The Digital Government Agenda North America Needs

Image: Geoffrey A. Fowler/The Washington Post via Getty Images/Project Syndicate

By Anne-Marie Slaughter and Alberto Rodríguez Alvarez

Canada, Mexico, and the United States have a chance to forge a regional agenda to position North America as a global leader in digital government services. Having already established a solid foundation for cooperation, they must now build on it.

In Ukraine today and in many other conflicts around the world, the digital domain has become a battleground for cyberattacks and information warfare. Even in normal daily life, digital platforms can endanger citizens and democracies by encroaching on individual privacy, manipulating consumer attention, fostering social isolation, and nurturing extremism. But, while not downplaying these harms, we should also remind ourselves of the many good things that today’s new technologies offer.

Continue reading →

Se necesita del liderazgo femenino para alcanzar la justicia climática

Image: Project Syndicate/ Fadel Senna/AFP via Getty Images

Por Laura Chinchilla y María Fernanda Espinosa

El mundo está muy consciente de que la crisis climática es uno de los principales escollos para el desarrollo sostenible. Y, sin embargo, a pesar de las dramáticas pruebas sobre las consecuencias letales del cambio climático, y a pesar de poseer los conocimientos, las tecnologías y los recursos para dar solución al mismo, continuamos en el mismo camino de altas emisiones de carbono que amenaza nuestra supervivencia.

Continue reading →

The Subordination of Women in Texas

By Chiara Cordelli and Aziz Huq

Texas’s new abortion law subjects women to heightened surveillance and the whims of private parties. If the US Supreme Court upholds the law, it will set back gender relations to an era that precedes the living memory of most Americans.

In 1984, the late US Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg gave a lecture on why Roe v. Wade, the Court’s 1973 decision recognizing a constitutional right to abortion, was wrongly decided. The case, she explained, should never have been framed as a matter of privacy or reproductive choice alone: Abortion was at bottom a question of gender equality.

Thirty-seven years later, Texas is proving Ginsburg’s point with its draconian and potentially transformative abortion law. If the Supreme Court upholds the law – it just heard oral arguments on whether to permit two legal challenges to proceed – it will set back gender relations to an era that precedes the living memory of most Americans.

Continue reading →

“En Guantánamo luchaba por mi libertad; aquí lucho por mi vida”: Una conversación con Mansoor Adayfi

Traducido por Pilar Espitia

Hace poco tuvimos el placer de sentarnos a conversar virtualmente con Mansoor Adayfi, autor de “Don’t Forget Us Here: Lost and Found at Guantánamo” [“No se olviden de nosotros: De cómo me perdí y me encontré en Guantánamo”]. Mansoor es activista, ex-prisionero de Guantánamo y actualmente reside en Serbia. A la edad de tan solo dieciocho años, fue secuestrado en Afganistán y vendido al gobierno de los Estados Unidos. Retenido en Guantánamo por catorce años, fue torturado y despojado de sus derechos más básicos.

Hablamos con Mansoor sobre lo que le diría a la versión más joven de sí, si pudiera volver en el tiempo, sobre su vida en Serbia y su reciente graduación de la universidad. Como gestor de proyectos de la ONG llamada CAGE, Mansoor y sus antiguos compañeros de prisión, o sus “hermanos”, han publicado un plan de ocho puntos para instruir al Presidente Biden sobre cómo cerrar Guantánamo de forma apropiada. Alrededor del cuello, Mansoor portaba un pedazo de tela naranja para simbolizar su solidaridad con sus hermanos y explicó sus planes para defender el cierre de Guantánamo hasta que sus hermanos fueran libres. Mientras Mansoor hablaba con convicción y humor, llamando al silencio “la herramienta de los opresores”, poco a poco se volvió claro que su voz será un instrumento poderoso de la justicia en los años venideros.

Continue reading →

Película de monstruos en América Latina

Por Andrés Velasco

Los latinoamericanos tenemos muchos talentos. Uno de ellos es la notable aptitud para gobernarnos mal, como lo ha puesto de manifiesto la pandemia. Seis de los 20 países con más muertes per cápita del mundo a causa del Covid-19 se encuentran en América Latina. Perú encabeza la lista y Brasil ocupa el octavo lugar.

Sin duda que la pobreza, la escasez de camas en los hospitales, y las hacinadas condiciones de vivienda, contribuyeron a la diseminación del virus, pero estos factores por sí solos no explican por qué la región lo ha hecho tan mal. Muchas naciones de Asia y de África padecen de los mismos problemas, pero sufrieron menos muertes per cápita. Incluso países que vacunaron a su población tempranamente, como Chile, –o que al principio de la pandemia parecían exitosos, como Uruguay– han terminado con un desempeño mediocre.

Continue reading →

“At Guantánamo, I was Fighting for my Freedom, but Here I’m Fighting for my Life:” A Conversation with Mansoor Adayfi

We recently had the pleasure of sitting down virtually with Mansoor Adayfi, author of Don’t Forget Us Here: Lost and Found at Guantánamo. Mansoor is an activist and former Guantánamo detainee now residing in Serbia. At the age of only eighteen, he was kidnapped in Afghanistan and sold to the U.S. government. Held in Guantánamo for fourteen years, he was tortured and deprived of his basic human rights.

We talked with Mansoor about what he would go back and tell his younger self, his life in Serbia, and his recent college graduation. Now the Guantánamo Project Manager at the NGO CAGE, Mansoor and fellow former detainees, or “brothers,” have published an eight-point plan to instruct President Biden on how to properly close Guantánamo. Wearing a bright orange cloth around his neck out of solidarity for his brothers, Mansoor explained his plans to advocate for the closure of Guantánamo until they were free. As he spoke with conviction and humor, calling silence “a tool of the oppressors,” it became increasingly clear: Mansoor’s voice will be a powerful instrument of justice for years to come.

Continue reading →

El Salvador’s Bitcoin Folly

By Jeffrey Frankel

Many aspects of cryptocurrencies are baffling, not least the success of a joke like Dogecoin. But El Salvador’s recent adoption of Bitcoin as legal tender alongside the US dollar is perhaps the strangest and potentially most worrying example of all.

El Salvador this month [September 2021] became the first country to adopt a cryptocurrency – in this case, Bitcoin – as legal tender. I say the first, because others might follow. But they should think twice, because the idea is highly dubious – and likely to be economically dangerous for developing countries in particular.

I will admit that I don’t understand the need for cryptocurrencies at all. Like many economists, I fail to see what problem they solve. They aren’t well designed to fulfill any of the classic functions of money – a unit of account, store of value, or means of payment – because their prices are so extraordinarily volatile. This volatility is not surprising, because cryptocurrencies are backed neither by reserves nor by the reputation of a well-established institution, such as a government or even a private bank or other trusted corporation.

Continue reading →