PRETORIA (IDN | GIN) – It was a long night for the African National Congress (ANC) party faithful as a popular revolt in the cities of Tshwane (Pretoria) and Port Elizabeth upended its long-held power base in those two key municipalities.
The ANC was beaten in working-class “black township” areas such as Mamelodi in Tshwane, and Motherwell in Port Elizabeth.
KAMPALA (IDN | GIN) – Police are resuming their attacks on Uganda’s mostly underground LGBTI community – raiding nightclubs and making arrests.
The renewed police activity comes as gays and rights activists mark the day and month in which a law requiring homosexuals to be jailed for life was overturned.
During the latest crackdown on August 4, police unlawfully raided a pageant in Kampala’s Club Venom to crown Mr/Ms/Mx Uganda Pride, according to a release by a coalition of activist gay rights groups including Human Rights Watch.
By Jamshed Baruah
GENEVA (IDN-INPS) – The final session of the UN nuclear disarmament working group (OEWG) opened in Geneva on August 5, as nuclear abolition campaigners around the world were gearing up for Hiroshima and Nagasaki Day actions.
Governments will meet from August 16 to19 to discuss the OEWG draft report, with the aim to adopt the final report on August 19 for submission to the UN General Assembly. They will follow up on the substantive work it undertook in February and May 2016.
The focus in February and May was on the legal measures required to achieve a nuclear-weapon-free world, and to prepare recommendations on reducing nuclear risks, enhancing transparency, and building further awareness about the humanitarian impact of nuclear weapons.
NEW YORK (IDN-INPS) – Under the overarching theme of ‘One Humanity’, the World Humanitarian Day (WHD) to be held – as every year – on August 19, will explain how the world came together in Istanbul around the Agenda for Humanity.
It will also stimulate how the commitments made at the WHD from May 23 to 24 in Istanbul will help the 130 million people around the world who need humanitarian assistance to survive.
One Humanity speaks about shared human experiences bind us across divides, and create a common responsibility to demand action for the most vulnerable and at risk of being left behind.
By Rodney Reynolds
NEW YORK (IDN) – As the U.S. presidential elections gather political momentum, one of the key issues that has triggered a provocative debate revolves round the very survival of humanity: the looming threat of an intended or unintended nuclear war.
Come November 8, the U.S. will be making a choice between two contenders: former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, a candidate of the Democratic Party; and Donald Trump, a self-proclaimed billionaire businessman from New York, a candidate of the Republican Party.
Viewpoint by Shenali Waduge *
COLOMBO (IDN-INPS) – Since the fall of the Mahinda Rajapaksa government in January 2015, reconciliation has propelled to the top of the political agenda with Western governments pushing Sri Lanka to be accountable for alleged war crimes committed at the end of the 30-year war with terror group Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE).
The new government led by President Maithripala Sirisena and Prime Minister Ranil Wickremesinghe has been currying favour with its new allies in the West and has been uncritically entertaining their demands for accountability, even to the extent of possibly allowing foreign (i.e. Western) judges to sit in judgement of war crime cases that may be brought against Sri Lanka’s war heroes in the army and the former government.
By Rodrigo Pérez
RIO DE JANEIRO (IDN-INPS) – Beneath the glitz and glamour, the Samba and Rio’s Carnival-like atmosphere, this year’s Olympic Games Opening Ceremony showcased the most impossible sounding dream of all – Africa’s Great Green Wall.
The initiative started a decade ago. Once completed it will be the largest man-made structure on Earth and a new Wonder of the World.
The progress made shows that land restoration efforts on a mass scale are both possible and offer hope. Senegal has already planted 12 million trees, Ethiopia has restored 15 million hectares of degraded land and Nigeria has created 20,000 jobs in rural areas.
UN Women, IOC and Always join to celebrate the community-based sports programme to build leadership skills and confidence of adolescent girls as part of the 2016 Rio Olympic legacy.
Rio de Janeiro (IDN-INPS) – Coinciding with the beginning of the 2016 Summer Olympic Games in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, UN Women, the International Olympic Committee (IOC) and Always/Whisper celebrated on August 6 the ‘One Win Leads to Another’ initiative, a programme that empowers women and girls through sport.
By J Nastranis
NEW YORK (IDN) – The UN General Assembly is coming under strong pressure to declare 2017 as the International Year to End Israeli Occupation of Palestine, particularly in the aftermath of the July 2016 report by the Middle East Quartet – comprising the United States, Russia, the European Union and the United Nations.
Ambassador Feda Abdelhady-Nasser, Deputy Permanent Observer at the Permanent Observer Mission of Palestine to the United Nations, told the Committee on the Inalienable Rights of the Palestinian People (CEIRPP) on August 4 that Gaza would be uninhabitable by 2020 if its humanitarian situation was not addressed.
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: A Sorry State of Affairs: The UN Secretariat Has No Climate Plan.
NEW YORK (IDN | Passblue) – How green is the United Nations’ own environmental policy?
Shepherding the Paris climate agreement to conclusion in December 2015 has been a major achievement of Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon. The agreement got more than 190 states to commit to hold the increase in the global average temperature to below 2 degrees centigrade, above pre-industrial levels.
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