InDepthNews – Page 712 – IDN-InDepthNews

OPINION2016-07-262023-07-10

Historic Commitment at Havana Peace Talks Table on Colombia

By Phumzile Mlambo-Ngcuka and Zainab Hawa Bangura

Phumzile Mlambo-Ngcuka is United Nations Under-Secretary-General and Executive Director of UN Women, and Zainab Hawa Bangura, United Nations Under-Secretary-General and Special Representative of the Secretary-General on Sexual Violence in Conflict.

NEW YORK (IDN-UN Women) – On 24 July 2016, we celebrated with the people of Colombia the historic commitment by the Government and FARC-EP at the Havana Peace Talks Table to ensure that one of the agreement’s fundamental objectives is to promote gender equality and the empowerment of women.

The implementation of this commitment will be the critical test of whether peace will endure, and fulfil the highest aspirations of Colombians for a just, equitable, inclusive and democratic society.

Individual Journalists, SYNDICATION2016-07-262023-07-12

NATO’s Largest Nuclear Storage Facility Carries Risks

Viewpoint by Jonathan Power

LUND, Sweden (IDN-INPS) -The Incirlik air base in southeast Turkey – from which U.S. pilots launch bombing raids on ISIS forces in Syria – is home to about 50 B-61 hydrogen bombs. That makes it NATO’s largest nuclear storage facility.

Each bomb has a yield of up to 170 kilotons, nearly a dozen times more powerful than the weapon that destroyed Hiroshima. The bombs are stored in underground vaults within aircraft shelters that in turn are protected by a security perimeter.

Recently, Incirlik was in the headlines because it appears it was one of the command centres of the attempted coup, meant to topple President Recep Tayyip Erdogan.

UN INSIDER2016-07-252023-07-10

Rising Civilian Casualties in Afghanistan Worry UN

By Devinder Kumar

NEW DELHI | KABUL (IDN) – “It was in the evening time and my wife, children, and mother were at home. Taliban attacked an Afghan National Army checkpoint and they both started firing mortars and rockets at each other. A mortar round exploded in my house, killing my eight-year-old daughter and injuring my seven-year-old son and my wife,” father and husband of victims killed and injured told the UN Assistance Mission in Afghanistan (UNAMA) in an interview in May 2016.

“We were hysterical, running from one side of the house to another thinking that another mortar round would hit the house. Since that moment, I have no life anymore,” reports the UNAMA’s ‘Midyear Report on Protection of Civilians in Armed Conflict: 2016’ released on July 25.

NEWSBRIEFS2016-07-252023-07-10

NEWSBRIEF: African Union Unveils New Pan-African Passport

KIGLI (IDN | GIN) – National leaders at the African Union summit held in Kigali, Rwanda, were presented on July 17 with a prototype of the long-awaited Pan-African passport.

“We’ve been overwhelmed by requests and enquiries of other ministers, officials and African citizens to share in this privilege of holding an African passport,” said AU Commissioner Nkosazana Dlamini-Zuma.

It is hoped that the new document will facilitate the seamless mobility of Africans and ease trade across the continent, consequently leading to the continent’s economic transformation.

UN INSIDER2016-07-252023-07-10

Committee to Protect Journalists Wins UN NGO Accreditation

By Rodney Reynolds

UNITED NATIONS (IDN) – The New York-based Committee to Project Journalists (CPJ), an independent non-governmental organization (NGO) campaigning for press freedom worldwide, has been recognized as an UN-accredited civil society organization by the Economic and Social Council (ECOSOC).

The July 25 decision by the 54-member ECOSOC, the primary UN body which coordinates the social and economic agenda of the United Nations, overrides a decision by one of its own committees, the UN Committee on NGOs, to reject the CPJ application on May 26.

CPJ’s application for NGO status was rejected by the committee with only 6 votes in favour of NGO status (Greece, Guinea, Israel, Mauritania, Uruguay and the United States) and 10 against (Azerbaijan, Burundi, China, Cuba, Nicaragua, Pakistan, Russia, South Africa, Sudan and Venezuela), with three abstentions (India, Iran and Turkey).

ARMAMENTS2016-07-252023-07-10

Astana and Geneva Preparing Ban-the-Bomb Conferences

By Jamshed Baruah

GENEVA (IDN) – Kazakhstan will host an international conference on August 28-29 to build and strengthen political will for the prohibition and elimination of nuclear weapons, some 15,000 of which are threatening the very survival of humankind.

The conference in Astana is being organised by the Senate of the Parliament of the Republic of Kazakhstan in partnership with the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Kazakhstan and Parliamentarians for Nuclear Non-Proliferation and Disarmament (PNND).

It will gather parliamentarians and mayors from around the world, along with a selection of religious leaders, government officials, disarmament experts, policy analysts, civil society campaigners and representatives of international and regional organisations – the United Nations, Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe (OSCE) and the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC).

ACP Group of States2016-07-242023-07-10

Brexit Implications for 79 ACP Countries Yet Unknown

By Robert Johnson

LONDON (IDN) – The outcome of the Brexit referendum on June 23, 2016 has set the UK on a path to leave the European Union (EU) that will also result in an end to its membership of the bloc’s Economic Partnership Agreements (EPAs) the free trade deals between the European Union (EU) and the 79 countries of the African, Caribbean and Pacific (ACP) group.

According to experts, while Brexit will have consequences for the UK, its impact on the ACP countries could be far reaching. Precisely how and in what ways was the subject of a brainstorming session of leading experts organized by the Ramphal Institute on July 15.

Named after Shridath “Sonny” Ramphal, second Commonwealth Secretary-General (1975-1990), the Ramphal Institute’s mandate is to tackle development issues and the wider world. So the focus was on Brexit and the Economic Partnership Agreements (EPAs).

Africa2016-07-232023-07-10

New Report Shows Way Out of Persistent Conflict in Africa

By Devendra Kamarajan

ADDIS ABABA (IDN) – For quite some time, Africa has been hosting at least three-quarters of the UN Peacekeepers worldwide which South African President Theo Mbeki and Algerian UN diplomat Lakhdar Brahimi bemoan as “a sad fact”.

In preface to the landmark report titled ‘African Politics, African Peace’, the two African leaders stress that having “engaged in a successful struggle against colonialism and apartheid . . . we surely have an obligation to exercise our hard-won right to self-determination and independence effectively to address this humiliating reality of persistent conflict on our Continent and the unwelcome and painful consequences it has imposed on the masses of Africa.”

DEVNET2016-07-222023-07-10

Development Cooperation Critical for Asia-Pacific Countries

By J Nastranis

NEW YORK (IDN) – A high-ranking United Nations official has stressed the need to translate the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development into national planning and budgetary processes.

This is particularly important in countries with special needs, declared the head of the United Nations Economic and Social Commission for Asia and the Pacific (ESCAP) on the sidelines of the fifth biennial high-level meeting of the Development Cooperation Forum (DCF) in New York on July 21. GERMAN | HINDI | SPANISH

ARMAMENTS2016-07-222023-07-10

Support for ‘Obama Nuclear Doctrine’ by Executive Order

Analysis by Ramesh Jaura

BERLIN | NEW YORK (IDN) – Despite protests by Republican congressional leaders and the heads of Senate Foreign Relations and Armed Services Committees, President Barack Obama is garnering wide support for his reported plan to implement at least a part of his cherished nuclear agenda through a series of executive actions during the next months before leaving the White House.

None of the executive options Obama is considering require formal congressional approval. In fact, all of those actions would “fall under his executive authority as commander-in-chief”, says David Krieger, president of the U.S.-based Nuclear Age Peace Foundation (NAPF).

Krieger is one of the nuclear disarmament pundits whose views IDN solicited in the aftermath of a report in the Washington Post on July 10, which said that executive options Obama is considering, include declaring a “no first use” policy for the United States nuclear arsenal and a UN Security Council resolution affirming a ban on the testing of nuclear weapons as envisaged by the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty (CTBT).