OPINION

Image credit: UN | Photo Credit: Mitsu (Eric) Kimura, SUA Archivist

UN To Commemorate 20th Anniversary of the Culture of Peace Declaration

Interview with Ambassador Anwarul K. Chowdhury*

NEW YORK (IDN) – The United Nations General Assembly (UNGA) adopted, by consensus and without reservation, its pioneering and norm-setting resolution 53/243 on the Declaration and Programme of Action on a Culture of Peace in 1990. The forthcoming UNGA is convening on September 13 the High-Level Forum on the Culture of Peace underlining the importance the world body attaches to full and effective implementation of these forward-looking decisions which are universally applicable and respond to the yearnings of every people for progress. Ambassador Anwarul K. Chowdhury, Founder of the Global Movement for The Culture of Peace (GMCoP), explains the origin and profound significance of the concept.

: Ambassador Anwarul K. Chowdhury; OPINION; 16 August 2019

The Slow Process That is Evolution

Viewpoint by Dr S.S. Sira*

TORONTO (IDN) – Evolution is a slow process. It is surprisingly orderly. Everything that is observed obeys laws that have been enunciated by science. Only in the last 100 years much progress has been made.

Physics of the structure and the properties of the atom have been worked out. The fundamental particles are the quarks. Quantum mechanics has been successfully applied to explain many phenomena, often counter intuitive to common experience.

: Phil Harris; OPINION; 14 August 2019

Photo: India’s Prime Minister Narendra Modi addressing the nation on revoking Article 370 on August 8, 2019. Credit: narendramodi.in

Kashmir Crisis Forebodes a New World Order in the Making

Viewpoint by James M. Dorsey

James M. Dorsey – a senior fellow at Nanyang Technological University’s S. Rajaratnam School of International Studies, an adjunct senior research fellow at the National University of Singapore’s Middle East Institute and co-director of the University of Wuerzburg’s Institute of Fan Culture – offered this viewpoint to IDN.

SINGAPORE (IDN) – India’s decision to deprive Kashmir of its autonomy, alongside a clampdown in the troubled north-western Chinese province of Xinjiang and US-backed Israeli annexation of Arab land, is the latest indication of what a new world order led by civilisational leaders may look like.

: Phil Harris; THE WORLD; Asia-Pacific; 14 August 2019

Photo: Xi Jinping and Vladimir Putin on June 5, 2019, The Kremlin, Moscow. Credit: en.kremlin.ru Moscow.

Russia and China Are Coming Closer Again

Viewpoint by Jonathan Power

LUND, Sweden (IDN-INPS) – In her famous decree in 1767 Empress Catherine the Great proclaimed Russia to be a European power. She wanted Russia to be a major player in European politics. She compelled the Europeans to accept Russia as a great power as a condition for doing business. In 1815 Russia was considered an equal in the 1815 Concert of Europe.

In contrast, Imperial China at that time was self-sufficient and inward looking. It basked in its own superior culture. It did not want to open up trade relations with Europe and the emperor questioned the ability of the British who were knocking on the door to “acquire the rudiments” of Chinese civilization.

: Jonathan Power; THE WORLD; Russia; 13 August 2019

Photo: UN Women Executive Director Phumzile Mlambo-Ngcuka. Credit: Kea Taylor

Transforming Education for a New Generation of Leaders

Viewpoint by Phumzile Mlambo-Ngcuka

The writer is UN Women Executive Director. She issued this statement for International Youth Day, 2019.

NEW YORK (IDN) – Sixteen-year old Gambian Jakomba Jabbie wants to be an aerospace engineer. A vocal advocate for girls’ education, she created a robotics team at school to show that girls can also participate in the area of technology, and “to make it a space for all of us”. She knows how important education is, especially to a girl.

: Opinion Editor; OPINION; 12 August 2019

Photo: "Against the dark background of the atomic bomb, the United States does not wish merely to present strength, but also the desire and the hope for peace. The coming months will be fraught with fateful decisions… may they be the decisions which will lead this world out of fear and into peace." (U.S. President Dwight D. Eisenhower in an address to the 470th United Nations General Assembly on 8 December 1953) Credit: UN Photo/MB

The Devastating Arms Race Rages Unabated

Viewpoint by Somar Wijayadasa*

“Every gun that is made, every warship launched, every rocket fired signifies, in the final sense, a theft from those who hunger and are not fed, those who are cold and are not clothed." – U.S. President Dwight Eisenhower in 'The Chance for Peace' address in April 1953.

NEW YORK (IDN) – The arms race has reached a new dimension as the United States President Donald Trump withdrew from the 1987 Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces (INF) Treaty.

: Somar Wijayadasa; ARMAMENTS; Nuclear Weapons; 10 August 2019

Photo: Begun 30 years ago, the Kubuqi desert greening project has succeeded in not only reining in the relentless growth of the seventh-largest desert in China, roughly the size of Kuwait, it has also turned about 6,000 square kilometers of the desert－one-third of it－green. Source: UNCCD

No Excuse to Further Defer Action on Climate Change and Land

Viewpoint by Ibrahim Thiaw

Following is the text of the response of Ibrahim Thiaw, UN Under Secretary General and Executive Secretary to the UN Convention to Combat Desertification (UNCCD), to Special Report on Climate Change and Land by Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) released in Geneva on August 8.

BONN IDN) – We have known for over 25 years that poor land use and management are major drivers of climate change, but have never mustered the political will to act. With the release of the IPCC (Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change) – special report on climate change and land, which makes the consequences of inaction crystal clear, we have no excuse for further delay.

: UN Bureau; OPINION; 08 August 2019

Image: The Dragonbear (Source: David Parkins)

Troubled Prospects for Gulf Security Architecture

Viewpoint by James M. Dorsey

SINGAPORE (IDN) – Russia, backed by China, hoping to exploit mounting doubts in the Gulf about the reliability of the United States as the region’s sole security guarantor, is proposing a radical overhaul of the security architecture in an area that is home to massive oil and gas reserves and some of the world’s most strategic waterways.

: Phil Harris; THE WORLD; Asia-Pacific; 07 August 2019

Europeans Should Refuse to Go MAD Again

Viewpoint by Jonathan Power

LUND, Sweden (IDN-INPS) – If MAD was Mad then the decision of President Donald Trump to renounce the Intermediate Nuclear Forces Treaty (INF) is MADDER.

MAD is Mutually Assured Destruction, a concept which underlay the nuclear deterrence of the Cold War. Presidents Mikhail Gorbachev and Ronald Reagan began the hard work of dismantling MAD with the INF, a treaty affecting the land-based missiles of Europe. It abolished missiles with a range of 500 to 2000 kilometres.

: Jonathan Power; OPINION; 06 August 2019

Photo: Two aerial photos of atomic bomb mushroom clouds, over Hiroshima on 6 August 1945 (left) and Nagasaki on 9 August 1945 (right). Source: Wikimedia Commons.

Hiroshima Unlearned: Time to Tell the Truth About US-Russia Relations and Finally Ban the Bomb

Viewpoint by Alice Slater

Author and nuclear disarmament advocate, Alice Slater is a member of the Board of World Beyond War, UN NGO Representative of the Nuclear Age Peace Foundation, and a longtime member of CODEPINK.

NEW YORK (IDN) – August 6 and 9 mark 74 years since the atomic bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, where only one nuclear bomb dropped on each city caused the deaths of up to 146,000 people in Hiroshima and 80,000 people in Nagasaki. Today, with the U.S. decision to walk away from the 1987 Intermediate-Range Nuclear Force (INF) negotiated with the Soviet Union, we are once again staring into the abyss of one of the most perilous nuclear challenges since the height of the Cold War.