IDN-InDepthNews – Page 737 – News for a Sustainable World, Peace and Security

UN INSIDER2016-04-152023-07-10

First Phase of Historic Process to Elect New UN Chief Concludes

Analysis by Ramesh Jaura

UNITED NATIONS (IDN) – There was quite some disquiet particularly among a large number of developing countries when Helen Clark, a former Prime Minister of New Zealand and current head of the UN Development Programme (UNDP), announced her official candidature on April 4, underlining her conviction that she was “up to the task” of leading the United Nations.

Earlier, on February 29, Antonio Guterres, former UN High Commissioner for Refugees and ex-Prime Minister of Portugal, had announced his official candidature for the post of the UN Chief.

In doing so, the two aspirants had virtually undermined the longstanding claim that Ban’s successor should be from Eastern Europe under a system of traditional geographical rotation. “This system has ensured that the post of the world’s topmost diplomat is not monopolized by the rich and powerful,” a developing country diplomat told IDN.

ACP Group of States2016-04-142023-07-10

EU-ACP – A force for South-South & Triangular Cooperation

Viewpoint by Dr. Patrick Gomes*

BRUSSELS (IDN) – Development cooperation in the 21st century is compelled to move beyond the simplistic paradigm of transferring funds from the developed North to the developing South.

With the global endorsement of Agenda 2030, including new modes of development finance, the proliferation of actors, and the rise of emerging economies, the traditional “donor – recipient” aid paradigm needs to be buried.

The long-standing and comprehensive North-South approach to development cooperation between the 28-member EU and 78 African, Caribbean and Pacific (ACP) countries, could well have invaluable horizons for innovation and enhanced development effectiveness.

ARTS & CULTURE2016-04-132023-07-10

Somali Arts Blossom in Minneapolis

NEW YORK (IDN | GIN) – Traditional Somali culture has found a home away from home. Scattered to the four winds during years of war and unrest, traditional handmade items have found their way to a safe place in the Somali Museum of Minnesota, amidst one of the world’s largest Somali diaspora population.

It may be the only museum in the world dedicated to preserving Somali culture. “Immigrant populations in Minnesota must explore and craft the ways they will carry their culture forward as they build their community in the United States,” the museum organizers wrote on the Museum’s website.

Africa2016-04-132023-07-10

Africa’s Billionaires Among Tax Dodgers in Panama Leak

NEW YORK (IDN | GIN) – Africa’s most talked-about and admired billionaires are among the dozens of world leaders named in the so-called Panama Papers – a huge trove of records listing tax dodgers and other misdeeds leaked to a media outlet in Germany, analyzed in cooperation with the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists (ICIJ) and published in papers around the world this month.

The massive leak of confidential documents from the Panama-based firm Mossack Fonseca has even pointed a finger at Africa’s richest man whose net worth is said to exceed $17 billion. Aliko Dangote, founder and chairman of Dangote Group, is listed together with his relatives in the continuing Panama papers leak.

ARMAMENTS2016-04-122023-07-10

Hiroshima Declaration Avoids Firm Commitment to Nuclear-Free World

Analysis by Rodney Reynolds

HIROSHIMA (IDN) – When the Foreign Ministers of G7 countries — Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, UK and the United States – adopted the ‘Hiroshima Declaration’ at the end of a two-day meeting on April 11, they failed to make any concrete commitments for the total elimination of nuclear weapons worldwide.

The Declaration was replete with pious intentions and time-worn platitudes of the dangers of weapons mass destruction (WMDs), but fell short of a world without nuclear weapons.

Tariq Rauf, Director of the Disarmament, Arms Control and Non-Proliferation Programme at the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI), told IDN the Declaration is a major disappointment and a frittering away of a solemn opportunity – the 71st year following the nuclear bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki – to commit to nuclear disarmament and elimination of nuclear weapons.

Individual Journalists, SYNDICATION2016-04-122023-07-12

Brazil’s Great Achievement Must Survive

Viewpoint by Jonathan Power

LUND, Sweden (IDN | INPS) – If worst comes to worst and Brazil’s President Dilma Rousseff is deposed and her widely beloved predecessor, Luiz “Lula” da Silva, is discredited they will long be remembered for the “Bolsa Familia”.

This is a government program that has cut Brazil’s once appalling poverty rate by half and reduced the number of poor very sharply to 3% of the population. It reaches 55 million people and 36 million have been lifted out of poverty. It has been such a winner that around sixty countries have sent their experts to study it.

Indeed, it has been so successful politically that we shouldn’t be surprised that if Rousseff is felled by the shenanigans of Congress masses will go out on the street and riot.

UN INSIDER2016-04-112023-07-10

UN and Hiroshima Citizens Insist on a World without Nuclear Weapons

Analysis by Ramesh Jaura

UNITED NATIONS (IDN) – Before the UN Disarmament Commission started the second week of its session at the United Nations headquarters in New York, a joint statement issued in Hiroshima by the Japan NGO Network for Nuclear Weapons Abolition and the Hiroshima Alliance for Nuclear Weapons Abolition (HANWA) declared: “The prospect for a nuclear-free world is not bright.”

The statement emerging from Citizens Symposium some 7,000 miles away from New York on April 10 and addressed to the G7 governments – Britain, Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan and the United States – said: “Today, the over 15,000 nuclear warheads that exist on the planet continue to threaten the existence of humanity. Nuclear proliferation continues and the vicious cycle involving poverty, inequality, environmental degradation and violence is bringing about various kinds of humanitarian crises across the world.”

Asia-Pacific2016-04-112023-07-10

Oh China, Please Come Back Ye…

Analysis by Dr Palitha Kohona*

COLOMBO, Sri Lanka (IDN) – As Sri Lanka, with an administration now in power for over one year, begins to confront complex domestic and international challenges, Prime Minister Ranil Wickremasinghe undertook a visit to Beijing.

Unthinkable just a few months ago with orchestrated anti China rhetoric flooding the media, he joined other world leaders who had already lined up outside the gates of Beijing seeking manna from the Middle Kingdom. At the conclusion of the visit on April 10, he spoke effusively of the potential for cooperation between the two countries.

So what caused the change? The visit was billed as an initiative to reassure the Chinese that Sri Lanka remained a reliable global partner, it is a welcoming destination for Chinese investors and tourists, and it will honour its contractual obligations to Chinese concerns made by the previous administration and it may have achieved at least some of its goals.

ARTS & CULTURE2016-04-102023-07-10

ACP-EU Support Targets Artists and Creative Businesses

This write-up is based on an article that originally appeared on ACP Website on April 5, 2016. – IDN | INPS Arts & Culture Desk

SUVA, Fiji – A series of workshops from April 5 to 7 at the Fiji Museum in Suva connected artists across the Pacific to international networks. Led by Visiting Arts, in partnership with The Pacific Arts and Culture Foundation in Fiji, the initiative was supported by the ACP-EU Support Programme to ACP Cultural Sectors, known as ACPCultures+ .

The training in Fiji involved an intensive workshop led by internationally renowned Festival Director, Jonathan Holloway. His intensive workshops are designed to increase artists’ and creative practitioners’ ability to work internationally.

The event followed on successful workshops organised in 2015 in Trinidad and Tobago, Ethiopia and Malawi.

ARMAMENTS2016-04-092023-07-10

Fresh Impetus for Banning the Bomb and Nuke Tests

Analysis by Ramesh Jaura

UNITED NATIONS (IDN) – Concerted efforts for entry into force of the treaty banning all nuclear tests and ushering in a world free of nuclear weapons are gathering momentum at the United Nations and other international fora.

Within days of Japan and Kazakhstan issuing a joint statement on “achieving the early entry into force” of the Comprehensive Nuclear Test-Ban-Treaty (CTBT), the Las Vergas Review-Journal reported that the U.S. is “inching closer to the day when full-scale nuclear weapons tests are banned forever”.

Earlier U.S. President Barack Obama wrote in his opinion article for the Washington Post: “The security of the world demands that nations — including the United States – ratify the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty and conclude a new treaty to end the production of fissile material for nuclear weapons once and for all.”