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During the past decade, the world has seen a significant increase in Brazilian diplomatic presence, power and action. Brazil sees itself as a rightful global player and trader. At the same time, the world has also witnessed the incredible economic growth and concomitant growth in diplomatic power of China. Many believe that the rise of China will fundamentally change the power balance and the international economic system. As a result of China's rise all countries have asked themselves "how do we build and manage a successful relationship with China?" This report is concerned in partly answering this question within the Brazil-China relationship. More specifically, this paper offers a set of recommendations that would be part of a wider Brazilian National Strategy to strengthen Sino-Brazilian ties. To do this, this report is structured in the following way: (1) it defines national strategy and highlights the importance of China to Brazil; (2) it reviews and briefly evaluates the development of Sino-Brazilian ties since establishment of diplomatic relations in 1974; (3) it looks at best-practice case-studies of certain aspects of Australian and American strategies for engagement with China, selected based on the weaknesses exposed in section (2); (4) it offers recommendations for a Brazilian National Strategy to strengthen Sino-Brazilian ties. To anticipate my five key recommendations explained in detail in section (4) are: 1. The Brazilian government's Secretariat for Strategic Affairs will develop, through a consultation process, a National Strategy for Brazil's engagement with China; 2. Establish the Brazil-China Dialogue, by expanding upon pre-existing COSBAN bilateral mechanism; 3. Establish Confucius Institutes in all Brazilian capital cities (27) by 2016 and to Establish a multi-disciplinary Master's Degree Program in the Area of Chinese Studies by 2016 in three leading Brazilian universities; 4. Establish the Brazil-China Foundation as the peak body fostering people-to-people exchange and mutual education between both countries; and 5. Establishment of the President's Brazil China Scholarship for outstanding students from both countries. This report acknowledges the tremendous positive evolution that Sino-Brazilian ties have gone through since 2004 with the visit of then President Lula to China. At the same time, this report also acknowledges that the bilateral relationship also needs to deepen and mature. In particular, Brazil and China lack substantial exchanges and engagement outside high-level government and business dialogues. Such an elitist approach to this core relationship for Brazil fails to grasp that the basis for an enduring and mutually prosperous relationship is the establishment of strong relationships at both elite and civil society levels, with government and big business leading the way by supporting the engagement of civil society. This report thus takes the position that diplomatic rhetoric is only as good as the people that are charged in executing it, hence the key task of any national strategy is to provide Brazil with the capacity to fulfil the potential of its relationship with China in coming decade.

The construction of national museums in Lithuania can be analysed in relation to traditional conceptualizations of European nationalism which emphasize state building through the identification of an ethnic and cultural nation situated in a particular territory (Hroch 2000). Although state building is not entirely explained by theories of nationalism, this report will broadly rely on this theoretical framework. The history of Lithuanian national museums can be divided into the following stages, based on forms of national statehood, key museums and key political oppositions: I. The first public museums: Baublys local history museum (1812) and Vilnius Museum of Antiquities (1855-1863), were established by Lithuanian-Polish aristocrats who were interested in the political and archaeological history of Lithuania. Opposition to the Russian Empire. II. The first state museums (1918-1940): Vytautas the Great Military Museum and Ciurlionis Art Gallery were organized by groups of Lithuanian intellectuals and established as part of a 'national pantheon' in Kaunas. Opposition to Poland, which occupied Vilnius. III. The establishment of a centralized museums system (1940/1944-1990): state initiated museums were dedicated to Soviet propaganda in line with Marxism-Leninism, but groups of Lithuanian intellectuals built museums relying on the nineteenth-century template of an ethnic nation. Silent opposition to the communist regime, forgetting of the Holocaust. IV. The consolidation of national state museums system (1990-2010): Soviet centralized administrative system was both subverted and modified to emphasize the ethnic Lithuanian dimension of nation-building through history, archaeology and culture. Opposition to Western popular culture and other perceived negative aspects of globalization, but beginning to deal with the Holocaust and communist crimes. Stage I saw emphasis on the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth (PLC), but also on the prehistory of Lithuania. In stage II, the Polish element of Lithuania's history was represented as negative; hence there was little interest in aristocratic culture. History museums focused on the territory of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania (GDL); a cult of grand dukes emerged alongside interest in Lithuanian folk culture. Jewish, Karaite and Belarusian learned societies organized ethnic museums too. During stage III, the political dimensions of ethnic nation-building were eliminated by the communist regime. However, the Lithuanian state was further constructed in museums through a history of the Middle Ages and folk culture. Aristocratic culture and the cultural heritage of the Lithuanian Jewish community did not get much space in Soviet museums, but were not completely eliminated either. The territorial focus was on the Lithuanian Soviet Socialist Republic (LSSR); references to the GDL were carefully censored. In stage IV the political dimension of ethnicity was brought back into the museums. Jews and Karaites were represented in existing museums or acquired their own museums. The Polish dimension of Lithuania's history remained contested. However, there emerged new museums, dedicated to the difficult parts of twentieth century history, such as the Holocaust and communist crimes. Note: A Full list of the abbreviations used can be found in an annexe of this report.

The largest ever evaluation of an international humanitarian response found that most lives were saved by affected & neighbouring communities in the immediate aftermath of the December 2004 tsunami. When the international community bypassed or appropriated local & national response, the impact was inefficient in terms of cost, effort & time. Adapted from the source document.

This article examines the establishment by the Thai court in the late nineteenth century of what was to become the "national library", an institution modelled on colonial scholarly societies being set up at the time. It examines its role in the construction of a corpus of a knowledge about the "Thai nation".

Untersucht werden die Gründe für die Einberufung der zweiten Nationalen Delegiertenkonferenz der Partei seit 1949 sowie deren Vorgeschichte und Ablauf. Im Mittelpunkt stand die Verjüngung der Führungsorgane und die personelle Verstärkung der Reformkräfte. Ausführlich dargestellt werden die personellen Veränderungen im Politbüro, ZK-Sekretariat und ZK. Eindeutige Verlierer sind die Militärs. Den Vertretern marktorientierter Wirtschaftsreformen gelang nur ein partieller Erfolg, da eine Reihe konservativer Politiker den Rücktritt verweigerte und sogar eine Reideologisierung der Partei einleitete. (DÜI-Sch)

In the context of the General principles of risk management, the article discusses the features of risk management that accompany the implementation of national goals, goals of state programs, national and Federal projects (as tools of strategic planning). Recommendations for improving the effectiveness of risk management in a specific subject area are given: the proposed methodological tools are tested on the example of the Federal project «Export of agricultural products» and measures of an applied nature are justified.

United Nations (UN) Member States agreed to start negotiations towards a universal sustainable development agenda. A major challenge is to design goals that guide future action at the national and international levels. These "Goals" usually refer to global development priorities at the highest aggregated level. "Targets" are subcomponents of goals that are needed to achieve the overarching goal. "Indicators" help to monitor progress towards the targets. At the national level, countries prefer to set their own targets and indicators based on their own circumstances and needs. At the international level, setting global minimum standards for all citizens, or agreeing on global environmental ceilings, can ensure better development outcomes for all countries. International development goals can foster coherence in aggregating national actions in addressing global challenges. They can create accountability across countries and ensure comparability on development progress. Combining national development targets and international development goals within one unified agenda, however, is challenging in at least two ways. First, a balance has to be found between flexibility at the local level and a strong basis for accountability at the global level. National level target-setting takes account of local development conditions and allows room for flexibility in addressing complex development challenges. Goal-setting at the global level will, however, prescribe goals to be met by all countries, which may be more or less consistent with the targets set at the national level. Second, it is difficult to define ambitious goals that are meaningful in a heterogeneous world. Countries differ regarding income, poverty, equality and geography, for instance. Global standards and rules need to be ambitious, yet they have to be fair towards all countries. Designing a universal development agenda has to address the differentiation of countries and integrate national- and international-level development goals within one agenda. This paper examines three approaches for designing the post-2015 agenda: 1) the Millennium Development Goals approach (top-down negotiation), 2) the inductive approach (bottom-up) and 3) the two-tier-list approach (a hybrid of the two). Each approach is characterised by different advantages and disadvantages that decision-makers negotiating the post-2015 agenda need to consider carefully. This paper proposes five key questions for judging the merits of each approach: How are global and national development goals linked? How does the approach influence negotiations? Are sectorspecific and cross-cutting goals included? How does the approach foster accountability? How communicable will the future agenda be? In light of these considerations, the two-tier-list approach would allow for combining a list of global goals to foster global collective action with nationally set targets and indicators. The two-tier-list approach offers the greatest potential for designing an ambitious, communicable, accountable and relevant future development agenda.

The use of information technology in healthcare services can improve the quality of care. The large amount of research has demonstrated the role of the use of Information and communication technology (ICT) solutions to overcome the challenges in patient information management. One of the challenges is the healthcare information sharing between providers. In high income countries, the challenge of exchanging information is almost solved. Nearly all high income countries have implemented a national healthcare network which connects healthcare providers in the whole country. Furthermore, European Union (EU) aims at the point of cross-border healthcare information exchange which supports the mobility of EU citizens. However, in developing countries, they are not yet ready to take the full advantage of ICT in their healthcare systems. The main objective of the thesis was to design the architecture of a national health information system for Rwanda, which is a developing country with limited resources. The research was based on three main issues: One was to determine existing health IT solutions in the healthcare system of Rwanda. The second one was to explore how other countries have developed their national health information systems (NHISs). The third was to find out how open source solutions can build a national network for a country. From the research, the components of the architecture have been defined and finally the architecture was designed. The research started by examining the current situation of ICT solutions in the healthcare system of Rwanda. This showed the progress in implementing certain electronic medical record systems in certain health facilities. However, there is no single hospital with a fully functional system. This step was followed by exploring how other countries implemented their NHIS and it showed that the process varies country by country. It was clear that in developing countries, open source solutions got a large market share contrary to developed countries where proprietary systems are the most used. Finally, open source solutions proved the capability to build a NHIS with different examples of robust open source solutions available in health IT nowadays. Although it would have been interesting, the thesis does not estimate the financial resources needed for the implementation of the architecture. It is possible to implement the NHIS for Rwanda by using both proprietary and open source solutions. However, the interoperability issue can be mitigated by minimizing different types of electronic medical records in healthcare facilities.

Sprachminderheiten sind in der heutigen Gesellschaft mindestens genauso so präsent wie Mehrheitssprachen. Daher gilt ein besonderes Augenmerk der Arbeit dieser Minderheitengruppe. Dabei werden auf europäischer, nationaler und regionaler Ebene vorhandene Maßnahmen und Förderungen näher erläutert. Zu Beginn zeigt ein historischer Überblick, wie die heutige mehrsprachige Schweiz entstand und warum in Italien eine so große Anzahl von Minderheitensprachen existiert. Neben menschenrechtlichen Grundlagen ist auf europäischer Ebene vor allem die "Europäische Charta der Regional- oder Minderheitensprachen" zu nennen. Die EU setzt sich bewusst für die mehrsprachige Union ein und fördert diese durch zahlreiche Projekte. Für viele Mitgliedsländer war die Charta Basis für die nationale Gesetzgebung. So wurde in Italien durch das Minderheitenschutzgesetz (Legge 482/1999) auch schwachen Minderheiten ein Schutz gewährt. In der Schweiz wird dieser durch das Sprachengesetz und die Sprachenverordnung des Bundes bzw. den Kantonsverfassungen festgelegt. Die Umsetzung erfolgt in beiden Ländern auf regionaler Ebene. Durch das Autonomiestatut von einzelnen Regionen sind in Italien aber starke Minderheiten dennoch besser geschützt und werden im alltäglichen Bereich auch besser gefördert. Da sowohl in der Schweiz als auch in Italien das Italienische - je nach Betrachtung - einmal Mehrheit und einmal Minderheit darstellt, wird auch auf die sprachliche Situation näher eingegangen. ; Nowadays the language used by the minority of the population of a country is just as important as the language of the majority. This thesis will pay special attention to the minority groups and how they are protected on a European, national and regional level. This thesis will cover a short historical overview on how multilingual Switzerland was created and also why there are a lot of minority languages in Italy. Following a brief historical background, the "European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages" which is very important in Europe for the protection of those minorities, is explained. The EU supports lots of projects and tries to keep up a multilingual union. The Charter , a law implemented in the EU in 2001 to protect language minorities, was the basis for national laws for many member states of the EU as well as Italy. Because of that the weak minorities are protected by the minority protection act "Legge 482/1999". In Switzerland, this is determined by a special language law/ regulation and the cantonal constitutions.The observing and realization of those laws in Switzerland and Italy are the tasks of regional authorities, but due to the autonomy of some regions the Italian minority is better protected and receives better support in their daily lives. The linguistic situation will be discussed further since in Switzerland and Italy the Italian language represents the minority and majority respectively depending on the point of view. ; vorgelegt von Eva Kassler ; Abweichender Titel laut Übersetzung der Verfasserin/des Verfassers ; Zsfassungen in dt. und engl. Sprache ; Graz, Univ., Masterarb., 2015 ; (VLID)757406

Quiet Diplomacy in Action is the first comprehensive account of the work of Max van der Stoel as High Commissioner on National Minorities for the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe (OSCE). Because Van der Stoel worked discreetly, until now very little has been written about his activities. This book takes the reader behind the scenes to explain why the post of High Commissioner was created, what his mandate is, how he worked in practice, and what recurrent themes and issues he encountered. Quiet Diplomacy in Action also gives a detailed summary of the High Commissioner's activities in the more than fifteen countries that he was involved with between 1993 and 2001. Major documents relating to national minorities in the OSCE context are included in an annex. As Michael Ignatieff writes in the Foreword: `Everyone talks about conflict prevention. One of the few senior figures that actually does it is the OSCE High Commissioner on National Minorities'. This book, written in co-operation with Mr. Van der Stoel, gives a unique insight into conflict prevention, minority rights, and the challenge of resolving inter-ethnic tensions. It should be considered a primary resource for all those interested in these subjects

The Grassland Silk Road is the earliest road across the grasslands of northern Eurasia. It is divided into three routes, namely the north line, the middle line and the south line, and has formed a famous trade road. The Grassland Silk Road has played an irreplaceable historical role in communication and integration between the North and the South, as well as between China and the West, and has also provided the material foundation and spiritual bond for today's economic construction of the New Silk Road Belt. The study of the Grassland Silk Road illustrates the historical process of sino-foreign economic and cultural exchanges and serves today's "One Belt and One Road" development strategy.

Information and Communication Technology ( ICT ) have an important role to play in changing and modernizing educational systems and ways of learning. Inventive use of ICT is defined as the use of ICT applications that hold up the learning outcomes based on the requirements of the modern information society. There is a growing importance for ICT within the school curriculum. Not only it is used to support teaching and learning within other curriculum subjects, but it is also a subject in its own right as a separate discipline. Therefore, the Indian Government administrators, educational policy planners, academicians, and all other stakeholders gave their utmost attention towards making a comprehensive national ICT Policy in this regard. In that way of advancement the first draft policy report prepared in 2008 and finally in 2012, the said policy took an ultimate form by the Department of School Education and Literacy, MHRD, Govt. of India. This policy endeavours to provide guidelines to assist the States education system in optimizing the use of ICT in school education within a national policy framework. The present discussions of this paper should be highlighted about the major aims, principles, and relevant recommendations of that National Policy on ICT in School Education.