The just ended one-day conference “Working towards Gender Mainstreamed Governmental Bodies”, organised by USAID Takamol-Gender Programme, in cooperation with the Jordanian National Commission for Women, is certainly the valuable start of a long process aiming to attai

Prime Minister Abdullah Ensour has been issuing circulars, memos and even a guidebook to government institutions, asking them to apply the “good governance practices” programme prepared by the Ministry of Public Sector Development and other pertinent units, to facilit

The talks His Majesty King Abdullah held in Amman on Thursday with US Secretary of State John Kerry and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu were successful, attesting to the King’s diplomatic skills and the Kingdom’s important role in many issues pertaining to P

The recent vigil by University of Jordan students protesting the hikes in tuition fees raises important issues that universities need to mull on. From the university’s perspective, the 30 to 100 per cent increase in fees for the so-called “parallel” and post-gr

It seems that the two mainstream Palestinian factions Fateh and Hamas are back to their old routine, and back at each other’s throat. No sooner had the ink of their signatures on last month’s new reconciliation agreement dried up than skirmishes between them started.

Syrian President Bashar Assad might give peace a chance by acknowledging that the proposal the UN envoy had for his country, calling for a piecemeal approach to ensure ceasefire, is “worth studying”. The UN envoy suggested that a truce be observed first in Aleppo, wh

The minister of interior has just announced that a committee formed by the Cabinet will scrutinise the moratorium on death penalty, which has frozen execution of death penalties since 2006, when the last execution was carried out. The issue of death penalty has its pro and con c

On the occasion of the 25th anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall, Mikhail Gorbachev, the last leader of the former Soviet Union, warned that the world was on the brink of another Cold War. Gorbachev seems to put the blame on both the West and on Russia for the rapid deteri

The Senate wants Arab, Muslim and international parliamentary unions to hold an emergency meeting on East Jerusalem, in general, and on the recent wave of Israeli attacks on the Muslim sites in the Haram Al Sharif compound, in particular. The Upper House of Parliament also wants