2018 ended on a high note: the gender gap in Romania continues to close. According to new figures from the renowned World Economic Forum, Romania has closed the overall gender gap to slightly more than 71%, which places Romania 63rdin the global ranking, just behind Croatia (59), Kazakhstan (60) and Bosnia and Herzegovina (62) but quite far behind our neighbours Bulgaria (18), Moldova (35) and Serbia (38).
Read further [in Romanian] in Dilema veche.
A new report on how EU member states address the legacy of the Holocaust claims that several Central and East European countries are seeing widespread historical revisionism and are downplaying of World War II crimes. The report was published two days before January 27, International Holocaust Remembrance Day, which marks the anniversary of the liberation of Nazi Germany’s most notorious death camp, Auschwitz-Birkenau, where hundreds of thousands of Jews were murdered.
Read further in Muftah Magazine.
Last week, the biggest public rally to date against China’s growing influence in Central Asia took place in Kyrgyzstan’s capital. On Thursday, January 17, police detained more than a dozen people assembled in Bishkek’s central Ala-Too Square, demanding a curb on work permits for Chinese nationals as well as other measures to reduce the Chinese presence in the country. Similar protests took place on January 7and on December 20, 2018, when a crowd of about 150 people gathered near the Chinese Embassy.
Read further in Muftah Magazine.
On January 9, a coalition of anti-corruption NGOs in Ukraine rejected almost half of the 113 candidates for the country’s new High Anti-Corruption Court as “questionable.” The move came after the Public Council of International Experts vetoed the first eight candidates for the court a week earlier. The court is a high-stakes international effort to reduce corruption in the Ukraine, and a condition for unlocking the next $2 billion in aid to Kiev from the International Monetary Fund (IMF). It is slated to open by the end of March.
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Last Friday, January 4, a long-awaited macro-economic report by the McKinsey consulting firm, was released by the Lebanese government. Originally scheduled to be publicly released after the new cabinet was inaugurated, caretaker Economy Minister Raed Khoury said Monday that delays with government formation, together with Lebanon’s worsening economic situation, had pushed him to publish the report sooner.
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On January 1, Romania took over the rotating presidency of the European Union from Austria. The social democratic PSD-ALDE government led by PrimeMinister Viorica Dăncilă, in cooperation with President Klaus Iohannis from the liberal PNL, will take on important European dossiers like migration and the multi-annual EU budget. Romania will also have to facilitate Brexit on March 29.
Read further in Muftah Magazine.
