Give Her a Chance

With over 10 million child marriages taking place annually, the practice has emerged as a major social malaise across the African continent and multiple regions in Asia.

America's Talent Cliff

Implementing a new FOCUS Grant to promote “Future Opportunities and Careers in the United States” and fixing our immigration system will make America's workforce more competitive in the 21st Century economy.

After Tragedy, We Need Action, Not Silence, From our Leaders

Some will say that it’s too early to address gun violence in America. For the 27 people who were killed in Newtown, it’s too late.

Immigration and the Future of the U.S. Economy

If the U.S. wants a robust economic future, it must first dramatically retool its workforce.

Focus Paper: The Limits of Homeowner Credit

In our new Focus Paper, Ahson Azmat explored the problems that lead to the housing crisis and the proposals suggested by President Obama for easing the fallout.

The Thirsty Planet – Part I: An Insight into the Growing Global Water Scarcity Problem

Pradyut Hande is The Future Forum’s Program Director for India and an award-winning youth leader and writer. He has over 250 publications in leading national and international dailies to his credit. This is the first in a three part series aimed at addressing critical aspects of the global water scarcity problem.

Water is truly the essence of life – a natural resource that has been and continues to be critical to our very evolution and existence. However, over the years, our well chronicled profligacy coupled with gross mismanagement fuelled by detrimental developmental activities has resulted in an alarming depletion in the precious resource that is freshwater. Add to that; an ever burgeoning global population, dangerous climate change disruptions and the absence of a clear action plan; have exacerbated the global water scarcity problem.

Let’s look at the basic statistics to begin with. 86% of the total freshwater reserves on the planet are used for agricultural purposes and food production. A further 9% is employed in industrial activities. That leaves a paltry 5% for domestic consumption. Just 5% to support a population of 7 billion inhabitants. Thus, the water scarcity issue today is a twofold conundrum – one of fundamental resource inadequacy and inequity, i.e., not only is water an increasingly scarce natural resource, but the distribution or lack thereof, of the available resources further compounds the acuity of an already dire situation. Read more

The Thin Red Line: Mounting Tensions in the Korean Peninsula and Why North Korea Must Soon Come to its Senses

The Korean Peninsula has borne witness to a heightened sense of fractured stability and intensified military tension over the last few weeks. For a region characterised by a perennial state of volatility, recent developments have highlighted the stark reality of uncertainty that presently shrouds the situation. With North Korea adopting an overtly abrasive and belligerent standpoint, ever since the UN censured the “rogue state” with further sanctions in light of its widely condemned recent nuclear test, matters appear to have snowballed into a state of hyperactivity and have consequently, become a cause for concern for multiple stakeholders. Read more

The Balkan Puzzle: Serbia and Kosovo Struggle to Resolve their Ongoing Dispute

Since time immemorial, history has unfailingly taught us many a lesson. One such lesson of grave significance is the well chronicled arduousness associated with tackling critical simmering bilateral or cross-regional tensions across the globe. On Wednesday, bilateral talks between the Balkan States of Kosovo and Serbia over the contentious status of Serb-dominated Northern Kosovo ended, failing in their endeavour to break the ensuing deadlock between the bickering nations. Mediated by the European Union, the talks were supposed to find at least a temporary solution to the diplomatic quagmire that continues to threaten the stability of an already volatile region. Read more

Why World Water Day Should be Every Day

Aaron Kinnari is the founder of The Future Forum. Learn more about the world water crisis at TheFutureForum.org/water.

Today is World Water Day. For most folks reading this post, potable water is a short walk to the closest faucet. But for one in nine people around the world, accessing clean water is a much more arduous task.

The absence of this most basic necessity has far reaching consequences. From water-borne diseases that claim millions of lives annually to the billions of dollars in lost productivity and economic opportunity, the global water crisis bares tremendous costs for nations around the world and is crippling long-term growth and development. Read more

Geo-Graphics: Why Easy Money Is Not Enough: U.S. vs. the Eurozone

A version of this post originally appeared on Geo-Graphics, a Council on Foreign Relations blog by the Maurice R. Greenberg Center for Geoeconomic Studies.

European Central Bank president Mario Draghi has promised to do “whatever it takes to preserve the euro,” and the bank’s Outright Monetary Transactions initiative last September, aimed at pulling down crisis-country bond rates, no doubt calmed market fears of a eurozone breakup. But whereas eurozone sovereign bond spreads have narrowed, the gap in real economic performance – particularly unemployment – between the best and worst performers, as shown in today’s Geo-Graphic, has continued to grow precipitously. Compare this to the United States, which has a fiscal and banking union as well as a monetary one. There, jumps in unemployment rate dispersion across states caused by financial and other shocks are reversed in relatively short order.

See the original post on Geo-Graphics.

Exiting from Monetary Stimulus: A Better Plan for the Fed

Benn Steil is director of international economics at the Council on Foreign Relations and author of “The Battle of Bretton Woods,” just out from Princeton University Press. A version of this post originally appeared on CFR.org.

The U.S. Federal Reserve’s monetary stimulus efforts have an undesirable side effect that needs to be managed with great care: the Fed has amassed a huge stock of mortgage-backed securities (MBS) that it will eventually want to liquidate without damaging the nascent housing recovery. What is needed to accomplish this is a relatively simple but innovative scheme whereby the Fed can, in one transaction, transform its MBS holdings into an equivalent amount of U.S. Treasury securities. Such an arrangement would allow the Fed to use conventional means of raising interest rates when inflation threatens without the worrisome economic and political consequences of selling mortgage-backed securities. Read more

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