IDN-InDepthNews – Page 640 – News for a Sustainable World, Peace and Security

OPINION2017-08-292023-07-10

America Should Get out of Afghanistan Before it’s Tool Late

Viewpoint by Jonathan Power*

LUND, Sweden (IDN-INPS) – It’s the most repeated maxim in all the reporting on Afghanistan: “The Americans have the watches, the Taliban have the time.”

Dead right! This is America’s longest war ever, 16 years and counting. President Donald Trump, admitting he was reversing his campaign call for pulling out, has now decided to stay in, sending to Afghanistan another 3,900 troops to reinforce the 8,400 there now.

Trump doesn’t claim it will do the job of defeating the Taliban. In fact he lays out no long-term strategy at all. It’s not difficult to imagine that in a decade the same stalemate will exist.

Africa2017-08-282023-07-10

Poverty Swoops on Southern Africa’s Urban Dwellers

By Jeffrey Moyo

HARARE (IDN) – At one stage in her life, she was a top accountant with the National Railways of Zimbabwe. Now, domiciled in Epworth, a crowded informal settlement in south-eastern Harare Province, 25 kilometres outside Harare, the Zimbabwean capital, hers has turned out to be a riches-to-rags tale.

Shuvai Chikoto, a 48-year-old mother of three who was widowed five years ago, is just one of millions of other Southern African urban dwellers who have plunged into poverty over the years – and she is not particularly impressed that the United Nations has set the goal of ending poverty in all its forms everywhere within the next 13 years.

UN INSIDER2017-08-272023-07-10

Climate Change Threatens Agriculture in Pacific Rim Economies

By J Nastranis

NEW YORK (IDN) – Global warming is expected to have a significant impact on future yields of everything from rice to fish, particularly in countries situated closer to the equator, the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO) has warned, and urged the Asia-Pacific economies to take a leading role in adaptation and mitigation.

“Many APEC [Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation] economies have already felt the full force of agricultural losses from natural disasters in recent years, with the vast majority of these being climate related,” said Kundhavi Kadiresan, Assistant Director-General and FAO Regional Representative for Asia and the Pacific, reported UN News.

UN INSIDER2017-08-262023-07-10

Globally Endangered Snow Leopard Draws the Focus

By Sultan Karimov

BISHKEK (IDN) – An elusive denizen of the mountains of Central and South Asia, the snow leopard (panthera uncia) inhabits parts of 12 countries: Afghanistan, Bhutan, China, India, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyz Republic, Mongolia, Nepal, Pakistan, Russia, Tajikistan, and Uzbekistan.

Its geographic range, 60 percent of which is in China, runs from the Hindu Kush in eastern Afghanistan and the Syr Darya through the mountains of Pamir, Tian Shan, Karakorum, Kashmir, Kunlun, and the Himalaya to southern Siberia, where the range covers the Russian Altai, Sayan, Tannu-Ola mountains and the mountains to the west of Lake Baikal.

Nuclear Weapons2017-08-252023-07-10

The World Loses a Hero in Tony de Brum

Courtesy Nuclear Age Peace Foundation (NAPF)

SANTA BARBARA (IDN-INPS) – Tony de Brum, former Foreign Minister of the Republic of the Marshall Islands (RMI), passed away on August 22, 2017. He was a powerful and inspiring voice for the abolition of nuclear weapons as well as climate sanity. He was a visionary leader, respected and admired throughout the world for his strength, wisdom, warmth and unceasing optimism.

Born in 1945, de Brum was one of the first Marshall Islanders to graduate from college. He played a key role in the negotiations that led to the first compact of free association between the U.S. and the RMI, and participated in the development of the Constitution of the Republic of the Marshall Islands.

UN INSIDER2017-08-252023-07-10

Kazakhstan Plays a Crucial Role in Making the Nuclear Fuel Bank a Reality

By Tariq Rauf*

ASTANA (IDN) – The International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) and Kazakhstan will formally inaugurate a Low Enriched Uranium (LEU) Bank located at the Ulba Metallurgical Plant at Öskemen (formerly Ust Kamenogorsk) on August 29.

This event will mark an important milestone in the long march for the IAEA to set up an IAEA owned and operated nuclear fuel bank as envisaged in the 1957 IAEA Statute. This initiative was proposed in September 2006 by the Washington, DC-based Nuclear Threat Initiative (NTI) which offered US$50 million to the IAEA, provided by global investor Warren Buffet, to set up an IAEA LEU Bank by raising an additional $100 million.

UN INSIDER2017-08-242023-07-10

Senior UN Official Urges Security Council Support for the Two-State Solution to Israeli-Palestinian Conflict

By Santo D. Banerjee

UNITED NATIONS (IDN) – Despite the scepticism – if not opposition – of the veto-wielding United States to realizing a two-State solution, a senior United Nations official has urged the parties to the longstanding Israeli-Palestinian conflict to recommit to that solution and to ending the occupation of Palestinian lands.

This view was unequivocally supported by the representatives of Bolivia and Uruguay, two of the 10 non-permanent members of the Security Council in addition to five permanent members (P5): China, France, Russian Federation, the United Kingdom, and the United States.

Nuclear Weapons2017-08-232023-07-10

Iceland, Norway Debate UN Nuclear Weapons Ban Treaty

By Lowana Veal

REYKJAVIK (IDN) – With a population of 344,000, Iceland does not have a military of its own. Nevertheless, it is a member of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) and as such was one of the countries that boycotted the discussions leading up to the potentially groundbreaking UN Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons, adopted on July 7.

Prior to the start of the conference leading up to the Treaty, Foreign Affairs Minister Gudlaugur Thor Thordarson replied to a parliamentary question by Left-Green MP Steinunn Thora Árnadóttir on whether Iceland would take part in the UN discussions about banning nuclear weapons, as she felt that the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation Nuclear Weapons (NPT) had not been very successful.

OPINION2017-08-222023-07-10

The Sound of Rain and Bees Murmuring – Not Noise, Please

Viewpoint by Jonathan Power*

LUND, Sweden (IDN-INPS) – Everyone has their favourite sounds – a ball on a cricket bat on a summer’s afternoon, birds singing, waves breaking on the beach, the coffee pot perking on the stove, children playing scoobydoo. Mine are the quiet sounds of the English Lake District- William Wordsworth’s:

‘“A flock of sheep that leisurely pass by one after one; the sound of rain and bees murmuring; the fall of rivers, wind and lakes, smooth fields; white sheets of water, and pure sky.”

UN INSIDER2017-08-212023-07-10

UN Committee Highlights Activities Marking 50 Years of Israeli Occupation of Palestine

By J Nastranis

UNITED NATIONS (IDN) – Fifty years after Israel occupied the West Bank and Gaza Strip, it continues to control these areas through repression, institutionalized discrimination, and systematic abuses of the Palestinian population’s rights.

Many of Israel’s abusive practices have been carried out in the name of security. Palestinian armed groups have carried out scores of lethal attacks on civilians and launched thousands of rocket attacks on Israeli civilian areas, also in violation of international humanitarian law.

But activities to mark 50 years of Israeli occupation of Palestine and support the two-State solution took the centre stage in recent efforts to quell tensions, especially in Jerusalem, and create conditions for mutual respect, the Palestinian Rights Committee heard on August 8, 2017.