PARIS (IDN) – Sweden’s Charlotte Petri Gornitzka, Director General of the Swedish International Development Co-operation Agency (Sida), has been appointed as the new Chair of the OECD’s Development Assistance Committee (DAC).
Petri Gornitzka replaces outgoing DAC Chair Erik Solheim, who recently became Executive Director of the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP). She will start her new role on a part time basis from July 11, 2016 and take up full-time duties in the autumn.
Viewpoint by Jonathan Power
LUND, Sweden (IDN-INPS) – After Hitler’s Final Solution – the elimination of the Jews – came Cambodia’s Khmer Rouge and the murder of two million of the country’s people. After that came Rwanda when at least a million of the Tutsi people were slaughtered en masse by the Hutus. More recently we have seen large-scale killing in Sudan and now in Syria. The latter two can’t be called “genocide” – the attempt to totally eliminate a people – but the first three certainly were.
However bad that sounds the evidence is, whether it be genocide or mass slaughter, there has been significantly less of it during the last 50 years, despite the fact that most of us recall the horrors – thanks to the TV news producers’ mantra “if it bleeds it leads” – not the steady lessening of its frequency.
Analysis by Jeffrey Moyo
HARARE (IDN) – Clad in faded trousers and shirt and an old pair of shoes dotted with a mixture of patches and holes, 38-year-old Jemitius Simango trudges along First Street in the Zimbabwean capital with a huge sack containing empty plastic bottles hanging on his back as he rummages through dustbins in search of valuables.
Simango holds a Marketing Diploma from Zimbabwe’s Harare Polytechnic College and at first glance many take him for a lunatic, although he is an ordinary man at ‘work’ trying to earn a living against the backdrop of this Southern African country’s faltering economy. After failing to secure employment, many like Simango have turned to doing various substandard jobs to sustain themselves.
BERLIN (IDN) – Leading German companies have expressed interest in backing three environmental undertakings of top priority to the Government of India. These relate to rejuvenating the legendary Ganges river and supporting a national campaign to clean the streets, roads and infrastructure of the country.
Known as the Swachh Bharat Abhiyan (Clean India Mission), the campaign covers 4,041 statutory cities and towns.
A third priority campaign, called Smart Cities Mission, relates to an urban renewal and retrofitting program of the Government of India with a view to developing 100 cities all over the country and making these both citizen-friendly and sustainable.
By South Centre*
GENEVA (IDN-INPS | South Bulletin) – A High-Level Panel on Access to Medicines convened by the UN Secretary-General is currently considering a number of proposals to address the policy incoherence between intellectual property (IP) rights, human rights, trade rules and access to medicines.
The final report of the High-Level Panel will be submitted to the UN Secretary-General, who will present the report to the UN General Assembly to take further action.
The South Centre has made the following three contributions (Nos 67, 112 and 113) to the Panel based on the premise that the right to health for all must prevail over trade and intellectual property rules.
By Devinder Kumar
NEW DELHI | BEIJING (IDN) – Aware that 2.6 billion people depend directly on agriculture, but 52 per cent of the farm land is affected by soil degradation, not only UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon and the specialised agency UNCCD but also UNESCO have stressed the compelling need to rehabilitate every year at least 12 million hectares of degraded land.
At the same time, during the global observance of the World Day to Combat Desertification – this year in Beijing – China and the UNCCD launched the Joint Action Initiative to combat desertification, rehabilitate degraded land and mitigate the effects of drought (JAI).
By Jaya Ramachandran
GENEVA (IDN) – Child labour is rampant around the world: some 168 million children working in various sectors of the economy – ranging from agriculture to mining, from manufacturing to tourism – are producing goods and services consumed by millions every day.
Marking the World Day against Child Labour on June 12, the United Nations International Labour Organization (ILO) has drawn the focus on the plight of children toiling in some of the most hazardous jobs.
“That child labour has no place in well-functioning and well-regulated markets is evident. But the reality is that today, child labour remains widespread in supply chains,” said ILO Director-General Guy Ryder in a statement that focussed on child labour and supply chains.
By Rodney Reynolds
NEW YORK (IDN) – A new study on the international trade in small arms and light weapons confirms the long standing traditional secrecy in the global market place.
Released June 6 – to coincide with the Sixth Biennial Meeting on the Implementation of the Programme of Action to Eradicate the Illicit Trade in Small Arms – the study pointedly says “export authorizations remain the most opaque dimension of small arms reporting”.
The 2016 Transparency Barometer, which evaluated the reporting practices of 49 countries, identified only three countries – Germany, the UK and the Netherlands – as “the most transparent major small arms exporters”.
Analysis by Martin Khor *
GENEVA (IDN | SOUTHNEWS) – The global health situation is facing many critical challenges, and multiple actions must be taken urgently to prevent crises from boiling over. This is the impression one gets from this year’s World Health Assembly held in Geneva on from May 23 to 28.
The WHA is the world’s prime public health event. This year 3,500 delegates from 194 countries took part, including Health Ministers of most countries. The one-week session provided a snapshot of the major medical problems and the actions being taken or proposed to deal with them.
In her opening speech, World Health Organization (WHO) Director-General Dr. Margaret Chan gave an overview of what went right and what is missing on the global health front.
Analysis by Jeffrey Moyo
HARARE (IDN) – Despite the hurdles women continue to face in Zimbabwe, this country has made significant headway in achieving gender equality in line with Goal 5 of the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) to be attained by 2030.
There is improved women parliamentary representation and increased numbers of girls in university than their male counterparts now – and this as more women have also taken up once male-dominated jobs.
According to UN Women, the United Nations organization dedicated to gender equality and the empowerment of women, women’s representation in Zimbabwe’s Parliament more than doubled from 17 per cent following the 2008 general elections, to 35 per cent in the elections on July 31, 2013.
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