25th edition – East/West – Pike & Hurricane

Sand, Salt, Stars: UF Trip to Jordan

Michael Schätzlein — Mon, 02 May 2016 13:16:16 +0000

Our trip started with a train to Denmark and Copenhagen airport a little before 5am on Saturday, the 26th of March. Our travel went smoothly, with a layover in Vienna Airport, before finally arriving at the destination our group of 14 had been long looking forward to and which we had planned for intensively: Amman, the capital of Jordan. With a new stamp in our passports, we went through security and out into Jordan.

Most of us slept surprisingly well, but were woken up when the muezzin started calling for prayer at 4.10 am. A quick fresh orange juice breakfast to go and four hours later, we sat in our buses and headed up north. Before noon, we arrived in Jerash – the Pompeii of the Middle East – and spent two hours exploring the ancient city and climbing rocks. Although culturally so different, it was very interesting to see that the city’s architecture resembles the one of most ancient Roman or Greek cities, including amphitheatres, pillars, and temples.

We got on our two busses again and headed to the Dead Sea. After a few compulsory tourist snaps, we floated around, tried to ‘swim’, and clumsy-us got some salt in our eyes, as expected. A quite painful experience! Most of us then paid for some healthy skin mud and before long, we were all muddy and black and enjoyed the view to Palestine on the other side of the Sea.

The first official day, Easter Monday started with an early wake-up call to make it to the World Health Organisation (WHO) by 10 o’clock. Even though we were in the world’s 4^th driest country, it rained heavily, with people shovelling and brushing water away around us. After a warm welcome, we were introduced to the WHO in Jordan, which mainly deals with communicable diseases and the changing epidemiology of disease, mainly due to the aging population, similarly to many countries in Europe. The situation is further complicated by the influx of refugees from Syria.

Apart from the WHO, we used our time in Amman to meet representatives of the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP), the embassies of Sweden and the United States of America, Arab Reporters for Investigative Journalism (ARIJ), UNICEF, EcoPeace Jordan, and the Royal Al-Bayt Institute for Islamic Thought. The meetings provided us with a broad background on Jordan, be it in terms of politics, religion, or foreign aid. We learned about the difficulties of being a journalist in Jordan and the potentially dramatic ecological changes that may arise if the Dead Sea dries out even further. At the School of International Studies of the University of Jordan, we got to meet some of our peers, and we were educated on LGBT issues when we met the owner of an Amman gay bar.

Our most engaging visit, which took place on the sixth day of our trip, was the one we paid to Shefighter, a gym created to train girls in self-defence. Its founder, Lina Khalifeh, greeted us warmly, and, after changing into gym clothes, we gathered round and listened to Lina speaking about her organisation, women in the Middle East, the legal response to domestic abuse, and the ways in which women organise themselves. During the practical part, we learned how to disarm a person attacking with a knife and how to escape from a situation in which somebody is trying to suffocate us.

After four days of interesting meetings and lectures in Amman, it was once more time to take in more of the country of Jordan. Running on only a few hours of sleep, we packed up the vans and headed south for the world-famous ruin city of Petra, which was built around 300 BC. The sun was out and it was the perfect day to explore the historical site.

We continued our journey to the next and final destination of our trip: Wadi Rum, also known as the Valley of the Moon, which is the biggest Wadi (valley) in Jordan. It is not a desert in the conventional sense – that is, if your mind unintentionally thinks of a vast sea of sand dunes – but rather a mix of various colours of sand, rocky sandstone mountains and numerous plants growing here and there. After adapting to the local clothing style (turbans) we jumped into jeeps and headed off into the desert.

Our first stop took us to a Bedouin tent with a spring. Nowadays, only a few Bedouin families are living directly in the desert – most of them congregate in smaller villages, with tourism being the main source of income. However, due to the negative developments in the region, the number of visitors has dropped significantly in recent times. Nevertheless, Wadi Rum continues to be a popular location for movie productions. Hence, our second stop was not only the main scene for the famous 1960s movie Lawrence of Arabia, but also provided the setting for Matt Damon’s last great extra-terrestrial experience in The Martian.

The jeep tour was not for educational purposes only, though. Our next stop took us to a small mountain with a sand dune, providing a perfect slope for sandboarding, rolling or simply running (and falling) down the hill. After some time, our group split up – while some took the jeep deeper into the desert and close to the Saudi border to enjoy the view a bit more, some others returned to the village and took camels for a ride to the ruins of an ancient temple. After that, our two groups reconvened at the best sun set sand dune in the whole of Wadi Rum, where we watched the sun slowly disappear behind the horizon. Enchanted by an atmosphere resembling A Thousand and One Nights, most of us decided to end the day by sleeping outside in the moonlight-bathed Wadi Rum.

On the next morning, it was time to return to cold, rainy Sweden. After a daring speedy drive to the airport and some difficulties involving the loss of a passport, we finally took the plane back to Malmö.

Written by the travel group, compiled and edited by Michael Schätzlein

Photo credits:

Carolin Jamusch for Malmö Association of Foreign Affairs

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One Belt, One Road – China’s Path to the West

Yaroslav Mikhaylov — Mon, 02 May 2016 12:16:12 +0000

In the early 15^th century, the Chinese admiral Zheng He sailed west from China, getting as far as the Arabian Peninsula and the east coast of Africa. It was one of the largest voyages of its kind during this time. Now, after six hundred years, China is once again following this trade route as it realises its newfound status as a major world power. Together with its efforts to revive the traditional Silk Road trading route, this constitutes China’s new One Belt, One Road trade and influence policy poised to directly challenge the global economic, military and cultural dominance of the Western world.

One Belt, One Road is a program of international agreements and infrastructure projects introduced by the Chinese President Xi Jinping in S eptember 2013 that is to culminate in the creation of two trade routes between China and Europe, Africa and beyond. One starts from Southern China and follows Admiral Zheng He’s sea route through Southeast Asia, India, Africa and the Red Sea, forming a maritime belt across the Eastern Hemisphere. The other is a land route going from the west of China through Central Asia, Iran, Turkey and Russia before reaching Europe, much in the same way as the Silk Road traders did since before the Roman Empire arose in the Italian Peninsula. On the face of it, it is merely a trade and infrastructure program designed to deliver China’s prodigal industrial output to the markets of Asia, Europe and Africa, but it is also designed to expand China’s influence across the hemisphere in a wide range of fields.

A key component of the One Belt, One Road program is the Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank (AIIB), launched in June of last year. Its official goal is to provide loans for infrastructure development in Asian nations – especially the ones across the One Belt, One Road routes – in order to make it easier for Chinese goods to flow into and through those nations. However, it is also a direct competitor to the American- and European-dominated World Bank, offering “programs of development [that] will be open and inclusive, not exclusive. They will be a real chorus comprising all countries along the routes, not a solo for China itself” according to Xi Jinping. And just as the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund became vessels for exporting Western policy preferences to the developed world, the AIIB is likely to also become a way for China to shape the international financial order more to its liking.

Sultan Han is a large 13th-century Seljuk caravanserai located in the town of Sultanhanı, Aksaray Province, Turkey. It is one of the three monumental caravanserais in the neighbourhood of Aksaray and is located about 40 km (25 mi) west of Aksaray on the road to Konya.

The One Belt, One Road project also seeks to export Chinese culture and a more Sino-centric view of world history. Silk Road-associated cultural sites are being promoted by pro-Chinese organisations across Central Asia and many have been nominated for the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) World Heritage Site status. A long-standing criticism of UNESCO is that its World Heritage Site list is very Eurocentric, so while inclusion of more Chinese or Chinese-influenced sites may make it more representative, it still demonstrates a shift in how we conceive of history – one that is far more favourable to China.

A large part of the One Belt, One Road plan consists of forging partnerships and creating institutions, but another big component of it is also acquisition of physical assets along the route. To help protect its shipping along the coast of Africa, China has begun constructing a large military base and harbour in Djibouti. This places China in a very exclusive club of nations that have military bases on more than one continent. And, according to China’s Foreign Minister Wang Yi, this is only the start of China’s overseas military expansion. However, he has also insisted that China’s intentions are a peaceful “product of inclusive cooperation, not a tool of geopolitics, and must not be viewed with an outdated Cold War mentality”, though how China uses its newfound influence remains to be seen.
Chinese companies have also been expanding their control of shipping infrastructure across the globe. Some of their attempts were successful, such as the purchase of the Greek port of Piraeus by China Cosco Holdings. Others were less successful, such as a Chinese billionaire’s attempt to buy 300 square kilometres of Iceland, ostensibly for a golf resort though more likely for trade or military purposes. The offer was rejected by Iceland’s government as illegal under Icelandic law. Another failure was an attempt to build a canal between the Pacific and the Atlantic Oceans in Nicaragua that would have been twice as wide as the one running through Panama, but which was abandoned after its backer lost a significant portion of his wealth during a market downturn. Despite their failure, the projects’ scope and distance from China suggest the expanding global reach of Chinese investment capital.

However, China’s road to global influence has been far from smooth. Much China coverage over the last year has been about the developing crisis in the South China Sea, where China claims control over naval territory that is also claimed by Vietnam, Malaysia, Philippines and Brunei, as well as the Republic of China – better known as Taiwan in the West. China has been supporting its claims by constructing artificial islands and deploying fighter planes and land-based rockets to them in an attempt to secure the region through military force. This has drawn opposition from the United States as hindering the freedom of navigation in the region, increasing tensions in the area even further. If this dispute is not resolved, it could severely undermine the sea-based half of the One Belt, One Road project.

China also faces significant international opposition to its plans, especially in Europe. Many European countries criticise China for its human rights violations, while China in turn publicly criticises nations that have hosted the Dalai Lama. He is a very popular figure in many Western nations, but China considers him a criminal for supporting the creation of an independent Tibet. Until these issues are resolved, they limit the extent to which increased economic integration with China is acceptable to European nations and the European public.

One Belt, One Road is an ambitious project that aims to change the nature of the global political, economic and social order to reflect the rising importance of China on the world stage. As part of this project, China builds new military bases, purchases infrastructure and even lobbies UN cultural bodies. In short, it is acting like a major world power. After many decades of relative political and economic isolation, One Belt, One Road represents a re-emergence of China into international affairs beyond its own back yard. If the One Belt, One Road project is successful, it will mark the beginning of a new era of international politics and if it is unsuccessful it will be a symbol of hubris of a want-to-be superpower. Either way, it will force a radical rethink of China’s standing among the world’s nations.

Image Credit:

Cover Photo: Chief Mass Communication Specialist David Rush for US Navy Pacific Fleet. Public Domain.

Picture 1: Splette, Wikimedia Commons. Public Domain.

Picture 2: José Luis Filpo Cabana, Wikimedia Commons, licensed under CC BY 3.0

Picture 3: Goran tek-en, Wikimedia Commons, licensed under CC BY 3.0

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Bookmobiles – Education on the Move

Evgenia Isaeva — Mon, 02 May 2016 13:16:09 +0000

Nowadays, obtaining a book or any other material to read is never seen as that big of a deal for many people. The emergence of the Internet has facilitated access to information and reduced the need for printed books significantly. One can simply go online and download almost everything from there. Printed books became mostly supplanted by online book catalogues that provide their users with an opportunity to access or download almost any book they want.

Public libraries that once used to be essential for the process of education of many individuals do not play a significant role anymore. They seem to gradually become less frequently visited by people in this part of the world. Another type of library, namely mobile libraries, also known as bookmobiles have also become redundant in the developed world in the past few years. The initial purpose of these book-carrying vehicles was to bring literacy to the masses and to facilitate access to books for dwellers of remote areas. Nowadays, illiteracy is not an issue for people, and books can be freely accessed by other means.

However, this is not the case yet in many countries of the developing world, where people have no schools or other sources of education, where libraries, not to mention the internet, are still a rare sight for many inhabitants, and where the illiteracy rates are strikingly high. In those places, bookmobiles can make a huge difference by providing access to books and encouraging education among the locals.

The situation is especially bad in the remote areas of poor developing countries. Many people in those regions are deprived of educational opportunities, mostly as a result of poverty. Many children there are also forced to work in order to provide for themselves and their families, and cannot go to school for these reasons.

The right to education is one of the fundamental human rights that all people are entitled to and should enjoy freely. It is inconceivable to imagine that somebody cannot read or write in this part of the world today. Yet, illiteracy is still a reality even in the twenty-first century.

According to data provided by the CIA in 2015, the global literacy rate among people older than 15 years old was 86.1%. Literacy levels vary significantly from region to region. Worldwide, around 775 million adults lack minimum literacy skills. While Europe, North America, Australia, and some countries in East Asia score high in the literacy index with more than 99% of their population being literate, many individuals in the developing world still do not have access to education at all. More than three quarters of illiterate people live in countries that are located in the Sub-Saharan Africa region, where around 64% of the overall population is literate, and in South and West Asia, where there is a literacy rate of 70%. The worst situation can be observed in the country of Niger where, according to data provided by UNESCO Institute for Statistics (UIS) in 2015, only about 19% of its adult inhabitants can read and write.

The lack of books is one of the major causes of illiteracy. That means that in order to combat illiteracy, access to books should be facilitated. A bookmobile could be a great tool for educating people and making books available. In several countries where a person cannot come to a library, the library could come to the person.

South Asia’s first bookmobile was launched in 1931. It became instrumental in educating the rural poor. Later, at the beginning of the twenty-first century, a new type of bookmobile that was equipped with a printer, a book binding machine and a satellite dish appeared on the streets of India. For only one dollar, a bookmobile like that can print out a book from its collection, making access to reading materials easier in the regions where no normal libraries are available.

A less advanced kind of a mobile library operates in Kenya. The access to books in this African country is provided by the Camel Library Service. In regions characterised by harsh climatic condition and poor transport infrastructure, camels carry books to children and adults who otherwise would not have access to any library. The project was launched by the Kenyan government in 1996. By 2006, these camel libraries were lending more than 7000 books in English, Swahili and Somali to people in the impoverished North East Province. For many kids in the remote areas of the country, where no television, computers and internet exist, camel libraries became the main source of education as well as entertainment.

Another example of bookmobiles making a change can be found in Zimbabwe. Due to the unstable political and economic situation in the country, many students there have to do without books and other educational facilities. When schools in the outlying corners of the country have no resources to educate people, donkey-drawn bookmobiles play a crucial part in promoting literacy and encouraging the reading culture among citizens.

In Pakistan, the initiative to spread education among children by means of a bookmobile was taken by one of its citizens, Saeed A. Malik, who used to work as an international civil servant with the United Nations for 25 years. He named his project Bright Star Mobile Library. The aim of the project is to provide children with books to evoke their curiosity, promote tolerance, and raise their awareness about the surrounding world. Due to his contacts, Malik managed to get support from the San Francisco Public Library that donated many books for his program that are now being used to educate people in Islamabad. Currently, Malik hopes to expand his program, but it requires more books and monetary donations that are not so easy to obtain.

As it can be seen, many examples of bookmobiles being used to battle illiteracy and encourage education can be found in several developing countries. Just like Kenya, Colombia uses donkeys to bring books to the country’s inhabitants. In Thailand, elephant-drawn libraries serve the same purpose.

To sum up, reading and writing are two fundamental skills for fighting illiteracy. Education is a powerful tool that is essential for the exercise of human rights. It can also help people lift themselves out of poverty. Facilitating access to books is the first significant step that can be used to stimulate education and increase literacy rates worldwide. Essentially, a bookmobile can be a powerful tool for promoting education and fighting illiteracy in the developing world, and especially in remote areas, where many people still do not have access to proper education and books. Although, bookmobiles alone might not be enough to battle illiteracy, they can be seen as a good first step to pave the way for a brighter future in the poor countries of the developing world where education is still not easy to obtain.

By Evgenia Isaeva

Image credit:

Picture 1: Ryan Welsh, licensed under CC BY 2.0

Picture 2: Acción Visual/Diana Arias, licensed under CC BY-SA 3.0

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Falun Gong: No End in Sight

Michael Schätzlein — Mon, 02 May 2016 13:16:05 +0000

When the People’s Bank of China announced that it would switch its 1 yuan notes for coins back in January, it did so not only to increase durability and recyclability of the money, but allegedly also to counter the spread of subversive comments criticising the government written on the low-value notes. The move is believed to target Falun Gong, a spiritual group that has been persecuted for almost two decades now and whose members are said to be behind the reactionary messages. It is one of many attempts in a seventeen-year campaign of the Communist Party at curbing the movement’s influence and wiping them out.

Falun Gong, often also referred to as Falun Dafa, is a spiritual practice based on qigong, which sets it apart from other persecuted groups like the Tibetans and the Uyghurs, who are defined by their ethnic belonging and political aspirations. It first emerged in 1992, during the so-called “qigong fever” of the 1980s and 1990s, when public practices of qigong became a mass phenomenon in China.

Qigong combines conscious breathing, posturing of the body and movements with meditation, and has its roots in traditional Chinese culture, spanning back thousands of years. It is praised by its practitioners for its recreational and spiritual value, but is also used in medicine and martial arts. Attempts at formalising and grouping the various qigong schools were first made under Mao Zedong at the end of the 1940s. After Mao’s death in 1976, the practice became ever more popular, and an estimated 60 to 200 million Chinese were avid followers of qigong at its peak.

The Chinese government, wary of movements that might undermine the Communist Party’s rule, set up a regulatory body in 1985. However, Falun Gong proved elusive from the start: since it does not require formal membership and membership fees are non-existent, the practice was harder to control than other schools of qigong. Apart from that, its sheer size – it had an estimated 70 million practitioners by the end of the 1990s – meant that the movement could prove to be a challenge to the Chinese government itself.

Chinese governmental pressure increased, which was answered in turn with resistance from the Falun Gong community. Since Falun Gong is more spirituality-oriented than other schools of qigong and its followers are thus more invested in it, attempts to curb the influence of Falun Gong were met with staunch resistance. In April 1999, ten thousand of the estimated 70 million practitioners of Falun Gong demonstrated peacefully in Beijing, demanding an end to persecution. Two months later, the Party initiated a large-scale crackdown on Falun Gong and other qigong schools, imprisoning thousands of Falun Gong members and closing qigong clinics and research institutions.

While some of the schools were allowed to continue their practice under increased government oversight, Falun Gong and the related school of Zhong Gong were banned. Hundreds of thousands of Falun Gong members were sent to labour camps, while others were detained in prisons, psychiatric clinics, or extrajudicial black sites, often living under grave conditions and usually having been sentenced without due judicial proceedings. The goal is re-education: Falun Gong inmates are to renounce their beliefs and to promise that they would never contact the movement again. By 2009, more than 2,000 deaths resulting from physical abuse and torture had been recorded. While the labour camps were officially abolished in 2013, they continue to exist under a different guise.

In 2006, allegations were made that the Chinese government was harvesting organs from Falun Gong prisoners, often said to be good donors due to their healthy lifestyle. The Kilgour-Matas report, written by former Canadian Secretary of State David Kilgour and human rights lawyer David Matas, came to the conclusion that there was no source for more than 40,000 organs that were transplanted between 2000 and 2005 in China. Also, the waiting time for a new organ was deemed suspiciously low – about two weeks as compared to 32.5 months in Canada, indicating that organs were procured on demand. The publication of the report caused widespread alarm among the international community. While China denied the allegations, it also could not provide a satisfactory answer to the claims.

In response to the crackdown, the Falun Gong movement went underground, continuing to maintain its presence through the distribution of Falun Gong materials among the Chinese population. Those who fled abroad founded a healthy exile movement that soon became enmeshed with other opposition groups of the Chinese diaspora, challenging Chinese state media through own newspapers, TV and radio stations, and providing tools to those whose who stayed behind in order to circumvent government censorship. Further, foreign members of Falun Gong, now mainly living in the USA and Taiwan, initiated a veritable flood of lawsuits against Communist Party officials, and the movement is today reported to have filed the highest percentage of all human rights lawsuits in the 21^st century. The Chinese government has responded by tapping the diaspora’s communication channels and employing diplomatic pressure to disrupt Falun Gong members’ activities.

All attempts to curb the influence of Falun Gong over the last seventeen years seem to have failed at eradicating the movement. Their numbers are still believed to be in the tens of millions, although gauging the amount of members has proved difficult. The consistent failure of anti-Falun Gong policies thus begs the question why the Communist Party continues its campaign of persecution. The explanation is simple: the Communist Party has made the case of Falun Gong a vital matter to the nation, and it is so deeply invested in the movement’s persecution that admitting a failure of its policies would deal a severe blow to the government. The price both in terms of resources and political prestige would have been lower if it had it backed down earlier, but that moment is long gone.

Photo credits:

Picture 1: Tom Waterhouse, licensed under CC BY-NC 2.0

Picture 2: ep_jhu, licensed under CC BY-NC 2.0

Picture 3: longtrekhome, licensed under CC BY 2.0

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Will the Refugee Crisis be the Downfall of the EU and its Ideals?

Christina Vibeke Holck-Clausen — Mon, 02 May 2016 13:15:31 +0000

Since the twelfth of November 2015 a rather unusual event at the Danish-Swedish border has been taking place. It has become the subject of systematic border control, and while control at a border might not seem as that big of a deal, this particular border has not been the subject of border control in over 62 years – a timespan longer than
most of the passengers are old. What could have provoked such a extreme reaction from the Swedish government? The answer is what has caused several members of the European Union to sacrifice its holy cow, which is the free movement guaranteed by the Schengen agreement – an agreement, which is said to have brought economic growth to the members. A core value in the Union since its funding as the European coal and steel union following the aftermath of the Second World War. Therefore, whatever is causing this must be a matter of absolute urgency. How complex the situation may be, the answer is a simple but large number. One million; the number of refugees which is said to have had arrived in Europe throughout 2015. The highest recorded number since the Second World War, and this is of course without the even greater number within the regions themselves. Even though it is a great number, and one refugee is without a doubt one too many, it pales compared to the 523 million citizens within the union – 523 million citizens who are living in the most affluent region of the world.

Surely affluent countries such as those in the Union could spare the money and effort it would take to give those fleeing from war and poverty a home and a stable, safe environment. Listening to the on-going negotiations one should think not. The situation is at a deadlock with countries like Germany and Sweden together with EU president Donald Tusk fighting a seemingly lost fight with the rest of the Union. It has become every country for itself. Poland, one of the biggest countries in the union and home country of EU president Tusk, have only taken a selected number of refugees – all Christian Syrians of course. This kind of behaviour has left the rest of the refugees to the charity and open arms of Germany and Sweden and dirty, inhumane refugee camps on the frontiers of the union. Refugee camps that have been criticised by the UN for their horrible conditions, and open arms that are slowly closing as Sweden is controlling its borders to Denmark and returning anyone without papers and Germany threatening to do the same.

The crisis has shown to the world, the fragility of the European Union. For as long as there is economic growth, national gain, Erasmus education and agricultural subsidies in sight the cooperation is almost endless. But when it comes to spending money or effort with no gain in sight the cooperation seems to vanish completely. The current crisis combined with the rise of right wing nationalist extremists and an increased scepticism towards the Union, exemplified by the upcoming British referendum, it can seem very unclear how the Union will recover. Some optimists suggest that the European Union will arise strengthened from its ordeals, when the members realise that they are stronger together then on their own. This remains to be seen, and the result of the British referendum will surely have a huge influence on the Unions continuing ordeals.

However, it is not only the Schengen agreement that has been sacrificed. Another core value is under pressure, the jewel in the European crown – the freedom of speech and the free press. German comedian Jan Böhmermann said on live television that the Turkish President Erdogan had a small penis and possessed several other unattractive traits – which is nothing more than most other prominent politicians in Europe have been a victim off through their career. Normally this would not have been an issue, if the European Union was not in on-going negotiations with Turkey, and the German legislation forbids the slander of foreign officials. Furthermore, one could argue that Erdogan has a different definition of freedom of speech than most of his European counterparts. Erdogan has threatened to leave the negotiations, if nothing happens. The matter should be straightforward. However, it has left the mighty Merkel in a pinch, as the agreement with the Turkish is of utmost importance for the Union, and while the Germans are avoiding a diplomatic crisis, the rest of Europe is awaiting the verdict. So now, the European Union and Merkel have descended from the high horse, and Böhmermann is taking a break from the media while awaiting a subpoena from the Turkish government.

This might seem insignificant if viewed only as the voluntary silence of a rude comedian, but it runs deeper than that. It questions who we are as a people, which values we represent and to what length we are ready to defend them even when it is under pressure. It makes us question how alike we really are, or whether it was just a pipe dream in the first place. And at the moment it seems that the return of refugees to Turkey is more important, than the freedom of speech and the free press. This question is getting even more complex as it shows the differences between the countries within the European Union about the definition of freedom of speech. So while for many years it has seem as the Union was on a steady road to unison without major bumps or setbacks, this has changed majorly. So the question remains, how will the European Union recover, not from the temporary setback of inter-European cooperation, but from the attacks on its very foundation? The idea of Europe as a unit, and not as individual countries.

By Christina Vibeke Holck-Clausen

Image credit:

Picture 1: Jonas Evertsson, licensed under CC BY-NC-ND 2.0

Picture 2: International Organization for Migration, licensed under CC BY-NC-ND 2.0

Picture 3: afrique-europe-interact Bremen, licensed under CC BY-NC-ND 2.0

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