Cuban Public Healthcare: A Model of Success for Developing Nations

This article assesses Cuban healthcare, not just for Cubans but also for those who receive the care of Cuban health professionals working worldwide. The article offers three main points: first, Cuba is an anomaly, a poor nation that has very good public healthcare; second, Cuba’s reported infant mortality rates are probably too good to be true; third, Cuba’s public healthcare system, all in all, provides a strong example of progress, an inspiration for other less developed nations to emulate.

Book I. September.

Chapter I. The Improvised Commune. Ye have roused her, then, ye Emigrants and Despots of the world; France is roused! Long have ye been lecturing and tutoring this poor Nation, like cruel uncalled-for pedagogues, shaking over her your ferulas* of fire and...

Diplomacy, trade, and South Korea’s rise to international influence

The story of South Korea’s post-armistice economic ascendance has been well documented, but its parallel rise as an influential international actor is just beginning to receive the scholarly attention it deserves. Moreover, in the work that has been produced thus far, scholars have assumed that it was its remarkable economic growth that drove South Korea’s rise to international influence. This assumption misses the important fact that South Korea was elevating itself internationally while it was still a poor nation. As we demonstrate in this paper, what is missing in existing work is that it was the diplomatic efforts of South Korean presidents early in the post-armistice period that put the country on the path to its current international influence both directly and indirectly. They did this directly by removing it from the diplomatic isolation it inherited after the Korean War, and they accomplished this indirectly by using the tools of diplomacy to expand South Korea’s trading relations, without which it would not have enjoyed the remarkable economic growth it experienced.

Political Democracy, Managing Poverty and Development in Nigeria

Poverty as an endemic factor for underdevelopment in Nigeria has drained the transitional process of Nigeria toward attaining the global advancement. Political democracy which is supposed to be a corner stone in improving the citizens welfare by its policies, has failed to meet its proffer responsibilities. Despite abundant resources, Nigeria remains among the class of under developing society and one of the poor nation in the world. The government lost her responsibility to make effective policies that would benefit and improve the better life of the citizens. Most of the policies adopted in a bit to alleviate poverty turn to benefit only the elites while the poor continue to remain in an abject poverty.The aims of this paper is to examine poverty, political democracy and development in Nigeria with the aim of drawing the attention of policy makers to the need to formulate a consistent poverty alleviation policy that should be backed up with consistency, political will and transparency at implementation.

Lessons from the Sam Hinga Norman Decision of the Special Court for Sierra Leone: How trials and truth commissions can co-exist

Sierra Leone is a poor nation in the midst of a laudable campaign to bring justice and reconciliation to a people desperately in need of it. Having suffered through the scourge of a decade long civil war, the nation employed two distinct yet related institutions to take a leading role in this campaign. Uniquely, the Government of Sierra Leone (GoSL) sought the assistance of the United Nations (UN) in setting up the world's first “hybrid tribunal”, named the Special Court for Sierra Leone (SCSL), to work alongside the already conceived of Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC). These two institutions were to employ different procedures and, to an extent, different objectives in the hopes of achieving peace, justice and reconciliation.