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Compiled by Santo D. Banerjee
NEW YORK (IDN) – For the first time since mid-October, some 25,000 Eritrean refugees, sheltering in two camps in the unsettled Tigray region of Ethiopia, have received desperately needed food aid, reports UN News.
"Families, women, men, children — even new-borns — have been cut off from supplies and essential services for many weeks, so this distribution was urgently needed," said Ann Encontre, the United Nations Refugee Agency (UNHCR) Representative in Ethiopia.
By Loraine Rickard-Martin*, Passblue
NEW YORK (IDN) – At the $79.4 billion United Nations pension fund, continuing tensions came to a head this month when the UN participant representatives to the pension board — elected representatives of 85,000 active UN staff members — wrote on December 2 to the General Assembly body that oversees the fund about their concerns on a range of issues regarding the fund’s administration and governance.
By Jamshed Baruah
GENEVA (IDN) – Nearly one-and-half years after UN Secretary-General António Guterres launched Securing Our Common Future: An Agenda for Disarmament in May 2018, a new handbook to support disarmament for security and sustainable development has been released. Its approach and focus draw primarily on the Agenda. Titled Assuring our Common Future, published by four international parliamentary organizations and two international policy bodies on November 5, 2020, the new publication offers background and examples of effective policies and parliamentary actions on a wide range of disarmament issues.
By Aar Jay Persius
BRLIN (IDN) – As Germany and other western European countries struggled to combat the Corona virus, eagerly awaiting the advent of a vaccine to unfetter humanity from the scourge of the ruthless pandemic, UN Secretary-General António Guterres descended on Berlin and declared that the prophesied inoculum must be viewed as a global public good.
Guterres undertook the mission as Germany prepared to complete its two-year term as a non-permanent member of the UN Security Council which is charged with primary responsibility for the maintenance of international peace and security. The visit came on the dawn of the last year of his first five-year term at the UN Secretary-General.
By J Nastranis
NEW YORK (IDN) – The United Nations Secretary-General António Guterres has appointed Siddharth Chatterjee, an eminent Indian national at the world body, as UN "resident coordinator" to China, who has the same rank as an ambassador of a foreign state accredited to that country. The Chinese government' has formally accepted the UN Secretary-General’s selection.
Observers consider this important particularly as Chatterjee is also an Indian Army Special Forces veteran. He holds a Bachelor's Degree from the National Defence Academy in India.
Viewpoint by Roberto Savio*
ROME (IDN | OtherNews) – The recent meeting of the G20 – scheduled to take place in Riyadh but held virtually due to the coronavirus pandemic – has been an eloquent example of how the world is drifting, in a crisis of leadership. It was, in a sense, a showcase. Everybody had to accept the view that the host of the meeting, the ailing King Salman of Saudi Arabia, was accompanied on TV screens by his apparent heir, Prince Mohamed bin Salman, who is clearly the mastermind of the brutal assassination, dismembering and disappearance of the body of dissident Saudi journalist Jamal Khashoggi.
By Ramesh Jaura
BERLIN | GENEVA (IDN) – UNCTAD Secretary-General Mukhisa Kituyi has stressed the need to address the frailties of globalization that led to the rapid spread of the COVID-19 pandemic and its uneven economic impacts, gravely wounding the world economy with serious consequences for everyone. He hopes that the situation would prove to be 'course-altering' and a catalyst for change. "We need to reshape global production networks and reset multilateral cooperation for the better," he says.
By Caroline Mwanga
NEW YORK (IDN) – United Nations Academic Impact (UNAI), launched in 2010 as an initiative to align colleges and universities with the work of the United Nations, celebrated its 10th anniversary on November 18. The program has more than 1500 members in 147 countries, all applying their academic inquiry, research and innovation to solving some of the world’s greatest challenges while educating the next generation of global leaders.
Interview by Kester Kenn Klomegah*
MOSCOW (IDN) – Under the Russian Chairmanship of BRICS 2020, Moscow has organised and hosted a series of corporate conferences, business forums and other important events. For example, the Roundtable discussion on the theme “International Cultural Cooperation for Strengthening BRICS Unity” brought high-profiled participants from Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa. It was part of efforts at broadening the scope of cooperation in different directions, and steps toward attaining an admirably influential position and becoming active on the global stage.
Viewpoint by P.I. Gomes*
PORT OF SPAIN, Trinidad and Tobago (IDN) – The Preamble to the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development refers to what is called the 5P’s of People, Planet, Prosperity, Peace and Partnership. They capture with such lucid precision what is referred to as “all areas of critical importance for humanity and the planet.”
These are all areas deserving of concerted attention, but the widespread and insidiously yet blatant impact of violence, as the negation of “peace”, might benefit from some reflections. Manifested increasingly in such multiple forms as gender-based violence (GBV), trafficking in persons, ruthless assaults of gun violence, armed conflict, racial supremacist abusive language, ethnic profiling and violent extremism – all span a range of human behaviour that is violent in intent and in effect, resulting in loss of life or life-long injury, at times physical, psychological or both.
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