Category: UN INSIDER

By Jaya Ramachandran

BERLIN | BRUSSELS (IDN) – Unless adequate steps are taken with relentless determination, the core objective of the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) agreed by all member states of the United Nations in September 2015, which recommend that “no one be left behind”, will not be achieved in Eastern Europe and Central Asia.

This is the crux of a United Nations report titled ‘Progress at Risk‘, published on October 12 in Brussels. Goals 8 and 10 of the SDGs – aiming to “promote inclusive and sustainable economic growth, employment and decent work for all” and “reduce inequality within and among countries” – are being ignored.

Analysis by Alyn Ware*

NEW YORK (IDN) – The United Nations General Assembly has on October 13 affirmed António Guterres, the former Prime Minister of Portugal and UN High Commissioner for Refugees, as the next United Nations Secretary-General (UNSG). The UN Security Council had on October 5 nominated him for the position after considering 13 candidates.

Guterres will have a number of challenges as he prepares to take up the UNSG position in January 2017. These include implementation of the Sustainable Development Goals, addressing climate change, managing the continuing global refugee crisis, ensuring progress on disarmament, curtailing armed conflicts in a number of countries and regions, and reducing the tensions between Russia and the West, and between China and its neighbours in East Asia. 

By Jamshed Baruah

GENEVA (IDN) – During his farewell visit to Geneva early October, the outgoing United Nations Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon was told by Prisca Chaoui, deputy executive secretary of the staff union: “As you leave the UN, you leave behind civil servants who are full of concern and apprehension about their future.”

Painting a black picture, Chaoui said the staff feared job cuts after the introduction of an expensive software (Umoja – meaning “unity” in Swahili) designed to unite UN employees scattered around the globe and another efficiency initiative aimed at streamlining administrative services.

By Rodney Reynolds

NEW YORK (IDN) – As a belated response to North Korea’s fifth nuclear test in September, the United States is in the process of negotiating a new Security Council resolution introducing additional economic sanctions while tightening existing ones.

But the final text of the resolution will depend on compromises demanded by China, a veto-wielding permanent member of the Security Council, which has remained a strong political supporter of the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea (DPRK).

Ambassador Samantha Power, U.S. Permanent Representative to the United Nations, told reporters, during a visit to South Korea October 10: “There are a set of political questions at the heart of any sanctions negotiation, but also a set of very, very technical issues, looking at the sources of hard currency for a regime that uses that currency in only one way, and that is to advance its destructive capabilities.”

By IDN-INPS UN Bureau

NEW YORK | LILONGWE (IDN | UN Women) – On the eve of International Day of the Girl Child, UN Women Goodwill Ambassador Emma Watson visited Malawi on October 10 to shine a global spotlight on the need to end child marriage. She met with traditional chiefs and girls who have returned to school after having marriages annulled.

In 2015, Malawi passed the Marriage, Divorce and Family Relations Act, raising the minimum age of marriage to 18. UN Women, together with partners, played an integral role in advocating the new law and works with traditional chiefs to change local practices. (Click for video here.)

By J Nastranis

NEW YORK (IDN) – 2017 will be an important year for Kazakhstan, a transcontinental country in northern Central Asia and Eastern Europe. Not only because on January 1 the country begins its two-year term as a non-permanent member of the UN Security Council, but also because it will host EXPO 2017 from June 10 to September 20.

By creating a platform to showcase cutting edge technologies that could provide solutions to energy issues, official sources said the EXPO will establish Kazakhstan as “a global leader on the challenge of future energies” and it will serve as a catalyst for Kazakhstan’s transition to a “green” economy.

By Ramesh Jaura

BERLIN | NEW YORK (IDN) – The choice of former Portuguese Prime Minister António Guterres as the next United Nations Secretary-General is profoundly historic, though it has not come as a surprise.

Guterres has not only gathered valuable experience as head of the UN Refugee Agency for ten years until December 2015, and as prime minister of his country in critical times, but also as president of the Socialist International.

This global social democratic organisation played a significant role at the height of the Cold War and in the Middle East under the stewardship of the late Austrian Chancellor Bruno Kreisky and Nobel Laureate and (West) German Chancellor Willy Brandt.

By Kalinga Seneviratne

VIENTIANE (IDN) – U.S. President Barack Obama’s early September visit to Laos helped to focus attention on one of the most horrendous war crimes in history, the bombing of the small landlocked Southeast Asian country during the Indochina War in the 1960s and 1970s, and its massive human and development costs.

The Laotians made use of the visit of both Obama and UN Secretary General Ban Ki-Moon for the ASEAN and East Asia Summits to launch their own Sustainable Development Goal 18 to reduce the impact of unexploded ordnance (UXO) on development and economic activities.

By IDN-INPS UN Bureau

GENEVA (IDN) – Keen to provide strategic support and boost efforts for gender equality and the empowerment of women and girls worldwide, the New York based UN Women, the United Nations Entity for Gender Equality and the Empowerment of Women, has opened its Geneva Liaison Office.

Explaining the decision to open the Office on October 6, UN Women said in a media release: “Serving as a gateway to development stakeholders, Geneva is host to over 40 United Nations (UN) entities, more than 400 non-governmental organizations, some 35 international organizations as well as renowned academic institutions, several of which support the promotion of women’s rights and gender equality.”

By J Nastranis

NEW YORK (IDN) – Over the past decade, Ban Ki-moon has worked ceaselessly to bring countries together to accelerate the global response to climate change. As he is fond of saying, he has visited communities on the climate frontlines, from the Arctic to the Amazon, and has witnessed how climate impacts are already devastating lives, livelihoods and prospects for a better future.

Some two months ahead of relinquishing his post as UN Secretary-General on completion of the second five-year term on December 31, he will have his efforts rewarded, allowing him to leave behind a valuable legacy.