Revista Conjuntura Austral

6-23

Authors: Danny Zahreddine

After more than two years since the beginning of the Syrian uprising, the clash between government and opposition remains intense. The difficulty of breaking the impasse between the actors involved is the complex network of alliances and interests surrounding Syria. This article will address the Syrian crisis in its multidimensional aspect, reinforcing the role of religious, historic and geographic issues of the conflict. For this, it is needed a view of three levels of analysis: domestic, regional and systemic.

35-52

Authors: Bruna Figueiredo Riediger

In January 2011, when Dilma Rousseff took office as Brazilian president, the Arab world saw the explosion of public protests – it was the “Arab Spring”. In Syria, the initially peaceful demonstrations evolved to a serious internal conflict, which caught the attention of the international community. Brazil, since the beginning, was a strong advocate of a consensus and a negotiated solution.

69-94

Authors: Jacqueline A. H Haffner, Genivone Etmy Sequeira Viana

This paper aims to analyze the challenges and opportunities of the African Union, showing that its creation falls within a larger search strategy for development. In this regard, the African Union would have been created with not only the intention of setting Africa in the world’s economic scenery - filling the negative legacy by its predecessor, the Organization of African Unity – but as well with the intention of solving social, political and economic issues faced by the black continent, issues which have grown due to globalization phenomenon. Considering these facts, the purpose of this paper is therefore to examine, under the light of challenges and opportunities faced by the African continent, how the African Union has been able to fight the social, political and economic problems of its Member States since its foundation.

115-127

Authors: Leonardo Ramos, Pedro Henrique Schneider Parreiras

This paper aims to show some of the main questions that were discussed in the V BRICS Summit and analyze, from there, their impact on the process of institutionalization of the BRICS. The hypothesis is that the Durban Summit indicates that the group is moving towards a new level of cooperation and institutionalization, and the Development Bank of the BRICS and common reserve fund elements that would point in this direction - it is also necessary to take into account the limits of such initiatives.