IDN-InDepthNews

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.

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.

Following is a joint statement read out on May 3, 2017 at the first session of the Preparatory Committee for the 2020 Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty Review Conference from May 2-12 in Vienna. It was drafted by a coalition of faith groups, with the Soka Gakkai International (SGI), the World Council of Churches (WCC), Pax Christi International, and PAX (Netherlands) taking the lead. The statement was delivered by Kimiaki Kawai, Director, Peace and Human Rights at SGI, which has collaborated with faith groups to issue interfaith statements highlighting the moral and ethical dimensions of nuclear weapons. – The Editor.

By Jutta Wolf

BONN (IDN) – As representatives of countries from around the world were preparing to gather in Bonn from May 8-18 for a new session of United Nations climate change negotiations, Chair of the Least Developed Countries (LDC) Group, Gebru Jember Endalew of Ethiopia stressed the need for “substantive progress” on the rules and processes that will fully operationalise the Paris Agreement.

The conference marks the half-way point to the finalisation of this process by 2018. It is also a staging-post for for COP23, the 23rd annual Conference of Parties to the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) in Bonn in November 2017.

By Jaya Ramachandran

GENEVA (IDN) – Undeterred by Israel’s sensitivity to all perceived criticism, a new study by the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD) has expressed disapproval of the country’s policies in the Occupied Palestinian Territory.

“The security, military, political and economic measures implemented by Israel in the Occupied Palestinian Territory – the Gaza Strip and the West Bank, including East Jerusalem – since the onset of occupation in 1967 have significantly distorted and disoriented the Palestinian economy,” says the study, The Occupied Palestinian Territory: Twin-Deficits or an Imposed Resource Gap?