Bild: UPF Lund

Already half an hour before last week’s Hans Rosling lecture was set to start the queue outside had grown long. The lecture was the result of a joint effort by the Association of Foreign Affairs and Studentafton. Well inside some people were forced to stand as the venue quickly ran out of chairs. Everybody wanted to see the now famous professor use his equally famous Gapminder graphs to try to answer the question of whether or not the world has become a better place. No small task it seems, but Rosling came up with an answer and had the stats to back it. And that was just the first 10 minutes of his presentation.

See also: Radio UPFs interview , A brief bio and a number of Hans Rosling’s talks at TED, Gapminder and Gapminder World,

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Torsdagen den 11 februari gästades utrikespolitiska föreningen av John Duncan som talade på ämnet “towards a world without nuclear weapons: A New Multilateral Diplomacy”. Duncan har en gedigen bakgrund inom dipolmati och idag är hans formella titel UK Ambassador for Multilateral Arms Control and Disarmament. Föredraget väckte intressanta frågor om modern diplomati och om hur dagens sammankopplade värld med sin ständigt ökande interdependens påverkar de som försöker bedriva ett traditionellt maktspel. Duncan driver tesen att en ny sorts diplomati krävs för att man ska kunna enas kring stora maktfrågor såsom kärnvapennedrustning.

Läs mer: John Duncans blogg

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On the 1st of December, the European Union’s new treaty, the Lisbon Treaty, entered into force. Appropriately enough, a lecture on the implications of the new Treaty was held in Lund the following day by Mr Henrik Norinder. Mr Norinder, who has a background in European and Swedish Constitutional Law and who has specialized in Competition Law and Internal Market Law, teaches EU Law at Lund University and is an associate at a law firm. During the lecture Mr Norinder gave a brief background of the Lisbon Treaty and highlighted some of the innovations in the document that from now on will constitute the legal basis for the EU. The lecture ended up in a discussion about whether the Lisbon Treaty could be seen as the creation of a ‘United States of Europe’.

For further reading; Q&A: The Lisbon Treaty (BBC News) Lycka till med den nya kommissionen (SvD) Europa - Treaty of Lisbon (official website) (more…)

Last week the Centre for Middle Eastern Studies arranged a seminar about international piracy and Sweden’s upcoming role as Force Commander of the EU naval operation (EUNAVFOR), taking place in the Gulf of Aden. The headline of the seminar was “Historical and Comparative Lessons for Sweden in the Gulf of Aden” and the panel consisted of Lieutenant Commander Kindgren, the Royal Swedish Navy; Dr. Charles Wheeler, Senior Researcher at Hong Kong Institute for the Humanities and Social Sciences and Dr. Mark LeVine, Professor of global history at the University of California.

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Foto: Jenny Lindström

Årets MR-dagar gick av stapeln på Stockholmsmässan under rubriken Mänskliga rättigheter och klimatkrisen. För många deltagare togs årets tema emot med en viss tveksamhet, å ena sidan märks en tydlig känsla av klimatet som ett uttjatat ämne, där deltagarna känner att de vet eller har hört det mesta, å andra sidan finns ett erkännande om att klimatkrisens påverkan på de mänskliga rättigheterna har diskuterats ytterst lite. Inledningsvis diskuterades frågan om minoriteters allt mer utsatta situation och huruvida MR-systemet är förberett för de nya rättighetsanspråk som en eskalerande klimatkris kommer att innebära.

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