I attended the 7th annual Internet Governance Forum sponsored by the United Nations in Azerbaijan: a country notorious for its non-compliance with international standards for protecting human rights. The IGF brought together some 1,600 representatives of governments, human rights activists, international bodies, NGOs and private companies to convene a […]

Being one of the six Internet Freedom Fellows gave me the opportunity to get a fresh perspective on the power of new media and its challenges, as well as a new appreciation of the core value of internet freedom. This articles gives some of my thoughts on my two week […]

  Introduction: The SOFAZ Project   “Oil is a major wealth of Azerbaijan which belongs not only to this generation, but also to future generations,” according to the former President of the Republic of Azerbaijan, Heydar Aliyev on the website of the State Oil Fund of Azerbaijan (SOFAZ). This organisation […]

The paper presents a comparative analysis of the resource-rich transition economies of Mongolia and the southern republics of the former Soviet Union. For Uzbekistan and Turkmenistan, the ability to earn revenue from cotton exports allowed them to avoid reform. Oil in Azerbaijan and Kazakhstan was associated with large-scale corruption, but […]