Category: UN INSIDER

By Devinder Kumar

NEW DELHI | KABUL (IDN) – “It was in the evening time and my wife, children, and mother were at home. Taliban attacked an Afghan National Army checkpoint and they both started firing mortars and rockets at each other. A mortar round exploded in my house, killing my eight-year-old daughter and injuring my seven-year-old son and my wife,” father and husband of victims killed and injured told the UN Assistance Mission in Afghanistan (UNAMA) in an interview in May 2016.

“We were hysterical, running from one side of the house to another thinking that another mortar round would hit the house. Since that moment, I have no life anymore,” reports the UNAMA’s ‘Midyear Report on Protection of Civilians in Armed Conflict: 2016’ released on July 25.

By Rodney Reynolds

UNITED NATIONS (IDN) – The New York-based Committee to Project Journalists (CPJ), an independent non-governmental organization (NGO) campaigning for press freedom worldwide, has been recognized as an UN-accredited civil society organization by the Economic and Social Council (ECOSOC).

The July 25 decision by the 54-member ECOSOC, the primary UN body which coordinates the social and economic agenda of the United Nations, overrides a decision by one of its own committees, the UN Committee on NGOs, to reject the CPJ application on May 26.

CPJ’s application for NGO status was rejected by the committee with only 6 votes in favour of NGO status (Greece, Guinea, Israel, Mauritania, Uruguay and the United States) and 10 against (Azerbaijan, Burundi, China, Cuba, Nicaragua, Pakistan, Russia, South Africa, Sudan and Venezuela), with three abstentions (India, Iran and Turkey).

By Rizwy Raheem

UNITED NATIONS (IDN) – UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon, who hails the Climate Change agreement as one of the political legacies of his 10-year tenure in office, is hosting a special event in September urging member states to deposit their instruments of ratification so that the treaty can come into force before he steps down end December.

The invitation for the September 21 event has been sent out to world leaders who will be attending the annual General Assembly sessions.

The agreement, which was finalized in Paris in December 2015, will enter into force 30 days after at least 55 countries – accounting for 55 per cent of global greenhouse gas emissions – deposit their instruments of ratification or acceptance with the Secretary-General.

By J C Suresh

TORONTO (IDN) – Governments, civil society organisations and more than 65 million people who are uprooted from their homes are looking forward to the United Nations Summit on Refugees and Migrants on September 19 at UN headquarters in New York.

The high-level meeting being organised by the UN General Assembly will address large movements of refugees and migrants, with the aim of bringing countries together behind a more humane and coordinated approach.

Addressing an event at the world body’s headquarters on July 19 in New York, UN Deputy Secretary-General Jan Eliasson stressed the need for “a discourse about making migration safe, orderly and responsible”, as spelled out in one of the Sustainable Development Goals under Agenda 2030.

By Rodney Reynolds

UNITED NATIONS (IDN) – The United Nations formally launched on July 11 its global campaign to help ensure the implementation of its 17 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) aimed at achieving social, economic and environmental advancement for over 7.0 billion people worldwide.

But the lingering question before the 10-day High Level Political Forum (HLPF) on SDGs was whether or not the international community will reach its targets, including the elimination of poverty and economic inequalities by 2030, as envisaged by world leaders in September 2015?

Reiterating the primary theme of the SDG Forum – “Ensuring that no one is left behind” – UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon said the successful implementation of SDGs will depend on its inclusiveness.

By Jaya Ramachandran

GENEVA | NAIROBI (IDN) – A new United Nations report lists China, Germany, India, Italy, Japan, the Netherlands, Spain, Switzerland, Britain and the U.S. among countries that are benefiting from ‘trade misinvoicing’ practised by a large number of Commodity Dependent Developing Countries (CDDCs).

Trade misinvoicing – involving resort to deliberately misreporting the value of a commercial transaction on an invoice submitted to customs – “continues to be used as a key mechanism of capital flight and illicit financial flows from developing countries”, says a study by the Geneva-based UNCTAD, the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development.

Nearly 90 of developing countries are losing commodity export earnings worth billions of dollars in valuable foreign exchange earnings, taxes and income that might otherwise be spent on development. $3.9 trillion is the estimated annual investment required for achieving Sustainable Development Goals by the year 2030 ,

By J Nastranis

NEW YORK (IDN) – The World Youth Skills Day on July 15 and the release on the same day of the World Youth Report on Youth Civic Engagement, compiled by the UN Department of Economic and Social Affairs (DESA) have brought into focus the attention the United Nations has begun dedicating to the youth, their concerns and aspirations.

The World Youth Skills Day at UN headquarters in New York was organized by the Permanent Missions of Sri Lanka and Portugal to the United Nations, the International Labour Organization (ILO), UNESCO, and the Office of the UN Secretary-General’s Envoy on Youth.

The importance of turning the spotlight on youth is underlined by the fact that the world today is home to the largest generation of youth in its history, with 90% of young people living in developing countries and with estimates suggesting that labor markets will need to add 600 million new jobs by 2026 to accommodate changing global demographics.

By Ramesh Jaura

BERLIN | NEW YORK (IDN) – The Department of Political Affairs plays a central role in the United Nations efforts to prevent and resolve deadly conflicts around the world. But it will not be on the radar screen of the Security Council when it opens on July 21 the first round of unofficial ‘straw polls’ to agree on one of the 12 candidates for the post of the Secretary-General.

A candidate who is acceptable to the five permanent members – USA, Russia, China, Britain and France – and is elected later by the General Assembly to succeed Ban Ki-moon, whose second five-year term expires on December 31, 2016, will however have to pay heed to the Evaluation of the United Nations Department of Political Affairs (DPA).

The reason: DPA’s latest evaluation by the UN Office of Internal Oversight Services (OIOS) published on May 31, 2016 is studded not only with praise for the accomplishments of the Department. It also carries a few brickbats.

Viewpoint by Rene Wadlow *

GENEVA (IDN) – The UN-mediated peace negotiations for Yemen led by Ismail Ould Cheikh in Kuwait move ahead slowly. The 13-month war was at first between Hauthis tribal forces loyal to the former president Ali Abdallah Saleh and those supporting the current president Abd-Rabbu Mansour Hadi who had been Saleh’s vice-president for many years. The war is a struggle for power but is not an ideological-religious-tribal conflict.

Into this conflict has come a Saudi Arabian-led military coalition using bombs and sophisticated weapons. (According to Yemen’s khabaragency.net website, on July 14, a Saudi F-16 warplane crashed in the west-central Yemeni province of Sana’a, killing one of its pilots. The incident took place in the province’s Nihm district, with one unnamed source saying it had been brought down by Houthi fighters. “The Yemeni army’s air defense force and Popular Committees targeted a Saudi F-16 warplane on July 14 night and managed to down it in the Nihm district east of the capital Sana’a,” the source was reported as saying.)

Analysis by J Nastranis

NEW YORK | NAIROBI (IDN) – UNCTAD14 will showcase an organization “with one foot rooted in history and both eyes looking to the future”, assures the communications and information unit of the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development.

Civil society organisations from around the world are however concerned at the prospect of UNCTAD moving toward forcing developing countries to take the role of engines to increase trade. This, they say, would tantamount to the organisation deviating from its mission to support the use of trade for development, the more it risks becoming redundant and irrelevant.

But official sources says that while the the six-day UNCTAD14, opening in Nairobi (Kenya) on July 17, has special historical significance, it makes important concessions to the future. Some 52 years ago, for example, Geneva hosted UNCTAD1, at that time the biggest conference ever, with 4,000 delegates from 120 countries.