By Santo D. Banerjee NEW YORK (IDN) – The concept of sustainable blue economy is gaining momentum, including at the highest levels of decision making, encouraging proponents of the growing movement to believe that humans can use the ocean as a tool for lifting people out of poverty, all the while protecting its valuable ecosystems. […]
World’s Poorest Look Forward to 2019 Climate Summit at the UN
By J Nastranis NEW YORK | KATOWICE (IDN) – The year 2018 has been marked by a series of natural disasters underlining that no country is immune to the impacts of climate change. But it is the nearly 1 billion world’s poorest people living in the 47 least developed countries (LDCs) that are often hit […]
Gap Widens Between Ambition and Action To Combat Future Climate Risks
By Aleksandra Gadzinski KATOWICE (IDN) – Climate consciousness across the globe is on the rise. But a new report has found a considerable gap between countries’ preparedness for climate change and the actual measures put in place to prepare communities for a future of increasing climate risks. The fourth edition of the UN Environment’s Adaptation […]
Leaders Pledge to Boost Blue Economy, Protect Water Bodies
By Justus Wanzala NAIROBI (IDN) – The Kenyan capital was literally painted ‘blue’ for the first-ever global conference on the blue economy attended by over 18,000 participants from 180 countries. Running from November 26 to 28, the Sustainable Blue Economy Conference ended with various countries signing commitments to ensure that humanity benefits from the blue […]
ICC Leaders Join in Global Initiative to Break Down Gender Barriers
By Robert Johnson THE HAGUE (IDN) – Top officials of the International Criminal Court (“ICC” or “the Court”) – President Chile Eboe-Osuji, Prosecutor Fatou Bensouda and Registrar Peter Lewis – have joined the International Gender Champions network, an important initiative to break down gender barriers at all levels. This global leadership network brings together decision-makers […]
Polish Perspectives of the UN Climate Change Conference
By Aleksandra Gadzinski KATOWICE (IDN) – “We can’t afford to fail in Katowice,” declared UN Secretary-General António Guterres in his opening remarks to the two-week-long 24th session of the United Nations Climate Change Conference (COP24) in southern Poland. The political will to fight climate change had faded since the Paris Agreement three years ago. The […]
Conference Calls for Mainstreaming Human Rights Education
By Neena Bhandari SYDNEY (IDN) – More investment is needed in human rights education and strengthening of civil society to address inequality and sustainability – the main objectives of the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals. This was the key message from the Ninth International Conference on Human Rights Education (ICHRE) held in Sydney, Australia. Drawing […]
Violence Against Women – Never Acceptable, Never Ending
By Lisa Vives, Global Information Network NEW YORK (IDN) – “I love you, that’s why I beat you.” So ends a poem by the Ghanaian writer Mariska Araba Taylor-Darko about a violent spouse and an abused woman who lays the blame of the daily beating on herself. The poem, A Beating for Love, takes special […]
Technology Comes to Rescue as Freshwater Becomes Scarcer
By Anna Kucirkova UNIVERSAL CITY, Texas (IDN-INPS) – Fresh water is the most important resource for human life on earth. People can survive far longer without food than without water, and virtually all of our food sources require fresh water to grow or create. Global climate change and the exponential increase in population has led […]
Decline in External Finance to Developing Countries Endanger Global Goals
By Krishan Dutta PARIS (IDN) – “Donor countries have not followed through on their 2015 promise to expand development finance flows,” said OECD Development Co-operation Director Jorge Moreira da Silva, launching a landmark report at the Paris Peace Forum. He was commenting on an important finding of the report that external finance to poor countries […]