Disarmament Talk with Alyn Ware
Disarmament Talk with Ambassador Salah Abdel Shafi
Fighting Poverty and Climate Change are the Same Fight
By Amina J. Mohammed
Note: Amina J Mohammed is the United Nations Deputy Secretary-General. Following are excerpts from her remarks as prepared for delivery at the opening of the Vienna Energy Forum on May 11, 2017. The full text was distributed by the Vienna-based UN Information Service (UNIS). – The Editor.
VIENNA (IDN-INPS) – Together, the two ground-breaking agreements (the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development and the Paris Agreement on Climate Change) are a transformative vision for a better world — universal, inclusive and integrated, an agenda for shared prosperity, peace and partnership on a healthy planet.
But realizing that vision means we must address climate change as a matter of utmost urgency.
Enriching the Belt and Broadening the Road
Viewpoint by LI Hong
LI Hong is Permanent Representative of China to the United Nations Economic and Social Commission for Asia and the Pacific (UNESCAP) in Bangkok, Thailand.
BANGKOK (IDN) – The Silk Road, which is a route linking several major world civilizations 2000 years ago, is invigorated by the Initiative of the Silk Road Economic Belt and the 21st Century Maritime Silk Road (BRI) proposed by Chinese president Xi Jinping in 2013.
The Initiative represents a long-term transcontinental vision for enhanced global economic cooperation and integration. It seeks to underpin future growth, prosperity and sustainable development by promoting policy dialogue and coordination, seamless connectivity, trade facilitation, industry development and people-to-people communication.
Planting Churches and ‘Saving Souls’
By Janaka Perera*
COLOMBO (IDN-INPS) – Sri Lanka is celebrating the 2561st year of Vesak on an international scale starting on May 10. The question however is whether the organizers and the foreign participants in the event will pay sufficient attention to the facts highlighted in a recent report of the Bangkok-based World Buddhist University (WBU) on the socio-economic and cultural challenges facing Asian Buddhists with a case study in Sri Lanka.
Designed to give an insight to the challenges facing Sri Lanka’s grassroots, the study was undertaken by Communications & Media Specialist Dr. Kalinga Seneviratne assisted by Samanmalee Swarnalatha.
Access of African Youth to Labour Market Receives Boost
By Justus Wanzala
NAIROBI (IDN) – The African Union (AU) in collaboration with the government of Germany has established an initiative to help young Africans acquire practical skills for meeting the needs of labour markets.
The aim is to strengthen their occupational prospects in view of the continent’s unemployment crisis.
Most hit are young people, with around 60 percent of the unemployed under the age of 25. Key players in implementation of the initiative are the New Partnership for Africa’s Development (NEPAD) and the German government’s Federal Ministry for Economic Cooperation, as well as the German KfW Development Bank. NEPAD is a socio-economic development flagship programme of the AU.
Mayors for Peace: Nuclear Weapons Don’t Ensure Security
By Jamshed Baruah
VIENNA (IDN) – While nuclear weapons have not been deployed since 1945 when atomic bombs were dropped on the Japanese cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, nearly 15,000 pieces of such instruments of mass destruction still exist, posing risks too great to be ignored. In view of this menacing reality, Mayors for Peace are warning that the danger of nuclear proliferation remains real, as seen in the case of continuing nuclear tests by North Korea.
Addressing the first session of the Preparatory Committee for the 2020 NPT Review Conference from May 2-12 in Vienna, Hiroshima Mayor Kazumi Matsui expressed concern on behalf of the Mayors for Peace representing more than 7,200 member cities around the world, that nuclear-weapon states and their allies continued to stress the relevance of nuclear deterrence. He voiced strong support for the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons (NPT), especially its Article VI obligation to negotiate nuclear disarmament in good faith.
It’s High Time Trump Made Friends with Russia
Viewpoint by Jonathan Power*
LUND, Sweden (IDN-INPS) – Does anyone, however well-informed, know what President Donald Trump thinks about President Vladimir Putin? I hazard a guess that he is still more pro than anti, only he doesn’t quite know where to begin.
It’s time overdue that they met and hammered out on the anvil what their mutual interests are.
Presidents Bill Clinton, George W. Bush and Barack Obama have left a legacy that makes it hard for Trump to manoeuvre. They have trampled not so much on Putin but on Russia’s core interests. When Putin’s predecessor, Boris Yeltsin, and later Putin himself were lobbying for what the last Soviet leader, Mikhael Gorbachev, had called a “common European house” they were taking heed of a Russian mood to drive through a new entente.
UNESCO Criticised for NGO Global Forum in Saudi Arabia
By Ronald Joshua
GENEVA (IDN) – UNESCO, the UN Educational Scientific and Cultural Organization, and its Director-General Irinia Bokova are coming under sharp criticism for holding the UNESCO NGO Global Forum in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia.
According to UNESCO, more than 400 NGOs and over 2,100 delegates from some 70 countries attended. Speakers included Olympic gold medallist Carl Lewis, and Wikipedia founder Jimmy Wales.
“Regrettably, UNESCO mentioned nowhere at its 7th International Forum of NGO, or on the conference website, that Saudi Arabia prohibits independent NGOs and arrests, jails and even sometimes flogs human rights activists,” said UN Watch, a Geneva-based human rights organization founded in 1993 to monitor UN compliance with the principles of its Charter in a press release on May 7.