GLOBAL ISSUES – Page 157 – IDN-InDepthNews

EU & Europe2016-05-262023-07-10

The Forgotten Humanitarian Crisis in the Balkans

Analysis by Vesna Peric Zimonjic

BELGRADE (IDN) – The violent split up of former Yugoslavia is more than two decades old. Peace was established in the region back in the 1990s. Yet for those who hardly know about the brutal violence and humanitarian disaster that accompanied the political breakup, little would appear to have changed.

“There is no more arms rattling, but the political rhetoric and lack of profound economic recovery keep people stuck in recent past, with poor view on better future,” prominent sociology professor Ratko Bozovic says. “There are new generations all over the former Yugoslavia who know nothing else but how this or that war was fought.”

The professor explained that no real insight into causes, accompanied by little perspective, creates a fertile ground for further confusion among the young who should take their nations into the future.

Indigenous Peoples2016-05-222023-07-10

Indigenous Peoples Insist on Equality of All Rights

Analysis by Rizwy Raheem

NEW YORK (IDN) – The world’s indigenous peoples – estimated at over 370 million living across 90 countries and accounting for 15 percent of the poorest – remain isolated, both politically and geographically.

So, nearly a thousand participants from Asia, Africa, North America, Europe and Latin America and the Caribbean gathered together to air their grievances before the United Nations at a two-week long conference, which concluded May 20.

Their plea for inclusiveness was a reiteration of Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon’s appeal to the international community on the UN’s 17 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) for a more humane and prosperous world for all – “leaving no one behind”.

The conference ended with a resounding call for greater participation in the United Nations and in UN bodies by some of the world’s most neglected minorities who are increasingly victims of armed conflicts, corporate greed and rising economic inequalities.

Latin America & the Caribbean2016-05-192023-07-10

IFAD Strengthens Partnerships with Central America

By Ronald Joshua

ROME | SAN SALVADOR (IDN) – Family farming accounts for about 50% of Agricultural Gross Domestic Product in Central America. It employs a huge percentage of agricultural working force, ranging from 36% in Costa Rica) to 76% in Honduras.

According to the Rome-based International Fund for Agricultural Development (IFAD), the UN agency dedicated to rural development, about 2.3 million families in the region work in family farming.

It is estimated that 6 in 10 family farmers face food insecurity and 65% live in poverty. Family farms’ heads are, in 85% of the cases, male. Their average age is 49. Family farms’ average extension is 1.13 ha.

With this in view, IFAD has joined hands with PRISMA-OXFAM-RIMISP Consortium to launch in San Salvador, the capital of El Salvador, a Regional Rural Dialogue Programme (PDRR), a network of family farmers’ organizations, focused on Central America and the Dominican Republic.

ARMAMENTS2016-05-172023-07-10

Obama’s Nuclear-Free World Vision Has Come to Naught

Viewpoint by Jonathan Power

LUND, Sweden (IDN-INPS) – During the Cold War barely a week went by without some reportage or debate on nuclear weapons. Not today. Yet most of the nuclear weapons around then are still around.

It would be alright if they were left to quietly rust in their silos. But they are not. When in 2010 President Barack Obama made a deal with Russian President Dimitri Medvedev to cut their respective arsenals of strategic missiles by one-third the Republican-dominated U.S. Congress, as the price for its ratification of the deal, decreed that Obama and future presidents be made to spend a trillion dollars on updating and modernizing America’s massive arsenal.

Now that chicken is coming home to roost – and a few other chickens too.

President Barack Obama’s unexpected legacy is that he has presided over an America that has been at war longer than any previous president. Moreover, of recent presidents, apart from Bill Clinton, he has cut the U.S. nuclear weapon stockpile at the slowest rate.

ARMAMENTS2016-05-112023-07-10

UN Working Group Urged to Assist in Banning Nukes

Analysis by Jamshed Baruah

GENEVA (IDN) – The powerful message of a joint statement by diverse faith groups, calling for abolition of nuclear weapons, has been strongly backed by UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon’s reaction to President Barack Obama’s decision to visit Hiroshima on May 27.

Obama would be the first sitting U.S. President to visit the Japanese city during the G-7 economic summit that was annihilated by the first ever atomic bomb, dropped by the United States on August 6, 1945. It was followed by the second bomb that devastated Nagasaki three days later, killing a total of more than 200,000 people.

Ban “very much welcomes” Obama’s decision to visit Hiroshima, UN Spokesman Stephane Dujarric said. “For the secretary-general, one of the enduring lessons of Hiroshima is the need to abolish nuclear weapons once and for all,” he added.

“We would hope that the visit is again a global message on the need for nuclear disarmament, which is something that the Secretary-General is calling for,” the Spokesman said.

ARMAMENTS2016-05-102023-07-10

Obama Should Meet A-Bomb Survivors, and Ban the Bomb

Viewpoint by Kevin Martin*

WASHINGTON, D.C. (IDN-INPS) – President Barack Obama plans to be the first sitting U.S. President to visit Hiroshima during the G-7 economic summit May 26-27 in Japan. Hiroshima is an impressively rebuilt, thriving city of a million people. The city was obliterated by the first atomic bomb, dropped by the United States on August 6, 1945, followed by the second bomb that devastated Nagasaki three days later, killing a total of more than 200,000 people.

Remarkably, many Hibakusha, atomic bomb survivors, are still alive today, though they often suffer from various radiation-caused illnesses or other physical ailments 71 years after the bombs were dropped.

Eighty-three-year-old Shigeko Sasamori was a young girl when the “fire bomb” (the words “atomic bomb” were not yet known) exploded a mile from where she stood. In the unimaginable chaos that engulfed the city after its devastation, Shigeko and her family were relatively fortunate, as their collapsed house barely missed crushing her mother to death, and after a period of severe disorientation and separation, Shigeko was reunited with her parents.

Indigenous Peoples2016-05-072023-07-10

Indigenous Peoples Seek Rights and Distinct Identities

By J. Nastranis

NEW YORK (IDN) – The 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development, and how it relates to indigenous peoples, will feature prominently in discussions at the fifteenth session of the United Nations Permanent Forum on Indigenous Issues.

The Forum will also focus on issues of peace and conflict, often relating to indigenous peoples’ lands, territories and resources and to their rights and distinct identities. More than 1,000 indigenous participants from all regions of the world are attending the gathering at United Nations Headquarters in New York from May 9 to 20.

“Since its establishment, the Permanent Forum has expressed great concern over the continuation of conflicts affecting indigenous peoples in different parts of the world,” said Alvaro Pop, the incoming Chairperson of the UN Permanent Forum on Indigenous Issues.

ARMAMENTS2016-04-262023-07-10

Chernobyl 30 years on: Exploring the Zone

Latin America & the Caribbean2016-04-192023-07-10

Search for Quake Survivors in Afro-Ecuadorian Villages

By Lisa Vives

NEW YORK (IDN | GIN) – The death toll in Ecuador’s African coastal communities continues to rise as rescuers dig for survivors of a massive earthquake in the battered villages.

On April 18, reports from the Esmeraldas, called the birthplace of Afro-Hispanic culture, estimated that 350 people died in the massive quake that sent buildings tumbling and roads buckling. Over one million African descendants reside in the area settled in the 1600s by escapees from Spanish slave ships.

Ecuador’s seismological institute reported more than 135 aftershocks following April 16 magnitude-7.8 quake that ravaged the country’s coastline. It was said to be 20 times greater than the quake that hit Japan early April 16. Ecuador could see a greater loss of life and greater damage due to the country’s less stringent construction codes.

ARMAMENTS2016-04-122023-07-10

Hiroshima Declaration Avoids Firm Commitment to Nuclear-Free World

Analysis by Rodney Reynolds

HIROSHIMA (IDN) – When the Foreign Ministers of G7 countries — Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, UK and the United States – adopted the ‘Hiroshima Declaration’ at the end of a two-day meeting on April 11, they failed to make any concrete commitments for the total elimination of nuclear weapons worldwide.

The Declaration was replete with pious intentions and time-worn platitudes of the dangers of weapons mass destruction (WMDs), but fell short of a world without nuclear weapons.

Tariq Rauf, Director of the Disarmament, Arms Control and Non-Proliferation Programme at the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI), told IDN the Declaration is a major disappointment and a frittering away of a solemn opportunity – the 71st year following the nuclear bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki – to commit to nuclear disarmament and elimination of nuclear weapons.