Failed States#4: Pakistan.

Pakistan. Torn between
fundamentalism and the West?

Date: 5th of October, 20.00h. - 23.00h.

Venue: Rasa, Pauwstraat 13A, Utrecht

Tickets: 5 euros at entrance, reservations: 030-2316040 (wed, thurs, fri 15:00 - 18:00)

At least 38 countries worldwide are listed as 'failed states'. Somalia,
Zimbabwe and Sudan rank the top. Countries are labeled failed when they aren't
able to govern and administrate their territory properly, when they do not
succeed in providing their citizens minimal living conditions, when they are
not able in fighting off corruption and criminality, and neither in preventing
their economies from crumbling down. Failed
states are those countries where life, in Thomas Hobbes' words, is not only solitary, but poor, nasty,
brutish and short.

The emphasis in the series is on the role of global citizens; what does
connect citizens there and here? And how do governments here and there react on
popular voices? In which circumstances do companies and NGO's play a role in
global, and local, attitudes concerning international relations? Do failed
states ask for international diplomatic pressure? Might even military
intervention be a possibility, in accordance with the Responsibility to Protect policy? Should international
reactions cover all three DDD's - development, diplomacy and defense - in
dealing with Failed States? Or do failed states want to be left alone in
failing, waving the motto ' give war a chance'?

Pakistan is a crucial -and often critical- country in global politics.
In the West's war on terror, in it's relation with it's neighbor India
and as a nuclear power. And even though the country's return to democracy,
it's still viewed as an unreliable and unruly ally. Ali Dayan Hasan will
lecture on the image of Pakistan abroad, on preconceptions, on the questionable
idea to consider Pakistan a failed state.

With:

- Ali Dayan Hasan, director Human Rights
Watch Pakistan, http://www.hrw.org/en/bios/ali-dayan-hasan

- Marjan Lucas, independent researcher and
consultant http://nl.linkedin.com/pub/marjan-lucas/12/b03/36b

- Journalist Babette Niemel moderates the evening

Info: www.failedstates.nl

This evening is supported by the NCDO