Category: UN INSIDER

By Ramesh Jaura and Katsuhiro Asagiri

BERLIN | TOKYO (IDN) – Japanese Buddhist philosopher and peace builder Daisaku Ikeda has urged the U.S. and Russian leaders to come together for a summit meeting as soon as possible to pledge a global drift toward nuclear disarmament. The two countries together hold more than 90% of the world’s nuclear arsenal.

The advice by Ikeda, who is the President of the Soka Gakkai International (SGI) Buddhist association, is contained in his 35th annual peace proposal titled “The Global Solidarity of Youth: Ushering in a New Era of Hope” issued on January 26, 2017.

By J C Suresh

NEW YORK (IDN) – The United Nations Special Committee on Decolonization has welcomed the commutation of the prison sentence of Puerto Rican nationalist Oscar López Rivera, the world’s longest-serving political prisoner confined in a U.S. federal penitentiary since 1981.

Puerto Rico – Spanish for ‘Rich Port’ – is an “unincorporated territory” of the United States, located in the northeastern Caribbean Sea, with a population of about 3.4 million and San Juan as most populous city.

Rich history, tropical climate, diverse natural scenery, renowned traditional cuisine, and attractive tax incentives make the main island of Puerto Rico – and a number of smaller ones such as Mona, Culebra, and Vieques – a popular destination for travellers from around the world.

By Jaya Ramachandran

GENEVA (IDN) – Within less than four weeks of taking office, United Nations Secretary-General António Guterres has pledged to “actively pursue the abolition of all weapons of mass destruction and the strict regulation of conventional weapons”, arguing that disarmament can play an important role in ending existing conflicts and preventing the outbreak of new.

“I am committed to achieving a world free of nuclear weapons,” Guterres declared in a video message to the Geneva-based Conference on Disarmament, which opened the first segment of its three-part 2017 session on January 23.

By Jayantha Dhanapala*

COLOMBO (IDN) – Throughout my life I have had an abiding faith in the United Nations Organization which, three years hence, will celebrate its 75th anniversary. The foundation document of that unique world body – the Charter – is not only the bedrock of international law, but also the most inspiring document that can hold the international community together amidst its diversity and conflict.

Individual countries and Governments are dominated by their separate concepts of national security whereas the UN has to weave 193 of these national security concepts of member states into a tapestry that will serve the common security of the global community in a co-operative and credible manner.

By Barbara Crossette* | Reproduced courtesy of PassBlue

NEW YORK (IDN | Passblue) – Nikki Haley, President Donald Trump’s nominee to become the United States ambassador to the United Nations, appeared in a confirmation hearing on January 18 lasting more than three hours in the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. She introduced herself in an address to members that was both autobiographical — the daughter of immigrants — and political.

Acknowledging her neophyte standing in international affairs, she announced at the outset: “Like most government agencies, the United Nations could benefit from a fresh set of eyes. I will take an outsider’s look at the institution as I have in every challenge in my life, I will come to the UN to work and to work smart.”

By António Guterres, UN Secretary-General

“The best prevention for conflict and the best prevention for other negative impacts on societies is, of course, sustainable and inclusive development,” said UN Secretary-General António Guterres in remarks at the special session on “Cooperation for Peace: Tackling the Root Causes of Global Crises” at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, on January 19. He also urged the need for “a new generation of partnerships, partnerships not only with governments, not only with civil society and academia but equally partnerships with the business community”. Following are detailed excerpts from his remarks.

DAVOS (IDN-INPS) – We live in a dangerous world. We see a proliferation of new conflicts; old conflicts seem never to die. Conflicts are becoming more and more interlinked, more linked with the new threat of global terrorism.

By J Nastranis

NEW YORK | CAPE TOWN (IDN) – The unprecedented scope of the UN’s 2030 Agenda, with its 17 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), calls for reliable data without which progress in implementing those goals cannot be tracked. “We cannot achieve what we cannot measure,” said Dr Pali Lehohla, South Africa’s Statistician-General and head of Statistics South Africa (STATS SA).

STATS SA hosted the first ever United Nations World Data Forum in Cape Town from January 15 to 18, with support from the Statistics Division of the UN Department of Economic and Social Affairs (DESA), under the guidance of the United Nations Statistical Commission and the High-level Group for Partnership, Coordination and Capacity-Building for Statistics for the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development.

By Jutta Wolf

BERLIN | BONN (IDN) – The UN SDG Action Campaign, an Initiative of the United Nations Secretary-General, is launching the first Global Festival of Ideas March 1-3 in Bonn with a view to ensuring the attainment of Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) by 2030.

Bonn, former West German capital in divided post-World War II Germany, hosts 22 UN secretariats, including those of the UN Framework Convention for Climate Change (UNFCCC), UN Convention to Combat Desertification (UNCCD), and UN Volunteers (UNV).

NEW YORK (IDN) – A photo exhibit launched at United Nations Headquarters in New York on January 16 by the International Organization for Migration (IOM) and the United Nations TOGETHER initiative seeks to draw attention to the plight of migrants in vulnerable situations around the world.

“The photo exhibit serves to highlight how crisis-related migration flows are growing in scale and complexity and inducing new forms of migration-related humanitarian challenges both internally and across borders,” said Ashraf El Nour, Director of IOM’s Office to the UN in New York. “Migrants need protection as their vulnerability to exploitation, trafficking, and violence heightens during crises,” he added.

By Ambassador Syed Akbaruddin

Ambassador Syed Akbaruddin is India’s Permanent Representative to the UN in New York. Following are excerpts from his statement to the Security Council in an open debate on January 10 on ‘Conflict Prevention and Sustaining Peace’ in connection with the agenda item ‘Maintenance of International Peace and Security’- an agenda that relates to one of the first purposes of the UN’s charter and one which is listed in the first article.

UNITED NATIONS (IDN-INPS) – The wisdom of the age-old adage, “Prevention is better than Cure” is self-evident . . . Dag Hammarskjöld is said to have first introduced the term “preventive diplomacy” more than 50 years ago into the lexicon. Boutros Boutros-Ghali’s “Agenda for Peace” unveiled in the 1990s comes to mind as another milestone in this saga.