IDN-InDepthNews

By Rodney Reynolds

UNITED NATIONS (IDN) – Antonio Guterres, a former Prime Minister of Portugal (1995-2002) who was sworn in as the ninth UN Secretary-General, will preside over a 71-year-old Secretariat which is badly in need of institutional reforms, including the break-up of a longstanding monopoly of male-dominated high ranking appointments, described as an exclusive preserve of major powers.

Asked about his priorities in the first 100 days of his administration, beginning January 1, he told reporters: “I think that one very important element of the agenda will be to give a clear signal that gender parity is a must.”

By J Nastranis

NEW YORK (IDN) – António Guterres, who was sworn in on December 12 as the new UN Secretary-General, is expected to appoint Nigeria’s Minister of Environment, Amina Mohammed, as his Deputy, according to Nigeria’s Premium Times.

Mohammed had formerly served as an adviser to the outgoing UN Secretary General Ban Ki-Moon. She was appointed minister by President Muhammadu Buhari in November 2015.

Nigeria’s Vanguard stated on December 12: A tweet by Pamela Falk, CBS UN correspondent, obtained by News Agency of Nigeria (NAN), said that the world body would soon release a statement confirming the appointment of the Nigerian Minister of Environment.

By Franz Baumann*

Note: This is a slightly abridged version of Franz Baumann’s Keynote Address at the Bonn International Model UN titled ‘Transformation in the midst of Crisis: New approaches in a changing International System’ on November 30. Bonn, the former capital of West Germany, hosts 19 UN organizations and secretariats in the UN Campus.

NEW YORK (IDN) – There has been a momentous transformation in the past seventy years since the end of WWII and the founding of the United Nations. The UN, to recall, was born out of the second cataclysmic catastrophe of the 20th century.

In the 1920s and 1930s, the opportunity was missed to organize peace: Japan invaded Manchuria, Italy invaded Abyssinia, Germany invaded Czechoslovakia, started WWII and carried out the genocide against the Jews.

By Santo D. Banerjee

NEW YORK (IDN) – Two days after the United Nations human rights wing drew attention to more than 60 years of “involuntary” separation between families from the two Koreas and called for steps to encourage reunion and alleviate suffering, senior UN officials have highlighted the need for the Security Council to pay attention to human rights violations in the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea (DPRK) adding that the situation is “of great concern”.

“History teaches us that serious human rights violations are warning signs of instability and conflict,” Deputy Secretary-General Jan Eliasson said in a briefing requested by nine of the Council’s 15 members: France, Japan, Malaysia, New Zealand, Spain, Ukraine, the United Kingdom, the United States and Uruguay.

By J Nastranis

NEW YORK (IDN) – The United Nations Internet Governance Forum (IGF) has underlined the urgency to bridge socio-economic inequalities that impact access to or use of information and communication technologies and called for concerted actions to ensure that all people in all countries are able to reap the benefits of the Internet.

According to figures released at the 11th annual IGF in Jalisco, Mexico, the current “digital divide” is adversely affecting some four billion people or two out of three households in developing countries that simply do not have access to Internet.

By UNCTAD

GENEVA (IDN-INPS) – Covered in steep hills and tropical forest, the tiny almost-island nation of Timor-Leste (East Timor) faced an uncertain future when it became independent from Indonesia in 2002.

But using its newly discovered oil for the benefit of its 1.2 million population, the fledgling democracy halved its infant and child mortality rates, boosted literacy, and saw national income rise from $810 per capita at independence to $3,940 in 2012.

The nation might have been eligible to graduate from its least developed country (LDC) status – a UN designation – by late 2021. But it depends heavily on its oil and gas exports, and tumbling oil prices have halved national income to $1,920 per capita in 2015, putting graduation into doubt.

By Devinder Kumar

NEW DELHI | GENEVA (IDN) – As India takes a prominent place in the globalised economy, it can choose its development path, and look beyond a linear ‘take, make and dispose’ model of growth by embarking on a circular economy transformation, and thus create economic, environmental and social value for its businesses and population, says a new report.

All the more so because “in an interconnected world predicated largely on a linear economic model, India’s development faces resource challenges and negative externalities – yet this scenario is not inevitable, and many opportunities can be derived from adopting a value-preserving model”, says the report produced by the Ellen MacArthur Foundation in association with the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD).