Global Futures

In May 2019, American and Taliban negotiators began a new round of peace talks in Doha, Qatar, hoping to settle the nearly two-decade long conflict in Afghanistan. The talks are aimed at securing a lasting peace agreement that includes Taliban guarantees regarding terrorism and a phased withdrawal of American troops from Afghanistan. Like many others with an interest in resolving the conflict, India and Germany will be paying close attention.

In this episode, Joel Sandhu from the Global Public Policy Institute (GPPi) talks to Aryaman Bhatnagar about Afghanistan’s recent peace talks, their relevance to Indian and German Afghan policy, and where the two can collaborate. Aryaman is a former project manager and advisor for Friedrich Ebert Stiftung India’s Peace and Security program, a Global Governance Futures 2027 Alumni, and a German Chancellor Fellow at the Global Public Policy Institute (GPPi), where he focuses on Germany’s foreign policy and its engagement with Afghanistan.

In this episode, Thorsten Benner from the Global Public Policy Institute (GPPi) talks to Maria Laura Canineu about police violence, the prison system and human rights in Brazil under the government of President Jair Bolsonaro.

Maria Laura Canineu is the Brazil Director in the Americas Division of Human Rights Watch. She directs a team of public lawyers handling human rights issues. She has focused her efforts on protecting and promoting the rights of children, women, workers, members of the LGBT community, and indigenous people.

Before that, Maria spent several years building the capacity of human rights NGOs in São Paulo, focusing on issues ranging from poverty reduction to corporate social responsibility.

In this episode of the Global Futures podcast, Joel Sandhu from the Global Public Policy Institute (GPPi) sits down with Andres Schipani in Sao Paulo, Brazil. They talk about the role that cities can have in national and international politics and how cities could be more active on the global arena.

Andres Schipani is the Brazil correspondent for the Financial Times. Before moving to São Paulo, he was the newspaper's Andes correspondent, covering Bolivia, Colombia, Ecuador, Peru, and Venezuela, as well as parts of the Caribbean. Before that, he worked in the Financial Times' New York bureau as a markets and emerging markets reporter.

Hong Kong has recently returned to the spotlight, as China cracks down on critics and pro-democracy activists in the city. Many Hong Kong observers see the erosion of the city’s civil liberties and democratic freedoms as a sign of China breaching the “one country, two systems” framework – established at the 1997 handover of Hong Kong from the United Kingdom to China – which allows the region to retain an economic and administrative system separate from that of China.

In this episode of the Global Futures podcast Joel Sandhu from the Global Public Policy Institute (GPPi) is joined by Tze-wei Ng to talk about Hong Kong’s current status and its future. Tze-wei is a lecturer teaching media law, as well as a project and legal consultant in Hong Kong. She is also a GGF 2030 fellow.

Cyril Ramaphosa took over as South Africa’s president when Jacob Zuma resigned in February 2018 following years of corruption scandals and what many consider gross economic mismanagement.

Ramaphosa’s victory sparked optimism in a country tied down by recession, rising fuel prices and high levels of unemployment. But his party, the African National Congress (ANC), is still struggling to hold on to power ahead of the upcoming national elections in mid-2019.

Cyril Prinsloo, a Global Governance Futures 2030 fellow and researcher in the Economic Diplomacy Programme at the South African Institute of International Affairs, joins GPPi’s Joel Sandhu to talk about the achievements and shortcomings of President Ramaphosa during this first year in office as well as his hopes for South Africa.

Since the beginning of January 2019, Brazil has new president - Jair Bolsonaro - a right-wing, conservative, nationalist whose beliefs in country, God, and anti-corruption swayed many to vote him into Brazil’s highest office.

In this episode Joel Sandhu from the Global Public Policy Institute (GPPi) sits down with Matias Spektor exactly a year after their first conversation. Matias Spektor is an Associate Professor and Associate Dean of Fundação Getulio Vargas’s School of International Relations. He is also one of Brazil’s leading lights on matters of Brazilian foreign and domestic policies.

In this episode Joel Sandhu from the Global Public Policy Institute (GPPi) talks to David Bandurski about the media landscape, internet and state censorship in China. They discuss the growing digitisation of media and its influence, the (in)famous Chinese social credit system, the state of Chinese investigative journalism, and more.

David Bandurski is adjunct lecturer and researcher at the Journalism Media Studies Center at the University of Hong Kong. He is also the co-director of China Media Project, an independent research program which fosters dialogue on key issues in Chinese media and communications, and monitors developments in the field. David has written for many publications, including the New York Times, the Wall Street Journal and the Far Eastern Economic Review. He was the recipient of the Human Rights Press Award in 2007.

In this episode, Joel Sandhu from the Global Public Policy Institute (GPPi) sits down with Matthieu Tardis to discuss his recent study,European Union Partnerships with African countries on Migration: Common Issues and Conflicting Interests.

Since 2015 and what some would call the refugee crisis, dialogue between the European Union and African countries on migration issues has assumed a new intensity. In this discussion, Matthieu shares some of the key takeaways of his study, and surprising insights into the interests that lie at the heart the migration issue in the EU and African countries.

Mathieu is a research fellow with the center for migration and citizenship France’s leading think tank, the Institut Français des Relations Internationales (Ifri).

Global Futures is a podcast about global politics and how rising powers like China and India are transforming it. We discuss foreign policy, economics, war and peace, and how the world is changing with experts from across the world.

Countries, their citizens and politics, seem more and more polarized by the day. Across Europe, far-right political parties proclaiming nationalist rhetoric are on the rise. We are grappling to understand the rise of an Us versus Them narrative, as well as the normalization of this narrative in politics. Many are trying to imagine what a counter narrative could look like and whether it would actually be able to gain traction in increasingly fragmented societies.

In this episode of the Global Futures podcast, Joel Sandhu from the Global Public Policy Institute (GPPi) meets Mathieu Lefevre who heads organization More in Common in Paris. Along with his team, Mathieu tries to develop and use positive narratives that tell what he calls the ‘story of us’.

What are the ingredients that create the Us vs. Them narrative and the ‘story of us’? And how can this approach help us in these highly uncertain times?

Forced migration is one of the critical issues of our time. 1 in 110 people in the world is currently displaced because of conflict, violence or persecution, or natural and environmental disasters. More common among those who are already vulnerable, forced migration also often creates tensions in the countries or regions that host such migrants.

In this episode of the Global Futures podcast we talk about displacement in the South Asian region. In this age of radicalism and polarization we are seeing the religious persecution and displacement of the Rohingya from Myanmar to surrounding countries such as India, as well as increased insecurity around internally displaced people within India, such as the Kashmiri Pandits, who fled violence in the Indian-administered state of Jammu and Kashmir during the beginning of the 1990s and whose future and status remain unclear.

Our guest is journalist Aarti Tikoo Singh, senior assistant editor at the Times of India. She has worked as a reporter and editor for more than 15 years, focusing on issues of conflict, war and terror. She was born and grew up in the conflict-torn state of Jammu and Kashmir and returned many years later to report on the politics, violence, governance, and human stories that have shaped the conflict.

With her we discuss the history and the future of forced displacement in South Asia. How do questions of religion and identity come into play? And most importantly, with the rise of extreme thinking, how can we break the vicious cycle of intolerance?