UN Insider

Photo Credit: Predrag Vasic/SPCS/OUSG/DESA

Urgent Need to Tackle Inequalities in Financing for Development Worsened by the COVID-19 Pandemic

By Jamshed Baruah

NEW YORK (IDN) — In the face of dramatic reversals in global progress towards achieving the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), urgent action is required by the international community to improve developing countries’ access to affordable finance.

Inaugurating the four-day Forum on Financing for Development (FfD Forum) on April 25, ECOSOC President Mr. Collen V. Kelapile, Botswana's Permanent Representative to the UN said: “…The ambition of sustainable development for all is facing perhaps its greatest threat since the adoption of the 2030 Agenda seven years ago.”

: Jamshed Baruah; SUSTAINABILITY; Poverty; 26 April 2022

Image: Map of the Caribbean from CIA's The World Factbook

Caribbean Foreign Relations and Super-Power Politics of Putin’s Ukraine War

Viewpoint by P.I. Gomes

Dr P.I. Gomes is retired Ambassador of the Cooperative Republic of Guyana to the Kingdom of Belgium and the European Union and former Secretary-General of ACP Group of State, now the Organisation of African, the Caribbean and Pacific States (OACPS).

PORT OF SPAIN, Trinidad and Tobago (IDN) — Recent events of the Russia-Ukraine war bring in their wake untold upheavals across Europe.

: Dr. Patrick Gomes; SUSTAINABILITY; Peace & Justice; 23 April 2022

UN Condemns UK Plan to Dump Asylum-Seeking Refugees in Rwanda

By Lisa Vives, Global Information Network

NEW YORK (IDN) — The United Nations Refugee Agency (UNHCR) has joined other human rights groups in protesting plans by the United Kingdom to dump migrants and asylum-seekers who cross the Channel thousands of miles away to Rwanda as the government tries to cut the record numbers of people making the perilous journey.

: Global Information Network; UN INSIDER; 23 April 2022

Image credit: Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO)

Ukraine War Could Drive Millions Elsewhere into Starvation

By Kalinga Seneviratne

SYDNEY (IDN) — While images of the war devastation in Ukraine have saturated the news bulletins around the world, a much more severe human disaster is unravelling in many other parts of the world that could throw over one-fifth of humanity back into poverty.

“We have all seen the tragedy unfolding inside Ukraine: cities flattened; people suffering and dying in their homes and in the streets; the fastest displacement crisis in Europe since the Second World War," UN Secretary-General António Guterres pointed out in an address to the UN Security Council on April 5.

: Kalinga Seneviratne; SUSTAINABILITY; Poverty; 22 April 2022

Photo: An aid worker from the UN refugee agency attends to a baby at a UN-supported health center in the northern region of Burkina Faso. OCHA/Giles Clarke.

Private Sector Has a Pivotal Role in Achieving Universal Health Coverage in Low- and Middle-Income Countries

Viewpoint by Massimiliano Colella

The author is the chief executive officer of Evercare.

DUBAI, United Arab Emirates (IDN) — With public debt reaching record highs both in developed and emerging markets—and with even more financial volatility following the COVID-19 pandemic—government budgets have been stretched thin. Underfunding in healthcare versus competing priorities has led to heavily burdened systems in emerging markets that are often struggling to keep up with increasing demands.

: Opinion Editor; SUSTAINABILITY; Health & Well Being; 22 April 2022

Photo: United Nations headquarters in New York, seen from the East River. CC BY 2.0

UN Opens its Doors to Visitors – After a long Pandemic Lockdown

By Rodney Reynolds

UNITED NATIONS, (IDN) — After more than two years of on-again, off-again pandemic lockdowns, the United Nations will soon return to normal—and re-open to the public.

The move comes amid reports of new infections from Covid-19, with mandatory masks still in force in New York city’s public transit systems, including buses and subways.

: Thalif Deen; UN INSIDER; 22 April 2022

US Urged to Restore the UN-Backed 2015 Iran Nuclear Deal

By Radwan Jakeem

NEW YORK (IDN) — More than 40 former government officials and leading nuclear non-proliferation experts have expressed strong support for an agreement that returns Iran and the United States to comply with the 2015 nuclear deal. The accord between Iran and the major world powers, known as the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA), was unanimously endorsed by the UN Security Council in Resolution 2231.

: Radwan Jakeem; SUSTAINABILITY; Peace & Justice; 21 April 2022

Remembering ECHELON: The First International Mass Surveillance Program

By Mila Bera

BELGRADE (IDN) — Ask a family member or friend how much they value their online privacy and you'll usually get a noncommittal answer that belies their disinterest. In fact, most people don’t have a clue how much their privacy is really worth. Governments and their agencies have no such doubts; they set the price on your privacy long ago.

: Europe Editor; SUSTAINABILITY; Peace & Justice; 20 April 2022

Image: The St. Petersburg International Economic Forum, a backwater event founded in 1997, has become a meeting place for Asian and European business and political leaders who see this meeting as much more significant than the World Economic Forum (WEF) annual meeting held in Davos, Switzerland.

Would the New Globalization Have an Eastern Face, If Western-Led Globalization Ends?

Viewpoint by E. Ahmet Tonak and Vijay Prashad *

This article was produced by Globetrotter.

NEW YORK | NORTHAMPTON (IDN) — An article written by authors John Micklethwait and Adrian Wooldridge for Bloomberg on March 24 sounded the alarm to announce the end of “the second great age of globalization.” The Western trade war and sanctions against China that predated the pandemic have now been joined by the stiff Western sanctions imposed against Russia after it invaded Ukraine.

: Opinion Editor; OPINION; 18 April 2022

Crisis-Ridden Sri Lanka Negotiates for an IMF Bailout

Viewpoint by Nandi Jasentuliyana

The writer is a former Deputy Director-General, United Nations.

LOS ANGELES, CALIFORNIA (IDN) — Sri Lanka is experiencing a severe foreign exchange and debt crisis resulting in a shortage of food, fuel, power, and every other commodity to be purchased at exorbitant prices that the suffering masses cannot afford, forcing them to the streets protesting against the governing authorities.