IDN-InDepthNews – Page 729 – News for a Sustainable World, Peace and Security

ARMAMENTS2016-05-172023-07-10

Obama’s Nuclear-Free World Vision Has Come to Naught

Viewpoint by Jonathan Power

LUND, Sweden (IDN-INPS) – During the Cold War barely a week went by without some reportage or debate on nuclear weapons. Not today. Yet most of the nuclear weapons around then are still around.

It would be alright if they were left to quietly rust in their silos. But they are not. When in 2010 President Barack Obama made a deal with Russian President Dimitri Medvedev to cut their respective arsenals of strategic missiles by one-third the Republican-dominated U.S. Congress, as the price for its ratification of the deal, decreed that Obama and future presidents be made to spend a trillion dollars on updating and modernizing America’s massive arsenal.

Now that chicken is coming home to roost – and a few other chickens too.

President Barack Obama’s unexpected legacy is that he has presided over an America that has been at war longer than any previous president. Moreover, of recent presidents, apart from Bill Clinton, he has cut the U.S. nuclear weapon stockpile at the slowest rate.

Health & Well Being2016-05-172023-07-10

Antibiotics Threatening to Become Useless

Viewpoint by Martin Khor *

Antibiotics – also called antibacterials – revolutionized medicine in the 20th century. Their effectiveness and easy access led to overuse, especially in livestock raising, prompting bacteria to develop resistance. This has led to widespread problems with antimicrobial and antibiotic resistance, so much as to prompt the World Health Organization to classify antimicrobial resistance as a “serious threat [that] is no longer a prediction for the future, it is happening right now in every region of the world and has the potential to affect anyone, of any age, in any country”. – Editor

GENEVA (IDN | SOUTHNEWS) – Antibiotic resistance – a process by which antibiotics no longer work because bacteria have become resistant to them – has climbed up the global agenda because of growing awareness of the immense threat this poses to human health and survival.

Africa2016-05-162023-07-10

Behind Eritrean Diaspora’s Attacks on the Dutch Media

Analysis by Martin Plaut *

BRUSSELS (IDN) – “I have never experienced anything like it,” says Philippe Remarque, editor in chief of De Volkskrant. The paper – the Netherlands’ largest broadsheet – has been taken to court by a man Remarque describes as an “operative working for the benefit of the awful Eritrean dictatorship”. On May 13 the newspaper received a verdict in the second case in which the court ruled once more in favour of the newspaper.

There is a large, and growing, Eritrean community in the Netherlands. Eritreans flee their country at a rate of 5,000 a month – the largest number of refugees crossing from Libya to Italy. More than 38,000 made the dangerous voyage in 2015, according to the European border agency, Frontex.

Those who arrive in the Netherlands seek refugee status. They discuss their cases with the Dutch immigration agency, only to confront a problem. According to a Dutch based website, Oneworld, refugees found that they were speaking through official translators who had close links with the Eritrean government.

UN INSIDER2016-05-162023-07-10

Kazakhstan Vows to Fight the ‘Virus of War’

Analysis by J Nastranis

NEW YORK (IDN) – Since wars begin in the minds of men, it is in the minds of men that the defences of peace must be constructed. This argument remains pertinent 70 years after the UNESCO Constitution came into force. Because “the virus of war is still prevalent in the minds of people”, said Kazakh Foreign Minister Erlan Idrissov, quoting President Nursultan Nazarbayev.

Representing Kazakhstan at the high-level forum titled Religions for Peace at the UN General Assembly on May 6, Idrissov said: “In the 21st Century, which is considered to be the most advanced century, with the most advanced achievements of human kind in its entire existence we still face the danger of global annihilation. . . As my president has formulated it, it is unfortunate that this virus of war is prevalent among many political elites.”

Kazakh President proposed such a forum at the 70th session of the General Assembly in September 2015, and at a meeting with UNESCO Director General Irina Bokova in Paris in November 2015. In doing so, he wanted to boost UN efforts to combat violent extremism and promote peace and security.

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.