Credential Ceremony, HM The King of the Netherlands and H. E. Brett Mason. The Australian Embassy is located on the Carnegielaan, behind the Peace Palace.  Ambassador Brett Mason and Indra McCormick, Deputy Head of the Australian Mission, receive me in the Ambassador’s office.  I have not yet sat down before I am taken to look at a large world map behind the Ambassador’s desk.   By Walter van van Teeffelen. “On 25 October 1616, Dirk Hartog landed here just off the west coast of Australia,” says Brett Mason.  He points at the map. “Almost 400 hundred years ago.  His ship was called de Eendracht.  In total, there were six ships.  In January 1616 they departed from Texel.  They followed the advice of Hendrik Brouwer, also a VOC Captain, who advised them to follow the eastern currents past Cape Good Hope in South Africa, and not to turn North-East toward India.  Hartog arrived at an uninhabited island near Shark Bay.  Later, this island was named Dirk Hartog Island.  It was a very dangerous area for ships; there were a lot of shallows and reefs, and cliffs further over on the mainland”.  Eendracht Land But Hartog did not ignore the island he landed on.  He first wanted to map what he had discovered.  He left behind a pewter plate with a scratched inscription as a ‘signpost’ for ships which might later land there and set sail northwards, mapping the coast.  The undiscovered land was later drawn on maps as ‘Het land van de Eendracht’ (Eendracht Land).  The Ambassador shows me a number of framed old maps from various centuries hanging in the hallway, from the time of Ptolemy to the 17th century. “Dirk Hartog was the second European to land on the continent,” says the Ambassador, “ten years earlier, in 1605, Willem Jansz left Bantam aboard the Duyfken to map the unknown Zuidland.  In February 1606, he arrived on the North Coast of Australia at Cape York Peninsula. He followed the coast to Cape Keerweer, mapping around 320 kilometres of the continent.  He believed it was a southern offshoot of New Guinea and called it Nieu Zelandt, but the name didn’t stick.  Abel Tasman, another Dutch explorer, gave the same name to a place he found in the Pacific Ocean in 1642, and that country is still called New Zealand”. Jansz’s voyage to Cape York was the first recorded contact between Europeans and indigenous Australians.  It marked the beginning of engagement between the world’s oldest living culture, that of the Australian Aboriginals, and the new seafaring merchants of Europe.  In part to commemorate this contact, the Aboriginal Art Museum in Utrecht (the AAMU) is holding an exhibition called Remember Me: Stories in Print (http://www.aamu.nl/Nu-te-zien).  The exhibition runs until 19 June.

Terra Australis Incognita By the fourth century BC, it was already assumed that there had to be land in the Southern Hemisphere.  Thinkers such as Aristotle and Ptolemy thought that, if the earth were to remain in equilibrium, there had to be land there.  They even named it: Terra Australis Incognita, the ‘unknown southern land’. Many centuries later, in the time of the voyages of discovery, this assumption was proved correct. But the continent was not immediately called Australia.  For more than 150 years it was called “New Holland” after the Dutch discoverers.  The name Australia only took hold once the English captain and cartographer Matthew Flinders published an account of his journey as A Voyage to Terra Australis in 1814. We take a look at the maps in the hallway.  On a VOC map from 1620, we see Eendrachtsland marked on the western coast.   On the northern side, the continent seems to be attached to what we now call Indonesia – there is still no sign of a Torres Strait, the corridor between Queensland and Papua New Guinea. The Batavia “The Dutch literally put Australia on the map,” says the Ambassador, “When Hartog was back in the Netherlands and talked about his voyage, various other ships travelled to the continent.  But many, having reached the new continent,  were sunk in the middle of the cliffs and shallows.  The area is riddled with shipwrecks.  At the end of the century captain Willem de Vlamingh, on behalf of the VOC, travelled further south along the western coast.  He discovered black swans on what is now called Swan River, in modern day Perth.  That was better terrain but still, much of the western coast was sand and desert.  On the advice of De Vlamingh, the VOC ceased further exploration. There is one more story about the discovery of the continent; “a dramatic story – the story of the ship de Batavia” according to the Ambassador.  Indra McCormick grabs a book by Peter Fitzsimmons which describes it all: ‘Batavia, the true, adventurous story of the sinking of the VOC ship Batavia in 1629’. “The ship sprung a leak on the Wallaby reef just off the coast.  Some of the crew remained behind on some small islands, another group sailed by sloop to Batavia to fetch help.  When the rescuers arrived, a munity had taken place among those left behind.  After various – often bloody – entanglements, only 68 of the 341 crew eventually arrived in Batavia.  After the wreck was found in 1963, coins, cannons and all sorts of other items were recovered and displayed”. Gas and Oil “Captain de Vlaming, after finding Swan River in 1696, also visited Dirk Hartog island,” says the Ambassador, “ He replaced the pewter plate that Dirk Hartog had left behind with a new version and took the old one with him.  It is now on display in the Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam.  I’m pretty romantic about the whole story of discovery.  But at the same time, you have to admit that it was inspired principally by trade.  The Dutch were great traders at that time.  It’s not for nothing that the pewter plate in the Rijksmuseum has not Dirk Hartog’s name on top, but the name of the trader who ordered the voyage.” If Dirk Hartog and his companions had, at that time, looked not only at the land but also under it – they would have discovered the true riches of the region.  The area is full of oil and gas – it is in fact one of the largest gas and oil fields in the world. And who is one of the biggest producers there? Shell. “Hartog’s efforts were not in vain,” says the Ambassador, “The results just took their time.  It is one of the biggest investments Shell has ever made”.

Alongside Shell, all the major Dutch businesses are represented in Australia: Unilever, Rabobank, ING, KPMG, Heineken, Achmea, AEGON, Philips and AkzoNobel.  And various businesses in the fields of infrastructure and water management, such as Deltares, Boskalis, Royal HaskoningDHV, Fugro, Strukton Rail and BAM International.  “In Brisbane and its surroundings, where I come from, there have been a lot of floods. And we gladly make use of the knowledge of those businesses,” says the Ambassador.  The Netherlands invests a lot in Australia; it is in fact the fifth largest direct investor, with an investment of 38 billion dollars. The total annual trade in goods and services between the Netherlands and Australia is worth around 6 billion dollars. The ‘Boom’ For the last twenty-five years, Australia has experienced continuous growth.  The economic dip of 2008 largely missed Australia.  “There’s been growth every year, normally significant growth, even last year growth was just under three per cent.  The ‘mining boom’, and Chinese demand for our raw materials has helped us enormously.  But it would be wrong to reduce our country to a mineshaft.  The returns make up less than 10 per cent of our GNP.  Increasingly important Australian exports come not from the ground, but from the mind: knowledge, innovation, education.  In the top hundred universities of the world, there are six Australian universities”.  Many young people from South-East Asia study at those universities.  “From the 1950s until the 1980s there was a system of bursaries for this.  It was part of the ‘Colombo Plan’, named after the capital of Sri Lanka.  We have now reformed that project: the New Colombo Plan, where we encourage Australian young people to go to Universities in the Indo-Pacific, an area stretching from Pakistan in the West to the Fiji islands in the East”. It’s part of a reorientation by Australia.  The Ambassador explains: “I am now 54.  When I was young, we saw our future in the English speaking world. In the last thirty years, young Australians have started to see their future in the Indo-Pacific.  Student exchanges contribute to a high quality workforce.  We have benefitted too from immigration from Asia: immigrants have given our country an injection of hard work, enthusiasm and different culture.  Australia has been the winner.

Optimism and Confidence This development has contributed to a changing self-perception: “In 1956, the Olympic Games were held in Melbourne.  We had about nine million people at that time.  We didn’t have a sense that we could compete with the world in art, culture or education.  We didn’t have enough confidence; only in sports did we have an excess of it.  That has changed completely in my lifetime.  Right now, Australia has more than 24 million inhabitants.   What was once a country of beaches, mines and cricket ovals is now a modern, multicultural country with a highly educated populace and a sophisticated economy and culture.  There’s a feeling of great optimism and confidence that we are the equals of other countries in the humanities, culture and arts. Young Australians are confident and optimistic, they no longer feel the need to go to America or Europe to enjoy a full life.  That was not the case for some Australians in the 1950s and 1960s.  Many intellectuals left because they thought Australia was a cultural wasteland.  For example Robert Hughes, the art critic and author of The Fatal Shore, went to New York.  Clive James and Germaine Greer fled to London.  But now we have a thriving cultural and intellectual life: millions visit Australia’s national museums and galleries every year, we have 15 Nobel Prize winners, and over a billion people rely on Australian inventions every day. How did this happen? “We had massive immigration after the Second World War.  Around 300,000 Dutch came.  Great immigrants, they were visible right across Australian social and economic life.  They also did well. Culturally and politically they were close to the Australians.  Honestly, I can’t imagine Australia without the Dutch.  Now there are a lot of backpackers from the Netherlands.  They speak such good English they’re almost Australians, and they’re so polite!  Immigration started to change our outlook.  That is one of the most heart-warming aspects of our country.  Wherever you come from, whatever your religion, whatever your ethnic background, if you keep to Australian values you’re an Australian.  Our country is pluralistic, tolerant and respectful.  My parents’ generation tended to look inwards or maybe to Britain.   But in the seventies and eighties the university system received a boost and the economy was freed from excessive regulation.  Australia became more competitive and the labour market more flexible.  Our population climbed.  Now, almost forty per cent of Australians progress to tertiary education”. One of the top projects located largely in Australia and South Africa, but with research assistance from the Netherlands, amongst others, is the SKA, the Square Kilometre Array, the largest and furthest seeing radio telescope project ever built.  This research will try to look at the beginning of the universe, the Big Bang.  We are trying to “capture” the very first light.” Outdoor Culture Most of the population of Australia live in the South East of the country, an area with a pleasant climate.  “What is the first thing you think of when you think of Australia?  For me, the first association is the sun.  Because of the climate, there’s an ‘outdoor’ culture.  This also influences interpersonal relations: they’re relaxed, bright and optimistic.  Politician Ambassador Brett Mason and Indra McCormick started their new jobs together in the Netherlands around 7 months ago.  Before becoming Ambassador to the Netherlands, Mason was the Assistant Minister for Foreign Affairs and served sixteen years as a Senator for Queensland.  “The work in The Hague is different,” says the Ambassador, “Civilised.  More civilised than Australian politics, you could say”. Photography by Babette Bellinga, Embassy of Australia. For additional pictures, please open the following link: https://www.flickr.com/photos/121611753@N07/albums/72157668373459816 Published in If then is now: http://ifthenisnow.eu/nl/verhalen/the-hague-embassy-Australia

Dr. Swaleha Sindhi. In the present era of globalisation, organisations are expected to work with a creative rather than a reactive perspective and grow to be flexible, responsive and capable organisations to survive. In the existing scenario, people are exposed to diverse knowledge through the internet; there is much to learn and more to assimilate. Senge’s (1990) model of the five disciplines of a learning organisation emphasises on the concept of systems thinking, personal mastery, mental models, building shared vision and team learning. This five points on continuous learning for individuals and organisations, with a great stress on the idea of bringing change with innovation and creativity. If the future institutions are driven by individual and collaborative learning, it is advisable to transform schools also into learning organisations, instead of school education being restricted merely to the process of acquiring facts and loads of numerical information to reproduce in an examination using rote learning methodologies ( a current scenario in Indian schools). In line with the needs of the education system in India, schools should become more efficient learning organisations that ultimately increase the leadership capacity and support the personal development of every individual at the institution. In chalking out the aims of education in India, Kothari Commission report (1964-66) stressed that ‘education has to be used as a powerful instrument of social economic and political change. The blending of conservative trend and progress is the essential characteristics of a healthy society. In a modern society, individuals learn about intricate changes that are occurring around them. School of course is an important agency to usher in the changes’. However, years after these recommendations, the Indian schools are still perceived as institutions; transferring knowledge, fulfilling educational tasks and realising educational objectives. They reflect upon syllabus, and follow a set of educational objectives framed to show them direction of activity at particular stages of education. There is hardly any effort to bring change in the system of education. Our education system is not governed with new educational tasks and essential new ideas for the educational organisations. Instead, schools in their effort to become learning organisations are already feeling the tidal wave of change in many ways and this has resulted in confused, exhausted and disappointed school leaders who are unable develop the capacity of the school and every individual therein to manage change. Indian Schools and Challenges As educator Roland Barth has said, “Relationships among educators within a school range from vigorously healthy to dangerously competitive. Strengthen those relationships, and you improve professional practice.” Indian schools fail to develop themselves into true learning organisations due to; the existing school culture, the amount of competition and working in isolation. In our schools, there is little or no resistance against isolation and unproductive school competitions. Teachers teach in isolation, rarely does a teacher have the opportunity to go beyond her classroom to visit the pedagogic worlds of her peers, to learn from their classes. Improving school and community cooperation is another important area for learning organisation. There is hardly any interaction between our schools and community. Little efforts are seen from schools to encourage children to get access to learning resources in the community, to meet outstanding members of the community or involving parents in actively organising extracurricular activities. One way of building connect with the community is involving community elders in developing curriculum, but hardly our schools take suggestions from community elders on the topics to be included in the curriculum. There are negligible efforts to remove traditional education boundaries. It is becoming clear that schools can be re-created, made vital, and sustainable renewed not by fiat or command, and not by regulation, but by taking a learning orientation. This means involving everyone in the system in expressing their aspirations, building their awareness, and developing their capabilities together. Senge calls this the rudder that can keep the organisation on the course during times of stress. Not to mention, stress among teachers and leaders is a common scenario in the majority of Indian schools today. The way forward The learning organisation approach is capable of making an organization more competitive and adaptive in response to change in a school context. Thus, existence of teacher practices conducive to an environment of strong learning environment supported by transformational leaders will enable schools to achieve continuous improvement and excellence regarding student and teacher learning. The powerful pathway to becoming a better practitioner is to observe an expert peer in action, to reflect and improve upon one’s practice as a result. When professionals like doctors, engineers or architects can do it then why not our teachers? Why can’t we bring teachers’ rich ‘knowledge-in-practice’ from the confines of their classrooms into the public domain? The reason that we are unable bring this change is because our teachers do not have the opportunity to go beyond classrooms to visit the pedagogic worlds of their peers or learn from their classrooms. Neither do the schools organize regular on the job staff development programmes for teachers to promote shared vision. On the positive side, today, majority of school teachers and Principals are finding themselves involved in professional learning activities. School and curriculum reforms have necessitated regular review of practices and attitudes. This is for the reason that schools are finding it difficult to resist the pressures of change and improvement especially in response to the demands of professionalism and accountability. It is high time our schools realize that the goal of learning organisations is not the occasional burst of professional activity each time new demands are made of the school, curriculum or practices. Schools and their staff need to be ahead of the change game. Thus, the philosophy of a learning organisation must be that learning is a way of working just as it is a way of living. Last word The ‘learning organisation’ management approach is capable of making an organisation more competitive and adaptive in response to change. The unit of innovation in Indian schools has usually been the individual teacher, the individual classroom, or a new curriculum to be implemented individually by teachers. But the larger environment in which innovation is supposed to occur is neglected. So few innovations occur and in the meantime either the innovative teacher is siphoned for few more bucks by other schools or a teacher who successfully innovates becomes threatening to those around him or her. Thus our fundamental challenges in education involve cultural changes that will require collective learning. By involving people at multiple levels and thinking together about significant and enduring solutions we can bring a positive shift in the system. However, the role of our schools as learning organization can only be furthered when the school leadership is committed to transform schools by getting engaged with the learning process themselves. At the same time our teachers also must make effort to develop themselves and be updated before they show high expectations from students. All these constraints have apparently become a hindrance to the transformation of schools into strong learning organizations. Dr. Swaleha Sindhi, is Assistant Professor in the Department of Educational Administration, the Maharaja Sayajirao University of Baroda, India. Decorated educational practitioner Dr Sindhi is a frequent columnist on related topics, too. She is the Vice President of Indian Ocean Comparative Education Society (IOCES). Contact: swalehasindhi(at)gmail.com    

Meeting Author Claudiu M. Florian Winner of the European Union Prize for Literature 2016 at Europe House in The Hague By Viviana Knorr. On the summer morning of the second day of June at Europe House in The Hague together The European Commission to the Kingdom of the Netherlands with the Romanian Cultural Institute in Brussels hosted the event “Meet the author Claudiu M. Florian winner of the European Union Prize for Literature 2016”.

The warm opening words by H. E. Mrs. Ireny Comaroschi Ambassador of Romania to the Netherlands in the presence of Mr. Pieter Jan Wolthers former Dutch ambassador to Romania from 2000 to 2005, took the public in general to the heart of her people in the audience who attentive enjoyed the author’s words: “The prize took me by surprise and motivated me further although I’ve been already motivated since writing this work … It’s my second time in Holland as the first one was during my masters degree long time ago”, remarked Florian who emotively highlighted how impressed he was by the plaster he used to fix his wall during his student’s life.  “It’s was made in Holland”, he remembered a young Florian thought in his first contact with today’s host country. The interview by Mr. Robert Adam Director of the Romanian Cultural Institute in Brussels further set the audience in the ethnic melting pot life in Transylvania of the author’s culturally and politically challenging novel; of a young boy’s story whose monologue carves out Romanian attitudes and beliefs with a soul-binding narrative that unfolded on every page.  “I didn’t understand or realised I was growing up multiculturally until arriving to Bucharest. More precisely that happened after returning home from school … it was when everything appeared different to me”, said the author, “I even had a double foreign accent”, exclaimed in reference to the accents he ended absorbing from both: Romanians in Transylvania and those in Bucharest. “I laughed when I heard my accent in a recording”, with a spark of nostalgia stressed the author further. The Ages of the Game — Citadel Street (2012) is Florian’s work where he gives life to the memories of his childhood taking readers to 1973 multiethnic and multilingual Transylvania. Next door, Emerich’s grandmother is particularly skilled whenever she drops by, promptly turning to German with Grandma, to Romanian with Grandpa, and to fiddling-faddling with me. The fact that Hungarian sounds as awkward as can be – the same goes for Saxon – is no reason why people shouldn’t get on together immediately, since everyone speaking all those tongues is equally apt, as are we all whenever we find ourselves in foreign company, to jump without respite up the common tricycle of Romanian, always at hand. Weaving in and out of Florian’s story are both of the boy’s grandparents with his relatives living in Germany, and his parents between Bucharest and Iași. From uncles, aunts, neighbours, to the falcons chasing the mice, the different radios —one red and one black— speaking different important words about the Russians, Americans or the Vietnamese signs of maximum appreciation, we learn who is winning and who is loosing, and of the fate of the people in the labyrinthine road the boy’s family walk. The languages that come together here let no one go away unenlightened. Any brief encounter in the street and any welcoming in a shared language brings up fresh knowledge as to the other person’s how-and-why. Not everybody speaks German, nor Saxon, nor Hungarian, yet they all speak Romanian. Last remarks from the author about that boy in Transilvania, were those of the different TV shows in Hungarian and German languages; the different religious preachers; and the feeling of belonging and of how everyone living in the Transylvania of those days knew they belong there. There was a module for questions and answers before wrapping up the event where the audience enthusiastically asked the author about the political language stand of his work’s German translation to his mother’s role during those days.      

Game of Poker at best, Game of Chess at worst, and neither option should be celebrated By Petra Poseg. Nuclear security is seemingly in the vanguard of global attention, but the large framework of international provisions is increasingly perceived as a toothless tiger. In the contemporary age where asymmetric threats to security are one of the most dangerous ones, the time is high to mitigate the risk of rouge actors having potential access to materials, necessary to develop nuclear weapons. Nowhere is this urgency more pivotal than in already turbulent areas, such as the South Caucasus. With many turmoil instabilities, lasting for decades with no completely bulletproof conflict resolution process installed, adding a threat of nuclear weapons potential means creating a house of cards that can cause complete collapse of regional peace and stability. That is precisely why recently uncovered and reoccurring actions of Armenia towards the goal of building its own nuclear capacity must be addressed more seriously. They should also attract bolder response to ensure safety of the region is sustained. According to the report by Vienna-based nuclear watch-dog, International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), Armenia has established quite a record of illegal trafficking of nuclear and other radioactive materials. There have been a couple of serious incidents spanning from 1999 onward. A large number of reported incidents has occurred on the country`s border with Georgia, tempting the IAEA to conclude there is high probability that the so called Armenian route does in fact exist. There is a further evidence to support this assertion. There were an unusually high number of Armenians caught in nuclear trafficking activities. Additionally, some of the reported incidents that made their way to the official reports suggested that the main focus of trafficking activities is in fact smuggling of nuclear material that could be used for nuclear weapons capabilities. There were also reports suggesting the trafficking of other radioactive material that could be utilized for alternate purposes, such as the building of a so called dirty bomb. Since the stakes with nuclear weaponry are always high to the extreme, the recognition of this threat must not be underrated and dismissed easily. Only days henceforth the latest illegal activities have been uncovered by border control in April, 2016, former Armenian Prime Minister Bagratyan shocked the international public with the claim that Armenia indeed has nuclear capabilities and the ability to further develop them. The main reason for the possession is to deter neighbors such as Turkey and Azerbaijan. More specifically, to discourage them from resorting to aggressive foreign policy measures and mitigates potential threats to Armenian territorial integrity, especially in the disputed regions. Even though Turkey and its intelligence network was quick to dismiss these claims and labeled them as a failed attempt to increase the geopolitical importance of Armenia, as well as to deter its much more militarily capable neighboring countries, such claims should not be taken lightly, either. Thus, there is no cause for alarm yet. However, there should be increased interest of the international community to investigate these serious claims. If documented, they would pose a grave destabilization factor for the already turbulent region. They would also trigger deepening of hostilities and mistrust in extremely delicate regional framework of peace. The prospects and dangers of potential acquisition of a dirty bomb by rouge actors are rising on the international agenda. The recently detected activities in South Caucasus showed that there were substantial efforts made in order to smuggle and illegally sell Uranium 238, which is highly radioactive. At the beginning of 2016, a different group was trying to smuggle a highly radioactive Cesium isotope that usually forms as a waste product in nuclear reactors. What is also worrying is that the majority of the activities are occurring in highly instable and unmonitored territories of Azerbaijan and Georgia that are under the control of separatists, such as Nagorno- Karabakh and South Ossetia. The mere organization of the Armenian route proves to show that illegal activities can flourish in the security blind spots of the region. There is also the Iranian connection. Armenia borders this Middle Eastern country that found itself in the centre of global attention until the ratification of The Joint Comprehensive plan of Action in 2015. The international agreement supposedly effectively mitigated the risk of Teheran developing its own nuclear capabilities and established a proper international regime to monitor compliance to the installed provisions. However, fears remain over future developments of this issue. The unusually high number of truck traffic between Armenia and Iran further fuels suspicion on what exactly goes down under the cloak of darkness. Iran is not the only powerful ally of Armenia that holds knowledge on all things nuclear. Yerevan is extremely close with Russia ever since the breakup of the former Soviet Union, and fully relies on Moscow when it comes to upholding its security, territorial integrity and political autonomy. Russia is of course a member of the elite nuclear club, and besides the US holds one of the largest stockpiles of nuclear capabilities in the world. This is of course a leftover of the Cold war era and fears of the Eastern or the Western devil, depends on which side of the wall the threat was being perceived. It is worrying to note that some of the nuclear material that was trying to find its way into Armenia through South Ossetia has been, at least according to some reports, traced back to Russian nuclear facilities. This is of course of small wonder, since Russia is an official supplier of nuclear fuel for the only nuclear power plant in Armenia, the Metsamor nuclear plant that supplies roughly 40 % of electricity to the country`s population. But the reactor itself falls into another aspect of nuclear threats posed by Armenia, specifically nuclear safety threats. The reactor is extremely outdated, and there are no proper safeguard and safety mechanism installed that would ensure adequate monitoring of its operations and recognition of potential faults in the system. The world just marked the thirtieth anniversary of the devastating Chernobyl accident, and it is unsettling to know there is high risk of a similar disaster in the adjacent area. Nuclear safety, like nuclear security, should be taken extremely seriously. Any outdated systems, like the one at the Metsamor nuclear plant, should be either closed down until repaired and adjusted to proper security standards, or shut down completely if the plant is unable to follow necessary legal provisions. To make the future prospects even grimmer, the area where the Metsamor plant is located is being said to have very vibrant seismic activities. Thus, not only is the plant dangerous due to outdated security systems and technology, but also due to naturally occurring phenomenon that is highly likely to cause significant damage on the plant itself. Armenian officials should protect their own population and not risk a nuclear holocaust. Instead, they continue to stubbornly extend their self-entrapment grand ambitions. Reviewing the manifold danger that Armenia represent in nuclear terms, there are no simple answers, although there are a few clear conclusions. The Metsamor power plant should be considered as an imminent and serious threat to millions of people in Asia, Middle East and Europe, and shut down. Additionally, this issue should not be shielded anymore for the sake of pure Macht politik. Macht prefers secrecy and coercion and we already well know how it always ends up. After Chernobyl, Three Mile Island and Fukushima disaster, the last thing the world needs is another nuclear catastrophe. Additionally, there are clear ambitions present in the country to develop and acquire nuclear capabilities. For more than one reason that is an extremely dangerous endeavor to pursue. Not just for the region itself and adjacent countries but also for the world which should be evolving towards the future nuclear free world instead. Consequently, we have to do all we can to prevent yet another blow to an already shaking NPT (Non-Proliferation Treaty). Conclusively, Caucasus is full of frozen yet unsolved, highly polarizing, toxic and potentially inflammable conflicts. We also have to be aware that the raging flames of instability from Syria and Iraq are not far away. We do not need another nuclear meltdown inferno. It is high time to localize the overheated blaze of Middle East. It would be a good start by stabilizing Caucasus in a just, fair and sustainable way. Petra Posega, is a Security Studies candidate, with a Degree in Political Science. She prolifically writes for platforms and magazines on four continents (including the Canadian (Geopolitics of Energy, the US Addleton, and Far-Eastern Journal of Asia- Europe Relation). Contact: posega@live.com

On the picture Florian Volz and Timo Schmidt. By Florian Volz. In the presence of the refugee crises in Europe and the issues, which arose from this crises two students on two bikes with two cameras will set out in June to capture 3000 km of stories along the Balkan migration route. The idea and initiative developed to show another side of the refugee crises, namely the side of the refugees. Refugee Roads is a two-months bicycle tour across Europe to gain insight into the experiences of those who undertake the journey along the Balkan Route. Florian Volz and Timo Schmidt, who both study BA International Studies at Leiden University, developed this project over the past year. They aim to play their part in the discussion around the European migration crisis. Shortly after their final exams later this month, the two international students will start the journey from the Peace Palace and finish two months later at Lesvos, Greece. After the first visit to Brussels they will cross national borders including those of France, Austria, Hungary, Serbia, Macedonia (FYROM), and Greece. Their bicycle trip across Europe will result in the production of a documentary, which aims to tell the daily stories of refugees fleeing their homes. Thus, it combines the genre of a road movie with a documentary about a pressing societal issue, which increasingly influences the agenda of European policymakers and diplomats. Through this initiative, the two students hope to capture stories of refugees, which will visualize the long journey and the connected hardship and history of the refugees. More information about Refugee Roads, including a blog and an interactive map, can be found at www.refugeeroads.com Questions and feedback as well as much appreciated donations can also be made via the website.  

By Tetyana Benzeroual. The Hague is a place where all manner of nationalities come together forming a multicultural society. Whether you are on the hunt for a job in the tricky employment market, studying or looking for new ways to contribute, finding your way in a new city can be a very challenging process. For the past two years, Volunteer The Hague has been the main platform for connecting active internationals in The Hague area with local non-profit organisations, creating positive change through the promotion of numerous volunteering opportunities. Volunteer The Hague matches the talents and skills of internationals with the needs of local non-profit organisations to build a more vibrant community for everyone living in The Hague area. It is powered by PEP (Participate Emancipate Professionals), an organisation dedicated to inspiring residents to get involved and make a difference in the community. Vacancies from various non-profit organisations in the city are being regularly posted on www.volunteerthehague.nl, enabling direct access for volunteers to a large volunteering community. Stay informed with the latest updates by liking the Facebook page of Volunteer The Hague. Contact information: Volunteer The Hague / PEP Den Haag Riviervismarkt 2 2513 AM The Hague Telephone: (070) 302 44 44 E-mail: info@volunteerthehague.nl Website: www.volunteerthehague.nl