Category: UN INSIDER

By J Nastranis

NEW YORK (IDN) – The Mission of Kazakhstan to the United Nations focused early May on ‘Interfaith and Inter-Ethnic Dialogue as a Key Instrument to Promote Peace and Security, an Inclusive Society and State Building’, with Kazakhstan’s Minister for Religious Affairs and Civil Society, Nurlan Yermekbayev, as a keynote speaker.

The importance of this event on May 12 is underscored by the fact that Kazakhstan is a non-permanent member of the UN Security Council for the two year-period 2017-2019. The Security Council is one of the six principal organs of the United Nations, tasked with the maintenance of international peace and security.

By Laurie Garrett

Since 2004, Laurie Garrett has been a senior fellow for global health at the Council on Foreign Relations in New York. Garrett is the only writer ever to have been awarded all three of the Big “Ps” of journalism: the Peabody, the Polk, and the Pulitzer. Her expertise includes global health systems, chronic and infectious diseases, and bioterrorism. (Full Bio and Contact). This article first appeared on 25 May 2017.

GENEVA – For the first time in its seventy-year history, the World Health Organization (WHO) will, effective July 1, be led by a nonphysician, an African, and a person from the global South. Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus of Ethiopia campaigned in an unprecedented election that gave 186 nations equal voice and saw three globetrotting candidates plead their cases.

By Desmond Brown

PORT OF SPAIN, Trinidad (ACP-IDN) – While there have been several activities at sub-regional level aimed at stimulating Caribbean countries to position themselves for successfully implementing the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), the pace of implementation has remained slow.

Specifically, the lack of national institutional frameworks for SDG implementation in most Caribbean countries constitutes a major obstacle to effective implementation of the goals.

The SDGs are the cornerstone of the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development, which became effective on January 1, 2016, and is supposed to shape sustainable development efforts globally.

By Rita Joshi

BONN (IDN) – The Fijian Prime Minister and incoming President of COP 23, Frank Bainimarama, has vowed to advance the work of the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) and “preserve the multilateral consensus for decisive action to address the underlying causes of climate change, respecting climate science.”

Bainimarama made the pledge in an address to delegates at the start of the closing plenary of May 18 at the UN Climate Change Conference in Bonn held some six months ahead of the 23rd annual session of parties to the UNFCCC.

By Ramesh Jaura

BONN (IDN) – The world’s 48 poorest countries that are particularly vulnerable to climate change are profoundly concerned whether “substantive progress” will be made in the months ahead on implementing the 2015 Paris Climate Change Agreement in all its aspects.

This was emphasised by Chair of the Least Developed Countries (LDC) group, Gebru Jember Endalew of Ethiopia, as delegates from 140 countries closed the two-week session of the United Nations climate change negotiations on May 18 in Bonn.

The LDCs are a group of countries that have been classified by the UN as “least developed” in terms of their low gross national income (GNI), their weak human assets and their high degree of economic vulnerability.

By Ravi Kanth Devarakonda

GENEVA (IDN) – India says it implements universal human rights as it reckons the world is one family – “Vasudhaiva Kutumbakam” – in which it is imperative to comply with the existing international rules governing civil, political, economic, and social rights.

But reports prepared by several special rapporteurs of the United Nations Human Rights Council and civil society groups paint a grim picture of continued violations of the fundamental human rights that India had agreed to in various international conventions and treaties.During the recent third cycle Universal Periodic Review (UPR) of India under the auspices of the Council on May 4, 2017, these two clashing narratives came under scrutiny, according to several participants in the meeting.

By Lowana Veal

REYKJAVIK (IDN) – One of the arguments for commercial whaling is that whales compete with humans for fish – they eat fish that would otherwise be available for human consumption.

According to Gísli Víkingsson from the Icelandic Marine and Freshwater Research Institute, whales eat around six million tonnes off Iceland, which is four to six times the amount taken by the Icelandic fishing fleet. “But of course it’s not all fish. Maybe a third is fish, though little is known for most species,” he says.

By Jaya Ramachandran

BONN (IDN) – Two important United Nations conventions and civil society representatives availed of the climate conference in Bonn to get together and reflect on how to connect the dots between the challenging agendas on climate and land by deliberating on: “Why land degradation neutrality matters for climate?”

The two conventions with headquarters in Bonn, the capital of post-war West Germany until reunification of two German states in 1990, are the United Nations Convention to Combat Desertification (UNCCD) and the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC). The city hosts some 20 UN agencies and secretariats meanwhile.

BONN (IDN) – Two United Nations agencies, the United Nations Framework Convention for Climate Change (UNFCCC) Secretariat and the United Nations University Institute for Environment and Human Security (UNU-EHS) have launched a significant initiative aimed at preparing young developing country professionals to lead climate action. It will get under way following the UN Climate Change Conference, which runs to May 18.

The fellowship initiative will offer work experience in a vibrant international policy environment at the UNFCCC Secretariat, according to a media release.. The UNU-EHSwill help identify and recruit the young professionals, and provide them with an exciting research environment, the media release added.