increasing share of Chinese components.

Reducing economic vulnerabilities through diversification

This type of global economy would also pose an existential challenge to export nations such as Germany. Even the short-term cutting off of Russian energy is a Herculean task. Decoupling from China at the same time seems difficult to imagine. But burying one’s head in the sand will not be enough.

Neither nations nor businesses will be able to escape the pressure from Washington and Beijing. In the future, important economic, technological, and infrastructural decisions will increasingly be subject to geopolitical considerations. Therefore, reducing one-sided vulnerabilities through diversification is the right thing to do.

On the other hand, some of the lessons drawn from the over-reliance on Russian energy before the war seem short-sighted. For decades, the German economy has integrated itself more deeply into the world economy than many other countries, with the goal of avoiding violent conflicts through interdependence.

It cannot break out of these interdependencies from one day to the next. Reducing economic vulnerabilities through diversification is therefore the right move, while decoupling for ideological reasons is the wrong one. Germany should therefore beware of sacrificing its economic future to an overly ambitious value-based foreign policy.

This is because losses of prosperity translate into fears of the future and social decline at home – a fertile breeding ground for right-wing populists and conspiracy theorists.

The geopolitical race, digital automation and the reorganization of supply chains according to resilience criteria are mutually reinforcing processes. It is not only companies that have to rethink their business models – entire national economies need to adapt their development models in order to be able to survive in a rapidly changing global economy.

The particular difficulty lies in having to make investment decisions today without being able to foresee exactly what the world of tomorrow will look like. Looking into the crystal ball, some think they can see an age of de-globalization. And in fact, in the wake of the 2008 financial crisis, the peak of globalization, as measured by the volume of world trade and capital exports has already passed.

However, de-globalization is not synonymous with a relapse into autarkic national economies. A stronger regionalization of the more networked global economy is more likely. In view of the political, social and cultural upheavals of turbo-globalization, this need not be the worst of possible outcomes.

One thing is certain: A geoeconomic tsunami will roll around the globe, crushing old structures in its path. The hope is that out of the ‘creative destruction’ that Joseph Schumpeter spoke of, there will emerge a more resilient, sustainable and diversified global economy.

However, without political shaping of the new world economic order, the opposite could also occur. Politically, this means adapting the rule-based world order so that it remains a stable framework for an open world economy because even the organization of a regionalised world economy needs global rules of the game that everyone adheres to.

Therefore, with few exceptions, nearly all nations have a great interest in the functioning of rules-based multilateralism. However, in the Global South, there is already a great deal of distrust towards the existing world order.

In reality, according to some, this amounts to the creation of the old and new colonial powers, whose supposedly universal norms do not apply to everyone but are instead violated at will by the permanent members of the UN Security Council.

In order to break through current blockages, such as those of the World Trade Organization (WTO), the emerging powers must be granted representation and a voice in the multilateral institutions that would be commensurate with their newfound importance.

Europe will have to accept a relative loss of influence because, as a rule-based supranational entity, its survival and prosperity depend on an open, rule-based world (economic) order.

Instead of morally elevating itself above others, Europe must concentrate all its energies on maintaining the conditions for the success of its economic and social model. In order to prevent the regionalization of the world economy from turning into the formation of competing blocs with high prosperity losses for everyone, there is a need for new partnerships on an equal footing beyond the currently popular comparisons of democracies and autocracies.

In order for new trust to develop, the global challenges (climate change, pandemics, hunger, migration) that particularly affect the Global South must finally be tackled with determination.

Marc Saxer coordinates the regional work of the Friedrich-Ebert-Stiftung (FES) in the Asia Pacific. Previously, he led the FES offices in India and Thailand and headed the FES Asia Pacific department

Source: International Politics and Society (IPS)-Journal published by the International Political Analysis Unit of the Friedrich-Ebert-Stiftung, Hiroshimastrasse 28, D-10785 Berlin

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