Showing 1 - 7 of 7
Fintech and universal inclusion
Oped, Carl Manlan & Adanna Chukwuma, Published on 14/01/2025
» The world has made remarkable progress in advancing financial inclusion in recent years. In the decade beginning in 2011, the share of adults with access to financial services rose a whopping 50%, to more than three-quarters. But we still have a long way to go in creating a truly inclusive financial system. Beyond expanding access to financial products and services, we must ensure that these products and services work for all people, including the 1.2 billion people worldwide with disabilities.
Will Cupid's aim improve this year?
Oped, Todd G Buchholz, Published on 14/02/2024
» Cupid may be hitting the mark in the shopping aisle, but he's not having much luck coaxing couples down the wedding aisle. Although Valentine's Day spending on significant others will reach a record high in the United States this year, fewer Americans are marrying and having sex, leading to fewer babies being born. But there is evidence to suggest that Cupid's aim will improve in coming years. If we want to survive as a species, we should be rooting for the pudgy cherub's success.
ESG: Time for action not words
Oped, Renaud Meyer, Published on 28/12/2023
» Not a week goes by without an ESG meeting, a CEO summit, a sustainability expo. This flurry of events highlights how much the business context has changed in the last decade and is set to change further in the coming years as stakeholders bring their growing influence to bear. Consumers, employees, and other economic actors, especially millennials, are becoming more environmentally and socially conscious. Not only are they increasingly holding companies to account for their performance on various socioeconomic issues, but they are also voicing their expectations for companies to contribute to solving the most complex challenges of our time in view of supporting the achievement of the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs).
D-Day for Pita, but change inevitable
Oped, Kheetanat Synth Wannaboworn & Walden Bello, Published on 12/07/2023
» Tomorrow will probably be the most decisive day in Thailand after nearly a decade of military rule. The key question on everyone’s lips is: Will the conservative forces allow the young leader of the Move Forward Party (MFP), Pita Limjaroenrat, to become the next prime minister? And the question which naturally follows is: If Mr Pita is blocked, what will happen? Will people go out to the streets in protest? Will soldiers be sent to disperse them? Will the violence of over ten years ago, which led to the military’s ouster of a civilian government installed by popular vote, return to Bangkok?
The misguided US 'democracy summit'
Oped, Thitinan Pongsudhirak, Published on 10/12/2021
» The United States government under President Joe Biden is putting up the right fight in a counterproductive way in its online organisation of a "summit for democracy" this week. Much touted since he won the election in November last year, President Biden's summit of democracies has proved controversial, with both good intentions and unintended consequences. The real battleground, as clichés about the benefits and drawbacks of democracy go, is to make the case that popular rule where citizens should have rights and freedoms for their own collective self-determination is ultimately preferable and superior than all other forms of government.
Reforms need broadening of the agenda
Oped, Thitinan Pongsudhirak, Published on 25/09/2020
» Thailand's student-led protest movement for overdue political change and reforms has reached a crucial juncture. In the aftermath of its most recent demonstration on Sept 19 at Sanam Luang public ground and open field in front of the Grand Palace in Bangkok's old town, the protest agenda can be seen as either zooming in directly on monarchical reform or emanating more from the side and down below on broader institutional changes that include the monarchy.
Give Thai youth movement a chance
Oped, Thitinan Pongsudhirak, Published on 24/07/2020
» The coronavirus reprieve for the government of Prime Minister Prayut Chan-o-cha is ironically over as Thailand's youth movement for political change has resumed in earnest.