IDN-InDepthNews – Page 691 – News for a Sustainable World, Peace and Security

OPINION2017-03-132023-07-10

Loss of Seagrass Meadows Threatens their Dugong Denizens

By Dr. Thani Ahmed Al Zeyoudi and Dr. Bradnee Chambers

Dr. Thani Ahmed Al Zeyoudi is the Minister of Climate Change and Environment of the United Arab Emirates and Dr. Bradnee Chambers is the Executive Secretary of the Convention on the Conservation of Migratory Species of Wild Animals.

Note: This article is an updated version of the one published on 9 March 2017. – Editor

BONN (IDN) – The on-going bleaching of coral in Australia’s Great Barrier Reef continues to generate great concern worldwide. Islands of plastic waste in the oceans contaminating the food chain make the headlines. So why then is there a deafening silence on the deteriorating condition of the world’s seagrasses?

Gender Equality2017-03-122023-07-10

Finland Launches Landmark Gender Equality Prize

By Rita Joshi

NEW YORK (IDN) – In run-up to the sixty-first session of the United Nations Commission on the Status of Women, CSW61, in New York from March 13 to 24, the government of Finland has launched the International Gender Equality Prize, which will be awarded for the first time later this year.

The prize, intended to promote gender equality worldwide, to support discussion on equality between women and men and to celebrate Finland’s 100 years of independence, was launchded by Prime Minister Juha Sipilä in Tampere on southern Finland on March 8, the International Women’s Day.

MULTIMEDIA2017-03-122023-07-10

Interview with Commonwealth SG Baroness Scotland

Global Partnerships2017-03-112023-07-10

Going Bananas Over Brexit

By Samantha Sen

LONDON (ACP-IDN) – The Brexit question as seen by the small and poor group of African, Caribbean and Pacific (ACP) countries is far simpler – and potentially far more lethal – than those the more usual Brexit debate engages with. It belongs less to debate on knock-on effects rolling into the future than to questions of physical survival here and now. When a fifth of Fiji exports head for the UK, when a Caribbean island lives off bananas sold to Britain, new spokes in buying and selling can hit the people, and even all of the people, of a small nation.

EU & Europe2017-03-112023-07-10

Calais Migrant Camp Closure Drives Refugees To Paris Streets

By Melissa Chemam*

Note: This article is being reproduced courtesy of the Friedrich Ebert Stiftung’s online Journal ‘International Politics and Society’ published on March 7, 2017 with the headline Refugees Welcome?

PARIS (IDN-INPS) – Since the destruction of the informal settlement of refugees and transitional migrants in Calais – now known as the “Jungle”– in October 2016, the French government promised to find housing for all three to four-thousand people forced to leave the area. They have opened about 500 welcome centres to redistribute the fleeing population across the country, away from Calais, neighbouring Hauts-de-France and saturated Paris.

UN INSIDER2017-03-102023-07-10

Nuclear Disarmament Is Humanity’s Common Cause

By Dr. J. Enkhsaikhan

Note: Dr. J. Enkhsaikhan is Chairman of Blue Banner NGO and former Permanent Representative of Mongolia to the United Nations in New York and Vienna. This article comes in run-up to the UN General Assembly’s two sessions – scheduled for March 27-31 and June 15-July 7 – to negotiate “a legally binding instrument to prohibit nuclear weapons, leading towards their total elimination”.

ULAANBAATAR, Mongolia (IDN-INPS) – Some believe that those that do not possess nuclear weapons have no basis to demand that those that do possess alter their nuclear policies. However, as the three recent international conferences on humanitarian consequences of nuclear weapons vividly demonstrated yet again, the detonation of a nuclear weapon, intentionally or otherwise, will have catastrophic consequences with far-reaching climatic, genetic and other devastating effects.

CTBTO2017-03-102023-07-10

The Key to Realizing Trump’s Nuclear Dream is the CTBT

Viewpoint by Brenna Gautam

Note: Brenna Gautam, a J.D. Candidate at Georgetown University Law Center, is a member of the CTBTO Youth Group. This article appears in cooperation with the Comprehensive Nuclear-Test-Ban Treaty Organization (CTBTO), as part of the initiative ‘Youth for CTBTO’. The views expressed are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect those of the CTBTO. – Editor

WASHINGTON, D.C. (IDN) – “It would be wonderful, a dream would be that no country would have nukes,” President Donald Trump announced, “but if countries are going to have nukes, we’re going to be at the top of the pack.”

The announcement can be neatly split in two. The first, wistful for nuclear disarmament, falls in line with the history of Republican successes in arms reductions: while Democrats since Kennedy have frequently proposed reductions, it has been Republican administrations that ultimately put these into effect.

UN INSIDER2017-03-092023-07-10

Exhibition Highlights the Power of Human Rights Education

By Ravi Kanth Devarakonda

GENEVA (IDN) – Several international civil society groups and governments have joined hands to highlight the power of human rights education in transforming lives. In commemoration of the fifth anniversary of the adoption of the UN Declaration on Human Rights Education and Training, they launched an Exhibition on March 6 at the UN in Geneva.

The Exhibition to be displayed until March 17 “reiterates the vital role of human rights education and training in the promotion of dignity, equality and peace, and in the prevention of human rights violations and abuses” – in the face of the rising wave of xenophobia, bigotry, and intolerance.

Latin America & the Caribbean2017-03-092023-07-10

Caribbean Gearing Up for Marine Resources Treaty

By Desmond Brown

BELMOPAN, Belize (IDN) – The countries of the Caribbean Community (CARICOM) have been fine-tuning their positions ahead of the next United Nations preparatory meeting to establish an international legally-binding agreement on sustainable use of marine resources.

The UN meeting is scheduled for March 27 to April 7 and senior environment experts from CARICOM held a two-day workshop here from February 20-22 to discuss the issue.

United Nations negotiations for the new treaty for the conservation and sustainable use of marine biological resources in the world’s oceans – nearly 64 percent of which lie beyond national jurisdictions – began in 2016.

OPINION2017-03-082023-07-10

Populism – The Morbid Symptom of a Political Crisis

By Franz Baumann*

NEW YORK (IDN) – Carnage in Syria, millions (dozens of millions actually) of forcibly displaced people, fast-tracking global warming, crises in South Sudan, Venezuela, Brazil, Turkey, the Philippines and elsewhere, terrorist attacks in Europe, the UK Brexit vote and the US presidential election. What a list! Was 2016 an unusually ghastly year, or was it rather the new normal?

Hoping against hope that it was an outlier, these reflections highlight several macro trends that feed chauvinistic outbursts in many countries, yet that will not likely be reversed by anti-globalism, protectionism or militarism: rising inequality, jobless growth, terrorist attacks, the influx of migrants, corruption.