Category: OPINION

Viewpoint by Siddharth Chatterjee

NAIROBI (IDN) – The national implementation plan for Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) in Kenya was launched on September 14. Representing President Uhuru Kenyatta, Mwangi Kiunjuri, Cabinet Secretary of the Ministry of Devolution and planning, said Kenya was way ahead of implementing the SDGs through its Vision 2030, and the devolved system of Governance

Kenya now needs strategic and creative partnerships with civil society networks to raise public awareness and sustain momentum for the Goals’ diverse set of targets.

Viewpoint by Dr Palitha Kohona

Ambassador Dr Palitha Kohona, the former Permanent Representative of Sri Lanka to the UN in New York, visited Cuba recently.

COLOMBO (IDN) – The ferocious American bald eagle, clutching its array of deadly weapons, has for almost 60 years persistently tried to gobble up the tiny Cuban Colibri. The Colibri, weighing only about two ounces, is the national bird of Cuba.

The plucky little bird, smartly darting around the eagle making careful and, at times, painful choices, has not only successfully avoided the eagle’s fiery talons but, in certain areas, prospered. But now that the eagle has ostensibly mellowed and softened its approach and replaced the urge to devour with endearing embraces, will the Colibri continue to survive?

Viewpoint by Jonathan Power

LUND, Sweden (IDN-INPS) – Russia announced on September 8 that it has decided to go where angels fear to tread – into the whirlpool of negotiations between Palestine and Israel. Long a preserve of the Americans and the French, the attempt to bring peace between the two and to make a final settlement on boundaries has frustrated them for decades. Can Russia do better?

Russia comes on the scene at a time when the script is perhaps about to be re-written in a radical way. After decades of negotiating around the premise that the only solution was a two-state arrangement with an independent Jewish state and an independent Palestinian state existing cheek by jowl, opinion in Palestine is shifting.

Viewpoint by Nelsy Lizarazo*

QUITO (IDN) – I visited to San Pablo 15 years ago and it was clearly the poorest neighbourhood of Portoviejo, the regional capital of Manabí Province.

Then, there was no drinking water. Families could not even imagine the possibility of free basic education for all, and secondary education even less. You could not walk on the streets after 5 in the evening and the health centre had neither sufficient medical staff nor medicine to cover the neighbourhood’s needs.

I returned to San Pablo at the beginning of September this year.

Viewpoint by Paul Mikov*

NEW YORK (IDN | INPS) – Bombs**, irrespective of the domains in which they are triggered, are always associated with and accompanied by destruction. This is so in theatres of military campaigns, as is in economics or politics. The only differentiation is in the nature of destruction and the possibilities that might be envisioned following, or out of, the destruction itself.

The concept of “creative destruction” that was coined by the economist Joseph Schumpeter in 1942 seems to increasingly have correspondence with and applicability for the political situation that has been developing and emerging in Macedonia over the past year or two.

Viewpoint by Dr. Jargalsaikhan Enkhsaikan*

This is a slightly abridged version of the Mongolian Blue Banner NGO President Dr. Jargalsaikhan Enkhsaikan’s address to the Astana Conference on August 29, 2016 to mark the 25th anniversary of the closure of the Semipalatinsk nuclear test site.

ULAANBAATAR | ASTANA (IDN-INPS) – Abolition of nuclear weapons is an ambitious goal that reflects seven decades of peoples’ aspirations and hopes to do away with this weapon of mass destruction. The paradox of the post cold war period is that though the number of nuclear weapons has been reduced, the number of states possessing such weapons has increased.

Viewpoint by Somar Wijayadasa*

NEW YORK (IDN) – At a time when United States-Russia relations continue to deteriorate, Russia has blacklisted seven U.S.-based non-governmental organizations (NGOs) as being “undesirable” on its territory.

This cannot be ruled as another manifestation of President Vladimir Putin’s Cold War-style paranoia as this happens in hundreds of countries around the world.

In the past year, Armenia, India, Egypt, Cambodia, Russia, China and Uganda are among the countries that enforced draconian laws to regulate NGO activities – mostly on suspicion of foreign governments interfering in their internal affairs.

Viewpoint by Jonathan Power

LUND, Sweden (IDN-INPS) – The French ambassador to the U.S. from 1902 to 1924, Jean-Jules Jusserand, observed that distant powers could not easily threaten the U.S. because “On the north, she has a weak neighbour; on the south, another weak neighbour; on the east fish and on the west, fish”.

The coming of the submarine-based nuclear missile has not changed that. Apart from the fact that no enemy would dare use them for fear of retaliation, and that there is no country in the world that feels that hostile to America (accept North Korea), the fact is America is too big and too far away to be invaded and dominated. There could not be a blitzkrieg by a foreign army across the mid-west or a Vichy America.

Viewpoint by Major General Dalvir Singh*

JODHPUR, India (IDN-INPS) – Major Siddharth Chatterjee, Sena Medal (Retd), who served under my command in Sri Lanka from 1987 to 1990, has recently been appointed as the United Nations Resident Coordinator to Kenya.

Major Chatterjee was a decorated and highly valued member of my team, who served with honour, distinction and epitomized the credo of the Indian Army, “service before self”.

Recently a blogger, who runs a blog out of the UN in New York, has hurled scurrilous, unfounded and mendacious accusations of human rights violations against Chatterjee. Major Chatterjee was a star member of my battalion, the 10th Para Special Forces, and at no time was my battalion or any member of my unit ever involved in any form of human rights violation.

By Kavi Chongkittavorn* | Reproduced courtesy of The Nation

BANGKOK (IDN-INPS) – After China’s Premier Li Keqiang outlined his new policy approach in front of ASEAN members in Bandar Seri Begawan in October 2013 – known as the “two plus seven” cooperative framework – nobody predicted it would then be shelved.

Only in recent months have China’s comprehensive initiatives been revisited by ASEAN members. In Vientiane, senior officials from China and ASEAN are currently taking stock of developments and achievements since China attended the first ASEAN meeting in Kuala Lumpur in 1991. They have another week or so to prepare for a joint statement to commemorate the 25th anniversary of relations.