Category: OPINION

By Shamshad Akhtar

Dr. Shamshad Akhtar is an Under-Secretary-General of the United Nations (UN) and the Executive Secretary of the Economic and Social Commission for Asia and the Pacific (ESCAP). – The Editor

BANGKOK (IDN) – Two years after the adoption of the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) by world leaders in New York, the ongoing practical question is how to finance the needs of such an ambitious and universal agenda.

It has been estimated that if the world’s developing countries are to achieve the targets set out in the global development blueprint, an additional public investment of at least $1.4 trillion per year will be needed.

By Charlotte Petri Gornitzka

Charlotte Petri Gornitzka, a former Director General of the Swedish International Development Co-operation Agency (Sida), is chair of the Development Assistance Committee of the 35-nation Paris-based Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) since July 2016..- The Editor

PARIS (IDN) – New analysis of foreign aid flows from members of the OECD Development Assistance Committee (DAC), which I chair, reveals a worrying trend. The share of Official Development Assistance (ODA) that is tied to companies in donor countries is on the rise again.

The latest OECD report on aid untying, released this month (April 2017), shows that the share of aid that is “untied” – in other words where the legal and regulatory barriers to open competition for aid-funded procurement have been removed – has declined for two years in a row.

Viewpoint by Jonathan Power*

LUND, Sweden (IDN-INPS) – There are 29 states which have at one time or another set about becoming nuclear weapons powers or have explored the possibility. Most have failed or drawn back. Only the U.S., Russia, France, UK, China, India, Israel, Pakistan and North Korea have crossed the threshold. But only the first five have long range, nuclear-tipped, missiles. North Korea wants to walk in their footsteps.

The common belief that when a state has decided to do so it goes for it as fast as it can is wrong. Sweden, Japan, Algeria, Australia, Italy, Yugoslavia, West Germany, Egypt, Iraq, Switzerland, Syria, Brazil, Argentina, Taiwan, South Korea, Norway, South Africa, Pakistan and India all sought to acquire nuclear weapons but their pace and commitment were different.

Viewpoint by Jonathan Power*

LUND, Sweden (IDN-INPS) – Are our governments economical with the truth, if not maliciously misleading? Do governments the world over lie? Of course yes, because there are always occasions when realpolitik appears to demand it.

Most recently, many are arguing, we have seen an attempt to obfuscate the truth when President Donald Trump ordered missiles to be fired at an airbase in Syria in, he said, retaliation for an attack using sarin gas by the Syrian government on unarmed civilians. Critics blame the rebels.

By Sergio Duarte, former UN High Representative for Disarmament Affairs*

NEW YORK (IDN) – Despite being shunned by the nine possessors of nuclear weapons and most of their allies, the first part of the negotiations mandated by the United Nations General Assembly on a legally binding instrument to prohibit nuclear weapons, leading towards their total elimination, ended on an optimistic tone on March 31.

Delegations from 120-plus States will return to New York in mid-June to start discussing the draft treaty to be presented by the President of the Conference, Ambassador Elayne Whyte-Gomez of Costa Rica.

Viewpoint by Jonathan Power*

LUND, Sweden (IDN-INPS) – The long talked-about referendum in Turkey will happen on April 16. In effect voters have to decide whether the president, Recep Erdogan, in theory the incumbent of a relatively modest political post, should now be given the powers of the president and prime minister together.

Combined with a large majority in Parliament he would have enormous power to shape Turkey around his pro-Islamic agenda. Although working within a democratic system, Erdogan is in many ways a populist, rather in the mould of President Donald Trump.

Viewpoint by Ann Wright*

NEW YORK (IDN-INPS) – Fourteen years ago on March 19, 2003, I resigned from the U.S. government in opposition to President George W. Bush’s decision to invade and occupy Iraq, an oil-rich Arab/Muslim country that had nothing to do with the events of September 11, 2001, and that the Bush Administration knew did not have weapons of mass destruction.

In my letter of resignation, I wrote of my deep concerns about Bush’s decision to attack Iraq and the predictable large number of civilian casualties from that military attack. But I also detailed my concerns on other issues: the lack of U.S. effort on resolving the Israel-Palestinian conflict, the U.S. failure to engage North Korea to curb nuclear and missile development, and the curtailment of civil liberties in the United States through the Patriot Act.

Viewpoint by Veterans For Peace

Veterans for Peace, an international organization made up of military veterans, military family members, and allies, calls for a reduction in the Pentagon budget and an increase in spending to meet human needs at home and abroad. This statement originally appeared on the organization’s website.

ST. LOUIS, Missouri (IDN-INPS) – As military veterans from WWII to the current era of conflicts, who have trained for, and in many cases, fought in U.S. wars, we know that current U.S. policies have not only failed to bring peace but are morally bankrupt.

Veterans For Peace has called for a different approach than war to demonstrate power and strength and prevent and end violent conflict. For the past thirty-two years, we have called for the abolishment of war as an instrument of national policy.

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”.