Following is the message of the Executive Committee to Association members upon the end of its term.

Dear friends,

These seem to be times of “shareholders” yet maybe even more so times of people who share. In fact, a key reality of our time is that we have to share ever more our present challenges and our common future. In this context the sharing of visions, of values and of commitments is ever more essential.

IPS has been and is defined by the people who feel they belong to it and who share the visions carried through the decades since its creation, the good times and the more challenging periods. We are all aware of the key role information and communication are assuming in the ever broader processes of multi-participatory global governance. And IPS has been one of the first to identify and to work on our global mutual interdependence, on the interrelationship between the agenda of our system of international organisations and the political, economic, social and societal reality in our different regions.

Understanding and conveying the issues related to the development processes is a central task in this context. This has been a priority task in the past and it will be even more so in the future. What has been added is the need of our global society to understand the shared transnational development processes.

For example, the consequences of global warming have to be understood in their implications for the poor and exposed populations of the crisis regions in the South and in the global challenges of fragmentation or solidarity with the victims of climate change. The fact that the security dimension of this agenda has now been clearly articulated and addressed, inter alia in a first exchange of views in the UN Security Council is underlining these developments. Equally the human rights dimension of the consequences of climate change with threats to the very fundamental human rights to life, to food, to shelter. Maybe this new agenda will make it clear that ultimately human rights, as the constitutional corner stone of our international system, is there to protect the poor, the weak, the exploited, the threatened.

IPS and its wonderful members have a more important task than ever to accomplish, a task that will be understood and appreciated by all those whose daily source of knowledge and understanding benefits from the valuable contributions received from you and from the values and visions reflected in them.

Kind regards,
IPS Executive Committee

The IPS Executive Committee, currently comprised of four members, exercises the powers of the Board of Directors in between Board meetings and supports the Director General in the execution of his duties. The current President of the Executive Committee (2006-2008) is Fifi Benaboud.