IDN-InDepthNews – Page 666 – News for a Sustainable World, Peace and Security

ARMAMENTS2017-03-312023-07-10

A Shift in the Public Conversation to Ban the Bomb

Viewpoint by Alice Slater

Alice Slater is New York Director of the Nuclear Age Peace Foundation, who serves on the Coordinating Committee of World Beyond War.

NEW YORK (IDN) – This week (March 27-31) the UN General Assembly held the opening session of a ground-breaking conference “to negotiate a legally binding instrument to prohibit nuclear weapons, leading towards their total elimination” just as the world has already done to ban biological and chemical weapons as well as landmines and cluster bombs.

The historic conference began with a bizarre Trumpian boycott on its first day, when Nikki Haley, Trump’s newly appointed U.S. Ambassador to the UN , flanked by the ambassadors from the UK and France stationed in front of the closed doors to the UN General Assembly, where 132 nations were about to start negotiations, staged a press event, with no questions permitted.

UN INSIDER2017-03-312023-07-10

Nakamitsu’s Choice As UN Disarmament Chief Is Significant

By J Nastranis

NEW YORK (IDN) – Izumi Nakamitsu, whose appointment UN Secretary-General António Guterres announced on March 29 as the world body’s next disarmament chief is the second woman and third Japanese to be nominated for the post. A veteran UN official, she will succeed Kim Won-soo of the Republic of Korea as Under-Secretary-General and High Representative for Disarmament Affairs, Office for Disarmament Affairs (UNODA).

Kim Won-soo, whom Ban Ki-moon appointed in June 2015, took over as Angela Kane of Germany (2012-2015) vacated the chair. Her predecessors were: Brazil’s Sergio Duarte (2007-2012); Japan’s Nobuaki Tanaka (2006-2007), Japan’s Nobuyasu Abe (2003-2006), and Sri Lanka’s Jayantha Dhanapala (1998-2003).

Asia-Pacific2017-03-302023-07-10

Education & Jobs Crucial As Cambodia Records Pro-Poor Growth

By Neena Bhandari

SIEM REAP/BATTAMBANG, Cambodia (IDN) – The once conflict ridden, impoverished country of Cambodia has made significant strides towards stability and progress, but it is still facing several socio-economic development challenges.

In 2016, it became a lower middle-income country after recording an annual average economic growth of seven percent over the past decade. “The country’s economy has trebled and the number of people living in poverty has halved in the last 15 years. We have to set development issues in the context of those successes,” says Nick Beresford, United Nations Development Programme’s (UNDP) Cambodia Country Director.

Middle East & North Africa2017-03-302023-07-10

Yemen, a Hushed Up Imperialist War

By Pier Francesco Zarcone*

ROME (IDN) – The US government intends to increase military aid to Saudi Arabia in its war against Yemen, according to recent reports. For the vast majority of the general public the news may be surprising, given that the ongoing conflict in Yemen is almost “non-news” as a result of the almost complete silence of the mainstream media. More importantly, most people probably do not know the causes.

From monarchy to republic

A summary reconstruction of the troubled and bloody history of Yemen can start in 1962, when a military coup backed by Egypt deposed the last monarch, Zaydi Shiite Muhhammad al-Badr, and the Republic was proclaimed.

UN INSIDER2017-03-292023-07-10

Nuclear Weapons Contradict Aspirations For Peace and Security

By Kim Won-soo

Following are excerpts from remarks by UN High Representative for Disarmament Affairs Kim Won-soo at the opening of the United Nations Conference to negotiate a legally binding instrument to prohibit nuclear weapons, leading towards their total elimination on March 27, 2017. He represented Secretary-General António Guterres who was travelling on official business.

NEW YORK (IDN-INPS) – This conference is taking place against a backdrop of rising international tension, renewed arms competition and an absence of results in disarmament bodies.

The Secretary-General recognized these developments when he recently described our world as one of “new and old conflicts woven in a complex, interconnected web” where “global tensions are rising, sabres have been rattled and dangerous words spoken about the use of nuclear weapons.”

UN INSIDER2017-03-292023-07-10

Faith Communities Call For Banning Nuclear Weapons

By Jaya Ramachandran

NEW YORK (IDN) – Faith communities have called for heeding the voices of the world’s Hibakusha (atomic bomb survivors) and stressed the need for the five-day United Nations Conference at the UN headquarters in New York to negotiate “a legally binding instrument to prohibit nuclear weapons, leading towards their total elimination”.

A statement on March 28, second day of the conference, endorsed by more than 20 organizations and individuals, pleaded for developing “a treaty text that clearly and explicitly” prohibits the use, possession, development, production, acquisition, transfer and deployment of nuclear weapons, as well as any inducement, encouragement, investment or assistance with those prohibited acts. “The new instrument should also provide for an obligation for the complete elimination of nuclear weapons, and a framework to achieve it.”

UN INSIDER2017-03-282023-07-10

Disarmament Groups Join 130 Nations For Abolition Of Nukes

By J Nastranis

NEW YORK (IDN) – Civil society disarmament groups threw in their weight for ushering in a world free of the atomic arsenal of mass destruction as more than 130 nations gathered on March 27 at the United Nations headquarters in New York to participate in the first round of five-day negotiations aimed at achieving a treaty banning nuclear weapons in international law. The second round is scheduled for June 15 to July 7, 2017.

While the majority of the world’s governments gathered in the room, President Donald Trump’s UN envoy, Nikki Haley, held a protest together with two of the five permanent (P5) veto-wielding members of the Security Council – the UK, France – and a number of Eastern European allies who feel threatened by Russia.

ARMAMENTS2017-03-282023-07-10

2020 NPT Review Conference Needs Innovative Strategies

By Jayantha Dhanapala

“ . . . and thus the whirligig of time brings in his revenges.” – Shakespeare: Twelfth Night

Note: The first Preparatory Committee for the 2020 Review Conference of the Parties to the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons (NPT) will meet from May 2 to 12, 2017 in Vienna, Austria. Following the text of a Policy Brief Jayantha Dhanapala – a former United Nations Under-Secretary-General for Disarmament Affairs, and a former Ambassador of Sri Lanka – did for the Asia Pacific Leaders Network (APLN) middle of March 2017. It is being reproduced with the permission of the author who currently serves as the 11th President of the Pugwash Conferences on Science and World Affairs, These are his personal views.

OPINION2017-03-282023-07-10

The Asian Poor Should Not Be Neglected

By Jonathan Power*

LUND, Sweden (IDN-INPS) – The Asian economies are picking up speed again. After the big hit from Wall Street when the bank, Lehman Brothers, collapsed in a heap in 2008, sending shock waves everywhere, a recovery is now in the works.

How many child deaths in the Third World did these bankers cause? Another question is will future growth be like the past – fast but severely inequitable? The same growth before 2008 that reduced absolute poverty created a widening gulf between the haves and have-nots.

But isn’t that sufficient for the day, many ask? Absolute poverty must be the key mark of progress – raising incomes, giving people more money to seek education for their children or medical care or filling the coffers for the state so that it can fund bore holes in the countryside and sewers in the urban slums.

Latin America & the Caribbean2017-03-282023-07-10

Jamaica’s ‘Tambourine Army’ on the Gender Violence Warpath

By Desmond Brown

KINGSTON, Jamaica (ACP-IDN) – In the wake of an alarming upsurge in domestic violence and abuse of women and girls, a new group has emerged here with the promise of a revolution for social change, combating gender-based violence in particular – the “Tambourine Army”.

On its Facebook page, the Tambourine Army describes itself as a radical social-justice movement committed to uprooting the scourge of sexual violence and safeguarding the rights of women and girls.

The group first came to public attention on Sunday, February 8, when 14 women staged a peaceful protest at the Nazareth Moravian Church in the central parish of Manchester, rallying support for a 15-year-old St Elizabeth school girl allegedly abused by the pastor of the congregation.