Introduction: International Issues and Debates Concerning Adoption

A history of systemic injustices and a lack of transparency have influenced public perceptions of domestic adoption. This book aims to introduce more empirical evidence into the debate by exploring the value of open adoption, as practised in Australia, as a route to permanence for abused and neglected children in out-of-home care who cannot safely return to their birth families. International evidence about the outcomes of adoption and foster care is discussed. The chapter introduces the Barnardos Australia Find-a-Family programme which has been finding adoptive homes since 1986 for non-Aboriginal children in care who are identified as ‘hard to place’. Regular post-adoption face-to-face contact with birth family members is an integral part of the adoption plan. The methodology for evaluating the outcomes for 210 children placed through the programme included case and court file analysis, a follow-up survey and interviews with adoptive parents and adult adoptees.

‘A Procedure Without a Problem’, or the face transplant that didn’t happen. The Royal Free, the Royal College of Surgeons and the challenge of surgical firsts

Face transplants are an innovative and unusual form of modern surgery. There have been 47 face transplants around the world to date, but none as yet in the UK. Yet in 2003, the UK was poised to undertake the first face transplant in the world. The reasons why it didn't take place are not straightforward, but largely unexplored by historians. The Royal College of Surgeons, concerned about the media attention given to face transplants and the ethical and surgical issues involved, held a working party and concluded that it could not give approval for face transplants, effectively bringing to a halt the UK’s momentum in the field. This extraordinary episode in medical history has been anecdotally influential in shaping the course of British surgical history. This article explores and explains the lack of a face transplant in the UK and draws attention to the complex emotional, institutional and international issues involved. Its findings have implications beyond the theme of face transplants, into the cultural contexts and practices in which surgical innovation takes place.

http://habibiaislamicus.com/index.php/hirj/article/view/104

The focus of this research is to present the Quranic teachings about Interstate relations in the light of the opinions given by the Quranic commentators. The objective is to draw conclusive guidelines to resolve the contemporary issues the world faces. According to Qur’an, the foundation of Interstate relations is the unity of mankind, religious tolerance, justice, and cooperation based on equality. If these Quranic guidelines are adopted to resolve international issues the world could become a cradle of peace. The reason is that this leads to a state of peace in the world through cooperation based on respect and tolerance. The policy adopted in the light of these teachings could lead to world peace and help countries, religions, and civilizations resolve their differences peacefully. The research concludes on the argument that the Quranic teachings adopted for the resolution of the international issues could prove a panacea for the world at loggerheads now.

THE PAST, THE PRESENT AND THE FUTURE TO COME

In this issue we publish an article by Tuleutai Skakovich Suleimenov entitled "The Past, the Present and the Future to Come". The author has made a great contribution as the first Minister of Foreign Affairs (1991-1994) to Kazakhstan's foreign policy and diplomacy after gaining independence, has been Ambassador Extraordinary and Plenipotentiary in several countries, is a Laureate of the State Prize of the Republic of Kazakhstan and holds a PhD in Political Science. Today, as a professor at the Academy of Public Administration under the President of the Republic of Kazakhstan, Suleimenov is actively involved in training a new generation of diplomatic personnel. On the eve of his 80th birthday Tuleitai Suleimenov shares his reflections on the path of a young state - the Republic of Kazakhstan in the 30th anniversary of its independence, in particular on the international initiatives of the First President of Kazakhstan - Elbasy Nazarbayev, which were a major contribution of Kazakhstan to the global agenda and international issues.

Indigenising International Relations: Insights from Centring Indigeneity in Canada and Iraq

This article responds to recent calls to decolonise International Relations. Despite the urgency of this task, much of this work remains at the margins or worse, bound to colonial world views and commitments. Against this backdrop, we first argue that centring Indigeneity demands scholarship that unravels the current configurations of the field and moves away from merely adding Indigeneity as a category within neoliberal, colonial, Westernised frameworks. Second, we assert that Critical Indigenous Studies offers a theoretically generative framework to begin examining international issues in new ways. To illustrate, we re-read sovereignty debates in Québec (Canada) and the Kurdistan Region of Iraq (KRI) through a critical Indigenous lens to disrupt the discourse and taken-for-granted understandings of self-determination struggles for secession in these two sites. Along with highlighting a path towards Indigenising the discipline, our work also reveals how distinct, yet intertwined colonialisms function across the globe.

Beyond “Feeling Blessed”: Using International Documentary Film to Foster Global Awareness in an Online College Course

As US colleges and universities incorporate an international requirement for undergraduate students, this study assesses the value of an online international documentary course. The effect of documentary viewing was evaluated using students’ reflective essays, noting possible shifts in perspectives on international issues after film viewing. Findings show that students gained new knowledge, displayed empathy, felt “blessed” for their privileges, and were inspired to help others. Findings also reflected an ignorance about inequitable power relationships between the United States and other countries, producing an “othering” effect. Recommendations are provided for engaging students in more critical research and reflection about local-global connections.

U POTRAZI ZA NOVIM SMISLOM: JUGOSLAVIJA I KRIZA GLOBALNE NESVRSTANOSTI 1965–1970.

This article is dedicated to the first crisis period in the history of global non-alignment, when in the latter half of the 1960s, a time when a number of leading non-aligned leaders had finally left the historical scene, mostly under the pressure of army coups or war defeats, there were no summits or other multilateral non-aligned meetings being held, with the first significant gatherings taking place only at the very end of this period, thus opening a historical stage marked by a paralysis of action on behalf of many countries adhering to this foreign policy course. These were also years when global non-alignment was facing a mounting challenge of becoming increasingly irrelevant in world affairs, since none of the great powers seriously took into consideration their opinion, while the number of crisis situations all around the non-aligned world had been steadily on the rise. This evident lack of capability of leading non-aligned countries to act in a coordinated and timely fashion proved to many worldwide observers that global non-alignment had finally reached its limit and could not be resuscitated again to exercise a proactive and dynamic role in international politics as had been the case in the early 1960s. Facing such a complex situation, often bordering on desperate, while being especially well aware that without this global non-aligned framework Yugoslavia was facing isolation and serious political constraints in Europe, Tito and other Yugoslav officials decided to undertake a number of diplomatic initiatives to re-galvanize the non-aligned group, tighten the ranks between some of the leading non-aligned countries, with the aim of reinventing the meaning and role of non-alignment in world politics, while setting up a more permanent mechanism for cooperation that could transform all non-bloc factors into a more relevant and widespread international movement ready to set off a constructive dialogue with the great powers over the major international issues of security and development. In spite of many ups and downs in these endeavors, as this article scrupulously analyzed them, eventually Yugoslavia did manage to reignite the spirit of cooperation and collective action among the various non-aligned countries, which finally led to the formal establishment of the Non-Aligned Movement at the Third Summit in Lusaka in September 1970.

Africa’s Trade with China and US: Has COVID-19 Changed the Trends of Trade?

Africa’s trade with China and the US is one of the international issues affecting development in the continent. This paper, therefore, examines the effects of COVID-19 on Africa’s trade with the two countries by investigating whether the pandemic has changed the trends of the trade. The article explores the responses of the individual trade of China and the US with Africa to their own shocks, without and with the pandemic, using the vector autoregressive (VAR) model and monthly data covering 1970m01 (January 1970) to 2020m07 (July 2020). The results show that China’s trade performs better while responding to a shock to America’s trade than America’s trade does while responding to a shock to China’s trade, without and with COVID-19. This finding suggests that China has a stronger trade footing in Africa and that COVID-19 had not changed the trends of Africa’s trade with China and America, even with the impact of the pandemic on China. China’s dominant trade status in Africa is probably due to the country’s large investment and aid in the continent. The key policy focus of Africa on trading with China and the US should therefore be how to achieve optimum trilateral trade thresholds in the face of potential trade-offs.