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Photo (left to right): The Norwegian Nobel Committee Chair Berit Reiss-Andersen; ICAN campaigner Setsuko Thurlow who survived the bombing of Hiroshima as a 13-year-old; ICAN Executive Director Beatrice Fihn. Credit: ICAN

In Just Ten Years ICAN Makes It To Nobel Peace Prize

By Alice Slater*

NEW YORK (IDN-INPS) – In Oslo on December 10, the Nobel Peace Prize was awarded to the International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons (ICAN) and was accepted on behalf of the Campaign by its executive director, Beatrice Fihn, and by Setsuko Thurlow, an ICAN campaigner and survivor of the 1945 Hiroshima bombing.

Both spoke for the thousands of campaigners in over 400 organizations and more than 100 countries around the world who succeeded this fall in working with friendly governments to move a majority of states at the United Nations to adopt a treaty to prohibit to ban nuclear weapons, making their possession, use, or threat of use unlawful.

: UN Bureau; OPINION; 23 December 2017

Photo: Eritreans protest next to the European Commission headquarters in Brussels. Credit: Klara Smits.

Eritrean Refugees in the Netherlands Want Ban on Diaspora Tax by Asmara

By Reinhardt Jacobsen and Klara Smits

AMSTERDAM | BRUSSELS (IDN) – Hundreds of Eritreans have been taking to the streets in various cities and refugee camps all over the world against the Eritrean regime to express solidarity with the unusual protests that took place in Asmara, the country's capital, on October 31. The latest in the protest series was on December 22, 2017 in Brussels next to the European Commission headquarters.

Among the protesters' demand is the closure of the Eritrean embassy in Brussels, which is responsible for the Netherlands, because people who have fled the country must fear the ‘long arm' of the regime and a culture of fear perpetrated by Asmara, according to a Dutch research report. This has prompted a debate in the Netherlands about the Eritrean regime's repressive activities in the country.

: Klara Smits; THE WORLD; Africa; 22 December 2017

Photo: Global Landscapes Forum. Credit: Pilar Valbuena

The Price of Forest Degradation and Biodiversity Loss for Livelihoods

By Fabíola Ortiz

BONN (IDN) – Forest degradation and biodiversity loss carry a very heavy price for climate and people’s livelihoods. Restoring forests matters when it comes to growing resilience to climate variation and securing a healthy environment for future generations. This was the main message delivered by experts and community leaders who met in Bonn (December 19-20, 2017) to discuss a more sustainable path to conservation.

“We should stop seeing indigenous peoples, natural resources and forests as a problem. We could see them as a solution,” said Robert Nasi, director general of the Centre for International Forestry Research (CIFOR) which hosted the Global Landscapes Forum, a large science-based platform on sustainable land use.

: Fabiola Ortiz; SUSTAINABILITY; Climate Action; 22 December 2017

Traumatised Rohingya Women Bear the Brunt of Persecution

By Naimul Haq

COX’S BAZAR, Bangladesh (IDN) – Shefali Aktar, mother of three, fled her home in Thaphanbin, a tiny village overlooking the Arakan Mountains in Rakhine state in Myanmar.

The 22-year-old pregnant woman escaped near death when her neighbour helped her and her children to hide in the nearby forest the night after the entire population of about 600 families in her village was wiped out.

“I went back to my village the next evening to find my husband. Instead, I found dead bodies,” says Shefali, breaking down in tears as she continues to narrate the horror.

: Naimul Haq; THE WORLD; Asia-Pacific; 21 December 2017

Photo: The scale of destruction in Aleppo is massive and heavy equipment is urgently needed to remove debris. Credit: UNHCR/Bassam Diab

Focus on Prevention As Conflicts Become More Intractable

By António Guterres, UN Secretary-General

Following are extensive excerpts from UN Secretary-General António Guterres' remarks at open debate of the Security Council on 'Addressing complex contemporary challenges to international peace and security' on December 20, 2017 during Japan's presidency of the Council for the month. – The Editor

UNITED NATIONS (IDN-INPS) – I would like to make three main points today. First, we are seeing not only a quantitative but also a qualitative change in threats to international peace and security. The perils of nuclear weapons are again front and centre, with tensions higher than they have been since the end of the Cold War.

: UN Bureau; OPINION; 20 December 2017

U.S. Politics Increasingly Governed by Policy of Unilateralism

By Rodney Reynolds

NEW YORK (IDN) – The politics of the Trump administration are being increasingly governed by the twin policies of unilateralism and isolationism.

After Donald Trump was elected president in November 2016, he withdrew from a historic 2016 climate change agreement signed by 195 countries – and the only signatory to do so.

And this year, he announced plans to dilute the 2015 Iranian nuclear deal signed by the five permanent members of the UN Security Council (UNSC), namely the U.S., UK, France, China and Russia, plus Germany and the 28-member European Union (EU) – much against warnings by all the other signatories.

: Ramesh Jaura; THE WORLD; Middle East & North Africa; 20 December 2017

Photo: Professor Calestous Juma. Credit: The Breakthrough Institute

Controversial Kenyan Advocate of GM Seeds Dies in Boston

By Global Information Network

NEW YORK (IDN) –The Kenyan director of the Science, Technology and Globalization Project at Harvard University, Professor Calestous Juma, passed away in Boston, Massachusetts, on December 15, at the age of 64.

Juma served as Professor of the Practice of International Development, and was affiliated with the Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs, the Center for International Development, and the Mossavar-Rahmani Center for Business and Government.

: Ramesh Jaura; NEWSBRIEFS; 19 December 2017

Photo: Patrice Nganang at the Paris Book Fair, by Georges Seguin CC BY-SA 3.0

Writers Protest the Arrest of New York Professor in Cameroon

By Global Information Network

NEW YORK (IDN) – The African Literature Association and other professional associations of writers and scholars are demanding the release of a Cameroonian-American writer and university professor, detained on December 6 without explanation at the airport in Douala, Cameroon.

Patrice Nganang, who teaches at Stony Brook University's cultural studies and comparative literature department in New York, was reported missing from a connecting flight to Zimbabwe where he was expected to meet up with his family.

The previous day he had published an article on the French website Jeune Afrique that was critical of the Cameroonian government’s handling of a series of strikes by the minority English-speaking population which is seeking equal rights with the majority French-speakers.

: Global Information Network; NEWSBRIEFS; 19 December 2017

Photo: Winner of the new student category, Moussa Ngom attending CESTI, Senegal. Photo: Hyppolite Valdez Onanina

African Fact Checkers Expose ‘Fake News’ And Win Prizes

By Global Information Network

NEW YORK | JOHANNESBURG (IDN) – Striking a blow against fake news, reporters from Kenya, Benin, Cote d’Ivoire, Senegal, and Cameroon scooped the top prizes this year in a competition organized by Africa Check, the leading fact-check organization on the continent.

Founded by the French news service AFP in partnership with the journalism department of the University of the Witwatersrand, Africa Check holds public figures accountable by sorting fact from fiction.

As well as producing its own reports, the website of Africa Check provides tips and advice on how to fact-check. It also offers a library of databases and fact-checking tools.

: Global Information Network; NEWSBRIEFS; 19 December 2017

Photo: The U.S. nuclear warheads are stored in some 21 locations, which include 13 U.S. states and 5 European countries. Credit: worldatlas.com

The Doomsday Machine by a Damascene Convert

Viewpoint by Jonathan Power*

LUND, Sweden (IDN-INPS) – The nuclear weapon missile business is contradictory, full of missteps, highly dangerous and prepared in its madness (Mutually Assured Destruction, aka MAD, they used to call it in Cold War days) to plunge the world into a nuclear war that will reduce most of the world to dust.

A new book, “The Doomsday Machine” by Daniel Ellsberg tells the whole nuclear bomb story in detail. No one has done it better. The only rival is the movie, “Dr Strangelove”, that got the essentials right without being privy to much of the Ellsberg’s knowledge.