Twenty-five years ago, on 20 November 1989, the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child (CRC) was adopted by the United Nations. Olivia Girard, from the international Waldorf organisation Friends of Waldorf Education explains its importance and how it relates to Waldorf education.

BERLIN (NNA) – The Convention on the Rights of the Child introduced a revolution in children’s rights. For the first time in history, children were treated as subjects instead of objects. Just like adults, they have…

A new study on the history of Weleda AG has been published by the Berliner Wissenschaftsverlag which for the first time gives a thorough insight into the fate of the company in the 1930s and 1940s using documents from the archives. The author is the historian Uwe Werner. NNA correspondent Wolfgang G. Voegele took a look at it.

BERLIN (NNA) – Werner is a former archivist at the Goetheanum and author of the standard work on anthroposophists in National Socialism, Anthroposophen im…

A new 8-volume critical edition of Rudolf Steiner’s works is being published by the respected German academic publisher frommann-holzboog. The edition, Schriften, Kritische Ausgabe (SKA), is edited by Christian Clement, associate professor of German at Brigham Young University, Utah, and  is being jointly distributed by the Rudolf Steiner Verlag. The first volume (actually volume 5 in the series) was published in August 2013 and second volume (volume 7 of the series) came out in November. Ansgar…

MADRID/ARRECIFE (NNA) – Protests are continuing on the Canaries following the decision by the Spanish government to approve oil drilling off the islands. On Lanzarote, the only petrol station there belonging to Repsol, one of the oil companies which are part of the drilling consortium, is being boycotted said Robert Schmid, president of the Fundación Antroposófica in Puerto del Carmen.

In June, some 250,000 Canaries inhabitants demonstrated against the drilling, a protest which received little…

The much-debated study by the US historian Professor Peter Staudenmaier about anthroposophy in fascist Germany and Italy has now been published in the Netherlands. Staudenmaier, who obtained his doctorate with this study at Cornell University/NY and who is often presented as a vehement critic of anthroposophy, now teaches at Marquette University Milwaukee.

Staudenmaier‘s book is an updated, greatly revised and abridged version of his dissertation. Alongside a densely-packed analysis of…

About 4,000 guests visit the Centro de TerapiaAntroposófica and the Finca Lomos Altos in Lanzarote every year. The activities of both institutions are made possible by a less well-known foundation, La Fundación Canaria Antroposófica, which celebrated its twenty-fifth anniversary this year. NNA correspondent Cornelie Unger-Leistner was there.

PUERTO DEL CARMEN/LANZAROTE (NNA) – “What are those favourable stars that watch over this island of Lanzarote?” This question, originally posed by the…

OSLO/BRUSSELS (NNA) – The former Norwegian prime minister Jens Stoltenberg, who took over as secretary general of NATO on Wednesday, went through the majority of his schooling in a Waldorf school.

The social democrat, who was born in 1959, attended the Oslo Rudolf Steiner School from 1966 to 1975. He then moved to the Oslo Katedralskol for the last three years where he prepared for his school leaving exams. Stoltenberg comes from a family of diplomats.

The Norwegian, who has in the past…

High-level intergovernmental talks on climate change took place at the UN in New York at the end of last month. Leaders and representatives from 120 member states took part in the one-day UN climate summit on 23 September which aimed to keep the issue of climate change on the global agenda. John Stubley looks back at the event.

NEW YORK (NNA) – The talks were the biggest high-level climate change meeting since COP 15 in Copenhagen in 2009, during which governments failed to produce binding…

BRUSSELS (NNA) – About 400 million people in 28 countries will be entitled to go to the polls on 22-25 May to elect a European Parliament for the eighth time. Yet never has the European idea been further from offering the citizens of Europe a political vision for the future. But civil society organisations have urged that the crisis should be seen as an opportunity to bring about change.

Most citizens now associate Europe with the debt crisis and bureaucratic interference. Thus it is no…

LONDON/BERLIN/MUNICH (NNA) – As EU and US negotiatiors sit down to the fifth round of negotiations in Arlington, Virginia this week on a controversial transantlantic free trade agreement, protests are continuing in Europe.

The Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP) aims to create the largest free-trade zone in the world. The agreement proposes to reduce customs tariffs and trade barriers and protect investments against government intervention.

In Germany, more than 650,000…