OPINION

Photo: The Temple of the Tooth in Kandy, one of the most holy sites in Sri Lanka reputed to contain an actual tooth of the Buddha on his 2nd visit to the Island over 2000 years ago. CC BY 2.0

Sri Lanka's Heroic Freedom Struggles of 1818 and 1848 – Part 1

By Dr. Palitha Kohona

The author is former Ambassador and Permanent Representative of Sri Lanka to the United Nations, and former Foreign Secretary. The following is Part 1 of the text of his keynote address delivered at Sri Lanka's University of Peradeniya, Kandy, on 26 November 2018.

COLOMBO (IDN-INPS) – We look back on a heroic struggle that our ancestors waged 200 years ago against the mightiest empire that the world had known up to that time, to regain their freedom and that of a nation that had remained unbowed for over 2300 years.

Unfortunately, it was a heroic but unequal struggle with a much more powerful and vengeful colonial power, which had also through unscrupulous manipulation succeeded in splitting the Kandyan people in to factions suspicious of each other and diluted the centuries old bonds that bound the nation together.

: Dr. Palitha Kohona; THE WORLD; History; 05 December 2018

Photo: U.S. Secretary of State Frank B. Kellogg signs The Kellogg Briand Pact (or Pact of Paris) for Renunciation of War as an Instrument of National Policy on August 27, 1928 at the ministry of foreign affairs in Paris. Background French Foreign Affairs Minister Aristide Briand. Credit: AFP/Getty Images.

Significant Progress in Ending All War

Viewpoint by Jonathan Power*

LUND, Sweden (IDN-INPS) – “We need jaw jaw not war war,” said Winston Churchill rather hypocritically. Still, he would be glad to see that the number of wars around the world has fallen dramatically since the end of the Second World War, despite the wars in Korea, Africa, Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya, Lebanon, Pakistan versus India, Central America, Cyprus, ex-Yugoslavia, Syria and now Yemen.

Compared with centuries past this has been a remarkable era, yet one not often acknowledged.

Interstate wars, apart from India versus Pakistan, Afghanistan, Iran and Yemen, have vanished off the map. The wars that remain are civil wars. The democracies do not go to war with each other, as British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher long ago observed.

: Jonathan Power; OPINION; 04 December 2018

Photo: UN Chief Opening COP24. Credit: UNFCCC.

UN Chief Calls for Katowice to Lay Down Ground Rules for the Paris Agreement

By António Guterres

Following are extensive excerpts from the UN Secretary-General's remarks at the opening ceremony of the UN Climate Change Conference (COP14) from December 2-14 in Katowice, Poland.

KATOWICE (IDN-INPS) – We are in trouble. We are in deep trouble with climate change.

Climate change is running faster than we are and we must catch up sooner rather than later before it is too late.

For many, people, regions even countries this is already a matter of life and death.

: UN Bureau; OPINION; 04 December 2018

Photo: King Mohammed VI of Morocco. Source: The Moroccan Times

A Moment of Reckoning for Decentralisation in Morocco

Viewpoint by Yossef Ben-Meir

Dr. Yossef Ben-Meir is a sociologist and Founder President of the High Atlas Foundation, based in Marrakech, Morocco, working to establish livelihood advancement projects – all of which are identified and managed by local communities, in partnership with the public, private and civil sectors.

MARRAKECH (IDN) – Morocco’s parliament is currently deciding the nation’s Decentralisation Charter. Since its working draft is not currently made public, we can only hope that every parliamentarian realises that the human development course of the nation and the relationships between public, civil and private institutions depend upon the creation of a meaningful charter.

: Africa & ME Editor; OPINION; 01 December 2018

Photo: Protest against U.S. involvement in the military intervention in Yemen, New York City, 2017. CC BY 2.0

U.S. Senate Vote on Yemen Rebukes Trump and Saudis

Viewpoint by Mark Weisbrot

This article was published by The Guardian on November 30, 2018. Mark Weisbrot is Co-Director of the Center for Economic and Policy Research in Washington, D.C., and the president of Just Foreign Policy. He is also the author of “Failed: What the ‘Experts’ Got Wrong About the Global Economy” (2015, Oxford University Press). You can subscribe to his columns here.

WASHINGTON (IDN-INPS) – It was a resounding defeat for the White House and Republican Senate leadership: by a 63-37 majority, the Senate voted on November 28 to advance legislation that would give President Trump 30 days to get the US military out of Saudi Arabia’s genocidal war in Yemen, unless he could get congressional authorization for US military intervention. Which he almost certainly could not.

: J Nastranis; OPINION; 30 November 2018

Photo: African Penguin Credit: Mike Barth. Source: www.unep-aewa.org

AEWA - International Environmental Cooperation At Its Best

Viewpoint by Jacques Trouvilliez

Internationalism seems to be falling out of vogue, but Jacques Trouvilliez, Executive Secretary of the Agreement on the Conservation of African-Eurasian Migratory Waterbirds (AEWA), holds his organization up as an example of how conservation objectives are being effectively achieved through cross-continental cooperation.

BONN (IDN) – The Agreement on the Conservation of African-Eurasian Migratory Waterbirds (AEWA) is a good, and certainly not the only example of international cooperation working well. It is a UN Treaty which operates on the basis of concerted actions. It has 78 members including the European Union with another 41 countries within its area eligible to join.

: UN Bureau; OPINION; 30 November 2018

Photo: Secretary of State Michael R. Pompeo meets with Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, on October 16, 2018. [State Department photo by Ron Przysucha/Public Domain]

Keeping Saudi Arabia Nuclear-Free

Viewpoint by Joseph Gerson

The writer is President of the Campaign for Peace Disarmament and Common Security and author of ‘Empire and the Bomb’.

NEW YORK (IDN) – There is growing concern over the ruthless Crown Prince’s campaign to purchase $80 billion of U.S. nuclear power plant designs and technologies from the U.S. and his reported insistence on producing Saudi Arabia’s own nuclear fuel – a potential path to nuclear weapons development.

Concerns that Saudi Arabia aspires to become a nuclear power need to be seen in the larger context of the dangerous ambitions and delusions of power hungry elites, nuclear and otherwise.

: UN Bureau; OPINION; 30 November 2018

Photo: Prime Minister Imran Khan and Premier Li Keqiang signed important MOUs during the former's first visit to China early November. Credit: China-Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC).

Baloch Separatists' Attack on Chinese Consulate Has a Message

Viewpoint by Shastri Ramachandran*

Balochistan – the largest of the four provinces of Pakistan in terms of land area, forming the southwestern region of the country – is aggrieved at not getting its due share of development out of the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC), flagship of the Belt and Road Initiative. This has caused resentment and, combined with the suppression of Baloch rights and aspirations, is a powder keg.

NEW DELHI (IDN) – The storming of the Chinese consulate in Karachi on November 24 by three heavily armed suicide squad members of a Baloch separatist group is loaded with meaning and message. It should be read correctly for understanding what gave rise to the attack and how the conditions that caused it may be eliminated.

: Shastri Ramachandran; OPINION; 29 November 2018

Photo: After over 1,000 days into the Saudi bombing of Yemen, which is almost entirely UK/US equipped and supported, the first large protest took place in London in Match 2018 outside Downing Street. CC BY-SA 2.0

Let Saudi Arabia Suffer Until bin Salman is Brought to Justice

Viewpoint by Jonathan Power*

LUND, Sweden (IDN-INPS) – How can Saudi Arabia be brought low? If the King won’t remove from power his 33-year old son, Prince Mohammad bin Salman, there may be no alternative but to do battle (non-violently) with its regime.

There seems to be no doubt that it was bin Salman who gave the order to murder Saudi Arabia’s dissident journalist, Jamal Khashoggi.

This is not the only reason to take up (non-violent) arms against Saudi Arabia. Others are its massive buying of Western military hardware. Another is its war in Yemen where it has killed tens of thousands of civilians. Another is that it still follows the intolerant strictures of the Wahabi sect of Islam.

: Jonathan Power; OPINION; 27 November 2018

Asia-Pacific Reviews Ambitious Targets of 1994 Cairo Conference

Viewpoint by Armida Salsiah Alisjahbana and Natalia Kanem

Ms. Armida Salsiah Alisjahbana is United Nations Under-Secretary-General and Executive Secretary of the United Nations Economic and Social Commission for Asia and the Pacific (ESCAP). Dr. Natalia Kanem is United Nations Under-Secretary-General and Executive Director of the United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA).

BANGKOK (IDN) – Ministers and senior policymakers across Asia and the Pacific are gathered in Bangkok up to November 28 to focus on population dynamics at a crucial time for the region. Their goal: to keep people and rights at the heart of the region’s push for sustainable development. They will be considering how successful we have been in balancing economic growth with social imperatives, underpinned by rights and choices for all as enshrined in the landmark Programme of Action stemming from the 1994 International Conference on Population and Development, or ICPD.