Category: UN INSIDER

By Jaya Ramachandran

ROME (IDN) – The UN Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) has warned that declining prices could obstruct international efforts to eradicate hunger and extreme poverty, and called for necessary steps to guarantee decent incomes and livelihoods for small-scale producers.

“Low food prices reduce the incomes of farmers, especially poor family farmers who produce staple food in the developing countries. This cut in the flow of cash into rural communities also reduces the incentives for new investments in production, infrastructure and services,” said FAO Director-General José Graziano da Silva at a high-level meeting on agricultural commodity prices in Rome.

By Ramesh Jaura

BERLIN (IDN) – “Since wars begin in the minds of men, it is in the minds of men that the defences of peace must be constructed,” declares the Preamble to the Constitution of UNESCO. This is also the crux of the message emerging from the World Congress titled ‘Disarm! For a Climate of Peace – Creating an Action Agenda’ from September 30 to October 3, 2016 in Berlin.

United Nations Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon’s famous remark, “The world is over-armed and peace is under-funded”, reverberated in the halls of Berlin’s Technical University.

Viewpoint by Jayantha Dhanapala*

The following is a slightly abridged version of Jayantha Dhanapala’s address to the International Peace Bureau (IPB) World Congress ‘Disarm! For a Climate of Peace’ from September 30 to October 03, 2016 at the Technical University Berlin, Germany.

BERLIN (IDN) – We are at a tipping point in history. The interconnected threats of nuclear weapons use, climate change and increasing inequality not only imperil the fabric of global society but also the very existence of human life and the eco-system that sustains it.

Increasing extremism and terrorism, conflicts triggered by regime change motives and the consequential displacement of people, the largest since World War II, with a rising tide of intolerance are other trends today.

NEW YORK (IDN) – An exceptional global treaty that will cut trade time and costs in the Asia-Pacific region opened for signature on October 1, 2016 at the United Nations Headquarters in New York.

Known as the Framework Agreement on Facilitation of Cross-border Paperless Trade in Asia and the Pacific, it will remain open for signature until September 30. The treaty will result in “long-term benefits for the region by promoting cross-border paperless trade to make international trade more efficient and transparent, while improving regulatory compliance”.

Analysis by Adriano José Timossi*

GENEVA (IDN) – The commemorations of the adoption of the Declaration on the Right to Development by the UN General Assembly 30 years ago gained a new momentum on September 29, 2016, with the adoption by the Human Rights Council of a resolution (A/HRC/33/L.29) which established a mandate for a Special Rapporteur on the Right to Development.

On September 22, 2016, the President of the UN General Assembly convened a one-day high-level segment, in the margins of the general debate of the UN General Assembly at its seventy-first session, to commemorate the 30th anniversary of the Declaration on the Right to Development.

By Jamshed Baruah

GENEVA (IDN) – The United Nations General Assembly will consider during the period October 24 to November 2 a resolution to launch formal, multilateral negotiations in 2017 on a “legally-binding instrument to prohibit nuclear weapons, leading towards their total elimination”.

Sponsored by Austria, Brazil, Ireland, Mexico, Nigeria, and South Africa, the resolution has been submitted on September 28. “It will likely be approved with more than 120 states in support”, said Daryl G. Kimball, Executive Director of the Arms Control Association (ACA). “The proposal may allow for consideration of several options and proposals, including a ban treaty,” he added.

By Ramesh Jaura

NEW YORK (IDN) – Former Portuguese Prime Minister Antόnio Guterres looks set to succeed Ban Ki-moon as the United Nations Secretary-General in January 2017 if the five permanent members (P5) of the Security Council do not decide to select in the coming weeks a woman or an East European for the world’s topmost post.

By tradition, the job of secretary-general has rotated among regions. Asia, Africa, Latin America and Europe have all held the post. East European nations, including Russia, argue that they have never had a Secretary-General and it is their turn.

By J Nastranis

NEW YORK (IDN) – Ahead of joining the Security Council in January 2017 as its non-permanent member for two years, the Kazakh delegation has availed of the 71st session of the UN General Assembly to highlight in general debate as well as in multilateral and bilateral events the Central Asian country’s plans and perspectives.

Addressing the General Assembly on September 24, Foreign Minister Erlan Idrissov said: “We take our election to the Security Council as an international recognition of the soundness and maturity of our foreign policy and a deserved achievement of our independence.”

By Barbara Crossette* | Reproduced courtesy of PassBlue

NEW YORK (IDN | Passblue) – With a cease-fire in Syria collapsing around him and bombs destroying precious relief supplies intended for the hungry, traumatized survivors of relentless government attacks on the once grand city of Aleppo, United Nations Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon used his last speech to open a UN General Assembly debating season to lash out at the government of Syria and its supporters.

“Many groups have killed many innocents, but none more so than the government of Syria, which continues to barrel bomb neighborhoods and systematically torture thousands of detainees,” Ban said on Sept. 20, in a rare outburst of anguish and anger from a secretary-general aimed at a member country in this most public of places, as the world watches. “Powerful patrons that keep feeding the war machine also have blood on their hands.”

By J Nastranis

NEW YORK (IDN) – Two among a spate of events accompanying the 71st session of the UN General Assembly have underlined that the Zero Hunger Challenge, launched in 2012 by Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon, and the Decade of Action on Nutrition, announced in July 2016, are critical to implementing Sustainable Development Goals.

According to the UN, almost 800 million people go to bed hungry every night and one in three people worldwide – nearly 2.5 billion – suffer from at least one form of malnutrition, ranging from hunger to obesity to a lack of critical nutrients.