Category: OPINION

By Manuel F. Montes*

GENEVA (IDN | SOUTHVIEWS) – In discussions at the UN about achieving Agenda 2030, it has become de rigueur to highlight the role of the private sector. It is often introduced as the discovery of the idea that private sector investment and financing is indispensable to achieving Agenda 2030.

For developed country diplomats and their associated experts this new celebrity treatment appears to be an article of faith, at least during negotiations on economic matters in the UN. They are foisting a misleading ‘Trumpian’ exaggeration that is technically harmful to development policymaking and to Agenda 2030.

The practical, and long-running, reality is that investment by enterprises has always been indispensable to growth and development. It is NOT a new reality. It’s NOT a reality specific only to Agenda 2030.

Viewpoint by Jonathan Power*

LUND, Sweden (IDN-INPS) – A few recent words from Jack Matlock who was U.S. ambassador to Moscow under presidents Reagan and Bush senior: “The Ukraine crisis is a product, in large part, of the policy of indefinite expansion of NATO to the east. If there had been no possibility of Ukraine ever becoming part of NATO, and therefore Sevastopol (the ex-Soviet naval port in Crimea) becoming a NATO base Russia would not have invaded Crimea.”

He goes on to say: “Americans have lived for nearly two centuries with the Monroe Doctrine [which forbids non-Americans to seize land or intervene in Latin America]. Why don’t we understand that other countries are sensitive about military bases from potential rivals not only coming up to their borders, but also taking land that historically they have considered theirs. These are extremely emotional issues – issues that are made to order for any authoritarian leader that wants to strengthen his rule”.

By Amina Mohammed

The author is Deputy Secretary-General of the United Nations. This article first appeared on UNCTAD website on July 21 with the caption: ‘Can trade deliver the UN’s 2030 agenda?’ – The Editor

UNITED NATIONS (IDN-INPS) – Trade can be a source of prosperity, new ideas and shared values and ambitions. Today, the world strives to harness globalization in realizing the social, economic and environmental goals embodied in the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development.

Making sure that trade plays its part is a must, which means both sustaining it and ensuring its consistency with sustainable development.

Trade can create jobs, promote investment, spread technological progress and speed up communications and connectivity.

By Dr Patrick I. Gomes, ACP Secretary-General

BRUSSELS (IDN) – Our Ocean, Our Future: Call for Action is the outcome document agreed by Heads of State and Government and High Level Representatives of the 193 member-states of the United Nations that met in New York from June 5 to 9 2017 at the first-ever Oceans and Seas Conference.

With the Republic of Fiji and the Kingdom of Sweden, as co-conveners, the Conference was a widely participatory event aimed at giving concrete support to the implementation of Sustainable Development Goal (SDG) 14 of the 2030 Agenda that seeks to Conserve and sustainably Use the Oceans, Seas and Marine Resources.

The participation of the African, Caribbean and Pacific (ACP) Group at the conference was very fitting and timely to shore up support and stand in solidarity with a hosting member state in its endeavour to rally unwavering commitment to accelerate the collective actions of the international community to deliver for the attainment of SDG 14.

Viewpoint by Jonathan Power*

LUND, Sweden (IDN-INPS) – The most peaceful countries in the world are Iceland, Portugal, Austria, New Zealand and Denmark, according to the new Global Peace Index, in a new 136-page report, published by the Institute for Economics and Peace in Sydney, Australia. The most violent are Afghanistan, Iraq, Syria, Yemen and South Sudan.

Seen from a spaceship the most violent ones appear more or less clustered in a corner of the earth. It’s not that the rest of the globe is at peace but even where there is fighting there is not the wholesale destruction of cities that we see every day on TV, as, for example, when the cameras follow the multi-sided civil war in Syria. Indeed, violence away from these five countries is localised. Nowhere else does it consume whole societies. The fickle eye of television needs to show more peace and less conflict if it is to project a balanced picture.

Viewpoint by the Venerable Dr Omalpe Sobhitha Mahathera*

This article is the 16th in a series of joint productions of Lotus News Features and IDN-InDepthNews, flagship of the International Press Syndicate.

ENBILIPITIYA, Sri Lanka (IDN) – There will be many answers to the question: which is the country where the happiest people live? In response many famous, developed nations will come to mind, but you will be surprised that the name of a little-known country could be the right answer to this question. It is Bhutan, the wonderful and amazing country that beats all others on the happiness index.

Bhutan has been so identified following a worldwide survey on Gross National Happiness (GNH) – not Gross National Product (GDP). Its capital is Thimpu, which reminds us of the peace talks held there between the Sri Lanka Government and Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) separatists in 1985.

Viewpoint by Jonathan Power*

LUND, Sweden (IDN-INPS) – China, since the days in 1793 and the mission of Earl Macartney, emissary of King George 11, has kept its distance from the West, preferring to be “as self-contained as a billiard ball”, to quote the great historian Alain Peyrefitte.

It was Peyrefitte who argued in “The Collision of Civilizations” that Macartney’s decision not to kowtow to the emperor gave the Chinese the impression that their civilization was denied. They withdrew into their bunker and have remained for the last two centuries prickly, ultra-sensitive, quick to take offence and too ready to assume the worst of West’s motives.

Viewpoinrt by Esad Duraković

Professor Esad Duraković is a well-known academic and a member of three Arab Academies of Art and Science.

SARAJEVO, Bosnia and Herzegovina (IDN) – In late June 2017, four Arab countries (Saudi Arabia, Egypt, United Arab Emirates, and Bahrain) adopted a decision to isolate the “brotherly” Qatar for several reasons, the main being “Qatar’s support for terrorism”.

In the subsequent ultimatum, they demanded of Qatar to close down Al-Jazeera, which, without doubt, embodies the greatest value of the Arab world in general today, and as such poses a threat to totalitarian regimes that want to rule in media darkness.

Viewpoint by Sugeeswara Senadhira*

COLOMBO (IDN-INPS) – While there is much written about China’s jittery relations with many of its neighbours these days, there is hardly anything written about equally jittery relations between India and its smaller neighbours in South Asia.

The scorching summer of 1987 saw the relations between Sri Lanka and India plummeting to a lowest ever ebb. New Delhi’s decision to airdrop supplies over Jaffna had opened up a diplomatic Pandora’s Box. New Delhi tried to justify this blatant violation of Sri Lanka’s sovereignty as an act of humanitarian necessity. But the world knew it as a hegemonic political action entangled directly in the ethnic crisis in Sri Lanka.