World Government

“In an international context, growing ever more dramatic, the war in Ukraine runs the risk of becoming a ‘forgotten’ war. Nevertheless, it is our duty not to allow it to fall into silence, not simply to maintain alive horror in dealing with such a tragic event, but rather, above all, to involve all of those responsible and the international community in the search for peaceful solutions.”

Pope Francis, January 3, 2024

At the current time, the world is facing an unprecedented nuclear threat, a situation of the greatest tension since the Second World War. Nuclear weapons, together with the climate crisis, are two connected realities which influence each other and which constitute an existential threat to life and the planet, as has been evidenced by a plethora of research. In the face of this threat, it is urgent to unite efforts to affirm the effective application of the treaties and make nuclear deterrence a thing of the past.

Visualizing “forgotten conflicts” is framed in the attempt by changing the focus and shifting it to situations that lack immediacy and that need to be visualized so that they do not fall into oblivion. In these pages that follow, you will find five extensive articles that review the causes, the development and possible future events in five countries in conflict. We are speaking about Honduras, Yemen, the Central African Republic, Western Sahara and Myanmar. And we do so with the help of authors who know the realities of these countries well because they were born there, have lived there or have worked there for some time on cooperation projects.  

The COVID-19 pandemic has generated a global social, political and economic shock, with consequences that are not yet foreseeable, making even sharper the focus on the problems of an unequal and plutocratic world which is politically polarized, socially atomized and environmentally unviable. It is for this reason that the author invites us to take advantage of the “moment of clarity” that the pandemic offers us to take a deep dive into some essential lessons learned, as, for example, our having realized that working for the common good for those who need care is what sustains life. In the third part of the Notebook, he analyzes the different post-pandemic scenarios that are open to us, but with the uncertainty of not knowing which of them is the most plausible. It is definitely a Notebook that offers to teach us a wide view of what is happening to us without being dogmatic.

In this Notebook the Author gathers together the response generated by COVID-19 among the political and economic classes and the consequences that are the prelude to future crises. Because once we are on the other side of the pandemic it is necessary to take on urgently the social and economic aspects of our system that should be questioned in order to foresee and avoid the recurrence in the near future of episodes like the one which we are now living.

End-of-Year Reflection

As we conclude 2018, menacing clouds hang over our democracies. The globalization of authoritarianism appears to be suffocating our hopes for progressively more humane societies. Are we able to believe that, despite the dark shadows, the sun is still there?

The policies of the so-called New Right and its questioning of the most basic human rights, especially as regards migrants and refugees, undermine the deepest foundations of the Old Europe. The present text seeks to investigate the causes and conditions that lie behind this specter that is haunting the continent, and it warns of the attempts by movements of the extreme right to use Christianity and religious confrontation in order to justify their ideology.

We take leave of the year 2016 with a long list of unresolved problems, to which new ruptures keep getting added. The pain keeps increasing, and the deaths of so many “saints Innocents” threaten to eclipse whatever hopes are engendered by the “birth” of many initiatives of solidarity. Those of us at Cristianisme i Justícia want to make a plea for dialogue and debate so as to keep from advancing toward the precipice. For, despite all the evidence, our faith in humanity and in what is most sacred therein encourages us to believe that we can help to turn the tide.

Spain is a leading arms exporter, and despiteregulation in theory, there is no absolute ban on exports to countries where there are grave violations of human rights. These are even authorised 'for humanitarian purposes'. Government's actions are characterised by secrecy and the active encouragement of arms exports, using theseas an instrument of foreign policy.