Reiner Braun - Disarmament, Peace and Development

An Economist and the Director of the Third World Forum, Samir Amin is an Egyptian-French Marxian economist. Currently, he is the Director of the Third World Forum in Dakar, Senegal. In 2009, he was awarded the Ibn Rushd Prize for Freedom of Thought in Berlin. He was born and raised in Egypt. From 1947 until 1957, he studied in Paris. He received a diploma in political science before graduating in statistics and economics. In Paris, he joined the French Communist Party (PCF), but later distanced himself from Soviet Marxism. After he completed his PhD in 1957, he returned to Cairo. There, he worked as a research officer for the governments Institution for Economic Planning. Later, he became an advisor to the Ministry of Planning in Bamako, Mali. In 1966, he qualified as a university lecturer in economics and received teaching assignments in France and Dakar. For 10 years, he was the Director of the Institut Africain de Dveloppement conomique et de Planification (IDEP), UN. Since 1980, he served as the Director of the African Office of the Third World Forum, an international, nongovernmental association for research and discussion. He is also the President of the World Forum for Alternatives. According to Samir Amin, the biggest crises of our time (including the energy crisis, food crisis, ecological crisis, and climate change) are elementary components of one major problem: the current capitalistic globalization based on the exploitation of resources. Samir Amin is a decided advocate of the developing countries autonomy and reclaims new approaches to overcome the crisis of capitalism.