IDN-InDepthNews – Page 683 – News for a Sustainable World, Peace and Security

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.

UN INSIDER2016-12-212023-07-10

Security Council Resolves to Halt Human Trafficking

By Santo D Banerjee

NEW YORK | VIENNA (IDN) – Human trafficking is a global problem particularly affecting people fleeing armed conflict, including women, children, internally displaced persons and refugees who are forced into modern slavery that fetches its perpetrators some $150 billion.

The UN Security Council is determined to put an end to this serious crime and violation of human rights, and has passed a resolution, which the Executive Director of the Vienna-based United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC), Yury Fedotov, describes as “historic”.

“The resolution offers a powerful recognition by the international community that persons desperately fleeing armed conflict are especially vulnerable to trafficking in persons and to other forms of exploitation,” said the UNODC Chief, according to UN Information Service (UNIS) in Vienna.

UN INSIDER2016-12-202023-07-10

DR Congo President Ignores UN and Citizen Protests

By Global Information Network

NEW YORK | KINSHASA (IDN) – Considering that the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), the world’s largest producer of cobalt ore, and a major producer of copper and diamonds, has never had a peaceful transfer of power since independence from Belgium in 1960, the current political crisis does not come as a surprise.

But the killing of a peacekeeper from South Africa deployed with the United Nations Stabilisation Mission in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (MONUSCO) in North Kivu on December 19 has precipitated the situation.

UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon has condemned the killing and called on the country’s “authorities to ensure that this attack is investigated and its perpetrators are brought to justice”. Attacks against UN peacekeepers are unacceptable,” according to a statement issued by Ban’s spokesperson.

OPINION2016-12-202023-07-10

Do Not Fear Islam But Fear Itself

By Jonathan Power

LUND, Sweden (IDN-INPS) – An abiding fear for Donald Trump is that the Middle East dictators’ successors in power will be militant Islamists who once elected will stop at nothing. At one time in the presidential campaign he threatened to “nuke” them. Even though the secular-minded President Bashar al-Assad appears to be winning the civil war in Syria the Islamists will sit on his tail.

Violent-inclined Islamists point to the Koran and the Hadith to justify their violence. Indeed, there are sentences in both that are close to their interpretation. Even though they may hype up these passages and ignore other more peaceful ones the truth is that Islam does have a tradition of the hard school. Nevertheless, the overwhelming majority of Muslims today don’t subscribe to it.

UN INSIDER2016-12-202023-07-10

SDGs in Asia Risk Hijacking by Western Activists

By Kalinga Seneviratne

BANGKOK (IDN) – Early December three UN agencies UNDP, UNESCO and UNFPA organized a three-day youth mobilizing program at the UNESCAP building here called ‘Case for Space’ (C4S) touted as a campaign led by over 60 partners in the region to raise awareness and advocate for the promotion of Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) in the Asia-Pacific region.

Yet, it was dominated by mainly European and American speakers and consultants, with the project being led by a UK-based activist group Restless Development, which made many participants from the region to wonder whether the SDG agenda is being hijacked by westerner activists.