OPINION

Photo: Alice Slater | Credit: channer.tv

A Shift in the Public Conversation to Ban the Bomb

Viewpoint by Alice Slater

Alice Slater is New York Director of the Nuclear Age Peace Foundation, who serves on the Coordinating Committee of World Beyond War.

NEW YORK (IDN) – This week (March 27-31) the UN General Assembly held the opening session of a ground-breaking conference “to negotiate a legally binding instrument to prohibit nuclear weapons, leading towards their total elimination” just as the world has already done to ban biological and chemical weapons as well as landmines and cluster bombs.

The historic conference began with a bizarre Trumpian boycott on its first day, when Nikki Haley, Trump’s newly appointed U.S. Ambassador to the UN , flanked by the ambassadors from the UK and France stationed in front of the closed doors to the UN General Assembly, where 132 nations were about to start negotiations, staged a press event, with no questions permitted.

: Opinion Editor; ARMAMENTS; 31 March 2017

2020 NPT Review Conference Needs Innovative Strategies

By Jayantha Dhanapala

“ . . . and thus the whirligig of time brings in his revenges.” - Shakespeare: Twelfth Night

Note: The first Preparatory Committee for the 2020 Review Conference of the Parties to the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons (NPT) will meet from May 2 to 12, 2017 in Vienna, Austria. Following the text of a Policy Brief Jayantha Dhanapala – a former United Nations Under-Secretary-General for Disarmament Affairs, and a former Ambassador of Sri Lanka – did for the Asia Pacific Leaders Network (APLN) middle of March 2017. It is being reproduced with the permission of the author who currently serves as the 11th President of the Pugwash Conferences on Science and World Affairs, These are his personal views.

: Jayantha Dhanapala; ARMAMENTS; 28 March 2017

Photo: Second Chittagong Hill Tracts Rural Development Project in Bangladesh. Credit. Asian Development Bank.

The Asian Poor Should Not Be Neglected

By Jonathan Power*

LUND, Sweden (IDN-INPS) - The Asian economies are picking up speed again. After the big hit from Wall Street when the bank, Lehman Brothers, collapsed in a heap in 2008, sending shock waves everywhere, a recovery is now in the works.

How many child deaths in the Third World did these bankers cause? Another question is will future growth be like the past – fast but severely inequitable? The same growth before 2008 that reduced absolute poverty created a widening gulf between the haves and have-nots.

But isn’t that sufficient for the day, many ask? Absolute poverty must be the key mark of progress – raising incomes, giving people more money to seek education for their children or medical care or filling the coffers for the state so that it can fund bore holes in the countryside and sewers in the urban slums.

: Jonathan Power; OPINION; 28 March 2017

Photo: Ambassador Anwarul K. Chowdhury. Credit: Mitsu (Eric) Kimura, SUA Archivist.

'If We are Serious About Peace and Development, We Must Take Women Seriously'

By Ambassador Anwarul K. Chowdhury

Without peace, development is impossible, and without development, peace is not achievable, but without women, neither peace nor development is possible, writes Ambassador Anwarul K. Chowdhury, former Under-Secretary-General and High Representative of the United Nations. He is an internationally recognized initiator of the UNSCR 1325 as the President of the UN Security Council in March 2000.

NEW YORK (IDN) - The biggest annual gathering of activists on women’s issues from all parts of the world converging at the United Nations ended on March 24 after its two-week meeting. That gathering is the regular sessions of the Commission on the Status of Women. This year it was the Commission’s 61st session (UN CSW 61). Many of the participants at these sessions have direct grassroots connections with their feet on the ground and understand the challenges and obstacles – physical, economic, political, societal, cultural and attitudinal – which women face on a daily basis.

: IDN-INPS UN Bureau; UN INSIDER; 26 March 2017

Photo: Ambassador Kairat Umarov, Permanent Representative of the Republic of Kazakhstan to the United Nations (second from left) on Security Council mission to the Lake Chad Basin. . The Permanent Representatives of France, UK and Senegal led the Mission Credit: UK Mission to the UN/Lorey Campese.

Lake Chad Basin: Strengthen the Security-Development Nexus

By Kairat Umarov

Ambassador Kairat Umarov is Permanent Representative of the Republic of Kazakhstan to the United Nations. He was a member of the Security Council Visiting Mission to the Lake Chad Basin from March 2 to 7, 2017. The Permanent Representatives of France, UK and Senegal led the Mission. Kazakhstan joined the UN Security Council as a non-permanent member for the two-year period 2017-2018.

NEW YORK (IDN) – The situation across the Lake Chad Basin is extremely fragile and volatile. Triggered by a deteriorating humanitarian situation, the crisis has worsened and is now the fourth largest on Earth, though barely known worldwide.

: IDN-INPS UN Bureau; UN INSIDER; 24 March 2017

Photo: Dr Richard Munang, Africa Climate Change and Development Policy expert with the UN Environment Programme (UNEP). Credit: Ngala Killian Chimtom

‘Innovative Volunteerism’ Key to Africa’s Development Blueprint

By Ngala Killian Chimtom

NAIROBI (ACP-IDN) – Africa’s present is defined by its vast but unexploited potential but the picture could be changed by leveraging catalytic sectors in which the continent holds comparative advantage, through dedicating available resources.

Dr Richard Munang, Africa Climate Change and Development Policy expert with the UN Environment Programme (UNEP) believes that these resources – both physical (technological, institutional, financial and demographical, the dividend to be derived from having most of its population under the age of 25) and non-physical (including intellectual, partnerships, policies and networks) – could be utilised for a comparative advantage with a global competitive edge through what he calls “innovative volunteerism”.

: IDN-INPS Middle East & Africa Editor; OPINION; 22 March 2017

Photo: Sergio Duarte, then UN High Representative for Disarmament Affairs, at the Conference on Facilitating the Entry into Force of the Comprehensive Nuclear-Test-Ban Treaty on September 23, 2011. Credit: James Leynse | Copyright CTBTO Preparatory Commission.

'We Must Succeed in Prohibiting Nuclear Weapons'

By Sergio Duarte, former UN High Representative for Disarmament Affairs*

NEW YORK (IDN) - For the first time since the foundation of the United Nations the majority of the international community seems prepared to take a bold and fundamental step leading to the abolition of nuclear weapons. On December 27, 2016 the General Assembly of the United Nations adopted Resolution 71/258 convening a Conference to negotiate a legally binding instrument to prohibit nuclear weapons, leading to their total elimination.

It is befitting to recall a similar effort undertaken in 1946 when the first Session of the United Nations General Assembly decided to establish a Commission to “deal with the problems raised by the discovery of nuclear energy and other related matters”, and to present proposals “for the elimination of atomic weapons from national armaments”.

: Sergio Duarte; OPINION; 21 March 2017

The Poor are Keen to Make Progress Despite Famine

By Jonathan Power

LUND, Sweden (IDN-INPS) - Once again the media is presenting us with the images of the mother of all famines – stretching from the Yemen to Somalia, to Sudan and South Sudan, to the Central African Republic, to northern Nigeria.

It’s a bad famine but there have been bad famines in the not so distant past – the great Ethiopian one in 1985, which triggered the rock star, Bob Geldorf, to organise a massive world-wide popular response. (I remember running with tens of thousands of other campaigners in London’s Hyde Park.) Before that, in 1974 at the World Food Conference, there was a real feeling that the world was running out of food and dramatic new policies must be put in place by the richer countries.

: Jonathan Power; SUSTAINABILITY; Food security, nutrition & sustainable agriculture; 21 March 2017

Photo: United Nations Office for South-South Cooperation Director Jorge Chediek closing the Global South-South Development Expo 2016 on 3 November 2016 in Dubai, United Arab Emirates. Credit: SUSSC

Mainstreaming South-South Cooperation in the UN System

Interview with Jorge Chediek, Director of the UN Office for South Cooperation (UNOSSC)

NEW YORK (IDN) – South-South and triangular cooperation forms an integral part, complementing North-South Cooperation, of the global Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) adopted by Member States of the United Nations on September 25, 2015 to end poverty, protect the planet, and ensure prosperity for all.

How is the UN Office for South Cooperation (UNOSSC) – as the global and United Nations system-wide focal point for South-South cooperation – engaging in advocacy, policy development, knowledge sharing and innovative programmatic activities? Ramesh Jaura, Editor-in-Chief and International Correspondent of IDN, flagship agency of the International Press Syndicate group, asked UNOSSC Director Jorge Chediek this and related questions in an e-mail interview. Read the Q&A in full:

: Ramesh Jaura; UN INSIDER; 20 March 2017

Image: Building knowledge societies. Credit: UNESCO

UNESCO Pits Media Development Against Fake News

By Guy Berger

Guy Berger is Director, Division of Freedom of Expression and Media Development at the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO). He is responsible for the Organization’s global work on press freedom, safety of journalists, internet freedom, media pluralism and independence, gender and media, media and information literacy, and journalism education.

PARIS (IDN) - While global controversies around “fake news” continue unabated, UNESCO is holding two events at its Paris HQ, which will give more insight into the issues.

First up is an annual meeting on media development, held by the eight UNESCO Member States who serve on the Bureau of the International Programme for the Development of Communication (IPDC).