Héctor Abad Faciolince

Recent articles by Héctor Abad Faciolince

HCTOR ABAD FACIOLINCE. Who Are the Protesters?

Protests around the world are often for contradictory things. The answer to the problem of one group of protesters is poison for another.

HECTOR ABAD FACIOLINCE. The Impossibility of Being a Child

Being a child means more than being under age. The State has a responsibility to ensure that all children have a childhood. Some politicians in power think that the solution to every problem is a hard hand, even if the victims are children.

HCTOR ABAD FACIOLINCE. Gifts of Quebradona

The Colombian wilderness has been protected from mining by the 50 years civil war with the FARC guerrillas. No investor was prepared to take the risk of its infostructure being blown up and its personnel assassinated. Now that the civil war is over, mining companies are moving in to bribe local communities with false promises to gain popular support. [more] Simply because there are minerals in the ground does not mean they have to be dug up. Many other things have to be taken into account.

Hctor Abad Faciolince : Against Submission

I am forever indebted to the Catholic Church and Cardinal Alfonso Lpez Trujillo. When I was a happy and irreverent twenty year old student at the Pontifical University, I published an article in which I openly insulted the Holy Father. The Meddling Pope, it was called. I say that I am forever indebted to the Church because at that time, they restricted themselves to expelling me from the Universidad Pontificia Boliviariana (with three other iconoclast friends) when, according to the time honoured Catholic tradition, the correct thing to do would have been to burn us at the stake, make...

Hctor Abad Faciolince: An Idea of Europe

After centuries of war, European unity has been one of the world's greatest achievements in the second half of the 20th Century. But can it last? The recent European Parliamentary elections have given rise to Euro scepticism and hostility to immigration. It is a testing time for Europe. John Menadue   El Espectador, Colombia, 4 May 2014, http://www.elespectador.com/opinion/una-idea-de-europa-columna-490295 I have just been at Berlins House of the Cultures of the World, as part of a discussion about Europe, and more specifically, about whether some ideas developed in that part of the word can be considered universally valid....

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