Our January 2010 Issue: Hope
This month, as we embark on a new decade filled with both great opportunity and uncertainty, Foreign Policy Digest has chosen the theme of “Hope” for its January 2010 issue. Specifically, we have chosen to examine the ways in which nations and individuals across global regions continue to find reasons for optimism in what at first sight often appear to be the least likely of places. In so doing, we hope to bring attention to the easy-to-overlook results of the collective labors of so many nameless men and women across the world who continue to give us reason to hope for a better world.
In the Americas, Antonio Zuniga writes of how the recent catastrophic earthquake in Haiti has been met with determination by its government and the international community to not repeat past mistakes in their ongoing efforts to address the needs of a devastated nation.
In Africa, Camillia Olson writes about the Democratic Republic of Congo, where an improved security situation has allowed some of the millions of displaced people there to begin to return home, as well as of the steps needed to strengthen this fragile yet promising trend.
In Asia, Regional Editor Jung Hwa Song writes of how a long-discussed new human rights body created under the auspices of the Association of South East Asian Nations (ASEAN) offers some hope that the influential organization may finally be taking genuine steps towards improving the human rights situation of its member states, which include some of Asia’s worst human rights offenders.
In Europe, Marko Cimbaljevich writes of encouraging signals of a return towards normalcy in the former Yugoslavia, as former international pariah Serbia moves towards European integration and more stable relations with its Balkan neighbors.
Meanwhile, in the Middle East, Shadi Hamid writes that Arab human rights and opposition groups are still vocally and courageously asserting that, six months after President Barack Obama’s speech in Cairo, the President’s administration should pursue more tangible actions on the ground.
The sources of hope discussed in this month’s articles remain for the most part fragile and tenuous. Yet as we face the crises of the past decade and prepare ourselves for those in the one yet to come, the very fact that so many people across the world continue to struggle for peace, democracy, human rights — or even simply for the chance for stability and a better life — is in itself a source of inspiration for us. We hope it will be for you as well.
Adam Benz is the former Editor-in-Chief of Foreign Policy Digest.
