“The Time is Now” to Invest in Youth, Girls

The demographic dividend: though not a new concept, it is one of the major buzzwords at the UN this year. But what does it really mean?There are 1.8 billion young people between the ages of 10 and 24 around the world, the most in the history of humankind.

Will Governments Support Access to Information Driving Development?

In an Information Society, access, and the ability to apply and re-use information is at the heart of individual fulfilment and social participation. Long before the idea of an Information Society came into use, libraries connected people to this, connecting them with literature and learning, and allowing them to improve their lives, and those of their families and communities.

Asian Financial Crisis: Lessons Learned and Unlearned

Debates are taking place on whether there will be another financial crisis, whether in some part of the world or that is global in scope.  Governments draw lessons from financial crises to adopt measures to prevent their recurrence.  However, such measures are often designed to address the root causes of the last crisis but not the next one.  More importantly, they can actually become the new sources of instability and crisis. 

Can Economic Growth Be Really Green?

The answer to this big question is apparently “yes” – Economic growth can be really green. How?

Sinking Island Seeks Seat in Security Council

The Maldives, one of the world’s low-lying, small island developing states (SIDS) -- threatened with extinction because of a sea-level rise-- is shoring up its coastal defences in anticipation of the impending calamity.

Migrant Contributions to Development: Creating a “New Positive Narrative”

Despite the “undeniable” benefits of migration, barriers including public misconceptions continue to hinder positive development outcomes, participants said during a series of thematic consultations here on safe, orderly, and regular migration.

To Achieve Ambitious Goals – We Need to Start with our Basic Rights

Recent protests in Ethiopia have seen people demonstrate in their thousands, angry at their authoritarian government, its favouritism towards those close to the ruling elite, and its failure to share the country’s wealth more equally.

The G20 Needs To Go Back to its Roots

When the finance ministers of the G7 countries proposed the G20 in the late 1990s, a good sense of realism prevailed. They recognized that addressing issues of global finance required the political support from—and involvement of—emerging market economies.

The Unnoticed Demise of Democracy

Politicians are so busy fighting for their jobs, they hardly seem to notice that they risk going out of business. Democracy is on the wane, yet the problem is nowhere in Parliaments. Common to all is a progressive loss of vision, of long term planning and solutions, with politics used just for power.

Prepare Now for the Next Financial Crisis

The Asian financial crisis started 20 years ago and the global financial crisis and recession 9 years back. When a new global financial crisis strikes, the developing countries will be more damaged than in the last crisis as they have become less resilient and more vulnerable.  They thus need to prepare from being overwhelmed.

Lawmakers in Europe Want the UN to Debate a Parliamentary Assembly. When Will Governments Follow?

Earlier this month, the European Parliament adopted its annual recommendations on the European Union’s policy at the upcoming session of the United Nations General Assembly that begins in September.

WHO Urges Govt’s to Raise Taxes on Tobacco

Seven million people die each year from tobacco-related deaths, according to a new report published by the World Health Organisation today.

In the New World Order, Asia Is Rising, Says Pakistan’s UN Envoy

When Maleeha Lodhi arrived at the United Nations in 2015 as Pakistan’s ambassador, she brought with her a broad background in academia, journalism and diplomacy: a Ph.D. in political science from the London School of Economics, where she later taught political sociology; the first woman to edit major newspapers in Pakistan; ambassador to the United States twice and once as Pakistan’s high commissioner in London.

Halting Sexual Exploitation of Children in Tourism, Mission Impossible

While the business sector jumps for joy as the number of tourists grew in 2016 for the seventh consecutive year to reach 1.2 billion, and as the first four months of 2017 have registered 6 per cent increase, the sheer speed, abetted by technology, of an atrocious crime—the sexual exploitation of children in tourism, has, to date, out-paced all attempts to put an end to it.

Don’t Move Resources from Development to Security, Warns UN Chief

Twenty years ago, when I was starting my functions as Prime Minister of Portugal, the world was surfing a wave of optimism. The Cold War had ended, technological prosperity was in full swing, the internet was spreading and there was the idea that globalisation would not only increase global wealth, but that it would trickle down and would benefit everybody in our planet.

Not Just Numbers: Migrants Tell Their Stories

Every single day, print and online media and TV broadcasters show images and footage of migrants and refugees adrift, salvage teams rescuing their corpses--alive or dead, from fragile boats that are often deliberately sunk by human traffickers near the coasts of a given country. Their dramas are counted –and told-- quasi exclusively in cold figures.

The Arab Youth Bulge and the Parliamentarians

More than ever before, the Arab region now registers an unprecedented youth population growth while facing huge challenges such as extremely high unemployment rates --more than half of all regional jobless population--, and inadequate education and health provision, in particular among young women.

Reforming the International Financial System

When we fail to act on lessons from a crisis, we risk exposing ourselves to another one. The 1997-1998 East Asian crises provided major lessons for international financial reform. Two decades later, we appear not to have done much about them. The way the West first responded to the 2008 global financial crisis should have reminded us to do more. But besides accumulating more reserves, Southeast Asia has not done much else.

2 Billion People Don’t Have Access To Clean Water, Opens up Fissures of Inequality

More than two billion people lack access to clean and safe drinking water, according to a new report released by the World Health Organisation (WHO).

We Have to Reclaim the Public Policy Space for SDGs

At the High-Level Political Forum which currently takes place at the United Nations in New York several events, for instance a SDG Business Forum, are devoted to the critical role of business and public-private partnerships (PPPs) in implementing the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development.

Nuclear Ban Approved, Now What?

More than seven decades after the deployment of deadly atomic bombs in Japan, the UN has passed a historic treaty banning nuclear weapons around the world. Though it has sparked hope for a future without nuclear weapons, uncertainty in the success of the treaty still lingers.