IDN-InDepthNews

OPINION2016-12-272023-07-10

Why We Should Be Optimistic About 2017

By Jonathan Power

LUND, Sweden (IDN-INPS) – What you see depends on where you sit. There are the pessimists who see President-elect Donald Trump who said in his tweet about the need to engage in a new arms race. There are the optimists, sitting on the other side of the room, who believe the kind words uttered by President Vladimir Putin and Trump to each other mean that there well could be a new agreement on reducing their nuclear armories. 2017 will be a lot better than 2016.

When I wrote my history of Amnesty International (“Like Water on Stone”, Penguin, 2002) I was struck both by the staff and activists how positive they were, despite dealing with some of the worst horrors in the world.

Asia-Pacific2016-12-272023-07-10

Suu Kyi’s Astute Move On Rohingya Issue in Myanmar

Analysis by Kalinga Seneviratne

This article is the 13th in a series of joint productions of Lotus News Features and IDN-InDepthNews, flagship of the International Press Syndicate.

BANGKOK (IDN) – With mounting demonstrations in support of Rohingyas in fellow ASEAN (Association of South East Asian Nations) Muslim majority countries Malaysia and Indonesia, Myanmar’s de-facto leader and Foreign Minister Aung San Suu Kyi made an astute move to summon Foreign Ministers of ASEAN for a one-day “retreat” to Yangoon on December 19 to brief them on the situation in Myanmar’s Rakhine State where most Rohingyas live.

OPINION2016-12-272023-07-10

The Struggle To Get Dalit Voice Into Mainstream Indian Media

By Jeya Rani*

CHENNAI (IDN) – Even as you read this whever you are, somewhere in India someone is being killed or raped, humiliated or outraged, just because she or he was born in a lower caste (known as Dalit).

The ‘not so changing’ statistics of National Crime Records Bureau say that a Dalit is assaulted every two hours in India. At least three Dalit women are raped every 24 hours. Two Dalits are killed every 24 hours. Two Dalit houses are burnt down.

There is no dearth of breaking news or good TRP ratings in reporting atrocities against Dalits across India. But, why are these stories not getting the coverage it deserves in the country often touted as the world’s biggest democracy?.

ARMAMENTS2016-12-262023-07-10

UN Paves The Way For Conference on Treaty Eliminating Nukes

By Jamshed Baruah

GENEVA | NEW YORK (IDN) – The United Nations General Assembly has confirmed that beginning March 2017, it would hold a conference open to all member states, to negotiate a “legally binding instrument to prohibit nuclear weapons, leading towards their total elimination”. The conference to be held at UN headquarters in New York will be divided into two sessions: from March 27 to 31 and from June 15 to July 7.

“This historic decision heralds an end to two decades of paralysis in multilateral nuclear disarmament efforts, and comes at a time when the two major nuclear-armed states are engaging in nuclear-sabre rattling,” noted the International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons (ICAN).

UN INSIDER2016-12-252023-07-10

Behind Security Council Demand To End Israeli Settlements

By J Nastranis

NEW YORK (IDN) – Within days of the outgoing UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon strongly criticising Israel’s settlement activities beyond the 1967 line, the UN Security Council has adopted a landmark resolution by a vote of 14 in favour and with the United States abstaining, instead of exercising a veto.

Since the resolution 2234 was adopted on December 23, Israel Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has been pouring anger not only on the current U.S. Administration but also on outgoing President Barack Obama: “Friends don’t take friends to the Security Council.”

“Israel will re-assess its ties with the United Nations following the adoption by the Security Council of a resolution demanding an end to Israeli settlement building,” Reuters quoted Prime Minister Netanyahu warning on December 24.

ARMAMENTS2016-12-242023-07-10

Youth Campaign for a Nuke-Free World at Nagasaki Conference

By Katsuhiro Asagiri

NAGASAKI (IDN) – A Forum of Youth Communicators, launched by Japanese Foreign Minister Fumio Kishida in 2013, has urged people around the world to realize that nuclear weapons do not only absorb huge amounts of money but also pose a serious threat to international peace and security, global environment, and the very survival of humankind.

The Youth Communicators met in the Japanese city of Nagasaki, which suffered atomic bombings along with Hiroshima seventy-one years ago. They pledged to communicate the pressing need to move toward a nuclear-weapons-free world, and proposed a series of steps to achieve the objective.

UN INSIDER2016-12-232023-07-10

Children and Women Main Human Trafficking Targets, Says UN

By Jaya Ramachandran

BERLIN | VIENNA (IDN) – Almost a third of all humans traded around the world for the purpose of sexual slavery, forced labour, or commercial sexual exploitation are children, and women and girls comprise 71 per cent of the victims of “human trafficking”, according to a new report by the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC).

The 2016 UNODC Global Report on Trafficking in Persons is the third of its kind mandated by the General Assembly through the 2010 United Nations Global Plan of Action to Combat Trafficking in Persons.

EU & Europe2016-12-222023-07-10

Kazakhstan Offers Astana As Venue Of Syrian Peace Talks

By J Nastranis

NEW YORK (IDN) – In a major move ahead of joining the UN Security Council as its non-permanent member on January 1, 2017 for two years, President Nursultan Nazarbayev has offered the Kazakh capital of Astana as the venue for peace talks between the conflicting parties in the Syrian conflict.

According to official sources, the offer follows “a significant agreement between Russian President Vladimir Putin and Turkish President Tayyip Erdogan who had agreed to push Syria’s warring factions towards new negotiations”.

“The latest reports of the successful evacuation of many civilians in Aleppo are, of course, welcome,” said The Astana Times in an editorial on December 21. “However, it would be wrong to see this as a sign that the conflict in Syria is coming to an end,” it added, stressing the need for peace talks.

UN INSIDER2016-12-212023-07-10

UNEP To Help ACP Implement 2030 SDG Agenda

NAIROBI (IDN) – The UN Environment Programme (UNEP) and the Brussels-based ACP Secretariat have agreed on a more coherent and integrated approach towards the implementation of the sustainable development goals in 79 African, Caribbean and Pacific states.

UNEP Deputy Executive Director Ibrahim Thiaw and the ACP Secretary-General Patrick I. Gomes signed on December 20 a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) in the margins of the 32nd session of the joint ACP-EU Parliamentary Assembly from December 19 to 21 in Nairobi, the capital of Kenya. The MoU aims to reinforce collaboration between the two international organizations in the field of environment and climate change.

OPINION2016-12-212023-07-10

Sri Lanka News Story International Media Was Blind To

By Dayan Jayatilleka*

COLOMBO (IDN) – It was perhaps the biggest Sri Lanka related news story of the year that is about to end. It should have been picked up by the international media but unsurprisingly it wasn’t. More shocking however is that it made to the local media but the biggest news was not focused on. There has not been, for instance, a single editorial on it or feature spun off from it.

Let me back up a bit. It was the doyen of foreign correspondents in Sri Lanka, a true Sri Lankan hand of the old school, PK Balachandran of the New Indian Express, who surfaced it, and it was Sri Lanka’s Daily Mirror that ran it first in Sri Lanka and it was the best reporter-cum-journalistic commentator on Sri Lankan affairs, DBS Jeyaraj, who gave the story the treatment it deserved.