Photograph by JFPhotoon 201.   ‘Every culture has either a matrilineal or pratilineal structure; there are a few cultures that have both systems. The matrilineal and patrilineal history is part of the humanity and identity of all human beings; these concepts empower women and men and transmit the ancestral cultures, since we learn standards of behavior from father and mother.’    By John Freeman.   The monarchy is a multi-dynastic institution with genealogies from male and female lines. Any changes to the succession law must never exclude the concept of royal lineages, since all cultures include patrilineal and/or matrilineal organizations. My ideas for the succession law do not discriminate for order of birth or gender. The concepts have four components: 1) If succession rights come from a mother, daughters have preference over sons. If succession rights come from a father, sons have preference over daughters. The gender of the parent (with dynastic rights) is the first precedent in succession rights. 2) Succession rights alternate from youngest to oldest in one generation and from oldest to youngest in the next, to avoid unequal treatment of any kind. 3) Rights of succession come from Proximity of Blood and Lineages. Proximity of Blood means that daughters/sons of a monarch come first in succession, followed by granddaughters and grandsons, or more distance blood descendants. Succession rights only go as far as the great great-granddaughters/grandsons 4) Lineages: Descendants of queens in direct female line have succession rights in perpetuity. Descendants of kings in direct male line have succession rights in perpetuity. Why the preference for females, when succession rights comes from a mother? Why the preference for males, when succession rights comes from a father? At the present time the monarchy and society are patrilineal; the monarchy only recognizes paternal lines. This is justification for male-primogeniture, and gender-blind primogeniture fails to correct discrimination. A patrilineal/matrilineal system of succession is a good example of gender equality for society. A dual system of succession would eventually produce a Netherlands type monarchy, where matrilineal Queens succeed one another, since in every monarchy there are kings that only have daughters. My suggestions promote the maternal/paternal lines of both sexes, and in the long run there is no gender discrimination. Why alternate succession from youngest to oldest in one generation and from oldest to youngest in the next generation? This is equality, since primogeniture is a hierarchical concept that favors the firs-born. My concepts permit succession of oldest, youngest, and middle daughters/sons. Please, see hypothetical genealogical tree on next page. What can the monarchy do to be more inclusive of women? The name of a dynasty only comes from a man, and women do not have this right/tradition. If the Queen names the dynasty, the house of Bowes-Lyon Windsor after her mother and father, this is recognition of the dual maternal and paternal lineages of the monarchy; it would grant women and their maternal lines equal social status. Why is gender-blind primogeniture not equality? Equality is a concept of universal application. Gender-blind primogeniture is a selective application of laws, and it discriminates against people who are not the first-born. The following are examples of selective application of laws, and these examples are not equality: Women and men have the right to vote, but women do not have equal pay. We are all citizens, but people of African ancestry are 3/5 of a person and do not have the right to vote. Gender-blind primogeniture goes against the civil rights and laws of the United Kingdom and Commonwealth, since these nations do not apply laws and civil rights selectively. This is a law for the 1% of 1% of the population, and it is not a good example for men, women, and children who are not the first-born. Conclusion Monarchies and cultures have lineage traditions (maternal and paternal lines). Gender-blind primogeniture is comparable to re-inventing the wheel, because gender-blind primogeniture destroys the cultural concept of maternal and paternal lines. Primogeniture of any kind is all about who comes first, and it implies that the justification for the monarchy is primogeniture. The monarchy is an institution of service and a cultural system of paternal and maternal lines. Any changes to the succession law must include changes to the patrilineal cultural system. English-speaking countries have a patriarchal cultural organization, where the identity of the family comes from paternal line. My suggestions satisfy the ideals of equality better than gender-blind primogeniture, because it recognizes the contributions of both genders and their paternal/maternal lines. This is of practical application for the non-royal 99% of population, since it provides working class families and women the identity of the maternal line; this would required a dual system of maternal/paternal surnames, since everyone has matrilineal and patrilineal histories.    

Business world honors ambassador for Bangladesh trade promotion   His Excellency Gerben de Jong Ambassador of the Netherlands in Dhaka, Bangladesh, received today the 2014 Embassy Prize. The prize is awarded by the Dutch business world every two years, to the embassy offering the best support in promoting trade. One of the Dhaka embassy’s initiatives is the Netherlands Bangladesh Business Platform in collaboration with Nyenrode Business Universiteit. Among other things the Business Platform organizes trade missions for Dutch SMEs, and it has developed the website www.nbbp.org containing information and research reports about doing business in Bangladesh.  Ambassador De Jong said: “Together with Nyenrode Universiteit., the embassy works at promoting activities between the Netherlands and Bangladesh. With a growing middle-class and a young population in the dynamic Bangladesh, there are opportunities for Dutch entrepreneurs thanks to a strong entrepreneurial spirit and the ambitious vision of the Bangladeshi government. The active involvement of the business world has become an important link in combating poverty.”     The relationship between Bangladesh and the Netherlands is shifting from traditional development assistance to sustainable trade and investment. Professor of International Business Strategy Prof. Dr. Désiree van Gorp of Nyenrode: “It’s fantastic that the Dutch business community is honoring the embassy with this prize. Research has shown that there are enormous opportunities for Dutch companies in food production and processing, water, logistics and IT outsourcing. Its strong economic growth means the country has become less dependent on development cooperation. Bangladesh offers growing opportunities for a sustainable economic relationship. Three trade missions to Bangladesh have so far been organized, with participation by 38 Dutch SMEs from a variety of sectors.      

  By Deborah Valentine.   For more than 28 years ACCESS has been serving the international community, of The Hague and the Netherlands. Starting in 1986 from the then small international community of The Hague, ACCESS has grown into a unique formula of community building & support. The volunteers it recruits, 90% of which are themselves ‘expats’, or as we prefer to call them internationals, have been using their skills, talents, time and empathy to create a supportive structure for new arrivals. Working as much for themselves as for the public at large, volunteers at ACCESS have over the years formed friendships, created a community for one another, and shared their experiences: all, to help people settle and live in the Netherlands as successfully as possible and make the most of their time in this country. Through its Helpdesk ACCESS volunteers are available five days a week, by phone or email, with the questions people may have: questions which range from understanding the healthcare system to finding a special service. On the website: volunteers and Partners share their knowledge, several FAQ Guides can be found, a topical quarterly lifestyle e-zine and a broad variety of articles on multiple aspects of living in the Netherlands. And, the on-call Counselling Network is there to guide those in need of more specific support to the answers they need. Volunteering opportunities are currently most accessible to those who live in and around The Hague, but the value of our information is accessible, and relevant to anyone living anywhere in the Netherlands. Want to know more, perhaps be a part of this vibrant community building network, meet people in a similar situation as yours – even perhaps from your own country of origin? Do take part in one of the monthly information sessions, or speak to Mr Roy Lie A Tjam former ACCESS Volunteer and currently Editor of the Diplomat Magazine for his impressions. Upcoming events: March 18th Volunteer Information Morning   (http://access-nl.org/about-access/how-we-do-it/volunteers/volunteer-information-mornings.aspx) March 30^th Welcome to The Hague (http://access-nl.org/about-access/what-we-do/welcome-to-the-hague.aspx)

By Ruud van der Lem, Drone-Solutions.nl. In many parts of the world, mosquitoes are responsible for a variety of illnesses for both humans and domestic animals, like Malaria, Chikungunya, Dog Heartworm, Dengue, Yellow Fever, Eastern Equine Encephalitis, Rift Valley fever, Zika virus, St. Louis Encephalitis, LaCrosse, Encephalitis, Western Equine Encephalitis and the West Nile Virus. Many of them can be lethal as well. Nearly 700 million people get a mosquito borne illness each year resulting in greater than one million deaths… The first US project Now the Florida Keys Mosquito Control District has initiated a project, to search for the mosquito breeding grounds, using drones, equipped with infra-red sensitive camera’s. These cameras can determine small shallow water pools from within varied rural areas. Finding these pools quickly means the authorities can than treat the areas with larvicide in order to destroy both the eggs and the larves. Domestic areas Mosquitoes have a fly range from up to 3 miles, so this ring around domestic areas is sufficient enough to gain a large effect. Project improvement We would encourage more research on this subject, whereby special designed software, automatically fixes the date/time, coordinates and the size of the suspected pools. With the use of GPS/smartphone/mapping, the larve destroy team than can quickly treat the locations. Conclusion In the war against mosquitos, drones can really make the difference. A additional benefit is not only the additional employment in operating such a project, but also the people’s awareness towards the positive aspects of drones. Drone-Solutions.nl is a specialist in providing solutions in remote sensing and cooperates with the security and drone industry.

By Mitesh D. Mistry – Diplomat Magazine’s Associate Editor in the United Kingdom Since the 1920’s, America has evolved into the world’s largest economy. Their status as world economic leaders has enabled them to dictate the course of global economics. However with the rise and threat of other regional economies like that of East-Asia, home to the large economies of China and Japan; it is argued that American economic hegemony is declining and coming to an end. The East Asian economy, consisting of China, South Korea, Japan and Hong-Kong, is one of the most thriving regional economies in the world. China’s economic rise, after their free-market reform in the late 70’s, had a huge impact on their long-term economic prosperity. It created more optimism over the last decade as China entered new markets such as mobile technology, with Huawei overtaking Sweden’s Ericsson to become the world’s largest telecoms equipment-maker. The quality of life improved significantly for median Chinese workers as they benefited from higher salaries, unlike American workers, due to China’s healthy economic growth. This meant more Chinese workers could afford to exchange their bicycles for vehicles, strengthening China’s car industry considerably; Chinese production increased greatly from 2 million cars to 18 million cars over the last decade overshadowing America’s automobile output of 11.6 million last year. This decline in American automobile production can be attributed to the global recession, which the US had failed to fully recover from; something which President Obama acknowledges, “I do think that one of the challenges that we are going face in the US, at a time when we are still recovering from the financial crisis is, how do we respond to some of the challenges of globalisation? The fact of the matter is the US was such an enormously dominant economic power, we were such a large market, our industry, our technology, our manufacturing was so significant that we always met the rest of the world economically on our terms. And now because of the incredible rise of China and other countries, there is real competition.”  The recession showed the first signs of economic power shifting favourably towards East-Asia, with particular focus on the Chinese and South Korean companies flourishing in the past five years, such as Huawei and Samsung respectively, due to particular development in science and technology. However despite the outcome of the recent recession making China appear economically superior, America can still be considered a major force in the global economy; through the International Monetary Fund. With high voting powers within the IMF and global use of the dollar, America has spread its global economic dominance through the loans and conditions the IMF issue to crisis-hit economies. Furthermore, the East-Asian ‘bloc’ doesn’t have an alternative institution to rival and challenge this American influenced organisation. Although the Chiang Mai Initiative is the closest East-Asian rival to the IMF, it is based on the foreign reserves of the East-Asian economies. Surprisingly, China’s foreign reserves are in decline. Figures from the People’s Bank of China showed its reserves had slipped 0.6% to $3.18tn This means if an ‘Asian Monetary Fund’ was created to rival the IMF, China would have to consider whether or not to fund it if their foreign reserves were forecasted for continuous decline. In spite of China’s economic success, rivaling that of America’s over the last decade, the continued global use of the dollar, which finances over half of the world’s trade, is a greater achievement for which global economic dominance can be measured; America’s global economic dominance is not at an end. Nevertheless if other East-Asian economies grow significantly and help push China to higher degrees of economic success and the use of its currency on a global scale, it could instigate a shift in global economic power to the East-Asian region and ignite a potential clash for future leadership of the global economy; between an American-led West and a China-led Asia.

Dushanbe, Tajikistan June 9 to 11, 2015 High Level International Conference on the implementation of the International Decade for Action “Water for Life”, 2005-2015.   On 19 December 2014 the UNGA has adopted a resolution (A/RES/69/215) entitled “International Decade for Action, “Water for Life”, 2005-2015, and further efforts to achieve the sustainable development of water resources” calling upon member countries, UN system institutions, including the “UN-Water” and other organizations to comprehensively evaluate progress achieved in the implementation of the Decade and continue taking steps for achieving internationally agreed water-related goals, including those indicated in the outcome document of the Rio+20 Conference, entitled “The future we want”. The resolution as the previous water related initiatives of Tajikistan has found wide support at the UN General Assembly and more than fifty UN Member States, including Afghanistan, Algeria, Armenia, Australia, Azerbaijan, Bangladesh, Belarus, Bolivia, China, Croatia, Cuba, Eritrea, Finland, Georgia, Haiti, Hungary, India, Indonesia, Islamic Republic of Iran, Iraq, Japan, Kazakhstan, Kuwait, Kyrgyzstan, Malaysia, Mongolia, Montenegro, Morocco, New Zealand, Pakistan, Paraguay, Philippines, Qatar, Republic of Korea, Republic of Moldova, Russian Federation, Senegal, Seychelles, Singapore, Spain, Sri Lanka, Sudan, Switzerland, Syrian Arab Republic, Thailand, Timor-Leste, Togo, Turkmenistan, Ukraine, Venezuela, Yemen have become the co-sponsors of the resolution. The adoption of the resolution by consensus reaffirms the fact that water initiatives by Tajikistan are of global importance and are widely supported by the UN Member States. The resolution implies the convening of the two important events: High-level interactive dialogue of the sixty-ninth session of the General Assembly in New York within the week after the World Water Day on 22 March, 2015; and the High Level International Conference on the implementation of the International Decade for Action “Water for Life”, 2005-2015 in Dushanbe, Tajikistan. The Government of Tajikistan as the host of the latter event which is scheduled on 9-11 June, 2015 in Dushanbe, alongside with the “UN-Water” and other UN institutions, international and regional organizations has already started its preliminary work in order to facilitate the whole process. Thus, aimed at successfully holding the Conference, as well as developing a comprehensive Programme of the Conference with the participation of all categories of water users and decision-makers the International Steering Committee of the Conference from among the representatives of the partner countries, international and regional institutions, river basin organizations, NGOs, the private sector and other stakeholders has been established. Moreover, within the National Organizing Committee under the chairmanship of the Prime Minister of the Republic of Tajikistan a Special working group (from all relevant ministries of Tajikistan) has been summoned to actively engage in organizational matters of the Conference. The main goal of the Conference is a comprehensive discussion of the issues of implementation of the International Decade for Action “Water for Life”, 2005-2015, which will later play a fundamental role in conducting comprehensive review of the implementation of the International Decade with bringing its results to the notice of wider international community. As the international community approached the year 2015 it’s important to recall that on 23 December 2003 the UNGA at its 58th session adopted the resolution A/RES/58/217. In accordance with the resolution the period 2005–2015 was declared as the “International Decade for Action, “Water for Life” (www.un.org/waterforlifedecade), the main goals of which alongside with promotion of efforts to fulfil international commitments made on water and water-related issues by the year 2015 were also the development of plans for integrated water resource management and water-use efficiency in rendering assistance to the developing countries. Today the need for a comprehensive assessment and review of the activities carried out during this period, identification of the impediments preventing countries from implementation of the Decade goals, as well as planning of the further activities for the post 2015 period become very critical. Therefore, conducting the High Level International Conference on the implementation of the International Decade for Action “Water for Life”, 2005-2015 in Dushanbe, Tajikistan (June 9-11, 2015) in this particular year is considered as a timely and effective step towards raising the awareness of the international community about the water sector trends and mobilizing efforts of the governments, UN institutions, international and non-governmental organizations, as well as other parties at all levels involved in the water problems solution. The Conference will gather together the representatives of the UN member countries’ governments, UN institutions, international and regional organizations, international financial institutions, business communities, non-governmental organizations, civil society, as well as scientists and experts. Invitations to the UN member countries, international and regional organizations and other partners will be sent on behalf of the Government of the Republic of Tajikistan and the National Organizing Committee in due course. For more information about the Conference, visit www.waterforlifeconf2015.org or contact the Secretariat of the Conference: 33 Sheroz str., Dushanbe 734001, Republic of Tajikistan E-mail:info@waterforlifeconf2015.org; Tel: (+992 37) 227 68 43 Fax: (+992 37) 227 68 4