OPINION

Map: Financial Action Task Force countries. Source: FATF

Ultimata to Iran and Pakistan Threaten to Cloud China’s FATF Presidency

Viewpoint by James M. Dorsey

James M. Dorsey – a senior fellow at Nanyang Technological University’s S. Rajaratnam School of International Studies, an adjunct senior research fellow at the National University of Singapore’s Middle East Institute and co-director of the University of Wuerzburg’s Institute of Fan Culture – offered this viewpoint to IDN.

SINGAPORE (IDN) – China’s chairmanship of an international anti-money laundering and terrorism finance watchdog could put to the test the cohesiveness of global efforts to counter political violence with Iran and Pakistan hoping that they will be able to avoid blacklisting with China at the helm.

: Phil Harris; OPINION; 27 June 2019

Photo: Xi with the first lady during the Moscow Victory Day Parade on 9 May 2015. CC BY 4.0

President Xi of China Remains an Enigma

Viewpoint by Jonathan Power

LUND, Sweden (IDN-INPS) – Xi Jinping, president of China, remains an enigma. You watched him on television reviewing the dancing in Pyongyang in the company of Kim Jong-un and his face is near to expressionless when in repose. He doesn’t stand like an arrogant man and we recall that time when he went out to eat in a noodle cafe he joined the back of the queue. His face doesn’t look hard, as did Hitler’s or Stalin’s or Donald Trump’s and Boris Johnson’s do today.

: Jonathan Power; OPINION; 25 June 2019

Families in a Changing World Call for Reality Check

Viewpoint by Phumzile Mlambo-Ngcuka

The writer is UN Under-Secretary-General and Executive Director, of UN Women.

NEW YORK (IDN) – What’s a family? Classically, we think of a mother, a father and the children. The father goes out to work, the mother takes care of the children, maybe she works part time, at home or close to home so she can be there when the children get back from school. It’s a common formula in advertising, movies and the media. It’s the pattern of romance plots, the story of song lyrics, the image for illustrations in schoolbooks. It’s comforting, stable, predictable. And it’s wrong, for the majority of families in the world.

: UN Bureau; OPINION; 25 June 2019

Photo: Izumi Nakamitsu, UN High Representative for Disarmament Affairs (UNODA) addressing the High-Level Panel “CTBT: Science and Technology in a Changing World” on 24 June at Hofburg Palace, Vienna, as part of the Science and Technology Conference2019 (SnT2019) 24 June-28 June 2019. Credit: CTBTO

Science & Technology Can Contribute to Nuclear Disarmament and Non-Proliferation

Viewpoint by Izumi Nakamitsu

The following are extensive excerpts from the statement by Izumi Nakamitsu, UN High Representative for Disarmament Affairs (UNODA) at the High-Level Panel “CTBT: Science and Technology in a Changing World” on 24 June at Hofburg Palace, Vienna, in the opening session of the Science and Technology Conference2019 (SnT2019) 24 June-28 June 2019.

VIENNA (IDN-INPS) – The world is witnessing a technological revolution through which an unparalleled convergence in scientific and technological innovations are changing almost every aspect of people’s daily lives. Communications, logistics, manufacturing and, yes, war and peace-making have all been, and will continue to be, revolutionized in our lifetimes.

: UN Bureau; OPINION; 24 June 2019

Photo: Eritrean refugees in Ethiopia. Credit: IOM – UN Migration

Continuous Influx of Eritrean Refugees Challenges Ethiopia

Viewpoint by Kristina Melicherová

BRUSSELS (IDN) – Refugee and host communities in Ethiopia came together on June 20 to commemorate World Refugee Day through various cultural activities, organized within refugee camps as well as urban settings. But the reality behind the festivities is that hundreds of Eritrean refugees continue to cross the border between Eritrea and Ethiopia every day.

Despite the peace deal between Ethiopia and Eritrea, signed in July 2018, the internal situation and oppression of Eritrean people, mainly through the indefinite military service, remains intact. The continued inflow of young Eritreans fleeing oppression is putting strain on Ethiopia’s refugee camps.

: UN Bureau; THE WORLD; Africa; 22 June 2019

Photo: U.S. Navy convoy in the Strait of Hormuz on July 21, 2016. Source: Wikimedia Commons.

Send in to the Persian Gulf a Flotilla Under the UN Flag

Viewpoint by Jonathan Power

LUND, Sweden (IDN-INPS) – In 1980 in his State of the Union address President Jimmy Carter said: “Any attempt by any outside force to gain control of the Persian Gulf will be regarded as an assault on the vital interests of the United States and such an assault will be repelled by any means necessary, including military force.”

Dear President Donald Trump: We’ve been here before and it’s as ludicrous this time as it was nearly 40 years ago. Why on earth are you sending in a flotilla of ships and 2,500 troops? Why are you so convinced that the mines that exploded on two oil tankers, neither of which were American, in the Persian Gulf are the work of the Iranians?

: Jonathan Power; OPINION; 18 June 2019

Trump Administration Should Rethink its Failing Iran Policy

Viewpoint by Kelsey Davenport and Daryl G. Kimball

Iran has announced that it will exceed a limit on enriched uranium set by the 2015 multilateral nuclear agreement, formally known as the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA). The following is the text of a statement by Kelsey Davenport, director for nonproliferation policy and Daryl G. Kimball, executive director of the Arms Control Association.

WASHINGTON, DC (IDN-INPS) – Iran’s decision to breach caps imposed by the accord is a troubling but predictable response to the Trump administration’s systematic campaign to deny Iran any benefit from the nuclear deal over the past year.

: Jaya Ramachandran; OPINION; 17 June 2019

Photo: Sergio Duarte, then UN High Representative for Disarmament, opening the 6th Conference on Facilitating the Entry into Force of the Comprehensive Nuclear-Test-Ban Treaty (CTBT), on 24 September 2009, in New York. Photo # 411972. Credit: UN Photo/Sophia Paris.

Resist Erosion of NPT to Rid the World of Atomic Bombs

Crumbling Security Landscape Ahead of the 2020 Review Conference

Viewpoint by Sergio Duarte

Ambassador Sergio Duarte is President of Pugwash Conferences on Science and World Affairs, and a former UN High Representative for Disarmament Affairs. He was president of the 2005 Nonproliferation Treaty Review Conference.

NEW YORK (IDN) – The forthcoming 50th anniversary of the entry into force of the Treaty on the Non-proliferation of Nuclear Weapons (NPT) provides the opportunity to look for lessons to be learned from its history and from its review cycles.

: Sergio Duarte; OPINION; 17 June 2019

Photo: Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev meeting with Ronald Reagan and President-elect George H. W. Bush in New York City in December 1988. Source: Wikimedia Commons

From Russia with Additional Insights

Viewpoint by Jonathan Power

LUND, Sweden (IDN-INPS) – When I was in Moscow three weeks ago, I was briefing myself for an interview with the Soviet Union’s last president, Mikhail Gorbachev. As it happened, he had to cancel it as he went into hospital for tests.

One of the American academics I always read is Gordon Hahn, an ex-fellow of the highly regarded Centre for Strategic and International Studies. He wrote that American policy towards Russia is a runaway train without rails, driven by a troubling confluence of hubristic ideological influences and bureaucratized sectorial interests.

: Jonathan Power; THE WORLD; Russia; 12 June 2019

Photo: India's Ambassador to the European Union in Brussels, Gaitri Issar Kumar's keynote address on the 44th anniversary of the ACP Group of States. She presented a painting of the tree of life, painted in the traditional Indian way, which symbolizes the very essence and energy of life. Credit: ACP Press.

ACP States Are A Key Factor in India’s Extended 'Act East Policy

Viewpoint by Gaitri Issar Kumar

The following are extended excerpts from India's Ambassador to the European Union in Brussels, Gaitri Issar Kumar's keynote address on the 44th anniversary of the African, Caribbean, and Pacific (ACP) Group of States. It was celebrated at the ACP House on June 7 in Brussels, which ACP Secretary-General Dr Patrick I Gomes described "the end of an era", with the ACP finding itself in the midst of reviewing many institutions that have shaped and marked it in the previous years.