Open2063: The Open Institute and Africa Freedom of Information Centre have announced the Open2063 initiative (www.open2063.org). The African Union is celebrating its 50th anniversary this year and looking to define the future of the continent over the next 50 years, in an AU-driven initiative called Agenda2063. Open2063 is an initiative to build a network of civil society organizations who are concerned with transparency, accountability and citizen engagement, to ensure that the plans for Africa in the next fifty years provide for an open, transparent continent, led by governments who engage and collaborate with their citizens and where rights and freedoms are upheld and respected, according to the announcement. Those interested are asked to sign up on the website. http://open2063.org/sign-up/
Guatemala: The landmark report on the Guatemalan police archives, From Silence to Memory: Revelations of the AHPN, has been made available in a new English translation issued by the University of Oregon. The publication — with a preface by the National Security Archive’s Kate Doyle — is a history of the National Police before and during Guatemala’s armed conflict. It is also a guide to navigating the millions of pages of police files preserved and publicly accessible in the Historical Archive of the National Police, and an analysis of several cases of police involvement in operations of surveillance, illegal detention, interrogation, execution, and cover-up — all committed in support of a brutal counterinsurgency state. See a posting at the National Security Archive – http://www2.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/NSAEBB/NSAEBB448/
World Bank: The World Bank is holding a briefing on the World Development Report 2015: Mind and Culture, which is in the initial stages of research. “The World Development Report 2015 is based on three main ideas: bounds on rationality, which limit individuals’ ability to process information and lead them to rely on rules of thumb; social interdependence, which leads people to care about other people as well as the social norms of their communities; and culture, which provides mental models that influence what individuals pay attention to, perceive, and understand (or misunderstand). The central argument of the Report is that policy design that takes into account psychological and cultural factors will achieve development goals faster.”
The session will be held on Thursday, December 19 from 12:30 – 2:00 in the Main Complex Building, Room MC 10-100. RSVP to Nga Trang via email (ntrang1@worldbank.org).
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