Suchergebnisse

In October 2010 Portugal was elected for a two years term at the United Nations Security Council. This article constitutes a descriptive memory of the steps, arguments, strategies and work methods making also a brief analysis of the results achieved during the Portuguese campaign to the Security Council. Adapted from the source document.

This article traces the evolution of Portugal's relations with its former African colonies over the thirty years since independence. It begins by identifying the special place held by Africa in the Portuguese political imagination, & shows that the relationships with the former colonies are still heavily influenced by this heritage. The past three decades have been witness to deep transformations in Portuguese foreign policy as a result of the end of the empire & the entry into the European Communities. Nevertheless, one finds that Africa reappears systematically as an important point of reference in Portuguese foreign policy, despite the inexistence of anything that might be called an Africa policy. The article then looks at Portugal's different relations with each of the former colonies, all of which show a tendency for deeper & stronger links over the years. Development aid is mentioned as an example of Portuguese difficulties in developing policy instruments, & the emergence of the Community of Portuguese-Speaking Countries is shown, with its strengths & fragilities to be evidence of the emergence of an era in which the scars of the colonial period are much less important than in the past. Adapted from the source document.