OPINION

Photo: Dr Richard Munang, Africa Climate Change and Development Policy expert with the UN Environment Programme (UNEP). Credit: Ngala Killian Chimtom

‘Innovative Volunteerism’ Key to Africa’s Development Blueprint

By Ngala Killian Chimtom

NAIROBI (ACP-IDN) – Africa’s present is defined by its vast but unexploited potential but the picture could be changed by leveraging catalytic sectors in which the continent holds comparative advantage, through dedicating available resources.

Dr Richard Munang, Africa Climate Change and Development Policy expert with the UN Environment Programme (UNEP) believes that these resources – both physical (technological, institutional, financial and demographical, the dividend to be derived from having most of its population under the age of 25) and non-physical (including intellectual, partnerships, policies and networks) – could be utilised for a comparative advantage with a global competitive edge through what he calls “innovative volunteerism”.

: IDN-INPS Middle East & Africa Editor; OPINION; 22 March 2017

Photo: Sergio Duarte, then UN High Representative for Disarmament Affairs, at the Conference on Facilitating the Entry into Force of the Comprehensive Nuclear-Test-Ban Treaty on September 23, 2011. Credit: James Leynse | Copyright CTBTO Preparatory Commission.

'We Must Succeed in Prohibiting Nuclear Weapons'

By Sergio Duarte, former UN High Representative for Disarmament Affairs*

NEW YORK (IDN) - For the first time since the foundation of the United Nations the majority of the international community seems prepared to take a bold and fundamental step leading to the abolition of nuclear weapons. On December 27, 2016 the General Assembly of the United Nations adopted Resolution 71/258 convening a Conference to negotiate a legally binding instrument to prohibit nuclear weapons, leading to their total elimination.

It is befitting to recall a similar effort undertaken in 1946 when the first Session of the United Nations General Assembly decided to establish a Commission to “deal with the problems raised by the discovery of nuclear energy and other related matters”, and to present proposals “for the elimination of atomic weapons from national armaments”.

: Sergio Duarte; OPINION; 21 March 2017

The Poor are Keen to Make Progress Despite Famine

By Jonathan Power

LUND, Sweden (IDN-INPS) - Once again the media is presenting us with the images of the mother of all famines – stretching from the Yemen to Somalia, to Sudan and South Sudan, to the Central African Republic, to northern Nigeria.

It’s a bad famine but there have been bad famines in the not so distant past – the great Ethiopian one in 1985, which triggered the rock star, Bob Geldorf, to organise a massive world-wide popular response. (I remember running with tens of thousands of other campaigners in London’s Hyde Park.) Before that, in 1974 at the World Food Conference, there was a real feeling that the world was running out of food and dramatic new policies must be put in place by the richer countries.

: Jonathan Power; SUSTAINABILITY; Food security, nutrition & sustainable agriculture; 21 March 2017

Photo: United Nations Office for South-South Cooperation Director Jorge Chediek closing the Global South-South Development Expo 2016 on 3 November 2016 in Dubai, United Arab Emirates. Credit: SUSSC

Mainstreaming South-South Cooperation in the UN System

Interview with Jorge Chediek, Director of the UN Office for South Cooperation (UNOSSC)

NEW YORK (IDN) – South-South and triangular cooperation forms an integral part, complementing North-South Cooperation, of the global Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) adopted by Member States of the United Nations on September 25, 2015 to end poverty, protect the planet, and ensure prosperity for all.

How is the UN Office for South Cooperation (UNOSSC) – as the global and United Nations system-wide focal point for South-South cooperation – engaging in advocacy, policy development, knowledge sharing and innovative programmatic activities? Ramesh Jaura, Editor-in-Chief and International Correspondent of IDN, flagship agency of the International Press Syndicate group, asked UNOSSC Director Jorge Chediek this and related questions in an e-mail interview. Read the Q&A in full:

: Ramesh Jaura; UN INSIDER; 20 March 2017

Image: Building knowledge societies. Credit: UNESCO

UNESCO Pits Media Development Against Fake News

By Guy Berger

Guy Berger is Director, Division of Freedom of Expression and Media Development at the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO). He is responsible for the Organization’s global work on press freedom, safety of journalists, internet freedom, media pluralism and independence, gender and media, media and information literacy, and journalism education.

PARIS (IDN) - While global controversies around “fake news” continue unabated, UNESCO is holding two events at its Paris HQ, which will give more insight into the issues.

First up is an annual meeting on media development, held by the eight UNESCO Member States who serve on the Bureau of the International Programme for the Development of Communication (IPDC).

: Guy Berger; UN INSIDER; 19 March 2017

Photo: The close China-DPRK relationship is celebrated at the Mass Games in Pyongyang. Credit: Wikimedia Commons.

China Should Keep Squeezing North Korea

By Jonathan Power

LUND, Sweden (IDN-INPS) - Rocket launches galore in North Korea. Colours and flames in the sky. It’s all a bit like a peacock spreading his tail.

Murders abound. Is this a butcher’s shop – an uncle, a half-brother and a couple of high-placed generals and no doubt others?

Kim Jong-Un, the president, is no Hamlet and murder seems not to give him doubts. The day after he is photographed at some event, smiling the smile of a psychopath who ditched his conscience somewhere at the top of the Alps when he was out for a hike organised by the school in Switzerland he was sent to.

: Jonathan Power; ARMAMENTS; 14 March 2017

Wanted Constructive Impatience for Change in Women's Status

By Phumzile Mlambo-Ngcuka

Following are excerpts from the opening statement on March 13 by Phumzile Mlambo-Ngcuka, UN Under-Secretary-General and Executive Director of UN Women for the 61st session of the Commission on the Status of Women.

NEW YORK (IDN-INPS) - The Commission concerns itself with the status of women. It reviews the progress made by women and girls, and assesses the remaining challenges. It is a barometer of the progress we are making on achieving a world that is free of gender discrimination and inequality, a world that leaves no-one behind. It will help us measure achievement of the implementation of the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development. It also helps us to pursue action in priority areas and benefits from the Commission’s Agreed Conclusions.

: IDN-INPS UN Bureau; OPINION; 14 March 2017

Photo: Photo: Dugong | Copyright: Mandy Etipson

Loss of Seagrass Meadows Threatens their Dugong Denizens

By Dr. Thani Ahmed Al Zeyoudi and Dr. Bradnee Chambers

Dr. Thani Ahmed Al Zeyoudi is the Minister of Climate Change and Environment of the United Arab Emirates and Dr. Bradnee Chambers is the Executive Secretary of the Convention on the Conservation of Migratory Species of Wild Animals.

Note: This article is an updated version of the one published on 9 March 2017. - Editor

BONN (IDN) - The on-going bleaching of coral in Australia’s Great Barrier Reef continues to generate great concern worldwide. Islands of plastic waste in the oceans contaminating the food chain make the headlines. So why then is there a deafening silence on the deteriorating condition of the world’s seagrasses?

: Dr. Bradnee Chambers; OPINION; 13 March 2017

Nuclear Disarmament Is Humanity's Common Cause

By Dr. J. Enkhsaikhan

Note: Dr. J. Enkhsaikhan is Chairman of Blue Banner NGO and former Permanent Representative of Mongolia to the United Nations in New York and Vienna. This article comes in run-up to the UN General Assembly's two sessions – scheduled for March 27-31 and June 15-July 7 – to negotiate “a legally binding instrument to prohibit nuclear weapons, leading towards their total elimination”.

ULAANBAATAR, Mongolia (IDN-INPS) - Some believe that those that do not possess nuclear weapons have no basis to demand that those that do possess alter their nuclear policies. However, as the three recent international conferences on humanitarian consequences of nuclear weapons vividly demonstrated yet again, the detonation of a nuclear weapon, intentionally or otherwise, will have catastrophic consequences with far-reaching climatic, genetic and other devastating effects.

: IDN-INPS UN Bureau; UN INSIDER; 10 March 2017

Populism - The Morbid Symptom of a Political Crisis

By Franz Baumann*

NEW YORK (IDN) - Carnage in Syria, millions (dozens of millions actually) of forcibly displaced people, fast-tracking global warming, crises in South Sudan, Venezuela, Brazil, Turkey, the Philippines and elsewhere, terrorist attacks in Europe, the UK Brexit vote and the US presidential election. What a list! Was 2016 an unusually ghastly year, or was it rather the new normal?

Hoping against hope that it was an outlier, these reflections highlight several macro trends that feed chauvinistic outbursts in many countries, yet that will not likely be reversed by anti-globalism, protectionism or militarism: rising inequality, jobless growth, terrorist attacks, the influx of migrants, corruption.