GLOBAL GOVERNANCE

Photo: UN Trust Fund 16 Days Fundraising Event. Credit: UN Women

Survivors and Activists Spotlight Solutions to End Violence Against Women

LOS ANGELES (IDN-INPS) – Commemorating Human Rights Day and the global advocacy campaign “16 Days of Activism against Gender-Based Violence”, the UN Trust Fund to End Violence against Women (UN Trust Fund) held a fundraising luncheon in Santa Monica, California, on December 10. In the hometown of the #MeToo movement, the event brought together a powerhouse of survivors, dignitaries, UN officials, gender experts and Hollywood celebrities.

Hosted by UN Women’s Executive Director Phumzile Mlambo-Ngcuka and Goodwill Ambassador Nicole Kidman, the event celebrated the ground-breaking initiatives supported by the UN Trust Fund across the world over the past 22 years and highlighted the work that remains to end this human rights violation, which impacts one in three women worldwide.

: IDN-INPS UN Bureau; UN INSIDER; 11 December 2018

Photo: UN Chief Opening COP24. Credit: UNFCCC.

UN Chief Calls for Katowice to Lay Down Ground Rules for the Paris Agreement

By António Guterres

Following are extensive excerpts from the UN Secretary-General's remarks at the opening ceremony of the UN Climate Change Conference (COP14) from December 2-14 in Katowice, Poland.

KATOWICE (IDN-INPS) – We are in trouble. We are in deep trouble with climate change.

Climate change is running faster than we are and we must catch up sooner rather than later before it is too late.

For many, people, regions even countries this is already a matter of life and death.

: IDN-INPS UN Bureau; OPINION; 04 December 2018

Photo: COP24 Opening Ceremony. Credit: UNFCCC.

Polish Perspectives of the UN Climate Change Conference

By Aleksandra Gadzinski

KATOWICE (IDN) – "We can't afford to fail in Katowice," declared UN Secretary-General António Guterres in his opening remarks to the two-week-long 24th session of the United Nations Climate Change Conference (COP24) in southern Poland.

The political will to fight climate change had faded since the Paris Agreement three years ago. The accord in December 2015 saw countries agree to step up efforts to fight the pressing problem of global warming. But with temperatures rising, oceans warming and glaciers receding faster than expected, climate change was running away from us.

: IDN-INPS UN Bureau; SUSTAINABILITY; Climate Action; 03 December 2018

Photo: The 35th plenary session of the ACP-EU Joint Parliamentary Assembly in Brussels from June18-20, 2018, in the presence of MEPs and their counterparts from the national parliaments of African, Caribbean and Pacific (ACP) countries. Credit: multimedia.europarl.europa.eu

Towards an Organisation of African, Caribbean and Pacific States

By Reinhard Jacobsen

BRUSSELS (ACP-IDN) – As negotiators inch towards updating the most comprehensive but 20-year old partnership agreement between the European Union and the African, Caribbean and Pacific (ACP) Group of States, they have a broad array of issues on their plate.

These include the name change to the 'Organisation of African, Caribbean and Pacific States (OACP)', ensuring the consistency of participation in parliamentary assemblies, establishment of the ACP Information Centre for South-South and Triangular Cooperation, and enhancing ACP's financial stability.

: Reinhard Jacobsen; GLOBAL GOVERNANCE; ACP Group of States; 03 December 2018

Photo: The G20 “Family Photo” at the Teatro Colón in Buenos Aires. Public Domain.

G20 Leaders Keep the Multilateralism Torch Alive

By Santo D. Banerjee

NEW YORK | BUENOS AIRES (IDN) – Going by the 31-point G20 Leaders' declaration titled 'Building consensus for fair and sustainable development', a plenty more drew the focus of the November 30-December 1 summit than preoccupation with shadow-boxing between the champion of 'America First ' and the rest of the world.

This must have been much to the satisfaction of UN Secretary-General António Guterres who, during press briefings at the beginning of the G20 meeting described the event as an essential forum, in view of a lack of confidence and high level of confrontation within the international community, because globalization has divided the world into winners and losers.

: Santo D. Banerjee; GLOBAL GOVERNANCE; The Group of Twenty (G20); 02 December 2018

Photo: Lesotho has had its fair share of the climate change impacts owing to the El Nino crisis in the past years. Credit: Lesotho: Agence Kaolin

ACP Steps in to Rescue Africa from Climate Change Impacts

By Jeffrey Moyo

MASERU (ACP-IDN) – Three years ago, Lesotho, Southern Africa’s small mountain kingdom surrounded by South Africa, was hit hard by the drought that led to the driest season in the region in 35 years. In the tiny dynastic nation, the El Niño driven-phenomenon resulted in a fall in maize production, the country's staple food.

But now thanks to ACP, the African, Caribbean and Pacific Group of States, a group that was created by the Georgetown Agreement in 1975, climate change impacts in African countries like Lesotho have met their match.

: Jeffrey Moyo; GLOBAL GOVERNANCE; ACP Group of States; 01 December 2018

Photo: African Penguin Credit: Mike Barth. Source: www.unep-aewa.org

AEWA - International Environmental Cooperation At Its Best

Viewpoint by Jacques Trouvilliez

Internationalism seems to be falling out of vogue, but Jacques Trouvilliez, Executive Secretary of the Agreement on the Conservation of African-Eurasian Migratory Waterbirds (AEWA), holds his organization up as an example of how conservation objectives are being effectively achieved through cross-continental cooperation.

BONN (IDN) – The Agreement on the Conservation of African-Eurasian Migratory Waterbirds (AEWA) is a good, and certainly not the only example of international cooperation working well. It is a UN Treaty which operates on the basis of concerted actions. It has 78 members including the European Union with another 41 countries within its area eligible to join.

: IDN-INPS UN Bureau; OPINION; 30 November 2018

Photo: A boy watches the shore from a boat near Sirajganj, a community affected by severe erosion that has left many displaced. Sirajganj, Bangladesh. October 2016. Credit: IOM/Amanda Nero.

New Study Calls for USD 2.3 Billion Support to ACP Countries

By Reinhard Jacobsen

BRUSSELS (ACP-IDN) – A new study finds that the 79-nation African, Caribbean, and Pacific (ACP) Group of States can boost climate action with technical and financial support amounting to a minimum of USD 2,317 billion. Capacity building, an important aspect of efforts to halt climate catastrophe, is expected to draw considerable attention at the forthcoming United Nations Climate Change Conference (COP24) in Katowice, Poland.

The urgency of climate action is underlined also by the new report released by the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP). It shows that global carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions rose again during 2017 after a three-year break, highlighting the imperative for countries to deliver on the historic Paris Agreement to keep global warming to below 2 degrees Celsius above pre-industrial levels.

: Reinhard Jacobsen; GLOBAL GOVERNANCE; ACP Group of States; 29 November 2018

Photo: The picture shows two women from Lesotho trafficked in South Africa. Credit: Sunday Times.

ACP Fights Human Trafficking, Migrant Smuggling in Africa

By Jeffrey Moyo

BEITBRIDGE (ACP-IDN) – At the age of 39, Ndikonyaga Muleya hailing from Beitbridge, Zimbabwe’s border town with South Africa, has found illegal crossing into South Africa convenient.

Over the years he became experienced crossing into the neighboring country looking for casual jobs in Musina, also a South African border town with Zimbabwe, which he now frequents as an illegal transporter of undocumented Zimbabweans itching to cross into South Africa fleeing from this country’s mounting economic woes.

“I earn money from transporting people through unmanned crossing points into South Africa. I was also helped before when I started crossing to SA,” Muleya told IDN.

: Jeffrey Moyo; GLOBAL GOVERNANCE; ACP Group of States; 28 November 2018

Asia-Pacific Reviews Ambitious Targets of 1994 Cairo Conference

Viewpoint by Armida Salsiah Alisjahbana and Natalia Kanem

Ms. Armida Salsiah Alisjahbana is United Nations Under-Secretary-General and Executive Secretary of the United Nations Economic and Social Commission for Asia and the Pacific (ESCAP). Dr. Natalia Kanem is United Nations Under-Secretary-General and Executive Director of the United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA).

BANGKOK (IDN) – Ministers and senior policymakers across Asia and the Pacific are gathered in Bangkok up to November 28 to focus on population dynamics at a crucial time for the region. Their goal: to keep people and rights at the heart of the region’s push for sustainable development. They will be considering how successful we have been in balancing economic growth with social imperatives, underpinned by rights and choices for all as enshrined in the landmark Programme of Action stemming from the 1994 International Conference on Population and Development, or ICPD.