IDN-InDepthNews

UN INSIDER2016-05-162023-07-10

A Tale of UN Bureaucracy

By Franz Baumann * | Reproduced courtesy of PassBlue

The author is a former assistant secretary-general of the United Nations and special adviser on environment and peace operations. This article originally appeared with the headline: UN Bureaucracy? No, Thanks.

NEW YORK – After more than 30 years of service, I retired from the United Nations as an assistant secretary-general, Special Adviser on Environment and Peace Operations, at the end of 2015, but to officially conclude my tenure with the UN, there was bureaucratic paperwork to contend with, to which Bartleby the Scrivener, Melville’s reluctant clerk, might have said, “I would prefer not to.”

During my last week in the office, between Christmas and New Year’s Day, and despite the new information-technology system, Umoja, I had to fill out by hand myriad forms. Originals of my marriage certificate (from 1987) and our daughter’s birth certificate (2000) needed to be submitted, even though the UN had moved us as a family across oceans a few times.

UN INSIDER2016-05-152023-07-10

UN Group Explores Ways Out of Nuclear Stalemate

Analysis by Jamshed Baruah

GENEVA (IDN) – The United Nations General Assembly has tasked an Open Ended Working Group (OEWG) to create a blueprint for constructing a world free of nuclear weapons. The Group’s two sessions – February 22-26 and May 2-13 – failed to agree on a draft plan. But the final three-day session in August was slated to negotiate a final report with recommendations for the United Nations General Assembly.

The report would be justified in stating – as Beatrice Fihn, Executive Director of the International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons (ICAN) told the OEWG on May 13 – that “a majority of the world’s governments are ready and want to start negotiations of a new legally binding instrument to prohibit nuclear weapons”. And this even without the participation of the nuclear weapon states.

Some 100 governments joined over the course of two weeks in May and many more contributed their support through a joint working paper from the Humanitarian Pledge group comprising 127 States.

UN INSIDER2016-05-132023-07-10

Bonn Meet to Take Forward Historic UN Climate Agreement

By Rita Joshi

BONN (IDN) – Just weeks after 176 countries and the 28-nation European Union signed the landmark Paris Climate Change Agreement at the United Nations headquarters in New York, governments are gathering at the Bonn UN Climate Change Conference from May 16 to 26, 2016 in Germany.

Bonn is the seat of the UN Framework Climate Change Convention (UNFCCC) secretariat. The former West German capital also hosts the secretariat of the UN Convention to Combat Desertification (UNCCD) and the UN Volunteers (UNV) together with 15 other United Nations organizations, programmes and offices.

While signing the Paris Climate Change Agreement – which sets out a global action plan to put the world on track to avoid dangerous climate change by limiting global warming to well below 2 degrees Celsius – on April 22 in New York, several key economies indicated that they are ready to join the treaty this year (2016), and 16 States already depositing their instruments of ratification.

The latest round of UN climate change negotiations gets underway on May 16 “with governments looking to the next steps needed to accelerate” the implementation of the Paris Climate Change Agreement and “continue the unprecedented momentum forged in 2015”, says a UNFCCC press release.

UN INSIDER2016-05-122023-07-10

UN Concerned Over Implementation of Development Goals

By J C Suresh

TORONTO (IDN) – Less than five months since the official coming into force of the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development in January, United Nations has warned that persistent weak global growth is posing a challenge to achieving the target to end all forms of poverty, fight inequalities and tackle climate change, while ensuring that no one is left behind.

Economic activity in the world economy remains lacklustre, with little prospect for a turnaround in 2016, says the United Nations World Economic Situation and Prospects as of mid-2016 report.

Launching the mid-year report at United Nations Headquarters in New York, Lenni Montiel, Assistant Secretary-General in the United Nations Department of Economic and Social Affairs (DESA) said: “The report underscores the need for a more balanced policy mix to rejuvenate global growth and create an enabling environment to achieve the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development.”

ARMAMENTS2016-05-112023-07-10

UN Working Group Urged to Assist in Banning Nukes

Analysis by Jamshed Baruah

GENEVA (IDN) – The powerful message of a joint statement by diverse faith groups, calling for abolition of nuclear weapons, has been strongly backed by UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon’s reaction to President Barack Obama’s decision to visit Hiroshima on May 27.

Obama would be the first sitting U.S. President to visit the Japanese city during the G-7 economic summit that was annihilated by the first ever atomic bomb, dropped by the United States on August 6, 1945. It was followed by the second bomb that devastated Nagasaki three days later, killing a total of more than 200,000 people.

Ban “very much welcomes” Obama’s decision to visit Hiroshima, UN Spokesman Stephane Dujarric said. “For the secretary-general, one of the enduring lessons of Hiroshima is the need to abolish nuclear weapons once and for all,” he added.

“We would hope that the visit is again a global message on the need for nuclear disarmament, which is something that the Secretary-General is calling for,” the Spokesman said.

ARMAMENTS2016-05-102023-07-10

Obama Should Meet A-Bomb Survivors, and Ban the Bomb

Viewpoint by Kevin Martin*

WASHINGTON, D.C. (IDN-INPS) – President Barack Obama plans to be the first sitting U.S. President to visit Hiroshima during the G-7 economic summit May 26-27 in Japan. Hiroshima is an impressively rebuilt, thriving city of a million people. The city was obliterated by the first atomic bomb, dropped by the United States on August 6, 1945, followed by the second bomb that devastated Nagasaki three days later, killing a total of more than 200,000 people.

Remarkably, many Hibakusha, atomic bomb survivors, are still alive today, though they often suffer from various radiation-caused illnesses or other physical ailments 71 years after the bombs were dropped.

Eighty-three-year-old Shigeko Sasamori was a young girl when the “fire bomb” (the words “atomic bomb” were not yet known) exploded a mile from where she stood. In the unimaginable chaos that engulfed the city after its devastation, Shigeko and her family were relatively fortunate, as their collapsed house barely missed crushing her mother to death, and after a period of severe disorientation and separation, Shigeko was reunited with her parents.

Global Partnerships2016-05-102023-07-10

Japan Moves Prestigious Africa Conference to Kenya

Analysis by Kingsley Ighobor

NEW YORK (IDN | Africa Renewal) – To many Africans, Japan is a country acclaimed for economic and technological prowess. Johnson Obaluyi in Lagos, Nigeria, says Toyota, the ubiquitous automotive manufacturer, comes to mind whenever Japan is mentioned. For Kwesi Obeng, a Ghanaian living in Nairobi, Kenya, it is technology. Beageorge Cooper, a consultant for the World Bank in Monrovia, Liberia, says she thinks of Japan as “a former world economic power”.

But it’s a different matter when Africans are asked about Japan-Africa relations. “I will have to read up on that,” says Cooper. “I think we are importing their Toyotas,” recollects Obaluyi. “They support research into tropical diseases in Africa,” says Obeng.

Such scant knowledge of the full gamut of Japan-Africa relations hardly reflects the true picture on the ground, considering that it was as recently as 2013 that Japan’s Prime Minister Shinzō Abe announced a whopping $32 billion five-year support for Africa’s development projects.

OPINION2016-05-102023-07-10

Obama Must Say a Profound Sorry for Hiroshima

Viewpoint by Jonathan Power

LUND, Sweden (IDN-INPS) – We were standing in Hiroshima looking at a stone wall. All there was to see was a shadow of a man. It had been etched into the wall at the moment of his obliteration by the blinding light of the first atomic bomb.

Olof Palme, prime minister of Sweden, stared hard at it. An hour later he gave a speech as head of the Independent Commission on Disarmament of which I was a member. “My fear”, he remarked, “is that mankind itself will end up as nothing more than a shadow on a wall.”

President Charles de Gaulle of France once observed, “After a nuclear war the two sides would have neither powers, nor laws, nor cities, nor cultures, nor cradles, nor tombs.”

What if, contrary to the received wisdom, it was shown that nuclear weapons played no role in the surrender of Japan at the end of World War 2, as has been their justification? Perhaps the terrible acts of Hiroshima and Nagasaki are no worse, despite their two hundred thousand deaths, than many other scathing memories of war waged against mainly civilian populations. Then we would have to start a big rethink of the value of nuclear arsenals.

UN INSIDER2016-05-092023-07-10

NEWSBRIEFS: Canadian Initiative – UN Peace Fund – ESCAP

OTTAWA – The Prime Minister of Canada, Justin Trudeau, announced May 9 that Canada will host the Fifth Replenishment Conference of the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria in Montréal, Québec, on September 16, 2016.

The Prime Minister also announced that Canada is pledging CAD785 million to the Global Fund for the next three years, a 20 per cent increase from its previous pledge three years ago. This investment will make a significant contribution to the ultimate goal of saving an additional 8 million lives and averting an additional 300 million new infections by 2019.

Global Partnerships2016-05-092023-07-10

Aid Frozen as Mozambique Reels Under ‘Iceberg of Debt’

NEW YORK (IDN | GIN) – Canada has joined the IMF, World Bank and several other countries in cutting aid to Mozambique over concerns about the country’s finances.

CTV News reported on May 9 that Mozambique had more than $1.3 billion in undeclared debts, which raised concerns among donors over its financial management. Fourteen donor agencies and countries, including the U.K., Portugal and Switzerland, are freezing a portion of their development assistance.

Canada’s high commissioner in Mozambique said on Twitter on May 9 that general budget support has been frozen – that’s aid that goes directly to Mozambique’s government. Development assistance provided to NGOs and multilateral organizations like the UN remains in place.

In the midst of freezing aid, banks that saw dollar signs in the developing economies of Africa are being blamed for a looming fiscal crash in Mozambique over so-called “tuna bonds”.

Emblematic of the easy lending by western banks, 24 fishing boats meant to be a modern tuna fleet are gathering rust in the port of Maputo.