IDN-InDepthNews – Page 625 – News for a Sustainable World, Peace and Security

OPINION2017-11-042023-07-10

The Role of Trade and Investment Vital in Fostering SDGs

By Roberto Azevêdo

Trade and investment are inseparable and remain indispensable “twin engines” for economic growth, modernization and development of Africa, says ‘The Abuja Statement’ emerging from the two-day High Level Policy and Private Sector Trade and Investment Facilitation Partnership Forum in Abuja, Nigeria, on November 2-3, 2017. Following are extensive excerpts from WTO Director-General Roberto Azevêdo. – The Editor

GENEVA (IDN-INPS) – It is encouraging to see many countries – as well as the broader development community represented here – interested in exploring how trade and investment can help promote sustainable development . . . both these elements – trade and investment – are fundamental in helping countries successfully integrate into the global economy.

Global Partnerships2017-11-042023-07-10

Financial and Economic System Reform Key to Achieving SDGs

By Jesse Griffiths*

BRUSSELS (IDN | INPS) – The Sustainable Development Goals are ambitious objectives; business as usual will not deliver them. Speaking on the recent International Day for the Eradication of Poverty, UN Secretary-General António Guterres acknowledged the need for new thinking. “The pledge to leave no one behind will require innovative approaches, partnerships, and solutions,” he said.

But this new model will only come about if we radically reshape the national, regional, and global economies that lie behind many of the obstacles to achieving the SDGs. We must rethink the way we govern and manage the global financial and economic system.

Africa2017-11-032023-07-10

On the Trail of Child Trafficking in Zimbabwe

By Jeffrey Moyo

BEITBRIDGE, Zimbabwe (IDN) – Child trafficking is alive and thriving on Zimbabwe’s southern border. Despite Zimbabwe winning a few “Brownie points” with the U.S. government for rescuing more than 100 female Zimbabwean trafficking victims from Kuwait recently, police at Beitbridge – a border town between Zimbabwe and South Africa – say they arrest between16 and 20 people every day implicated in illegally “transporting” unaccompanied children through Zimbabwe’s border with South Africa.

The Zimbabwe Republic Police (or ZRP) Officer Commanding Beitbridge District, Chief Superintendent, Francis Phiri, said the children recovered from these arrests are handed over to the government’s social welfare department to have them returned to their homes in Zimbabwe.

UN INSIDER2017-11-032023-07-10

Cataclysm Looms Large As UN Climate Talks Convene

By Franz Baumann | Reproduced courtesy of PassBlue

The author is a visiting professor at New York University and a former assistant secretary-general of the United Nations (and special adviser on environment and peace operations). This article originally appeared with the headline: As UN Climate Talks Convene, the Earth Veers Toward Catastrophe. – The Editor

NEW YORK (IDN | Passblue) – Two years ago, the governments of the world unanimously adopted the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development, a remarkable blueprint of the world’s most pressing long-term predicaments that the United Nations is good at lifting into the global conscience. Cataloguing 17 goals and 169 targets, the agenda contains an inventory of the remedial activities that are expected of all countries, and that includes climate change.

Middle East & North Africa2017-11-022023-07-10

ISIL Members Accused of ‘International Crimes’ in Mosul

By Jaya Ramachandran

GENEVA (IDN) – A UN report has accused the so-called Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL/Daesh) of perpetrating serious and systematic violations in Iraq’s Mosul city that amount to “international crimes”.

Published on November 2 by the UN assistance Mission for Iraq (UNAMI) and the Office of the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR), the report is based on direct witness testimony, and documents mass abductions of civilians, the use of thousands as human shields, the intentional shelling of civilian residences, and indiscriminate targeting of civilians trying to flee the city.

OPINION2017-11-02

Decode Trump To Halt His Access To U.S. Nuclear Codes

Viewpoint by David Krieger* SANTA BARBARA | USA (IDN-INPS) – The future of the world and of humanity is at the mercy of a lunatic. His name is Donald Trump, and he alone has access to the U.S. nuclear codes. Before he does something rash and irreversible with those codes, it is imperative to decode […]

Climate Action2017-11-012023-07-10

Survival of Forests is Vital for Reaching Climate Change Goals

By Jutta Wolf*

BERLIN (IDN) – A key solution to saving tropical forests is to secure the land rights of the indigenous peoples and local communities, and to invest in them as an effective strategy for reducing deforestation and slowing climate change, according to the new findings released in Berlin on November 1.

It was no surprise therefore when Mina Setra, Deputy Secretary General of The Indigenous Peoples’ Alliance of the Archipelago (AMAN), said: “We are a proven solution to the long-term protection of forests, whose survival is vital for reaching our climate change goals. Yet in return, we face human rights violations, violence to our communities, criminalization of our peoples and the murder of our leaders.” The Alliance represents 17 million people in Indonesia.

OPINION2017-11-012023-07-10

A Century On, the Balfour Declaration Still Resonates

By Chinmaya R. Gharekhan

Note: The Security Council has no plans to discuss the anniversary of the Balfour Declaration in relationship to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, Italy’s Permanent Representative to the UN in New York, Ambassador Sebastiano Cardi who chairs the Council for the month of November, told journalists at the world body’s headquarters on November 1. The following article is being reproduced courtesy The Hindu, an eminent newspaper in India. Ambassador Chinmaya R. Gharekhan a former Permanent Representative of India to the United Nations. – The Editor.

NEW DELHI (IDN-INPS) – The famous (or infamous) Balfour declaration was issued exactly a hundred years ago on November 2, 1917.

USA and Canada2017-10-312023-07-10

Congressional Report Warns of Skyrocketing Costs of U.S. Nuclear Arsenal

By J C Suresh

TORONTO | WASHINGTON, D.C. (IDN) – A new study throws limelight on the skyrocketing costs of the current plan to sustain and upgrade U.S. nuclear forces and outlines several pragmatic options to maintain a credible, formidable deterrent at less cost.

The Congressional Budget Office (CBO) study published on October 31 estimates that sustaining and upgrading U.S. nuclear forces will cost taxpayers $1.24 trillion in inflation-adjusted dollars between fiscal years 2017 and 2046. When the effects of inflation are included, the CBO expects the 30-year cost to exceed $1.5 trillion. These figures are significantly higher than the previously reported estimates of roughly $1 trillion.

Africa2017-10-312023-07-10

Death of 4 Soldiers Opens Window on Secret U.S. Operations in West Africa

By Lisa Vives, Global Information Network

NEW YORK (IDN) – With the deaths of four American servicemen in Niger, a window has opened onto U.S. operations in West Africa – an area barely known even to U.S. legislators who have sent U.S. soldiers there in harm’s way.

The latest soldier to die on a tour in the French-speaking region is Texas-born Staff Sergeant, Logan J. Melgar, a Latino. His death in Mali is attributed to strangulation and two elite members of the U.S. Navy Seal Team Six are being investigated for his murder.

Melgar’s Special Forces teammates were there at the request of Paul Folmsbee, U.S. ambassador to Mali for a previously undisclosed and highly unusual clandestine mission to support French and Malian counterterrorism forces battling Al Qaeda’s branch in North and West Africa, as well as smaller cells aligned with Al Qaeda or the Islamic State, according to the New York Times.