Carbon emission is one of the major causes for climate change. Countries should accelerate their effort to achieve carbon neutrality. Credit: Pixabay / Peggychoucair
Opinion by Armida Salsiah Alisjahbana (bangkok, thailand)
Inter Press Service
Heads of State, ministers, senior government officials and other key stakeholders will convene in Bangkok from 15 to 19 May at the 79th session of the Economic and Social Commission for Asia and the Pacific (ESCAP) to explore policy options and foster ambitious climate action towards net-zero pathways. Ahead of the 79th session, ESCAP will also launch its theme study The Race to Net Zero: Accelerating Climate Action in Asia and the Pacific. The study sets out the transformations that are needed for the region to transition to a net-zero carbon future in support of sustainable development. It provides an outline of the regional context of climate change and identifies policies and actions that could be taken in various sectors of the economy to support the global climate agenda.
BANGKOK, Thailand, May 09 (IPS) – The latest synthesis report from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change makes for grim reading: Every fraction of a degree of warming comes with escalated threats, from deadly heatwaves to severe hurricanes and droughts, affecting all economies and communities.
It is a reality that the people of Asia and the Pacific know only too well. “The worst April heatwaves in Asian history” last month was just a taste of the worsening climate impacts we will continue to face in the years to come.
Our latest report highlights that the sea level is creeping up in parts of the region at a slightly higher rate than the global mean, leaving low-lying atolls at existential threat. Annual socioeconomic loss due to climate change is mounting and likely to double in the worst-case climate scenario.
Inequity is yet another threat as climate change sweeps across the region. Asia and the Pacific already accounts for more than half of global greenhouse gas emissions and the share is growing.
But there is another picture of hope in our region: 39 countries have committed to carbon neutrality and net zero between 2050 and 2060. The cost of renewable energy is falling almost everywhere, with installed capacity growing more than three-fold in the past decade.
Electric vehicles are entering the market en masse as countries such as China, India, Japan, the Republic of Korea and Thailand have made electric mobility a priority.
This momentum needs to accelerate like a bullet train. Because nothing short of a breakthrough in hard-to-abate sectors will give us a good chance of stopping catastrophic global warming.
Accelerating a just and inclusive energy transition
The recent energy crisis has kicked renewable energy into a new phase of even faster growth thanks to its energy security benefits. There is opportunity now to leverage this momentum and turn it into a revolutionary moment.
Cross-border electricity grids can be the game changer. ESCAP has simulated different scenarios for grid connectivity and scaling up renewables. It shows that a green power corridor, cross-border power grid integration utilizing renewables, can help to remove the last hurdles of the transition. We are working with countries to chart a path to improved regional power grid connectivity through cooperation.
Achieving low-carbon mobility and logistics
The exceptional growth of electric vehicles has proved that electric mobility is a smart investment. And it is one that will help stave off carbon dioxide emissions from transport, which has stubbornly increased almost by 2 per cent annually the past two decades.
Through the Regional Cooperation Mechanism on Low Carbon Transport, we are working with the public and private sector to lock in the changeover to low-carbon mobility, clean energy technologies and logistics.
This is complemented by peer learning and experience sharing under the Asia-Pacific Initiative on Electric Mobility to accelerate the penetration of electric vehicles and upgrading public transport fleets.
Building low-carbon industries through climate-smart trade and investment
The net zero transition is not complete without decarbonizing the industrial sector. The region accounts for nearly three quarters of global greenhouse gas emissions in manufacturing and construction.
Binding climate considerations in regional trade agreements can be a powerful tool. While climate-related provisions have entered regional trade agreements involving Asian and Pacific economies, they offer few concrete and binding commitments. To unlock further benefits, they will need to be broader in scope, deeper in stringency and more precise in obligations.
As foreign investment goes green, it should also go where it is needed the most. It has not been the case for any of the least developed countries and small island developing States in the region.
Financing the transition
The transition can be only possible by investing in low- and zero-emission technologies and industries. Current domestic and international financial flows fall well short of the needed amount.
The issuance of green, social and sustainability bonds is rapidly growing, reaching $210 billion in 2021 but were dominated by developed and a few developing countries. Both public and private financial institutions need to be incentivized to invest in new green technologies and make the uptake of such technologies less risky.
Linking actions and elevating ambitions
The code red to go green is ever so clear. Every government needs to raise their stake in this crisis. Every business needs to transform. Every individual needs to act. A journey to net zero should accelerate with a fresh look at our shared purpose.
At ESCAP, we are working to bring together the pieces and build the missing links at the regional level to support the net-zero transition work at the national level. The upcoming Commission session will bring countries together for the first time in an intergovernmental setting – to identify common accelerators for climate action and to chart a more ambitious pathway.
This is the start of an arduous journey that requires cooperation, understanding and determination. And I believe we have what it takes to get there together. Armida Salsiah Alisjahbana is Under-Secretary-General of the UN and Executive Secretary of the Economic and Social Commission for Asia and the Pacific (ESCAP)
Indigenous women gather before an equality forum in Mexico City, Mexico. Credit: UN Women/Paola Garcia
Opinion by Jens Martens (bonn, germany)
Inter Press Service
BONN, Germany, May 05 (IPS) – The world is in permanent crisis mode. In addition to the consequences of the COVID-19 pandemic and the triple planetary crisis of climate change, biodiversity loss and pollution, the war in Ukraine and other violent conflicts, a worldwide cost of living crisis and an intensified debt crisis in more and more countries of the global South are affecting large parts of humanity.
Inter-State wars, terrorism, divided collective security, and peacekeeping limitations remain the same challenges facing multilateralism as when the UN was founded 76 years ago, Secretary-General António Guterres told the Security Council December 2022.
Scientists are now even warning of the risk of a global polycrisis, “a single, macro-crisis of interconnected, runaway failures of Earth’s vital natural and social systems that irreversibly degrades humanity’s prospects”.
Human rights, and especially women’s rights, are under attack in many countries. Nationalism, sometimes coupled with increasing authoritarianism, has been on the rise worldwide. Rich countries of the global North continue to practice inhumane migration policies toward refugees.
At the same time, they pursue self-serving and short-sighted “my country first” policies, whether in hoarding vaccines and subsidizing their domestic pharmaceutical industries, or in the race for global natural gas reserves. This has undermined multilateral solutions and lead to a growing atmosphere of mistrust between countries.
“Trust is in short supply”, UN Secretary-General António Guterres told the Security Council in August 2022. Consequently, Member States defined one of the main purposes of the Summit of the Future in September 2024 to be “restoring trust among Member States”.
António Guterres had proposed to hold such a Summit of the Future, which he described as “a once-in-a-generation opportunity to reinvigorate global action, recommit to fundamental principles, and further develop the frameworks of multilateralism so they are fit for the future”.
The Summit offers an opportunity, at least in theory, to respond to the current crises with far-reaching political agreements and institutional reforms. However, this presupposes that the governments do not limit themselves to symbolic action and voluntary commitments but take binding decisions – also and above all on the provision of (financial) resources for their implementation.
In this context, the principle of Common but Differentiated Responsibilities (CBDR) remains absolutely valid. Without such decisions, it will hardly be possible to regain trust between countries.
The G77 emphasized in a statement on 20 April 2023, “since the Summit of the Future is meant to turbo-charge the SDGs, it must address comprehensively the issue of Means of Implementation for the 2030 Agenda, which includes, but is not limited to, financing, technology transfer and capacity building.”
Of course, it would be naive to believe that the risk of a global polycrisis could be overcome with a single summit meeting. But the series of upcoming global summits, from the SDG Summit 2023 and the Summit of the Future 2024 to the 4th Financing for Development Conference and the second World Social Summit 2025, can certainly contribute to shaping the political discourse on the question of which structural changes are necessary to respond to the global crises and to foster multilateral cooperation based on solidarity.
Our new report Spotlight on Global Multilateralism aims to contribute to this process. It offers critical analyses and presents recommendations for strengthening democratic multilateral structures and policies.
The report covers a broad range of issue areas, from peace and common security, reforms of the global financial architecture, calls for a New Social Contract and inclusive digital future, to the rights of future generations, and the transformation of education systems.
The report also identifies some of the built-in deficiencies and weaknesses of current multilateral structures and approaches. This applies, inter alia, to concepts of corporate-influenced multistakeholderism, for instance in the area of digital cooperation.
On the other hand, the report explores alternatives to purely intergovernmental multilateralism, such as the increased role of local and regional governments and their workers and trade unions at the international level.
Seventy-five years after the adoption of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, a key challenge is to create mechanisms to ensure that human rights – as well as the rights of future generations and the rights of nature – are no longer subordinated to the vested interests of powerful economic elites in multilateral decision-making.
Timid steps and the constant repetition of the agreed language of the past will not be enough. More fundamental and systemic changes in policies, governance and mindsets are necessary to regain trust and to foster multilateral cooperation based on solidarity and international law.
Jens Martens is Executive Director of Global Policy Forum Europe
PARIS, May 01 (IPS) – Freedom of the press is the cornerstone of democratic society. Without a debate of ideas, without verified facts, without diversity of perspectives, democracy is a shadow of itself; and World Press Freedom Day was established to remind us of this.
On World Press Freedom Day 2023, UNESCO will organize a special anniversary event at UN headquarters in New York, marking the 30 years since the UN General Assembly’s decision proclaiming an international day for press freedom.
This anniversary edition of World Press Freedom Day will include a full day of activities at the UN Headquarters on 2nd May. Partners from the media, academia, and civil society are invited to organize events in New York and around the world centered on this year’s theme.
For the international community, it is first and foremost a question of combating the impunity that still surrounds crimes of which journalists are victims, with nearly nine out of ten murders of journalists going unpunished.
This, for instance, is the objective of the United Nations Plan of Action on the Safety of Journalists and the issue of Impunity, which UNESCO has been leading for ten years. It is also about ensuring that independent media can continue to exist.
With the digital revolution, the information landscape and its modes of production and distribution have been radically disrupted, jeopardizing the viability of independent professional media.
To ensure that information remains a common good in the digital age, our Member States, through the Windhoek +30 Declaration of 2021, have undertaken to support independent journalism, ensure greater transparency of online platforms, and develop media and information literacy.
We will not be able to do this without the actors who now have significant control over access to information: the digital platforms. This is why UNESCO held the “Internet for Trust” conference in February, as an essential step towards the development of principles to regulate digital platforms.
This is a fundamental issue, because it involves both protecting freedom of expression and fighting disinformation and hate speech. Thirty years after the first World Press Freedom Day, we can see how far we have come and how far we still have to go.
So, let this Day be an opportunity to renew our commitment, within international organizations, to defending journalists and, through them, press freedom.
Footnote: As the UN Organization responsible for defending and promoting freedom of expression, media independence and pluralism, UNESCO leads the organization of World Press Freedom Day each year.
This year’s celebration will be particularly special: the international community will mark the 30th anniversary of the proclamation of the Day by the United Nations General Assembly.
It will serve as an occasion to take stock of the global gains for press freedom secured by UNESCO and its partners in the past decades, as well as underline the new risks faced in the digital age.
UNITED NATIONS, May 01 (IPS) – The United Nations has consistently been a vociferous advocate of freedom of the press – and, most importantly, the right of journalists to report without fear of reprisals.
But regrettably, the UN is also one of most opaque institutions where transparency is never the norm.
Celebrated every 3rd of May, this year’s theme for World Press Freedom Day will be “Shaping a Future of Rights: Freedom of Expression as a Driver for all other Human Rights.”
Journalists, rarely if ever, were able to get any on-the-record comments or reactions from ambassadors, diplomats and senior UN officials because most of them follow the advice given to Brits during war-time censorship in the UK: “Be like Dad, Keep Mum”.
As Winston Churchill once remarked: “Diplomacy is the art of telling people ‘to go to hell’ in such a way that they ask for directions.”
But as a general rule, most ambassadors and diplomats did not tell us either to go to hell or heaven– but avoided all comments on politically-sensitive issues with the standard non-excuse: ”Sorry, we have to get clearance from our capital”.
But that “clearance” from their respective foreign ministries never came. Still, it was hard to beat a response from a tight-lipped Asian diplomat who told me: “No comment” – and as an after-thought, added: “And Don’t Quote Me on That”.
And most senior UN officials, on the other hand, never had even the basic courtesy or etiquette to respond to phone calls or email messages even with an acknowledgment. The lines of communications were mostly dead.
When I complained to the media-savvy Shashi Tharoor, a former UN Under-Secretary-General, head of the one-time Department of Public Information (DPI) and a prolific author, he was explicit in his response when he said that every UN official – “from an Under-Secretary-General to a window-washer”—has the right to express an opinion in his or her area of expertise.
The US Freedom of Information Act (FOIA), which dates back to 1967, has provided the public and mostly the press in the United States the right to request access to records from any federal agency—and has been described as “the law that keeps citizens in the know about their government”.
As a result, some of the newspaper scoops and insider information in the US mainstream media have come following requests from American journalists under the FOIA.
But a longstanding proposal for a FOIA at the United Nations has failed to get off the ground due largely to the inaction by the 193-member General Assembly, the UN’s highest policy making body, resulting in the lack of transparency in the inner workings of the UN and its Secretariat.
So has the proposal for a UN Special Envoy to deal with safety of journalists—dead on arrival (DOA).
Andreas Bummel, Executive Director, Democracy Without Borders, told IPS: the UN is an institution that exercises public authority directly and indirectly with over 30,000 working in the Secretariat (plus the UN system worldwide).
“As such, it needs to be accountable not only to its member states but to citizens and the public at large.
Establishing a proper freedom of information procedure at the UN will be an important tool to enhance this, declared Bummel, co-author of “A World Parliament: Governance and Democracy in the 21st Century.”
Martin S. Edwards, Professor and Chair, School of Diplomacy and International Relations at Seton Hall University in the US, told IPS: “I must admit I don’t know the legal angles here. This having been said, it’s pretty clear to me that the only way forward for the UN in an era of political division is greater transparency”
Greater efforts to “tell your story better” are not enough. You can’t advocate for “effective, accountable, and inclusive” institutions at the national level without it, within the UN system too. Things like access to information are an essential step in that direction, he added.
In the US, federal agencies are required to disclose any information requested under the FOIA unless it falls under one of nine exemptions which protect interests such as personal privacy, national security, and law enforcement.
In Australia, the legislation is known as Right2Know; in Bangladesh, the Right to Information (RTI) provides resources for those seeking to file a request with government agencies; in Japan, the Citizens’ Centre for Information Disclosure offers help to those interested in filing requests; in India, the Right to Information: a Citizen Gateway is the portal for RTI; Canada’s Access to Information Act came into force in 1983 and Kenya’s Access to Information Act was adopted in August 2016, according to the Centre for Law and Democracy (CLD).
And Sweden’s Freedom of the Press Act of 1766 has been described as the “oldest in the world.”
While FOIA covers access to federal government agency records, the Freedom of Information Law (FOIL) guarantees access to state and local government records. All 50 states in the US also have freedom of information laws that govern access to these documents, though the provisions of the state laws vary considerably.
The Paris-based UN Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO), which is mandated to oversee press freedom, defines Freedom of Information (FOI) as the right to access information held by public bodies.
According to UNESCO, the FOI is an integral part of the fundamental right of freedom of expression, as recognized by Resolution 59 of the UN General Assembly adopted in 1946, as well as by Article 19 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (1948), which states that the fundamental right of freedom of expression encompasses the freedom to “to seek, receive and impart information and ideas through any media and regardless of frontiers”.
FOI has also been enshrined as a “freedom of expression” in other major international instruments, including the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (1966) and the American Convention on Human Rights (1969).
In an interview with IPS back in 2017, Samir Sanbar, a former UN Assistant Secretary-General who headed the one-time Department of Public Information (DPI), said the right to information is an integral part of U.N. principles.
But providing that right—even the basic information available in the public domain– has been stymied both by member states and the UN bureaucracy, he added.
He pointed out that the need to “inform the peoples” is implicitly indicated in the UN Charter.
But implementing it was “a basic issue I had experienced throughout my work, with both certain government officials– including those publicly claiming open channels– and many senior U.N. Secretariat colleagues”.
Those who believed “Information is Power” were very hesitant, to what they perceived was sharing their authority with a wider public, said Sanbar who served under five different UN Secretaries-General.
“It was most evident that when I launched the now uncontested website www.un.org, a number of powerful Under-Secretaries-General (USGs) and Permanent Representatives cautioned me against “telling everyone what was happening” (in the UN system) and refused to authorize any funds.”
“I had to raise a team of DPI volunteers in my office, operating from within the existing budget, to go ahead and eventually offer computers loaned from an outside source, to certain delegations to realize it was more convenient for them to access news releases than having to send one of their staffers daily to the building to collect material from the third floor.“
Eventually, everyone joined in, and the site became one of the ten best official sites worldwide.
“We had a similar difficulty in prodding for International World Press Freedom Day through the General Assembly. It seems that even those with the best of intentions– since delegates represent official governments that view free press with cautious monitoring– are usually weary of opening a potentially vulnerable issue,” said Sanbar, author of the book “Inside the U.N. in a Leaderless World’.
This article contains excerpts from a 2021 book on the United Nations—largely a collection of political anecdotes– titled “No Comment – and Don’t Quote Me on That,” available on Amazon. The link to Amazon via the author’s website follows: https://www.rodericgrigson.com/no-comment-by-thalif-deen/
LOME, Togo, Apr 26 (IPS) – The writer is President, World Alliance for Mercury-Free DentistryThe Minamata Convention on Mercury, a stellar success story to date, has been favorably compared to the prototype success story for a treaty on toxins: the Montreal Protocol. Both had a single focused mission; both gained universal support across the globe; both matched technological innovation with environmental science to discard old polluting methods.
But emerging after hidden negotiations with the mercury lobby is a GEF project with UNEP endorsement which ignores, if not outright defies, the will of the Parties. As COP5 approaches, here is the test case on whether Minamata continues to move our small planet toward an end to anthropogenic mercury—or become mired in corporate capture.
For the past decade, the Parties repeatedly rejected the agenda of the dental mercury lobby—the dentists who still cling to the 19th century tooth-unfriendly pollutant amalgam, despite it being 50% mercury and a health risk to their own dental nurses; and the waste industry, whose obvious self-interest is to keep amalgam going into perpetuity to sell their equipment.
Charlie BrownThe mercury lobby wanted a treaty focused on amalgam waste; the Parties said NO, this treaty is about use, not about waste. The mercury lobby wanted access to implant mercury fillings in all children, especially those in Africa, Asia, and Latin America; the Parties said NO, and adopted the Children’s Amendment at COP 4—which enters into legal force on 28 September 2023.
So, the dental mercury lobby met repeatedly with GEF and UNEP staff in sessions closed to the Parties . . . closed to the Minamata Secretariat . . . closed to the Minamata Bureau . . . closed to the dozens of CSOs who have actively pushed for a treaty to phase out anthropogenic mercury.
Violating their own standards, GEF and UNEP constructed (or allowed without objection) a project that bypasses the Children’s Amendment entirely in favor of trying to redirect the mission of the treaty from use to waste—the very position repeatedly rejected by the Parties since 2013.
Separators do not sell well because they do not and cannot eliminate mercury waste; they only catch the mercury in the dentist office—not the mercury implanted in people—and they require a massive infrastructure to ensure that even that partial waste, from dental offices, is properly disposed of. Only one solution ends mercury waste from amalgam: the switch to mercury-free dentistry.
The #1 beneficiary of this Greenwashing is the world’s only major publicly traded dental products maker expanding sales of amalgam: Southern Dental Industries (SDI) of Melbourne. While its competitors exited or scaled back amalgam—or never made it in the first place—SDI seized their exits as its opportunity to corner the amalgam market.
Just six weeks ago, in a call to its shareholders, SDI’s CEO boasted about its huge increases in amalgam sales, detailed its entry into new markets to sell amalgam, and affirmed her personal goal of ‘maximizing’ amalgam sales! Wriggling into a GEF-UNEP amalgam “reduction” project while increasing amalgam sales, SDI is the sole dental products company in a project partnership role—hence given market access denied to their mercury-free competitors in nations on three continents. Here is a classic case of Corporate Capture!
GEF’s requirement of stakeholder participation at the earliest stage was papered over via a legerdemain: a false claim that the NGOs are participating. Falsely listed as participants are the World Alliance for Mercury-Free Dentistry, Bangladesh-based Environment and Social Development Organization, Germany-based European Network for Environmental Medicine, Philippines-based BAN Toxics, Nepal-based Center for Public Health and Environmental Development, Cameroun-based Centre de Recherche et d’Education pour le Développement, and U.S.-based Consumers for Dental Choice.
Equally troubling, RAP-AL Uruguay, who leads the campaign for mercury-free dentistry for Latin America, is preliminarily assigned to promote separator sales—a goal anathema to its very mission.
UNEP top brass in Nairobi and GEF top brass in Washington need to act:
• First, to determine who on their staffs submitted the plethora of false claims of CSO participation;
• Second, to kill this project, so that the Minamata Convention on Mercury does not become the treaty about corporate capture and greenwashing;
• Third, to use GEF funding to enact the will of the Parties as stated unequivocally in its 2022 Amendment: stop placing mercury fillings, for all time and all regions, in children and women who are pregnant or breastfeeding.
UNITED NATIONS, Apr 18 (IPS) – The massive leak of a treasure trove of highly-classified US intelligence reports—described as “one of the most remarkable disclosures of American secrets in the last decade”-– has also revealed a more surprising angle to the story.
The US not only gathered intelligence from two of its adversaries, Russia and China, but also from close allies, including Ukraine, South Korea, Egypt, Turkey and Israel.
The United Nations, which has long been under surveillance by multiple Western intelligence agencies, was also one of the victims of last week’s espionage scandal.
According to the British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC), one of the US intelligence reports recounts a conversation between Secretary-General Antonio Guterres and his deputy, Amina Mohammed.
Guterres expresses “dismay” at a call from the European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen for Europe to produce more weapons and ammunition for the war in Ukraine.
The two UN officials also discussed a recent summit meeting of African leaders, with Amina Mohammed describing Kenya’s president, William Ruto, as “ruthless” and that she “doesn’t trust him.”
Responding to questions at the daily news briefings, UN spokesperson Stephane Dujarric told reporters: “The Secretary-General has been at this job, and in the public eye, for a long time, and “he is not surprised by the fact that people are spying on him and listening in on his private conversations”.
What is surprising, he said, “is the malfeasance or incompetence that allows for such private conversations to be distorted and become public.”
At a more global scale, virtually all the big powers play the UN spying game, including the US, the Russians (and the Soviets during the Cold War era), the French, the Brits, and the Chinese.
During the height of the Cold War in the 1960s and 1970s, the UN was a veritable battle ground for the United States and the now-defunct Soviet Union to spy on each other.
The American and Soviet spooks were known to be crawling all over the building -– in committee rooms, in the press gallery, in the delegate’s lounge, and, most importantly, in the UN library, which was a drop-off point for sensitive political documents.
The extent of Cold War espionage in the United Nations was laid bare by a 1975 US Congressional Committee, named after Senator Frank Church (Democrat-Idaho) who chaired it while investigating abuses by the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), National Security Agency (NSA), Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), and the Internal Revenue Service (IRS).
The evidence given before the Church Committee in 1975 included a revelation that the CIA had planted one of its Russian lip-reading experts in a press booth overlooking the Security Council chamber so that he could monitor the lip movements of Russian delegates, as they consulted each other in low whispers.
Dr Thomas G. Weiss. Distinguished Fellow, Global Governance, The Chicago Council on Global Affairs, who has written extensively on the politics of the UN, told IPS: “As you say, it is hardly surprising that US intelligence services spy on the 38th floor. This is an ancient practice”.
He pointed out there is almost nothing that they don’t monitor. Indeed, it should come as a source of relief to UN fans that Turtle Bay is still taken seriously enough to spy on.
“The justification for the monitoring would be more intriguing”, he said.
“Is the SG pro-West (he has criticized the Russian War), or pro-Russia (according to rumors)?,” said Dr Weiss, Presidential Professor of Political Science and Director Emeritus, Ralph Bunche Institute for International Studies at the CUNY Graduate Center.
In his 1978 book, “A Dangerous Place,” Senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan, a former US envoy to the United Nations, described the cat-and-mouse espionage game that went on inside the bowels of the world body, and particularly the UN library.
Back in October 2013, When Clare Short, Britain’s former minister for international development, revealed that British intelligence agents had spied on former U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan by bugging his office just before the disastrous U.S. invasion of Iraq in March 2003, the UN chief was furious that his discussions with world leaders had been compromised.
And as she talked to Annan on the 38th floor of the UN Secretariat building, Short told the BBC, she was thinking, “Oh dear, there will be a transcript of this, and people will see what he and I are saying.”
The United Nations, along with the 193 diplomatic missions located in New York, has long been a veritable battleground for spying, wire-tapping and electronic surveillance.
Back in September 2013, Brazilian President Dilma Rousseff, throwing diplomatic protocol to the winds, launched a blistering attack on the United States for illegally infiltrating its communications network, surreptitiously intercepting phone calls, and breaking into the Brazilian Mission to the United Nations.
Justifying her public criticism, she told delegates that the problem of electronic surveillance goes beyond a bilateral relationship. “It affects the international community itself and demands a response from it.”
Rousseff unleashed her attack even as US President Barack Obama was awaiting his turn to address the General Assembly on the opening day of the annual high-level debate. By longstanding tradition, Brazil is the first speaker, followed by the United States.
“We have let the US government know our disapproval, and demanded explanations, apologies and guarantees that such procedures will never be repeated,” she said.
According to documents released by US whistleblower Edward Snowden, the illegal electronic surveillance of Brazil was conducted by the US National Security Agency (NSA).
The Germany Der Spiegel magazine reported that NSA technicians had managed to decrypt the UN’s internal video teleconferencing (VTC) system, as part of its surveillance of the world body.
The combination of this new access to the UN and the cracked encryption code led to “a dramatic improvement in VTC data quality and (the) ability to decrypt the VTC traffic,” the NSA agents reportedly said.
In the article, titled “How America Spies on Europe and the UN”, Spiegel said that in just under three weeks, the number of decrypted communications increased from 12 to 458.
Subsequently, there were new charges of spying—but this time around the Americans were accused of using the UN Special Commission (UNSCOM) in Baghdad to intercept Iraqi security intelligence in an attempt to undermine, and perhaps overthrow, the government of President Saddam Hussein.
The charges, spread across the front pages of the Washington Post and the Boston Globe, only confirmed the longstanding Iraqi accusation that UNSCOM was “a den of spies,” mostly American and British.
Established by the Security Council immediately after the 1991 Gulf War, UNSCOM was mandated to eliminate Iraq’s weapons of mass destruction and destroy that country’s capabilities to produce nuclear, biological and chemical weapons.
The head of UNSCOM, Richard Butler of Australia, however, vehemently denied charges that his inspection team in Iraq had spied for the United States. “We have never conducted spying for anyone,” Butler told reporters.
Asked to respond to news reports that UNSCOM may have helped Washington collect sensitive Iraqi information to destabilize the Saddam Hussein regime, Butler retorted: “Don’t believe everything you read in print.”
Around the same time, the New York Times weighed in with a front-page story
quoting US officials as saying that “American spies had worked undercover on teams of UN arms inspectors ferreting out secret Iraqi weapons programmes.”
In an editorial, the Times said that “using UN activities in Iraq as a cover for American spy operations would be a sure way to undermine the international organization, embarrass the United States and strengthen Mr. Hussein.”
“Washington did cross a line it should not have if it placed American agents on the UN team with the intention of gathering information that could be used for military strikes against targets in Baghdad,” the editorial said.
Samir Sanbar, a former UN Assistant Secretary-Genera, who headed the Department of Public Information (DPI), told IPS monitoring international officials evolved with enhanced digital capacity.
What was mainly done by security agents widened into a public exercise, he added.
Initially, he said, certain U.N. locations of interest like the Delegates Lounge were targeted by several countries, including with devices across the East River in Queens or across the lounge adjacent to the UN Lawn –and within shouting distance of permanent missions and residences of UN diplomats.
One senior UN official once said the closer he drove towards the S-G’s residence at Sutton place the more obvious was the radio monitoring.
“I recall a meeting with Kofi Annan the day U.S, President Bush announced the invasion of Iraq. He had suggested a “tete a tete”–the two of us alone.
While expressing his concern, and seated outside on lounge chairs, “we noted helicopters circling around The Secretariat building.”
“When I mentioned “Black Hawk Down” – relating to Somalia’s experience– he nodded and smiled casually. Kofi was a dignified colleague and an outstanding Secretary General who rose from the ranks, and inspired the whole Secretariat staff.”.
“May his soul rest in peace”, said Sanbar, who served under five different Secretaries-General during his long tenure at the UN.
Meanwhile, when the U.N. Correspondents Association (UNCA) held its annual award ceremony in December 2013, one of the video highlights was a hilarious skit on the clumsy attempts at spying going on inside the highest levels of the Secretariat—and right up to the 38th floor offices of then Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon.
When I took the floor, as one of the UNCA award winners, I gave the Secretary-General, standing next to me, an unsolicited piece of light-hearted advice: if you want to find out whether your phone line is being tapped, I said jokingly, you only have to sneeze loudly.
A voice at the other end would instinctively– and courteously– respond: “Bless you”.
And you know your phone is being tapped, I said, amid laughter.
This article contains excerpts from a 2021 book on the United Nations titled “No Comment – and Don’t Quote Me on That,” available on Amazon. The link to Amazon via the author’s website follows: https://www.rodericgrigson.com/no-comment-by-thalif-deen/
Only 55 percent of people across the Pacific Islands have access to basic drinking water and just 30 percent have sanitation services – the lowest rate in the world. Photo Credit: UN Samoa
Opinion by Simona Marinescu (apia, samoa)
Inter Press Service
APIA, Samoa, Apr 14 (IPS) – Water is life. No other definition captures quite so aptly what this essential element means for our lives, livelihoods and the natural environment.
Although it is considered both a renewable and a non-renewable resource, water is becoming scarce and is expected to reach a critical point by 2040.
Out of the total volume of water present on earth, 97.5% is saline- coming from the seas and oceans, while only 2.5% is freshwater, of which only 0.3% is present in liquid form on the surface, including in rivers, lakes, swamps, reservoirs, creeks, and streams.
Due to irresponsible usage, including pollution from agriculture and the construction of dams, liquid freshwater on the surface of the earth is rapidly diminishing. We are the only known planet to have consistent, stable bodies of liquid water on its surface, yet we are not doing enough to preserve and provide access to all people everywhere to this critical source of life.
According to the 2021 UN Water report, in 2020, around 2 billion people (26% of the global population) lacked safely managed drinking water services and around 3.6 billion people lacked safely managed sanitation.
Some 2.3 billion people live in countries facing water stress of whom 733 million are in high and critically water-scarce environments.
Credit: UN Samoa
Samoa’s connected crises
In Samoa and other Pacific Small Island Developing States, access to clean water represents a huge challenge. Although these islands enjoy abundant rainfall – 2 to 4 times the average global annual precipitation, poor waste management systems and lack of adequate infrastructure means that the availability of clean water is severely limited.
Only 55 percent of people across the Pacific Islands have access to basic drinking water, and just 30 percent have sanitation services—the lowest rate in the world.
According to a joint study by the National University of Samoa, the Ministry of Natural Resources and other partners, water sources tested contained a high concentration of minerals, toxic pesticides, microplastics and bacteria such as e-coli, which increases the rate of water-borne diseases and poses significant health risks.
For our UN country team in Samoa, improving water quality is a central, cross-cutting priority which not only protects communities and helps prevent disease, but also feeds into our broader efforts to address the Triple Planetary Crisis of climate disruption, nature loss and pollution.
The use of the Triple Planetary Crisis framework provides a valuable basis for the measurement of losses and damages which countries like Samoa experience due to climate change and pollution including deterioration of water ecosystem services.
With this in mind, we have engaged extensively with communities and partners across Samoa over the past six months to develop the Vai O Le Ola (Water of Life) Report.
Launched ahead of the UN Water Conference in New York (22-24 March), the report draws on insights from these consultations to set out a response to the Triple Planetary Crisis and propose integrated approaches of restoring the quality and resilience of Samoa’s water system.
An integrated path forward
From rivers, mangrove swamps, lakes, wetlands, territorial waters, and the Exclusive Economic Zone (EEZ) – water represents a major part of the environment system which supports the livelihoods for over 200,000 people in Samoa and also forms a significant part of Samoan cultural identity. Improving the quality of this critical source of life must begin with the integration of all relevant policies and strategies on climate change, ocean management, socio-economic development, waste management, and biodiversity conservation into one overarching framework.
Targeted interventions including the Vai O Le Ola Trust Fund and Knowledge Crowdsourcing Platform, and programmes on Innovative Climate and Nature Financing, Social Entrepreneurship for Climate Resilience, Community Access to Clean Energy, Zero Plastic Waste, are central to the Triple Planetary Crisis Response Plan in Samoa and across the Pacific.
Nature-based Watershed Management is another key initiative outlined in the Vai O Le Ola report which will support agro-forestry, reforestation and invasive species management, flood management and biodiversity conservation linked to water systems.
On the legislative side as well, new opportunities to strengthen environmental protection and conservation are emerging. Last year, the UN General Assembly adopted a resolution recognizing for the first-time access to a clean, safe, and sustainable environment including water as a fundamental human right.
With the adoption of this resolution, global attention on the legal rights of ecosystems and natural resources has significantly increased.
In 2022, Ecuador was the first country in the world to recognize and implement the “rights of nature” followed by Colombia which established legal personality for the Atrato River in recognition of the biocultural rights of indigenous communities.
In Samoa, the National Human Rights Institution is already discussing how the right to a clean, safe and sustainable environment will be operationalized into law.
As an ‘ocean state’, water is a defining feature of Samoa’s national wealth and people’s way of living – known as ‘Fa’a Samoa.’ To find long lasting solutions to water scarcity and pollution across Samoa and other Pacific Islands, we must therefore look not only towards science, technology and innovation, but also to the centuries of wisdom and experience of the communities who live here.
We must recognize that for the people of Samoa, as Prime Minister Fiame Naomi Mata’afa explains below, their waters are a source of life as well as a source of beauty.
Simona Marinescu, PhD, is UN Resident Coordinator in Samoa, Cook Island, Nieu, and Tokelau. Editorial support by UNDCO.
Source: UNDCO
The Development Coordination Office (DCO) manages and oversees the Resident Coordinator system and serves as secretariat of the UN Sustainable Development Group. Its objective is to support the capacity, effectiveness and efficiency of Resident Coordinators and the UN development system as a whole in support of national efforts for sustainable development.
DCO is based in New York, with regional teams in Addis Ababa, Amman, Bangkok, Istanbul and Panama, supporting 130 Resident Coordinators and 132 Resident Coordinator’s offices covering 162 countries and territories.
UN Resident Coordinator in Indonesia Valerie Julliand plants trees in Bogor, West Java. Credit: UN Indonesia
Opinion by Valerie Julliand (jakarta, indonesia)
Inter Press Service
JAKARTA, Indonesia, Apr 12 (IPS) – As Ramadan continues through next week, the world’s 2 billion Muslims will focus on the core values of the holy month: helping the poor and committing oneself to the service of others.
These are values that are at the heart of many religions – and also are core values of the United Nations. The UN, including here in Indonesia, works to serve those less fortunate, under the motto to Leave No One Behind.
Committing oneself to the service of others includes future generations. Taking care of our planet to make sure it remains habitable and can support life on earth as we know it for those who come after us is one of our key responsibilities.
“Future generations” refers to people who will come after us, those who are not yet born. More than 10 billion people are projected to be born before the end of this century alone, predominantly in countries that are currently low- or middle-income.
As the global population is expected to grow, we need to ensure that sufficient resources remain available to them. The lives of the future generations, and their ability to effectively enjoy human rights and meet their needs are strongly determined by today’s actions.
Do we over-exploit the resources of the planet or do we only take as much as we really need and use resources sustainably, bearing in mind the generations to come?
At a time when millions of Indonesians are going to gather for iftar with friends and family evening after evening, let us pause for a moment to think not only about those who have passed away but also about those not yet with us.
As the UN Secretary General’s Our Common Agenda policy brief “To think and act for future generations”, released last week, makes it abundantly clear, stopping climate change and pollution ARE our prime tasks when it comes to serving those not yet born. And the world is failing in these tasks – and needs to do more, much more.
Another UN report, released by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change just last week, points out that we are currently on track to a global warming of 2.8 degrees above pre-industrial levels. That is much above the Paris Agreement’s goal to keep global warming to “well below” 2 degrees Celsius. Countries have made commitments to reduce emissions but are not fulfilling them.
Indonesia is among the few countries that heeded the call to strengthen their Paris Agreement commitments last year. In November, the government announced a new set of targets, with more ambitious climate change mitigation goals than before, including a commitment to generate over a third of the country’s energy from renewables as early as 2030.
The UN in Indonesia supports the government in its plans to meet climate commitments and balance the needs of current and future generations through development that is sustainable. We advise the government on climate financing.
We support PLN in modernizing its Java-Madura-Bali power grid, so that it can take in more electricity from intermittent renewable sources like solar and wind. We support Transjakarta in its plans to convert its 10,000-strong bus fleet to electric buses.
Late last year, the government, the UN and development partners signed the National Blue Agenda Actions Partnership in support of Indonesia’s plans to create a more sustainable ocean-based economy.
Eight UN agencies and several donors work in tandem with the government to ensure that the sea can provide livelihoods to coastal communities not only today but also tomorrow.
A sustainable blue economy is vital for Indonesia as it helps boost revenues from ocean-based activities while conserving marine biodiversity and the health of the ocean through the restoration, sustainable use and protection of marine ecosystems.
The world needs more partnerships like this, so that we can safeguard the planet for those who are not yet born. A UN General Assembly resolution adopted last September calls for a Summit of the Future in 2024, where world leaders are expected to agree on multilateral solutions for a better tomorrow, strengthening global governance for both present and future generations.
May the values embodied by Ramadan—peace, compassion and generosity—prevail during this holy month, and throughout the year, and the years, decades and centuries to come.
Valerie Julliand is UN Resident Coordinator in Indonesia.
This article was originally published as an oped in the Jakarta Post.
Source: DCO
The Development Coordination Office (DCO) manages and oversees the Resident Coordinator system and serves as secretariat of the UN Sustainable Development Group. Its objective is to support the capacity, effectiveness and efficiency of Resident Coordinators and the UN development system as a whole in support of national efforts for sustainable development.
DCO is based in New York, with regional teams in Addis Ababa, Amman, Bangkok, Istanbul and Panama, supporting 130 Resident Coordinators and 132 Resident Coordinator’s offices covering 162 countries and territories.
A nurse walks into a hospital ward in Janakpur in Dhanusha District in southern Nepal. Credit: UNICEF/Rupadhayay
Opinion by Roopa Dhatt, Susannah Schaefer (washington dc / new york)
Inter Press Service
WASHINGTON DC / NEW YORK, Apr 07 (IPS) – As World Health Worker Week draws to a close on April 7, health organizations from around the world have been celebrating women’s vital role in the health workforce and sharing stories about the enormous value they bring to all areas of health and care.
But platitudes are not enough. It’s time for global health leaders to step up and turn these words into action.
Globally, women make up almost 70% of the global health workforce and 90% of the frontline health workforce, contributing over $3 trillion to global health each year. The health systems in which they work play a significant role in remote and marginalized groups’ access to health, especially in times of crisis. Despite this, the challenges faced by community health workers (CHWs) are frequently overlooked.
CHWs play a critical role in providing care to vulnerable populations, but they are undervalued and accorded lower status in the “informal” workforce. Upwards of six million women are estimated to be either unpaid or grossly underpaid despite working in core health systems roles and just 14% of CHWs in Africa are salaried.
It is unjust that global health systems rely on the labor of unpaid women who are creating social and economic value that is uncounted and unrewarded. Unpaid work reduces women’s economic security and increases their lifetime poverty.
It also weakens health systems. The pandemic has demonstrated the need for strong and resilient health systems, but there can be no global health security while health systems are subsidized by some of the world’s poorest women.
Women health workers continue to make huge sacrifices to work on the frontlines. They went door-to-door educating households on the COVID-19 virus, tracing contacts, and delivering vaccines.
At last year’s World Health Assembly, India’s one million women community health workers known as accredited social health activists (ASHAs) were honored for successfully protecting the health of millions of people during the pandemic.
At the start of the pandemic, however, reports were coming out of India about the unacceptable risk faced by ASHA workers who were being sent into communities without lack of infection controls and facing stigma and abuse as perceived vectors of the virus.
In 2020, they launched widespread street protests and strikes to demand better pay, protection, and working conditions. ASHA workers may have been acknowledged as global health leaders, but they continue to be underpaid with small performance-based honorariums. They are still fighting for a fair and regular salary and the benefits that come with formal sector roles.
Pre-pandemic the World Health Organization (WHO) projected a global shortage of 10 million health workers by 2030, which COVID-19 now has deepened. Health workers lost their lives to the virus and significant numbers are unable to work, affected by ‘long-COVID’. There have been increased reports of violence towards women health workers during the pandemic–from colleagues as well as patients and their families.
In a 2018 report on health policy and system support to optimize CHW programs, one of the primary WHO recommendations included fair remuneration for CHWs, but this is still far from the norm. When CHWs are compensated, it often fails to align with WHO recommendations, which call for financial packages that are commensurate with the demands of the job, the level of complexity, the training required, and the hours worked.
This World Health Workers Week, we come together with our partners to call on global health leaders, governments and policy makers to disrupt the status quo. We believe that every person, regardless of gender, should have access to quality health and care and opportunities to thrive.
We know a fairly-compensated health workforce–alongside training, supervision, and safe working environments–leads to improved productivity, wider access to healthcare, and better patient outcomes.
The gender pay gap in health of 24% is one of the largest of any sector. We are calling on leaders to take measures to close that gap. We stand with our partners in calling for and focusing on transformative change, including gender-equal leadership in global health and a new social contract for women health workers centered on the need for fair and equal pay and safe and decent work.
There is increasing urgency in both high-income and low- and-middle income countries to prioritize changes in guidelines, funding, and policies. After three years of COVID-19, women health workers, who have been the majority in patient-facing roles, are burned out and traumatized.
Understandably, women are leaving the health sector at all levels in a ‘Great Resignation,’ which threatens to deepen the global health worker shortage crisis.
Addressing these injustices is a moral obligation and an economic necessity. Investing in health workers is a win-win proposition and will send a message that we recognize and value them as professionals.
Not only can we restore justice to neglected global health systems, but we can improve the working conditions and pay of health workers, unleashing broader economic benefits.
We would like to send a clear message that as heads of global health organizations we are committed to building stronger health systems and a more equitable world. Achieving true health equity includes quality care for all–including health workers.
Dr Roopa Dhatt is Executive Director and Co-Founder Women in Global Health, a fast- growing women-led movement with 47 chapters worldwide.
Susannah (“Susie”) Schaefer is Executive Vice Chair, President, and Chief Executive Officer (CEO) of Smile Train, the world’s largest cleft-focused organization with a sustainable and local model of supporting surgery and other forms of comprehensive cleft care.
Financing is vital for growth. Credit: Unsplash / Towfiqu Barbhuiya
Opinion by Armida Salsiah Alisjahbana (bangkok, thailand)
Inter Press Service
The writer is UN Under-Secretary-General and Executive Secretary of the Economic and Social Commission for Asia and the Pacific (ESCAP)
BANGKOK, Thailand, Apr 04 (IPS) – The unprecedented fiscal firepower used to protect the vulnerable from the harsh socio-economic impact of the COVID-19 pandemic and the resulting economic contraction have pushed the average government debt level in the Asia-Pacific region to its highest since 2008.
Public debt distress is expected to worsen amid the global economic slowdown, record high inflation and rising interest rates, and uncertainty induced by the war in Ukraine.
And surging debt service payments are expected to put public debt sustainability of several developing Asia-Pacific economies at risk. Most concerning, debt distress risk is highest for countries with the highest development finance needs, including small island developing States.
Public debt is a powerful development tool in need of a major rethink
Yet, a higher debt level is not necessarily a bad thing, according to this year’s edition of the Economic and Social Survey of Asia and the Pacific. Current policy debates on public debt sustainability do not take into account the long-term positive socio-economic and environmental impact of public investments in laying the foundations of inclusive, resilient and sustainable prosperity.
Indeed, left unaddressed, development deficits and climate risks hurt economic prospects and public debt sustainability itself. Our analysis shows that social spending cuts increase poverty and inequality and undermine economic productivity in the long term.
Conversely, investing in healthcare, education, social protection and climate action is good economics.
Multilateral lenders and credit rating agencies focus excessively on keeping debt sustainable in the short term. Such perceived optimal debt levels are too low and lead to suboptimal development outcomes.
Revisiting current debt sustainability norms has also become necessary with the emergence of major non-traditional bilateral creditors and a drastic fall in concessional development lending to Asian and Pacific countries over the past decade.
It is time for a bold shift in thinking about public debt sustainability. We propose an augmented approach that assesses public debt viability that takes into account a country’s SDG investment needs, government structural development policies aiming to boost economic competitiveness, and national SDG financing strategies.
It is time for creditors, international financial institutions and credit rating agencies to consider the positive long-term economic, social and environmental outcomes of investing in the SDGs, while assessing public debt sustainability.
Our research finds that public debt is found to decline over the long term when the socio-economic and environmental benefits of public investments are incorporated.
Rather than penalizing bold fiscal support for people and the environment, international creditors should consider if such spending would boost economic productivity.
Lenders and credit rating agencies should see debt relief as helping support the fiscal outlook, rather than as a sign of an upcoming debt default.
Developing countries should also strive to balance investing in the SDGs with ensuring debt sustainability. Governments should not feel deterred from borrowing for essential, high-impact sustainable development spending; rather, funds should be used efficiently and effectively.
Public coffers should also be boosted by resource mobilization strategies designed to generate social and/or environmental benefits, such as through progressive taxation.
Effective public debt management reduces fiscal risks and borrowing costs, with several examples of good public debt management practices in the Asia-Pacific region. At the same time, countries with high debt distress levels may need pre-emptive, swift and adequate sovereign debt restructuring, while efforts towards common international debt resolution mechanisms and restructuring frameworks needs to be accelerated.
We are in the fourth year of the Decade of Action to accelerate progress towards the SDGs with not much to show in gains. It is time for Asia and the Pacific to rise to the challenge of mobilizing the financial resources to realise the dream of resilient and sustainable prosperity for all.
UNITED NATIONS, Apr 03 (IPS) – As signs of a new Cold War are fast emerging at the United Nations, the US continues its war of words with the People’s Republic of China (PRC).
The rivalry, which extends from Russia and Taiwan to Iran and Myanmar – where the UN’s two permanent members are on opposite sides of ongoing political or military conflicts– has now triggered a battle on semantics.
Is China, described as the world’s second largest economy ranking next to the US, really a “developing nation”?
The US House of Representative unanimously passed a bill March 27 directing the Secretary of State Antony Blinken to strip the PRC of its “developing country” status in international organizations
Titled “PRC Is Not a Developing Country Act” — the bill cleared the House in an overwhelming 415-0 vote. The legislation reads: “It should be the policy of the United States—
(1) to oppose the labeling or treatment of the People’s Republic of China as a developing country in any treaty or other international agreement to which the United States is a party;
(2) to oppose the labeling or treatment of the People’s Republic of China as a developing country in each international organization of which the United States is a member; and
(3) to pursue the labeling or treatment of the People’s Republic of China as an upper middle-income country, high income country, or developed country in each international organization of which the United States is a member”.
At the United Nations, China is closely allied with the 137-member Group of 77 (G77), the largest single coalition of “developing countries” (a group created in 1964 with 77 members).
Since China is not a formal member of the G77, the group describes itself either as “The G77 and China” or “The G77 plus China.”
Ambassador Anwarul K. Chowdhury, a former Permanent Representative of Bangladesh to the UN and a former UN Under-Secretary-General, told IPS the defining of a developing country is a complex challenge.
“There is no established framework or charter for defining a “developing country,” he noted
According to well-respected economist Jeffrey Sachs, the current divide between the developed and developing world is largely a phenomenon of the 20th century. Some economists emphasize that the binary labeling of countries is “neither descriptive nor explanatory”.
For the UN system, the G77, which provides the collective negotiating platform of the countries of the South, is in reality synonymous with nations which are identified as “developing countries, least developed countries (LDCs), landlocked developing countries and small island developing states” (SIDS).
“They are all sub-groupings of developing countries and belong to the G-77, he pointed out.
Outlining the group’s history, he said, the G-77 was established in 1964 by seventy-seven developing countries, signatories of the “Joint Declaration” issued at the end of the first session of the UN Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD) in Geneva.
Although members of the G-77 have increased to 134 countries, the original name was retained due to its historic significance. Developing countries tend to have some characteristics in common, often due to their histories or geographies, said Ambassador Chowdhury, Chairman of the Administrative and Budgetary Committee (Fifth Committee) of the UN General Assembly in 1997-98 and Chair of the Group of 27, working group of G-77, in 1982-83.
In October 1997, he said, China joined the G-77 while keeping its special identity by proposing the nomenclature as “G-77 and China”. China aligns its positions on the global economic and social issues with G-77 positions for negotiating purposes.
Being the largest negotiating group in the United Nations, and in view of the mutuality of their common concerns, G-77 is not expected to agree to separate China from the current collaborative arrangements.
“And more so, if the pressure comes from the US delegation, in view of the recent resolution of the House of Representatives of the US Congress, to take away the categorization of China as a developing country”, declared Ambassador Chowdhury.
In a World Bank Data Blog, Tariq Khokhar, Global Data Editor & Senior Data Scientist and Umar Serajuddin, Manager, Development Data Group, at the World Bank, point out that the IMF, in the “World Economic Outlook (WEO)” currently classify 37 countries as “Advanced Economies” and all others are considered “Emerging Market and Developing Economies” according to the WEO Statistical Annex.”
The institution notes that “this classification is not based on strict criteria, economic or otherwise” and that it’s done in order to “facilitate analysis by providing a reasonably meaningful method of organizing data.”
The United Nations has no formal definition of developing countries, but still uses the term for monitoring purposes and classifies as many as 159 countries as developing, the authors argue.
The UN maintains a list of “Least Developed Countries” which are defined by accounting for GNI per capita as well as measures of human capital and economic vulnerability.
“While we can’t find the first instance of “developing world” being used, what it colloquially refers to — the group of countries that fare relatively and similarly poorly in social and economic measures — hasn’t been consistently or precisely defined, and this “definition” hasn’t been updated.”
“The World Bank has for many years referred to “low and middle income countries” as “developing countries” for convenience in publications, but even if this definition was reasonable in the past, it’s worth asking if it has remained so and if a more granular definition is warranted.”
In its legislation, the US House of Representatives says “not later than 180 days after the date of the enactment of this Act, the Secretary of State shall submit to the appropriate committees of Congress a report identifying all current treaty negotiations in which—
(a) Any international organization of which the United States and the People’s Republic of China are both current member states, the Secretary, in coordination with the heads of other Federal agencies and departments as needed, shall pursue—
(1) changing the status of the People’s Republic of China from developing country to upper middle income country, high income country, or developed country if a mechanism exists in such organization to make such a change in status;
(2) proposing the development of a mechanism described in paragraph (1) to change the status of the People’s Republic of China in such organization from developing country to developed country; or
(3) regardless of efforts made pursuant to paragraphs (1) and (2), working to ensure that the People’s Republic of China does not receive preferential treatment or assistance within the organization as a result of it having the status of a developing country.
(b) The President may waive the application of subsection (a) with respect to any international organization if the President notifies the appropriate committees of Congress, not later than 10 days before the date on which the waiver shall take effect, that such a waiver is in the national interests of the United States.
Speaking during the debate, Representative Young Kim (Republican of California) said: “The People’s Republic of China is the world’s second largest economy, accounting for 18.6 percent of the global economy.”
“Their economy is second only to that of the United States. The United States is treated as a developed country, so should PRC,” Kim said. “And is also treated as a high-income country in treaties and international organizations, so China should also be treated as a developed country.”
“However, the PRC is classified as a developing country, and they’re using this status to game the system and hurt countries that are truly in need,” she added.
Elaborating further, Ambassador Chowdhury said the World Bank, as a part of the Bretton Woods institutions, classifies the world’s economies into four groups, based on gross national income per capita: high, upper-middle, lower-middle, and low income countries.
In 2015, the World Bank declared that the “developing/developed world categorization” had become less relevant and that they will phase out the use of that descriptor.
Instead, their reports will present data aggregations for regions and income groups.
The World Trade Organisation (WTO) accepts any country’s claim of itself being “developing”.
He said certain countries that have become “developed” in the last 20 years by almost all economic metrics, still wants to be classified as “developing country”, as it entitles them to a preferential treatment at the WTO – countries such as Brunei, Kuwait, Qatar, Singapore, and the United Arab Emirates.
The term “Global South“, used by some as an alternative term to developing countries, began to be mentioned more widely since about 2004.
The Global South refers to these countries’ interconnected histories of colonialism, neo-imperialism, and differential economic and social change through which large inequalities in living standards, life expectancy, and access to resources are maintained.
“Most of humanity resides in the Global South,” declared Ambassador Chowdhury.
Despite advances in gender representation in legislative bodies, the track record of women in the executive branches of government – as heads of state or heads of government — remains low.
by Thalif Deen (united nations)
Inter Press Service
This feature is part of a series to mark International Women’s Day, March 8.
UNITED NATIONS, Mar 08 (IPS) – For the first time in history, says a new report from the Inter-Parliamentary Union (IPU), not a single functioning parliament in the world is “male-only”.
Is the increasing number of women in parliaments a singular achievement for gender empowerment? Or is it the result of mandatory legislative quotas for women’s representation in world’s parliaments?
According to the latest IPU report, Women in Parliament 2022, women’s participation in parliament has never been as diverse and representative as it is in many countries today.
The findings are based on the 47 countries that held elections in 2022. In those elections, women took an average 25.8% of seats up for election or appointment. This represents a 2.3 percentage point increase compared to previous renewals in these chambers.
Brazil saw a record 4,829 women who identify as Black running for election (out of 26,778 candidates); in the US, a record number of women of colour (263) stood in the midterm elections; LGBTQI+ representation in Colombia tripled from two to six members of the Congress; and in France, 32 candidates from minority backgrounds were elected to the new National Assembly, an all-time high of 5.8% of the total.
The report said legislated quotas were again a decisive factor in the increases seen in women’s representation.
Thomas Fitzsimons, IPU’s Director of Communications told IPS there are many factors that explain the successes of the countries that have made progress.
For example, he pointed out, technological and operational transformations, largely due to the COVID-19 pandemic, have increased the potential for parliaments to become more gender-sensitive and family-friendly.
“The influence of gender issues on election outcomes, with increased awareness of discrimination and gender-based violence, as well as alliances with other social movements, also helped drive strong results for women in some of the parliamentary elections,” he noted.
“But if we had to choose one primary factor, it would be legislated quotas. Legislated quotas enshrined in the constitution and/or electoral laws require that a minimum number of candidates are women (or of the under-represented sex),” he said.
Chambers with legislated quotas or combined with voluntary party quotas produced a significantly higher share of women than those without in the 2022 elections (30.9% versus 21.2%).
“As for the future, we need to accelerate the momentum which is still too slow. At current rates of growth, it will take another 80 years before we reach parity,” Fitzsimons declared.
Antonia Kirkland Global Lead — Legal Equality and Access to Justice.at Equality Now, told IPS it is encouraging to see IPU’s data revealing that more women than ever are in political decision-making roles globally, and there has been an overall increase in the number of women in both government and parliamentary posts.
IPU’s data clearly demonstrates that quotas on women’s representation have had a positive, big impact. Countries applying quotas have enjoyed a 9.7% increase in women in parliaments in comparison to countries without, she said.
“However, it is lamentable that women are still so underrepresented at all levels of political decision-making, accounting for only 9.8% of Heads of Government and just over a quarter of MPs. It is also deeply concerning that gender parity in parliaments is at least 80 years away if we continue at the current pace.”
With the World Bank finding that only 14 countries have full legal equality between women and men, and UN Women gaging it will take another 286 years to eliminate gaps in legal protections, duty bearers must create a safe and empowering environment for women to engage in politics that fosters greater legal equality, said Kirkland.
She said more needs to be done to increase women’s political representation by understanding and removing obstacles that impede women’s participation in the public sphere and decision-making.
“To accelerate gender parity in parliaments, we need an end to sex-discriminatory laws in all areas of life which hold women back from engaging in politics in the first place.”
Political parties should highlight the importance and advantages of gender diversity, and implement initiatives that involve women in politics at all stages and within all branches of the political arena.
IPU’s report, she pointed out, shows that a shocking percentage of women in parliament are subjected to gender-based violence and sexual harassment in their own parliaments, on the streets, and in the digital world. Concerted efforts are required to tackle head-on gender-based violence and abuse targeting women politicians both online and offline.
Governments, parliamentarians, the private sector, and civil society need to seize every opportunity – such as the upcoming UN Global Digital Compact – to work together so that women are protected from online abuse. Perpetrates and those who facilitate or provide platforms for such abuse must be held accountable.
“Tackling this problem would result in less self-censorship by parliamentarians, greater interest from girls and young women to serve in government, and ultimately stronger democracies that are both more peaceful and gender-equal, declared Kirkland.
At the regional level, the report said, six countries now have gender parity (or a greater share of women than men) in their lower or single chamber as of 1 January 2023. New Zealand joined last year’s club of five consisting of Cuba, Mexico, Nicaragua, Rwanda and the United Arab Emirates (UAE), at the top of the IPU’s authoritative global ranking of women in parliament.
Other notable gains in women’s representation were recorded in Australia (the strongest outcome of the year with a record 56.6% of seats won by women in the Senate), Colombia, Equatorial Guinea, Malta and Slovenia.
High stakes elections in Angola, Kenya and Senegal all saw positive strides for women. Wide divides characterized results in Asia: record numbers of women were elected to the historically male-dominated Senate in Japan but in India, elections to the upper chamber led to women occupying only 15.1% of seats, well below the global and regional averages.
The Pacific saw the highest growth rate in women’s representation out of all the regions, gaining 1.7 percentage points to reach an overall average of 22.6% women in parliament. Every Pacific parliament now has at least one-woman legislator.
In the 15 European chambers that were renewed in 2022, there was little shift in women’s representation, stagnating at 31%.
In the Middle East and North Africa region, seven chambers were renewed in 2022. On average, women were elected to 16.3% of the seats in these chambers, the lowest regional percentage in the world for elections held in the year. Three countries were below 10%: Algeria (upper chamber: 4.3%), Kuwait (6.3%) and Lebanon (6.3%).
Bahrain is an outlier in the region with a record eight women elected to the lower chamber, including many first-time lawmakers. 73 women ran for election to the lower chamber (out of a total of 330 candidates) compared with the 41 women who ran in the last election in 2018. Ten women were also appointed to the 40-member upper chamber.
The IPU is the global organization of national parliaments. It was founded more than 133 years ago as the first multilateral political organization in the world, encouraging cooperation and dialogue between all nations. Today, the IPU comprises 178 national Member Parliaments and 14 regional parliamentary bodies. It promotes democracy and helps parliaments become stronger, younger, gender-balanced and more representative. It also defends the human rights of parliamentarians through a dedicated committee made up of MPs from around the world.For more information about the IPU, contact Thomas Fitzsimons at e-mail: [email protected] or [email protected] or tel: +41(0) 79 854 31 53
Credit: ASEAN Parliamentarians for Human Rights (APHR)
Opinion by Jan Servaes (brussels)
Inter Press Service
BRUSSELS, Jan 30 (IPS) – Parliamentarians worldwide face increasing human rights violations and a greater risk of reprisal simply for exercising their mandate or expressing their ideas and opinions.
Asia follows the same trend according to the Inter-Parliamentary Union (IPU). It is the second most dangerous region for MPs, with the number of cases recorded by the IPU increasing every year.
While instances of physical attacks remain rare in Southeast Asia, governments often resort to politically motivated charges against parliamentarians and opposition leaders in what has come to be known as ‘lawfare”.
Myanmar
Since the military takeover and the suspension of parliament in February 2021, the IPU has received specific reports of human rights violations against 56 MPs elected in the November 2020 vote.
Two new MPs, Wai Lin Aung and Pyae Phyo, were arrested in December 2021. This brings the total number of detained MPs to 30. Many of the detainees are reportedly held incommunicado in overcrowded prisons. where they are mistreated and possibly tortured, with little access to medical care or legal advice.
According to Amnesty International, torture and ill-treatment are institutionalized in Myanmar. Women have been tortured, sexually harassed and threatened with rape in custody,
Stop lawfare!
ASEAN member states must immediately stop using judicial harassment and politically motivated charges against critics and political opponents, the ASEAN Parliamentarians for Human Rights (APHR) stated at a January 27 press conference in Manila under the banner: “Stop Lawfare! No to the weaponization of the law and state-sponsored violence.”
The press conference explained the continued use of lawfare and its effect on freedom of expression. It was a show of solidarity with parliamentarians and others facing this kind of repression.
Philippines
The Philippines is ranked 147th out of 180 countries in the 2022 World Press Freedom Index, and the Committee to Protect Journalists ranks the Philippines seventh in its 2021 Impunity Index, which tracks the deaths of media workers whose killers go unpunished .
In the Philippines, “lawfare” has been used systematically by the previous administration of President Rodrigo Duterte and also by the current administration of Ferdinand Marcos, Jr. to suppress opposition voices. A notable case is that of APHR’s board member and former member of parliament in the Philippines: Walden Bello.
On August 8, 2022, Walden Bello was arrested on a cyber libel charge. Bello is facing politically motivated allegations filed by a former Davao City information officer who now works as Chief of the Media and Public Relations Department in the office of the Vice President, Sara Duterte.
The indictment against Walden Bello is a clear example of political intimidation and revenge designed to terrify opponents of the current Philippine government. It is a violation of freedom of expression, which is essential for a democracy.
In addition to Walden Bello, many other political leaders and activists, including Senator Leila De Lima, Senator Risa Hontiveros and Senator Antonio Trillanes, have fallen victim to dubious justice. Senator Leila de Lima, was arrested in February 2017 on trumped-up drug charges, shortly after she launched a Senate investigation into extrajudicial killings under the Duterte administration. She has been in detention ever since, still awaiting trial, despite several key witnesses retracting their testimony.
Many local and regional leaders are also suffering arbitrary detention following questionable arrests in the wake of government “red-tagging” campaigns against local activists and journalists, including human rights and environmental defenders.
Maria Ressa, who, as editor-in-chief of Rappler, received the Nobel Peace Prize in 2021 together with a Russian journalist, has repeatedly been a victim of lawfare. They were recently acquitted of tax evasion. Ressa said it was one of several lawsuits former President Duterte used to muzzle critical reporting.
However, Ressa and Rappler face three more lawsuits: a separate tax suit filed by prosecutors in another court, her appeal to the Supreme Court against an online libel conviction, and Rappler’s appeal against the closing of the Securities and Exchange Commission. Ressa still faces up to six years in prison if she loses the libel conviction appeal.
The ASEAN Parliamentarians for Human Rights (APHR) therefore call on all “Southeast Asian authorities to stop abusing the justice system to quell dissent and urge ASEAN to reprimand member states that use laws to attack the political opposition.
The Philippine government can take the first step by dropping all charges against Walden Bello and immediately releasing Senator Leila De Lima and all others unjustly detained on politically motivated charges,” said Mercy Barends, president of APHR and member of the Indonesian House of Representatives.
ASEAN
“Lawfare is happening all over Southeast Asia and beyond. Governments in the region use ambiguous laws to prosecute political opponents, government critics and activists. This weaponization of the justice system is alarming and incredibly damaging to freedom of expression.
It creates an atmosphere of fear that not only silences those targeted by such lawfare, but also makes anyone who wants to criticize those in power think twice,” said Charles Santiago, APHR co-chair and former Malaysian MP.
Myanmar and Cambodia
In Myanmar and Cambodia, for example, treason and terrorism laws have been used to crack down on opposition. The most tragic example occurred last July, with the execution of four prominent Myanmar activists on charges of bogus terrorism by the Myanmar junta. These were the first judicial executions in decades and are an extreme example of how the law can be perverted by authoritarian regimes to bolster their power.
In Cambodia, members of the opposition are sentenced to long prison terms on trumped-up charges simply for exercising their right to freedom of expression. Journalists are increasingly subjected to various forms of intimidation, pressure and violence, according to a new report published by the UN Human Rights Office (OHCHR).
Thailand
Meanwhile, libel laws are among the most commonly used laws in Thailand where, unlike many other countries, it can be considered a criminal offense rather than just a civil crime. Sections 326-328 of Thailand’s Penal Code establish various defamation offenses with penalties of up to two years in prison and fines of up to 200,000 Thai Baht (approximately USD 6,400).
“I think we as parliamentarians in our respective countries should do our utmost to repeal or at least amend these kinds of laws. Our democracies depend on it. But I also think we can’t do it alone. We need to work together across borders, share experiences with parliamentarians from other countries and stand in solidarity with those who fall victim to it, because at the end of the day we are all in this together,” said Rangsiman Rome, member of the Thai parliament and APHR member.
Jan Servaes was UNESCO-Chair in Communication for Sustainable Social Change at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst. He taught ‘international communication’ in Australia, Belgium, China, Hong Kong, the US, Netherlands and Thailand, in addition to short-term projects at about 120 universities in 55 countries. He is editor of the 2020 Handbook on Communication for Development and Social Change.
NEW YORK, Jan 27 (IPS) – As Turkey approaches its centennial anniversary this October, President Erdogan is stopping short of nothing to win the election in June to fulfill his life-time dream of presiding over the celebration. The Turkish people should deny him this historic honor because of the reign of terror to which he has mercilessly subjected his countrymen.
Righting the Wrong
Had Turkey’s President Erdogan continued with his most impressive social, economic, judicial, and political reforms that he initiated and implemented during his first years in power, today’s Turkey would have been a great country, respected and prosperous while enjoying tremendous regional and global influence under his leadership.
Instead, Erdogan reversed his remarkable achievements on all domestic and international fronts in pursuit of building an authoritarian regime that could satisfy his unquenchable thirst for ever more power. Erdogan will stop short of nothing to win the upcoming elections in June.
He certainly hopes to preside on October 29 over the hundredth anniversary of the establishment of the Turkish Republic by Mustafa Kemal Atatürk and to be recognized as the new Atatürk (father) of modern Turkey. The Turkish people must deny him that honor because of his continuing horrific human rights violations.
To put in perspective as to why Erdogan does not deserve to preside over the anniversary and should be handedly rejected in the June elections, it is first necessary to provide a brief account of his relentless reign of terror and his unremitting campaign to harass and delegitimize the opposition parties to achieve his sinister objective.
Following the failed coup of July 2016, Erdogan arrested tens of thousands of innocent people, including hundreds of security officials, academics, and military personnel suspected of belonging to the Hizmet (Gülen) Movement and charged them with participating in the coup. He uses Article 301 of the Anti-Terror Act to crack down on dissent and even criminalize criticism of “Turkishness.”
He arrested hundreds of journalists accusing them of spreading anti-government propaganda, shut down scores of TV and radio stations, and imposed restrictions on the use of social media. Nearly 200 journalists have been imprisoned since 2016; currently 40 remain incarcerated in subhuman prisons, which blatantly defies the convention of freedom of press, especially in a NATO member state.
Thousands of university graduates are leaving the country in the search for job opportunities and to free themselves from Erdogan’s shackles. Leaving their country behind is causing an alarming brain drain, which is affecting just about every industry.
The Council of Europe and the University of Lausanne reports that Turkey has the largest population of prisoners convicted on charges related to terrorism. As Turkish journalist Uzay Bulut notes, “The report, updated in April 2021, shows that at the time there were a total of 30,524 inmates in COE member states who were sentenced for terrorism; of those, 29,827 were in Turkish prisons” .
As Leo Tolstoy observed in War and Peace, “One need only to admit that public tranquility is in danger and any action finds a justification… All the horrors of the reign of terror were based only on solicitude for public tranquility.” To that end, Erdogan proclaims to be a pious man, but he cynically uses Islam as nothing but an evil political tool to project a divine power to assert his dictatorial whims unchallenged.
The World Organization Against Torture (OMCT) reports that Erdogan conveniently uses Anti-Terrorism Law No. 3713, which was enacted by his AK Party-led, rubber stamp parliament to stifle freedoms and silence the voices of those who defend human rights. The law allows him to label peaceful human rights defenders as ‘terrorist offenders’.
OMCT states that “Official data show that in 2020, 6551 people were prosecuted under the anti-terrorism law, while a staggering 208,833 were investigated for ‘membership in an armed organization,’” typically those involved with the Gülen movement.
Erdogan continues his crackdown on his own Kurdish community which represents nearly 20 percent of the population, depriving them of basic human rights. His systematic persecution of the Kurds seems to have no bounds, as he accuses thousands of being supporters of the PKK, which he considers as a terrorist organization and which successive Turkish governments have been fighting for more than 50 years at staggering human and material cost.
He consistently demands that various Balkan and EU states extradite Turkish nationals whom he accuses of being terrorists to stand trial in his corrupted courts, denying them due process and subjecting them to ferocious torture in order to extract confessions for offences they never committed.
He is preventing Finland and Sweden from joining NATO unless Sweden extradites about 130 political refugees, mostly Turkish Kurds, to stand trial in Turkey. Sweden has rejected his demand knowing that once they reach Turkish soil, it will be tantamount to the kiss of death. To be sure, the rule of law in Erdogan’s Turkey has been effectively dismantled.
To improve his chances of being re-elected, Erdogan wants to ensure that the Kurdish political parties are denied representation in the Parliament. He has incarcerated many of the 56 members of the pro-Kurdish Peoples’ Democratic Party (HDP) and removed its remaining members from the legislative process; he is determined to close the party altogether.
In addition, he arrested many members of the Democratic Regions Party (DBP), accusing them of unfounded terrorism-related offenses and illegally replacing them through government-appointed trustees.
Erdogan is asking the Biden administration to issue a statement in support of his policies to help him in his bid for reelection when in fact he is at odds with President Biden on a host of critical issues, including his egregious human rights violations, his refusal to allow Sweden and Finland to join NATO, his purchase of the Russian-made S-400 air defense system, his money laundering, and his ceaseless corruption.
And in 2019, he tried to block NATO’s plan for the defense of Poland and the Baltic states unless NATO identified the Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces as terrorists.
One would think that if he is so desperate to be re-elected come June, he would make significant concessions both domestically and in his relations with the US and the EU. Why not offer amnesty to all political prisoners, free the journalists, stop harassing and jailing leaders of opposition parties, and fully adhere to human rights and the rule of law?
Why not drop his opposition to Sweden’s admission to NATO? Why not rescind his purchase of a second batch of S-400s and decommission those currently in use, which are totally incompatible with NATO’s air defense systems? Finally, why not restore the democratic principles which every member state of NATO is required to uphold?
But then, Erdogan’s obsession with absolute power has blinded him from seeing and feeling the plight of his own people, which only demonstrates his ignorance and shortsightedness. As Jorge Luis Borges aptly observed, “Dictatorships foster oppression, dictatorships foster servitude, dictatorships foster cruelty; more abominable is the fact that they foster idiocy.”
A number of years ago, Erdogan’s former prime minister Davutoglu told me that by the year 2023, Turkey will have restored the glory, the global influence, and prestige that the Ottoman Empire enjoyed in its heyday. Needless to say, Davutoglu’s prophecy has not come to pass.
To the contrary, today, Turkey’s economy, social and political order, and democracy are in complete disarray; Turkey is far from having “zero problems with neighbors,” and remains estranged from the US and the EU.
If Erdogan manages to be re-elected through cheating and by disenfranchising the opposition parties, he will celebrate the centennial anniversary while presiding over a country in retreat, with a disillusioned and despairing citizenry and diminishing regional and international stature. He will not be the new Atatürk even though he so frantically wants to portray himself as a great reformer leading a constructive and great power on the world stage.
Instead, Erdogan will be remembered with scorn and contempt for having squandered Turkey’s huge potential while degrading the anniversary that could have been Turkey’s greatest celebration in one hundred years.
Dr. Alon Ben-Meir, a retired professor of international relations at the Center for Global Affairs at New York University (NYU), taught courses on international negotiation and Middle Eastern studies for over 20 years.
In a tourism-dependent economy, sustainable finance will promote sustainable fisheries, maritime transport, and tourism. Credit: UNDP
Opinion by Christopher Marc Lilyblad (mindelo, cabo verde)
Inter Press Service
MINDELO, Cabo Verde, Jan 26 (IPS) – On 20 January, the world’s best sailors arrived in Mindelo, Cabo Verde, completing the initial leg of the 2023 edition of The Ocean Race. Coinciding with this stop was the launch of Cabo Verde’s first blue bond at the Ocean Summit, an event jointly organized by The Ocean Race and the Government of Cabo Verde on the sidelines of the grueling round-the-world race. United Nations Secretary-General Antonio Guterres was in attendance as this year’s keynote speaker.
The bond was launched on Cabo Verde’s Blu-X sustainable finance platform, a regional platform for listing and trading sustainable and inclusive financial instruments.
The issuance will raise domestic, regional, and global investment in Cabo Verde’s rising ocean economy while divesting capital from industries responsible for sea-level rise, pollution, and other transgressions against ocean rights.
In brief, the winds of sustainable finance are filling the sails of a local blue economy heeling towards global Ocean Rights.
Consistent with its blue seal, up to US$1 million in proceeds (minimum US$500,000) will supply affordable loans to microentrepreneurs and startups in coastal communities, emphasizing financial inclusion to ensure widespread access to the new value generated from the growing blue economy.
The remaining US$1.5 million foresees structural investments in small and medium-sized enterprises operating in the maritime and fisheries sectors.
Notably, this is the first initial public offering, or IPO, listed on the Blu-X sustainable finance platform. This means anyone, anywhere with access to the digital Blu-X platform can invest via their computer or phone, including foreign investors and members of Cabo Verde’s sizable diaspora.
Furthermore, this marks the first private issuance that does not rely on a public guarantee but is solely backed by market demand. With a ‘greenshoe’ (or ‘blue aquasocks’, rather?) option of an additional US$ 1 million triggered if demand for bond subscriptions exceeds the initial US$2.5 million, the blue bond could ultimately generate US$3.5 million in private and market-driven finance for a sustainable blue economy.
In a race against time during the UN’s Ocean Decade, this initial blue bond listing offers a potentially game-changing test case for Cabo Verde’s blue finance ambitions.
The strategic partnership between the Cabo Verde Stock Exchange (Bolsa de Valores de Cabo Verde – BVC) and UNDP under Cabo Verde’s integrated national financing framework (INFF) has already led to four sustainable bond issuances totaling USD32.5 million.
Building on this momentum, the blue bond’s proceeds are exclusively destined for sustainable marine- and ocean-based projects generating returns for the economy, society, and environment – the triple bottom line.
With funding from the UN’s Joint SDG Fund and UNDP’s strategic and technical support, the Blu-X team at the BVC guided the Cabo-Verdean International Investment Bank through the process of issuing the bond framework, following an external review process that ensures adherence to blue principles.
What actually ‘counts as’ blue has recently been established through a new blue bond regulation in November 2022, enacted under the authority of Cabo Verde’s capital market regulatory agency.
The regulation draws on the Atlantic Technical University’s blue taxonomy, derived from a scientific study of existing blue economy activities and the potential of Cabo Verde’s shores.
The first of its kind in Africa, the regulation reflects the country’s pioneering role in defining blue finance norms, standards, and principles, which closely aligns with the Ocean Race’s Sustainability Charter and corresponding calls for a Universal Declaration of Ocean Rights anchored at the United Nations.
By hoisting the blue flag, Cabo Verde is again signaling its emergence as a global front-runner. Indeed, since the first blue bond issuance by Seychelles in 2018, these financial instruments have mostly been treated as a subsidiary category of green bonds in financial markets. However, what was once seen as a ‘shade of green’ is now emerging as a primary colour of its own.
Building on this initial proof of concept, the proliferation of blue bonds has the potential to transform financing for Cabo Verde’s strategic sustainable development agenda: Ambition 2030.
In a tourism-dependent economy vulnerable to external shocks, the growth of sustainable finance and the blue economy will accelerate socio-economic decentralization and sectorial diversification, from fisheries and maritime transport to nautical sports and ocean-based technology.
As a small island developing state that is “99 percent ocean,” this stands to benefit the local communities that depend on marine environments and maritime spaces for their livelihoods.
Blue economy impact investing poignantly illustrates why marine environments and biodiversity should be preserved not only as ends in themselves but also as catalysts for value creation.
As more and more people subscribe to the idea that protecting ocean resources is vital for maintaining and growing economies, we will see an upsurge in innovative businesses, initiatives and transactions that advance marine conservation.
The growth of blue entrepreneurship and investment paves the way for greater collaboration spurring collective action capable of avoiding a tragedy of the ocean commons.
In other words, by reshaping economic incentive structures along these lines and leveraging their effects in local coastal communities, sustainable finance enhances cognizance of global ocean sustainability principles and incentivizes corresponding human action.
The Ocean Race Cabo Verde presented by Blu-X marks a growing interest in Cabo Verde’s emerging blue standard. Inspired by these blue finance bearings, perhaps others will soon chart a similar course, with the prospect of collectively raising an entire fleet racing towards the UN Ocean Decade finish.
Christopher Marc Lilyblad is Head of Strategy and Policy Unit, a.i. UNDP Cabo Verde; Development Economist & Head of Strategy and Economic Cluster, a.i. UNDP Guinea-Bissau
The UN’s empty corridors when the world body went into a lockdown mode because of the Covid-19 pandemic beginning March 2020. Credit: United Nations
by Thalif Deen (united nations)
Inter Press Service
UNITED NATIONS, Jan 17 (IPS) – A new variant of Covid-19, spreading across New York city, is forcing businesses, banks and high-powered financial institutions to re-introduce flexible working hours after a brief hiatus.
At the United Nations, the lockdown has reduced the 39-storeyed Secretariat building to a veritable ghost town since most staffers continue to work from home – at least two or three days per week.
The UN, which has office space, either on-rent or on long-term commercial leases outside the Secretariat, is looking for options to terminate some of these contracts– or have already done so.
When the issue of rented office space came up at a meeting of the UN’s Administrative and Budgetary Committee back in December 2015, it was revealed that over 5,300 staffers were in off-campus, leased-buildings at a cost of more than $56 million a year.
But since the pandemic shutdown, beginning March 2020, the UN has been downsizing its off-campus operations.
Asked for Secretary-General Antonio Guterres’ reaction to a “completely empty building at the moment”, his Spokesperson Stephane Dujarric told reporters: “We have experience with flexible working hours. I think it shows that it can be very productive in many cases. We continue to be also guided by recommendations from our health and safety experts.”
Asked about the rented properties for several UN departments and divisions, currently sporadically occupied, Dujarric said: “We’ve shrunk our footprint from rental properties that we have in Manhattan”.
This was in fact a trend before COVID with the “hot-desking” that has been put in place in many departments where people don’t have assigned spaces, but they will just take spaces as they come every day, given that– especially in a lot of departments — there is a lot of travel, Dujarric said.
“So, we’ve been able to shrink our real estate expenses,” he noted, while jokingly using a Hollywood metaphor: “Look Ma, I shrank the UN.”
Ian Richards, a development economist based in Geneva and a former President of the Coordinating Committee of International Staff Unions and Associations, told IPS through successive resolutions on what is called “flexible workplace strategies,” the General Assembly has been installing “hot-desking” at UN offices in New York, Geneva and elsewhere.
Hot-desking rules are premised on there being fewer desks than people (staff, consultants, interns) and therefore require staff to work part-time from home.
Further, and this is well documented in the scientific literature, hot-desking spaces do not allow staff to actually focus on their work, pushing more staff to work from home part of the week in order to be more productive, said Richards.
“Obviously, certain jobs lend themselves better to part-time telecommuting than others – and this is reflected in how the policy is implemented.”
However, he noted, the feedback from managers is that working from home part of the week improves productivity and motivation.
“It is also a non-negotiable requirement in the current job market if the UN wants to remain a competitive employer and keep attracting the cutting-edge skills it needs”.
In a light-hearted piece, the BBC last week focused on flashy new job titles resulting from flexible working hours: Chief Visionary Officer, Development Guru, Chief Innovation Evangelist and Chief Remote Officer.
Meanwhile, according to Cable News Network (CNN), virologists and epidemiologists say the new Omicron sub-lineage, the XBB 1.5, has features that give it the potential to drive a new surge of Covid-19 cases in the US, although it’s still unclear how large that wave will be and whether it could send many more people to the hospital.
Maria Van Kerkhove, technical lead on COVID-19 at the World Health Organization (WHO) is quoted as saying the XBB.1.5 is the “most transmissible subvariant detected yet”.
Speaking of flexibility at work, the Geneva-based International Labour Organization (ILO) last week released a report pointing out that flexible working hours can benefit productivity and also advance economies and businesses while helping employees and families achieve a better work-life balance.
The issues surrounding working hours and conditions are “at the heart of most labour market reforms and evolutions taking place in the world today”, Branch Chief Philippe Marcadent said in a foreword to ILO’s Working Time and Work-Life Balance Around the World.
“The number of hours worked, the way in which they are organized, and the availability of rest periods can significantly affect not only the quality of work, but also life outside the workplace”.
The study, described as the first to focus on work-life balance, examines the affects that working hours and time schedules have on the performance of businesses and their employees.
Covering the periods before and during COVID-19, the report reveals that more than a third of all employees are regularly working more than 48 hours per week, while a fifth of the global workforce is labouring fewer than 35 hours per week, on a part-time basis.
“The so-called ‘Great Resignation’ phenomenon has placed work-life balance at the forefront of social and labour market issues in the post-pandemic world”, said lead author Jon Messenger.
The study analyses different work schedules and their effects on work-life balance, including shifts, arrangements for being on call, compressed hours, and hours-averaging schemes.
Innovative working-time arrangements, such as those introduced during the COVID-19 crisis, can bring great benefits, including greater productivity and improved work-life balance, said Messenger.
“This report shows that if we apply some of the lessons of the COVID-19 crisis and look very carefully at the way working hours are structured, as well as their overall length, we can create a win-win, improving both business performance and work-life balance”, he added.
However, the report cautioned that the benefits of some flexible arrangements, such as spending more time with the family, may also be accompanied by greater gender imbalances and health risks.
Opinion by Chloe Bryer – Azza Karam – Ruth Messinger – Negina Yari (new york)
Inter Press Service
NEW YORK, Jan 12 (IPS) – Can you imagine what it would be like if women were simply not allowed to step outside of their homes, let alone to work for a living? When women choose to do so, and they can afford it, then it is a matter of choice. When women mostly cannot, as is the case in Afghanistan now, not only is half the population imprisoned, but children go hungry, and communities sink deeper into poverty.
World Bank data (as incomplete as it is), indicates that the average number of female-headed households (i.e. households where women are the primary – if not the only – breadwinners), is around 25%.
What that means is, that on average, a quarter of all households around the world depend on women earning an income. Children, families, communities, and nations –depend on women’s work, to the tune of a quarter of their labour force.
Economists are still pointing to the obvious challenges of counting female labour, which often lies disproportionately on the frontiers of the formal economy, such that women continue to serve as reserve armies of labour and frontline workers during industrialization.
Economists who work to document these specificities, also point out that as soon as these frontiers expand or change, women are expelled or relegated to the shadows of the informal economy and piece-rate labour, identifying this as an all too frequent failure to recognize the importance of the kind of work many women engage in, which both keeps an economy running, and enables its expansion and growth.
The Covid-19 Pandemic should have resulted in a clear realisation that all hands are necessary on deck, with so many women actually needed as first responders–the backbone of the public health crisis – everywhere in the world.
As economies take a nosedive and the realities of recession hit many of us, all economies need to be kept running, if not to expand and grow.
And beyond these very real challenges to counting women’s work – and making that work count – there is another very critical reality: culture. Lest we think only of the vagaries of women who take over “men’s jobs” (whatever that means in today’s world), we need to stop being blind to the fact that women are needed to serve other women.
In fact, in many parts of the world, including the supposedly liberal and ‘egalitarian’ Western world, many women still prefer to receive life-saving direct services from other women – in public health, in sanitation, in all levels of education, in nutritional spaces, and many, many others.
Now let us pause a moment and consider humanitarian disaster zones, where women and girls often need to be cared for – and this can only be done by and through other women.
Then let us envision a reality one step further – let’s call it a socially conservative country, which is facing humanitarian disaster, and is heavily dependent on international organisations (governmental and non- governmental) for the necessary humanitarian support.
How is it conceivable that in such a context, women can be excluded from serving? And yet this is precisely what the Taliban have decreed on December 24, when it barred women from working in national and international NGOs. And this is after they banned women from higher education.
Many international NGOs halted their work in Afghanistan, explaining that they cannot work without their women staff – as a matter of principle, but also as a question of practical necessity. Yet, the United Nations – the premier multilateral entity – continues to see how they could compromise with the Taliban rule, for the sake of ‘the greater good – real humanitarian needs’.
Thank goodness they are letting the UN continue to work with their women employees, runs one way of thinking. We will not fail to deliver humanitarian needs, runs another UN way of thinking.
Of course, humanitarian needs are essential to human survival – and thus, should never be held hostage. But why is the United Nations being accountable for humanitarian needs only?
Meanwhile, the Taliban claim that these edicts about womens’ work and education are a matter of religious propriety, a claim which, as of this moment, is not strongly challenged by another multilateral entity – the Organisation of Islamic Cooperation (OIC), encompassing 56 governments and members of the United Nations.
While individual governments have spoken out, this multilateral entity has remained relatively silent on the Islamic justice of such a decree. Is it because this multilateral religious entity sees no need to speak to humanitarian needs?
Or is it because it sees no value to hard economic realities where women’s agency plays a central role? Or perhaps it is because there is no unanimity on the Islamic justification behind such decrees?
Multilateralism is supposed to be the guarantor of all human rights and dignity, for all people, at all times. But as governmental regimes weaken, so do traditional multilateral entities heavily reliant on those governments. Time for community based transnational networks based on intergenerational, multicultural, gender sensitive leaders.
Rev Dr Chloe Bryer is Executive Director, Interfaith Center of New York; Prof Azza Karam is Secretary General, Religions for Peace; Ruth Messinger is Social Justice Consultant, Jewish Theological Seminary; and Negina Yari is Country Director, Afghans4Tomorrow
UNITED NATIONS, Dec 23 (IPS) – The reform of the Security Council, the most powerful body at the United Nations, has remained a never-ending political saga.
According to the President of the General Assembly, Csaba K?rösi of Hungary, 43 years have passed since the question of Security Council reform first appeared on the UN agenda.
“It has been 17 years since world leaders expressed their support for the so-called “early reform” of the Council, calling it an essential element of the overall effort to reform the United Nations”.
“And it has been 13 years since the General Assembly launched an intergovernmental negotiations (IGN) process”, he added.
But a lingering question remains?
Will reforms be ever achieved in the lifespan of the United Nations, which has made significant contributions as a humanitarian relief organization but remains deadlocked as a political body, outliving its usefulness?
After more than four decades, the reform process has been at a virtual standstill –or perhaps moving at the combined pace of a paralytic snail and a limping tortoise.
Pointing out the deadlock, K?rös said there are groups of Member States who are very much for the expansion of the permanent and non-permanent membership. There are others who favour expansion only—of non-permanent memberships.
And then, there are countries that favour the preservation of existing veto rights, while others would like to abolish all veto rights.
There are also countries supporting the expansion of non-permanent memberships with similar veto rights or reformed veto rights compared with the one today, he pointed out.
“It would be intellectually very easy to suggest a solution but it’s not my role. I cannot step out of my role, So, it will be the responsibility of Member States to iron out a compromise”
“As we stand, compromises are not on the horizon,” he declared.
Stephen Zunes, Professor of Politics, University of San Francisco, who has written extensively on the politics of the Security Council, told IPS given that the veto-wielding members of the Security Council have a strong stake in maintaining the status quo, it is hard to imagine that these latest efforts at reform will be any more successful than previous attempts.
This can only hurt the credibility of the United Nations, whose enforcement mechanisms will continue to be trapped in a 1945 worldview, he noted.
“It was the Soviets who primarily abused their veto power during the first quarter century of the United Nations. During the next four decades, it was the United States which emerged most frequently as the lone dissenting vote blocking scores of otherwise unanimous Security Council resolutions”.
During the past decade, he pointed out, it has been Putin’s Russia which has emerged as the greatest obstacle to unity.
In almost every case, the negative consequences of vetoes by Washington and Moscow have most seriously impacted not each other, but peoples of the Global South.
“It is a travesty that while only 16% of the world’s population is white, 80% of the permanent seats in the Security Council are held by majority white countries,” said Zunes.
Currently, the 15-member Security Council is composed of five permanent members (P5)– the US, UK, Russia China and France, armed with veto powers, along with 10 non-permanent members, without veto powers, elected for two years, on the basis of geographical rotation.
Meanwhile, the contenders for permanent seats include India, Japan, Germany and Brazil– with or without vetoes.
Africa seeks two seats, and the countries staking their claims include Nigeria, South Africa and Egypt. But the 55-member African Union is now seeking a seat of its own. Last week, Algeria made a case for a permanent seat on behalf of North Africa.
The reform process known as Intergovernmental Negotiations (IGN), that began in 2009, is co-chaired by Permanent Representatives Alya Ahmed Saif Al-Thani of Qatar and Martin Bille Hermann of Denmark.
David M. Malone, Rector of the United Nations University and Under-Secretary-General of the United Nations, told IPS: “I fear Security Council reform involving permanent seats– rather than working methods, and perhaps some variations on elected seats, with some of these perhaps becoming semi-permanent with or without vetoes– is likely to be blocked for as long as the UN is around, not least precisely because the world has changed so much that each of the P-5, with the possible exception of China, has something to lose, if even modest reform on composition occurs”.
Adding more vetoes is likely to make the Council even less effective than it is now, and likely slower, he pointed out.
“The reason I put my comment this way is that each of the P-5 has its own reasons for not wanting further competition in terms of power within the Council”, he said.
France may fear the emergence of the idea of an European Union (EU) seat, if the debate gets serious. For the UK, more permanent seats would simply devalue its own, which is a rare jewel (at least in terms of self-image) in the crown after BREXIT.
The US already finds it very hard to get its own way, said Malone, a former Permanent Representative of Canada to the United Nations.
Nobody wants more Russias, particularly at the moment. And China, while formally supporting more permanent seats for countries of the Global South has, noticeably, done nothing concrete to help make this happen.
“The circumstances generating a new multilateral dispensation representing the global community in the sphere of security are likely to arise only after a global catastrophe, just like the UN’s creation was an outcome of World War II”.
And who really wants another World War II type disruption of the current global order, even recognizing the gross equity deficit in the Security Council’s current disposition?
he asked.
“As I’ve observed (and, for my country, at times, on and off played a role relative to) the Council for slightly more than thirty years, I’ve come to think of the Security Council reform issue (as it pertains to composition, rather than to, say, working methods) as a parlour game greatly enjoyed by delegates and observers of the UN.”
They so enjoy it because they know the score is bound to be a nil-one in the final reel.
So, the debate is gratis and gratuitous, however good the intentions of a number of delegations may be, said Malone author of The UN Security Council in the 21st Century (as co-editor; 2015, Lynne Rienner Publishers) and the second edition of Law and Practice of the United Nations (co-authored graduate textbook; 2016; Oxford University Press).
Martin S. Edwards, Professor and Chair, School of Diplomacy and International Relations at Seton Hall University in South Orange, New Jersey, told IPS since President Biden opened the door on this, it makes every bit of sense to rise to the moment.
“But it also means that the window here is narrow, as he will soon have to focus on reelection. And we know that the UN is not going to be a focus in a Republican administration. So, the time for serious dealing is now.”
Recognizing US domestic constraints is important for a second reason as well. What many do not understand is that for the P5, these proposals require ratification, he said.
For the US, that’s a 2/3 vote in a polarized Senate. It is difficult for me to imagine circumstances that would cause Republican Senators to give President Biden a win. And delay on the part of countries will again cause that window to close, Edwards noted.
Many countries are seeking the perfect at the expense of the good. For example, if the issue is representation, then is pursuing a veto really needed?
“Countries have spent several years trying to delegitimize the veto, so it makes little sense to ask for it. Rhetorically, no one wants to propose anything less, and this also makes it difficult to find a deal: you either have a veto or you don’t”.
Some of these proposals are clearly self-serving, said Edwards.
By itself that’s not a bad thing, but since the goal of the African countries was to develop a common negotiating position – the Ezulwini Consensus – it would be a shame for African countries to try to break it.
“To me, there are two questions about that consensus, which is two permanent seats and two elected seats for Africa. Can Africa live with less? And then what does the rest of the SC look like?”
The P5 countries were accorded veto power because of their status as both great powers and the victors in World War II. They continue to exercise that power even though they do not represent the changing global demographic composition or realities of current geopolitical power.
Moreover, whereas the Council was bestowed with the powers to maintain peace and international security with enforceable mechanisms, it has generally failed to reach consensus on enforcing some of its own resolutions, declared Edwards.
An emergency Security Council meeting on Ukraine. Credit: UN Photo/Evan Schneider
Opinion by James Paul (new york)
Inter Press Service
The writer is former Executive Director, Global Policy Forum and author of “Of Foxes and Chickens”—Oligarchy and Global Power in the UN Security Council.
NEW YORK, Dec 23 (IPS) – The UN Charter mandates the Security Council to maintain international peace, but wars rage on and nations arm themselves with ever more lethal weapons. No wonder that the Council’s critics are so many and calls for its reform so urgent.
On December 11, 1992, with post-Cold War optimism, the UN General Assembly voted to gather comments from member states on Council reform. Eighty governments made submissions, many sharply critical.
In the thirty years since, there have been endless meetings and initiatives. Year after year, governments, scholars, NGOs, and citizen movements have advanced proposals for Council renovation. In all that time, little progress has been made.
The Council’s five Permanent Members (the P-5) are the heart of the problem. Armed with vetoes, never-ending Council membership, and many other special privileges, they perpetuate their power, protect their global interests and shield their incessant war making.
They shape international law to suit themselves. The United States, the global giant, has by far the most dominant role in the Council. But it is adverse to following the rules itself and rarely inclined towards peaceful conflict solutions. Many ask: should the foxes guard the global chicken coop?
Various powers outside the P-5 want to be elevated to the highest rank. Brazil, India, Japan and Germany have long announced that they want to join the Permanent club. They argue that they would bring fresh ideas to better “represent” world regions and promote world peace.
Nigeria, South Africa and Egypt want to belong to the exclusive club too, bringing (they say) an African voice. But (to use an African metaphor) would these new crocodiles protect the world’s little fish? It seems unlikely!
Other reformers insist on more seats (and longer terms) for the Elected Members of the Council, presently ten in number. Smaller members are very vulnerable to pressure, threats and bribes from the P-5. Further, these lesser countries manage to have only the slightest influence on the Council’s proceedings.
They are, said the exasperated Singapore ambassador, “like short-term commuters on a long-distance passenger train.” So, a simple increase in Elected Members would not be a sure bet.
Limiting the veto or abolishing it entirely would have a very positive result but, needless to say, the P-5 fiercely oppose it. Reformers have also pressed for fairer membership elections and more frequent open public meetings.
Yet (with the exception of cosmetic tweaks) the reform process constantly runs up against P-5 blocking power. Their veto can stop any reform proposal dead in its tracks. But we should not forget that the world is changing and that autocratic power in history never lasts forever!
All reform proposals reflect an idealistic notion that the Council can be changed to restrain the enormous power, appetite and influence of the strongest and richest nations. This idea is rooted in the dream of democratic institutions within nation states, that rich and poor can elect representatives and determine policy in what passes for the general interest.
Difficult as it is at the national level, how could it possibly work in the war-torn world of global politics? Might one day the P-5 Ancien Regime collapse in a great crisis, under desperate pressure from a global citizens’ movement? What would it take to set such a process in motion? It may seem impossible, but so was the French revolution. We can be skeptical, but if we want peace we must press for change.
WASHINGTON DC, Dec 21 (IPS) – There are two sides to the problem of Gender Parity at the United Nations.
On the one hand, member states need to appoint more women to their senior ambassadorial ranks. There is always tremendous competition for the post of UN ambassador, especially if a member state is on the UN security Council.
It’s a pipeline question for the member states. To reach that level of seniority, a diplomat has to have the years of service. It will likely take time for countries to have the flow through of women ambassadors. So, the UN Secretary-Genera (SG) is correct in putting the onus on member states to change or accelerate their systems.
That said, there is still a problem within the UN itself.
In the last 5 years, many governments notably the UK, Italy, the Scandinavians have sponsored the regional women’s mediation networks. For example. I’m a member of the Women Mediators Across the Commonwealth (WMC).
The vision was to identify women with the requisite skills and experience in mediation efforts and provide a new pathway into senior UN positions particularly as Envoys and mediation work. In the WMC we have 50 amazingly experienced women from across Commonwealth nations.
Similarly, the Mediterranean Women’s Mediation Network has members from that region. For senior positions, our governments have to support our candidacy, and they have done so.
But the UN system is a blockage, because when it comes to determining eligibility, their criteria still include things like ’15 years of UN experience’. Well, the whole point is that most of us have gained experience outside of the UN bureaucracy or as expert consultants with the UN, but not as UN staff.
We bring a wealth of other valuable expertise, yet the skill and knowledge that outsiders might bring seems of less value to the recruiters, than then traditional institutional knowledge. As a result, the female candidates that member states might endorse, are blocked by the UN.
If they are serious about having more women in the peace and security sector, particularly women with the relevant experience in inclusive and gender responsive peacemaking, security humanitarian work, they need to look for us in civil society. This is where most of the innovation has happened and is happening.
The work being done by women on the ground and lessons sharing that goes on through our networks is invaluable. It is exactly what the UN needs to be more fit for purpose. It is also the path towards actual reform and renovation of the UN architecture and practice.
But it can only happen if the member states and the UN leadership and bureaucracy have the vision, political will and willingness to change their recruitment priorities and practices.
Anyone claiming they can’t find the women, is willfully ignoring the facts.
Sanam Naraghi Anderlini, MBE, Founder & CEO, International Civil Society Action Network in Washington DC.
