Global Development Experiment

Global Development Experiment will resume broadcasting once a cure has been found for COVID19. 

In response to the pandemic, many governments across the globe are increasing the use of surveillance, silencing critics, denying their citizens accurate information on the virus, and failing to provide basic health services to their marginalized communities. Join me as Fred Abrahams, Associate Director for Program, Human Rights Watch, talks about holding governments accountable in their response to the COVID19 pandemic.  

As the online fight between open and closed societies intensifies, the need for effective cybersecurity strategies from individuals to countries has become ever more vital.  Kiersten Todt and Roger Cressey, two leading global authorities on cybersecurity, take us behind the matrix to expose the attackers, and provide strategies for NGOs, businesses, and governments on how to counter the cyber threats.

How will COVID19 impact future international development efforts?  Does the united international response to COVID19 provide a test run on how we can possibly come together to address such long term global issues as climate change?  Join Jason Swantek, Senior Contributing Editor to GDE, and me for the discussion.  

Georgia has become a battleground between the West vs Russia, between rule by oligarch vs rule of law.  Levan Kakhishvili, young Oxford educated Georgian political scientist, provides a balanced insight to the current political turmoil, and just how Western are the political parties vying for control of the State.  Levan Kakhishvili is a Doctoral Fellow in Political Science at Bamberg Graduate School of Social Sciences (BAGSS), Otto-Friedrich University Bamberg.  Levan received his MSc in Russian and East European Studies at St Antony's College, University of Oxford.

Is Europe becoming more like Albania?  Fatos Lubjona, Albania’s leading intellectual, and award winning writer and human rights activist, discusses how Albania’s post-democratic challenges are a microcosm of the political and social trends sweeping through Europe. Join me as we discuss Fukuyam, and Huntington to better understand Albania’s “transition” from a closed society to a country on the brink of becoming a kleptocracy.  

Tearing down ethnic divisions and bringing war criminals to justice. Andrej Nosov, a young artist and political activist based in Belgrade, defies the Balkan historical taboos to lead a series of social and cultural movements that unites former Yugoslav war torn youth against national, ethnical, and sexual orientation stereotypes. Join me as Andrej discusses the ongoing battle he and his young colleagues in the Balkans face in trying to right the past while addressing today’s social ills.

“Grow big or go home!” Did the Institute for Democratic Alternatives in South Africa (IDASA), leading global think tank that was instrumental in bringing down the apartheid system, become a victim of its own success? Join me as I talk to Paul Graham, former CEO of IDASA, on the challenges the think tank faced in trying  to manage the expectations of the communities they were serving and the bureaucratic demands of their donors. For more information on IDASA and its history, please visit Stellenboch University SunDigital website.

Social media driven fake news, misinformation, propaganda - how it works and how can civil society counter it? Daniel Fazakes co-founder of Bakamo, a leading London based social media monitoring company, discusses his in-depth studies on how social media driven disinformation were used and influenced the French elections, migration debate in the EU, and in the Russian and Ukrainian conflict.    

Optor leader reflects on how the movement brought down Milosevic. Can such a movement be replicated? What does it mean to apply strategy to international development? Can human rights become part of mainstream culture? 

From conflict resolutions to positions of power, how (and how many) women participate is key. When are gender quotas effective? What are the challenges the current generation of women's rights activists face? 

What assumptions did the international development field get wrong 30 years ago? What is the role of the private sector in international development?

How ought equal rights for women be pursued in the face of systematic repression? Can court systems and existing institutions be used to advance justice?

Thirty years of documenting human rights violations across the globe and bringing to justice war criminals. His biggest challenge yet maybe the declining interest in human rights, especially by Western governments. What does he propose to do? 

Do we need to go back to the 90s -- or at least reinstate the levels of investment in civil society development of decades past? What makes the people who run civil society development projects successful?

Journalists for the Institute for War and Peace Reporting (IWPR) are divided by language and borders but united by their commitment to objective reporting. What makes the IWPR model transferable from one conflict zone to another? Are we concerned or excited by the changes being driven by social media? Or both?

Is there a right way to enter the development field? Is it possible for massive bureaucracies to learn from mistakes and respond to priorities in the field?

Back to the future? Are we trying to solve today’s global problems with yesterday’s solutions?

Can the South African transitional justice experience be exported? When should international actors step away from mediating a conflict? 

Address the complex questions left behind by the last two decades of development projects, and to forge more effective and lasting impact from initiatives moving forward.