Category: OPINION

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.

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”.

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”.

By Phumzile Mlambo-Ngcuka

Following are excerpts from the opening statement on March 13 by Phumzile Mlambo-Ngcuka, UN Under-Secretary-General and Executive Director of UN Women for the 61st session of the Commission on the Status of Women.

NEW YORK (IDN-INPS) – The Commission concerns itself with the status of women. It reviews the progress made by women and girls, and assesses the remaining challenges. It is a barometer of the progress we are making on achieving a world that is free of gender discrimination and inequality, a world that leaves no-one behind. It will help us measure achievement of the implementation of the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development. It also helps us to pursue action in priority areas and benefits from the Commission’s Agreed Conclusions.

By Dr. Thani Ahmed Al Zeyoudi and Dr. Bradnee Chambers

Dr. Thani Ahmed Al Zeyoudi is the Minister of Climate Change and Environment of the United Arab Emirates and Dr. Bradnee Chambers is the Executive Secretary of the Convention on the Conservation of Migratory Species of Wild Animals.

Note: This article is an updated version of the one published on 9 March 2017. – Editor

BONN (IDN) – The on-going bleaching of coral in Australia’s Great Barrier Reef continues to generate great concern worldwide. Islands of plastic waste in the oceans contaminating the food chain make the headlines. So why then is there a deafening silence on the deteriorating condition of the world’s seagrasses? 

By Franz Baumann*

NEW YORK (IDN) –  Carnage in Syria, millions (dozens of millions actually) of forcibly displaced people, fast-tracking global warming, crises in South Sudan, Venezuela, Brazil, Turkey, the Philippines and elsewhere, terrorist attacks in Europe, the UK Brexit vote and the US presidential election. What a list! Was 2016 an unusually ghastly year, or was it rather the new normal?

Hoping against hope that it was an outlier, these reflections highlight several macro trends that feed chauvinistic outbursts in many countries, yet that will not likely be reversed by anti-globalism, protectionism or militarism: rising inequality, jobless growth, terrorist attacks, the influx of migrants, corruption.

By Sugeeswara Senadhira*

COLOMBO (IDN) – Immediately after announcing the temporary merger of the North and East in July 1987, the then Sri Lankan President J. R. Jayewardene, in a surprising policy dichotomy, declared that he would canvass against the merger during the proposed referendum to be held in the East by December 31, 1987. Fortunately or unfortunately, the said referendum was never held, and it was routinely postponed annually by gazette notifications.

The issue of merger of the Northern Province and Eastern Province surfaced once again in February 2017 when Indian Foreign Secretary Subrahmanyam Jaishankar reportedly rejected the suggestion made by the Sri Lankan Tamil politician Suresh Premachandran of the Tamil National Alliance (TNA) for Indian intervention in re-merging the two provinces.

By Jonathan Power

LUND, Sweden (IDN-INPS) – The great immigration debate has to become the great re-thinking and re-structuring debate. Charlie Brown is right when he says, “No problem is too big and complicated that it can’t be run away from”.

In both the US and the EU the focus is increasingly on the problem of immigration. President Donald Trump talks of them being criminals, drug traffickers and scroungers. And then he wants to build a very expensive wall on the border separating countries that for a long time have not countenanced war or terrorism against each other. (By the way, there is a funny Mexican joke: “Yes, it’s a good idea to build the wall – it will keep Trump out”!)

By Phumzile Mlambo-Ngcuka, UN Women Executive Director

Note: This is the text of message by UN Women Executive Director as part of a series on International Women’s Day, 8 March 2017

NEW YORK (IDN-INPS | UN Women) – Across the world, too many women and girls spend too many hours on household responsibilities – typically more than double the time spent by men and boys. They look after younger siblings, older family members, deal with illness in the family and manage the house.

In many cases this unequal division of labour is at the expense of women’s and girls’ learning, of paid work, sports, or engagement in civic or community leadership. This shapes the norms of relative disadvantage and advantage, of where women and men are positioned in the economy, of what they are skilled to do and where they will work.