GLOBAL ISSUES – Page 188 – IDN-InDepthNews

HUMAN DEVELOPMENT2013-10-232023-07-10

Sweden Commended For Global Development Aid

By Richard Johnson | IDN-InDepth NewsAnalysis

PARIS (IDN) – At a time when international development cooperation does not draw public focus, a new report highlights Sweden’s significant contribution to assisting countries in need of money they cannot afford to muster on capital markets. According to the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD), Sweden provided USD 5.24 billion in official development assistance (ODA) in 2012. This amounted to 0.99 percent of its gross national income (GNI) – in excess of the United Nations’ target of 0.7 percent of GNI.

Latin America & the Caribbean2013-10-222023-07-12

Latin America: Headwinds Challenging Progress

By J C Suresh | IDN-InDepth NewsReport

TORONTO (IDN) – Latin America has achieved economic growth and made significant progress in poverty reduction over the course of the last decade. But it is now facing headwinds, according to the latest Latin American Economic Outlook.

Jointly produced by the OECD Development Centre, the UN Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean (UN ECLAC) and CAF – Development Bank of Latin America, the report was released in Panama City during the XXIII Ibero-American summit on October 18-19, 2013.

“Between 2003 and 2012, the region grew at an average annual rate of 4% thanks to the rapid rise of global trade and increasing commodity prices, and this despite the contraction brought about by the international financial crisis,” states the report.

Latin America & the Caribbean2013-10-122023-07-12

Female Share in Latam Labour Market Rising

By Oscar Ugarteche, Valentina Ballesté* | IDN-InDepth NewsAnalysis

QUITO (IDN) – With no haste, but without pause, the participation of women in the labour market has seen accelerated growth since the 1970s, according to the Panorama Laboral 2012 of the International Labour Organization (ILO). There is a gradual closing of the differences in participation between men and women in the labour force.

The participation rate of women in Latin America in 2012 was 49.8%, the employment rate was 40.2% and the unemployment rate 7.7%, while for men the participation rate was 71.4%, employment 59.8% and unemployment 5.6%. (1)

USA and Canada2013-10-102023-07-12

Iran-US Relations: Restoration Benefits Both

By Nasser Saghafi-Ameri* | IDN-InDepth NewsAnalysis

TEHRAN (IDN | Iran Review) – After nearly 35 years of estrangement between Iran and the United States, a short phone call between President Rouhani and President Obama on September 27, 2013 culminated into a marathon diplomacy which started few days earlier at the United Nations and following the blessing of the Supreme Leader Ayatollah Seyed Ali Khamenei in what he qualified as ‘Heroic Flexibility’.

HUMAN RIGHTS2013-10-072023-07-10

‘Lampedusa’ Forces EU Asylum Policy Overhaul

By Mirjam van Reisen* | IDN-InDepth NewsViewpoint

BRUSSELS (IDN) – The Italian government has published the names of the occupants of the boat that drowned near Lampedusa on October 3. All those on the list appear to be Eritreans. At the weekend hundreds of bodies were recovered, washed ashore on the Italian island of Lampedusa. The European Union is soul-searching and identifying the problems of its increasingly repressive refugee and asylum policy.

A meeting of Ministers of Home Affairs has been called in Luxemburg to consider a package of measures, in a first response to the Lampedusa tragedy. Observers are pointing out that the effect of the European policy to effectively control the ‘safe routes’, forces the most desperate refugees to take ever bigger risks in their attempt to reach safety.

ARMAMENTS2013-10-072023-07-10

Hiroshima and Nagasaki Beckon Nuke Free World

By Ramesh Jaura | IDN-InDepth NewsAnalysis

BERLIN | HIROSHIMA (IDN) – “World leaders, high-ranking UN officials, city mayors and representatives of the civil society from around the globe, gathered for a summit at Hiroshima and Nagasaki to mark the seventieth anniversary of the atom bombing of two Japanese cities, declared that nuclear weapons will be outlawed by 2020, and called upon all governments to agree at the earliest on a nuclear weapons convention.”

A press release in August 2015 might read somewhat like this if the momentum building up for ushering in a world free of nuclear weapons continues and Soka Gakkai Internatonal (SGI) President Daisaku Ikeda’s proposal for a nuclear abolition summit to be held in 2015 on the anniversary of the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki is translated into action.

ECONOMY2013-10-032023-07-10

Rising Migrant Remittances Highly Significant

By J C Suresh | IDN-InDepth NewsAnalysis

TORONTO (IDN) – A new report has highlighted the importance of funds remitted home by migrants, which are now nearly three times the size of official development assistance given by rich developed nations and larger than private debt and portfolio equity flows to developing countries. They exceed the foreign exchange reserves in at least 15 developing countries, and are equivalent to least half of the level of reserves in over 50 developing countries, says the latest issue of the World Bank’s Migration and Development Brief.

USA and Canada2013-10-022023-07-12

Latin America: Anti-US Rhetoric Does Not Overshadow Trade

By Luisa Parraguez, Francisco Garcia Gonzalez, Joskua Tadeo*
IDN-InDepth NewsAnalysis

MEXICO CITY (IDN | Yale Global) – The Latin American blogosphere held its breath when Bolivian president Evo Morales’s plane was forced to land in Vienna in July. As European authorities searched for former U.S. National Security Agency contract worker Edward Snowden on board, Twitter accounts of South American presidents exploded with resentment.

The continent denounced the United States for extending its hemispheric supremacy to Europe, sputtered words like “colonialism” and “imperialism,” and claimed that the incident violated the Vienna Convention on Diplomatic Relations. Argentina’s President Cristina Kirchner called the incident “not only humiliating to a sister nation, but also for the whole South American continent.”

ARMAMENTS2013-09-302023-07-10

UN Presses Forward on Global Ban on Nuke Tests

By Jaya Ramachandran | IDN-InDepth NewsAnalysis

NEW YORK (IDN) – Seventeen years after the Comprehensive Nuclear-Test-Ban Treaty (CTBT) opened for signature, the United Nations has launched a new initiative to expedite its entry into force “at the earliest possible date”.

Foreign ministers and high-level representatives from the 183 Member States of the Treaty have urged the eight remaining States – China, the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea (DPRK), Egypt, India, Iran, Israel, Pakistan and the United States – to sign and ratify the CTBT, “thus ridding the world once and for all of nuclear test explosions”. Ratification by these eight countries is indispensable for the Treaty coming into force.

GLOBAL ISSUES2013-09-292023-07-10

US-Iran: Inching Towards Détente

By Mahmoud Reza Golshanpazhooh* | IDN-InDepth NewsAnalysis

TEHRAN (IDN | Iran Review) -The pace of developments in Iran’s foreign policy has been very high during the last week of September 2013. Iran’s effort to take the best advantage of the general atmosphere at the annual session of the United Nations General Assembly led the new Iranian President Hassan Rouhani to put his power and the power of his foreign policy team in the area of bilateral and multilateral relations, especially public diplomacy, to the first test. Many domestic and foreign analysts believe that he has successfully passed that test.