By Bernadette Paolo*
IDN-InDepth NewsViewpoint
WASHINGTON DC (IDN) – The people of the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) have long been savaged. Perhaps that is why the international outcry over the M23 rebels overtaking Goma and wreaking humanitarian devastation has been muted. Everyone has grown used to hearing about the violence that has become endemic in the DRC.
By Jayantha Dhanapala*
IDN-InDepth NewsViewpoint
WASHINGTON DC (IDN) – The US Presidential Inauguration ceremony will be held in Washington DC on Monday, January 21, 2013.The official theme for the 2013 inauguration is “Faith in America’s Future”. For many Americans, and indeed for many international observers, that faith is in desperate need of reaffirmation not only because of the domestic economic crisis, and the political paralysis in the US Congress over its solution, but also because of the decline of the US’s political power and influence internationally.
By Jerome Mwanda | IDN-InDepth NewsReport
NAIROBI (IDN) – The United Nations has launched a $1.3 billion humanitarian appeal in Mogadishu to address the immediate needs of the Somali people over the next year and enhance resilience in the country, which has for decades been mired by conflict, drought, floods and food insecurity.
The appeal issued on December 4 is part of three-year strategy. It is expected to benefit 369 humanitarian projects targeting 3.8 million Somalis in need, according to the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA). The strategy will be implemented by 177 national and international non-governmental organizations and UN agencies operating in Somalia.
By Julio Godoy | IDN-InDepth NewsAnalysis
BERLIN (IDN) – Between 1995 and 1998, the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) prepared behind closed doors a so-called multilateral agreement on investments (MAI). The harmless sounding name concealed a Machiavelli-like treaty allegedly addressed at – as an OECD paper put it at the time – setting “clear, consistent, and transparent rules on liberalisation and investor protection, with dispute settlement, thereby underpinning the continued removal of barriers to market access and encouraging economic growth.”
Radhika Coomaraswamy, formerly the Chairperson of the Sri Lanka Human Rights Commission, has served as the Under-Secretary-General of the United Nations, Special Representative for Children and Armed Conflict from April 2006 to July 2012. She is an internationally known human rights advocate who has done outstanding work as Special Rapporteur on Violence against Women (1994-2003). […]
By Ernest Corea*
IDN-InDepth NewsAnalysis
WASHINGTON DC (IDN) — The Israeli government’s desire to extract revenge from the Palestinians for the recognition that the international community has bestowed on the Palestinian Authority (PA) is offensive and inconsistent with the norms of appropriate diplomatic conduct.
The planned revenge is doubly repugnant because Israel wants to direct its punitive ire at Palestinians for action taken by 138 of the world’s established nations.
By Bernhard Schell
IDN-InDepth NewsReport
DUBAI (IDN) – “A digital divide has no place in the information age and 21st century knowledge economy,” according to UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon. “Our overall objective must be to ensure universal access to information and communication technology – including for the two-thirds of the world’s population currently not online,” he says.
In a video message to a major meeting organized by the United Nations International Telecommunication Union (ITU) in Dubai in the United Arab Emirates on December 3, Ban said the management of information and communication technology should be “transparent, democratic, and inclusive”.
By Jen Alic of Oilprice.com*
IDN-InDepth NewsViewpoint
WASHINGTON DC (IDN) – As Washington hunts ill-defined al-Qaeda groups in the Middle East and Africa, and concerns itself with Iran’s eventual nuclear potential, it has a much more pressing problem at home: Its energy grid is vulnerable to anyone with basic weapons and know-how.
By Shastri Ramachandran*
IDN-InDepth NewsAnalysis
NEW DELHI (IDN) – In the weeks, and months, ahead, there will be tomes written on the significance of the change in China’s leadership with 62-year-old Xi Jinping succeeding Hu Jintao as the new helmsman. The import of the epochal shift, like all things Chinese, may unravel rather slowly.
The obvious text, replete with promises of political reform, more equitable economic development, fighting corruption and the great renewal of the Chinese nation, would be read closely for underlying meaning by the world, including India, for the likely impact, big and small, of the new spearhead of the Communist Party of China (CPC).
By Ramesh Jaura
IDN-InDepth NewsAnalysis
BERLIN | VIENNA (IDN) – Before World War II broke out in 1939, German-born Nobel laureate Albert Einstein recommended President Franklin D. Roosevelt to begin research on a nuclear weapon since Germany under Adolf Hitler might be developing such a destructive tool. The result was the Manhattan Project, which culminated in the U.S. dropping atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki.
Einstein deplored use of the new discovery of nuclear fission as a weapon, and signed with the British philosopher Bertrand Russell, the Russell-Einstein Manifesto, highlighting the danger of nukes.
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