All Recent FutureChallenges Posts

There was a strange consensus at the Salzburg Trilogue. On the one hand, there were all these high-level people – including leaders of such symbols of international capitalism as the World Trade Organization and the European Union – making very determined pleas for social equity and environmental sustainability. On the other, […]

The Salzburg Trilogue, as the name indicates, is held in a beautiful town in the Alpine country of Austria. Salzburg’s European heritage is visible everywhere from the Ancient Greek-style statues in the Mirabell Garden to the striking medieval Hohensalzburg Castle. Though a relatively small town of 150,000, there’s a kind […]

The International Olympic Committee is certainly not bashful about proclaiming its lofty ideals. The Olympics, it says, is about placing sport – silver platter style – at the “service of humanity and to thereby promote peace”. The iconic Olympic rings themselves signify a kind of brotherhood or “union between men”. […]

  Writing a review of Africa’s participation in the Olympics has been harder than I imagined. With my country Ghana, the assessment was very simple and could be summed up with one word – flop. Looking at the continent as a whole the picture is more complex but it is […]

It is inevitable. Comparisons will be drawn between the now concluded London Olympics and the 2010 Commonwealth Games (CWG) hosted in Delhi, India. Besides the commonalities—international sporting events, extravagant ceremonies and billions spent on infrastructure—there is a sea of difference between how the British held their event and how the […]

Democracy in Hungary: Why Outsiders Should Care Alexey Sidorenko, a Future Challenges blogger based, has been observing the rollback in democracy in Hungary under Fidesz. Looking from the outside in, he sees it as one example of a broader rollback in democracy in Eastern Europe. Follow Alexey @sidorenko_intl. This article […]