Trade : WTO teaming up with Alibaba, WEF to "enable" e-com may be illegal (PRIV)
(Robert Howse, New York)
While a glum consensus has formed that nothing much happened at the WTO MC11 Ministerial Conference, a hardly-noticed announcement on the sidelines of the MC11 Ministerial Conference may have constitutional even transformative implications for the WTO.

Opinion : Roberto Savio speaks about fear as a tool to gain power (PRIV)
(IPS, Rome)
At the outset my thanks to Dr Hanif Hassan Ali Al Kassim, and Ambassador Idriss Jazairy who lead the Centre for Human Rights Advancement and Global Dialogue for organizing this panel discussion at a critical moment in history.

United Nations : Bangladesh aims at middle-income status by 2021. (PRIV)
(IPS, New York)
The environmental challenges facing Bangladesh, described by the United Nations as one of the world's "least developed countries" (LDCs), are monumental, including recurrent cyclones, perennial floods, widespread riverbank erosion and a potential sea level ri se predicted to put about 27 million people at risk over the next two decades.

Libya : Up to one million enslaved migrants, victims of "Europe's complicity " (PRIV)
(IPS, Rome)
"European governments are knowingly complicit in the torture and abuse of tens of thousands of refugees and mig rants detained by Libyan immigration authorities in appalling conditions in Libya ," Amnesty International charged in the wake of global outrage over the sale o f migrants in Libya.

Opinion : The journey to Oslo (PRIV)
(IPS, Oslo)
On December 10 in Oslo, the International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons (ICAN) was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize.