OPINION

Photo: “Manhattan cocktail” (Creative Commons image) served at the UN North Delegates' Lounge (designed by Hella Jongerius and Rem Koolhaas) "where Diplomats and Renegades Rendezvous!” (Image source: dezeen.com)

Great Expectations! The Non-Proliferation Treaty and The Coming of The Messiah!

Viewpoint by Tariq Rauf* from Vienna for IDN

Great Expectations is a novel published in July 1861 by the renowned British writer, Charles Dickens. It depicts the education of an orphan nicknamed Pip who has a stroke of good luck and great expectations but then loses both his luck and his expectations. Against that backdrop, the writer – an eminent nuclear disarmament expert – cautions that the taking of office by Joe Biden as US President next January would not mark the coming of the Messiah for nuclear arms control as wished for by his supporters. Besides, he argues, the already postponed tenth review conference of the parties to the NPT should be held in April-May 2022 in the Austrian capital city Vienna and not in August 2021 at the UN headquarters in New York. And this for two reasons: the wide-ranging impact of COVID-19 pandemic and Vienna offering an ideal venue for nuclear disarmament conferences.

: Opinion Editor; OPINION; 14 December 2020

Pacific SIDS Champion Oceans and Blue Economy Preparing for COP 26

Viewpoint by P.I. Gomes*

PORT OF SPAIN, Trinidad and Tobago (IDN) – On December 10, 2020, marking five years since adoption of the landmark Paris Agreement of the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC), Heads of Government and Leaders of the Pacific Small Island Developing States (SIDS) deemed it fit to convene a High-Level Roundtable on Urgent Climate Change Action in Tuvalu.

: Dr. Patrick Gomes - former ACP Seretary-General; OPINION; 13 December 2020

Trump Paves Highway to Hell

Viewpoint by Bill Dahl*

QUERETARO, Mexico (IDN) – Donald Trump lost the U.S. Presidential election. Trump garnered 73.9 million votes to Joe Biden’s 80 million (47.2% to 51.1%). Yet, Trump refuses to formally concede his loss. His attempts to win legal challenges based upon assertions of widespread voter fraud have been unanimously rejected by U.S. courts. The official certification of the election results is scheduled for December 14, 2020.

: Opinion Editor; OPINION; 11 December 2020

Australia-China Spat: It's More Than Just Trade

Viewpoint by Kalinga Seneviratne

SYDNEY (IDN) – A one-sided trade war has been gathering momentum between China and Australia, ever since Australian Prime Minister Scott Morrison called for an “independent” international investigation of the origins of Covid-19, which infuriated China.

China is Australia’s biggest trading partner with two-way trade worth A$ 235 in financial year 2018-19, which amounts to 26% of Australia’s total trade.

: Kalinga Seneviratne; OPINION; 11 December 2020

Photo: Maradona visited Argentina's new president Alberto Fernández (right) on 26 December 2019. CC BY 4.0

How Nigerians Remember Maradona

Viewpoint by Azu Ishiekwene

The writer is the Managing Director/Editor-In-Chief of The Interview magazine based in Abuja, Nigeria.

ABUJA (IDN) – When the news of the death of Diego Maradona broke, I was in a friend’s office. Our initial spontaneous reaction was sorrow and regret. And then we drifted, almost as if we had rehearsed it, to the next thing: who is football’s all-time greatest? Maradona or Pele?

My friend wasted no time in declaring that for him, it is and always will be Maradona. He spoke about the Argentine’s prodigious talent, talked about his imagination and gushed, above all, about his artistry and genius.

: Opinion Editor; OPINION; 10 December 2020

Photo: President Ronald Reagan and Soviet General Secretary Mikhail Gorbachev at The First Summit in Geneva Switzerland, 19 November 1985. Source: Wikimedia Commons.

Biden Would Do Well to Roll Back the Expansion of NATO

Viewpoint by Jonathan Power*

LUND, Sweden (IDN) – Top of President-elect’s Joe Biden’s foreign policy list must be Russia. Not China, not Europe. Russia has been the West’s mortal enemy since shortly after the end of World War II, with a short break when Communism was overthrown in 1991, until NATO began its expansion in 1999 and the Cold War, supposedly dead and buried, was resurrected. Only Russia and the US with their massive nuclear arsenals have the power to destroy civilization.

: Jonathan Power; OPINION; 08 December 2020

Photo: The panorama of Port Vila, capital and largest city of Vanuatu. CC BY 2.0

Vanuatu's Development Success Overshadowed by COVID-19

Viewpoint by Armida Salsiah Alisjahbana

Armida Salsiah Alisjahbana is Under-Secretary-General of the United Nations and Executive Secretary of the United Nations Economic and Social Commission for Asia and the Pacific (ESCAP).

BANGKOK (IDN) – The Pacific Island Developing State of Vanuatu has emerged as one of the region’s great success stories. Vanuatu has joined the ranks of Samoa and the Maldives as one of only six countries to graduate from being a least developed country since the category was introduced by the United Nations in 1971.

: Opinion Editor; OPINION; 08 December 2020

Photo: Poster for International Day for the Elimination of Violence against Women. Credit: UN Women

US Policing and Militarism Perpetuate Sexual Violence

Viewpoint by Olivia Pace*

The original version of this article was published on Waging Nonviolence and is made available under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.

PORTLAND, Oregon (IDN) – From the forces of policing to the military, these arms of the US state claim to be arbiters of justice and safety in the most superficial way. In reality, not only do these forces fail to create safety or bring justice to survivors of sexual violence. These systems actively perpetuate sexual violence and gendered violence on their own.

: Phil Harris; OPINION; 07 December 2020

Human Exploitation of the Biosphere Threatens Mass Extinction

Viewpoint by John Scales Avery*

COPENHAGEN (IDN) – According to a recent United Nations report, more than a million species of plants and animals are currently threatened with extinction because of human activities. Rates of extinction today are as much as 1,000 times greater than the normal background rate.

As the greenhouse gas emissions of human society push the earth towards catastrophic climate change, rates of extinction in the biosphere will certainly become higher.

: Opinion Editor; OPINION; 06 December 2020

Photo: Somar Wijayadasa speaking on World AIDS Day at the UN – 1998.

The Forgotten HIV/AIDS Pandemic

Viewpoint by Somar Wijayadasa*

NEW YORK (IDN) – Since the first identification of HIV/AIDS in the United States of America (USA), in 1981, approximately 76 million people have been infected with HIV, and nearly 35 million people have died of AIDS — the highest global death toll of all time — and also one of the world’s most politicized, feared and controversial diseases in the history of modern medicine.

However, this year, the deadly coronavirus (COVID-19) has thus far infected over 65 million and killed over 1.5 million people around the world.