How inclusive is activism and discussions on climate change? Most environmental movements and organisations in the United States and Europe are primarily white and middle class, and hold vast amount of resources and set the agenda for policy work and ecosystem recovery. This dated photo shows a landslide in central Kenya that resulted after intense rainfall - one of the consequences of climate change. Credit: Isaiah Esipisu/IPS

By Samira Sadeque
UNITED NATIONS, Sep 25 2020 (IPS)

Wrapping up Climate Week at the United Nations General Assembly, global leaders called for climate action that may be “ambitious but achievable” and called for climate measures that would “leave no one behind”. But some climate activists remain concerned about how this can be achieved.

“The environmental movements in the United States and Europe are primarily white and primarily middle class,” Tara Villalba, a Filipino climate activist in the U.S., told IPS. “These mainstream environmental organisations hold vast amounts of resources (in the form of land, money, other property, and influence), and they are in charge of how those resources are used in ecosystem recovery and in policy work: our solutions are not taken seriously.”

Villalba spoke to IPS following Thursday’s Climate Change Roundtable hosted by the U.N. Secretary-General, in the same week as a significant pledge made by China to achieve “carbon neutrality” by 2060.

“But the climate emergency is fully upon us, and we have no time to waste,” U.N. Secretary-General António Guterres said in his speech, as he also called for climate action efforts to “leave no one behind”.

While leaders, including the United Kingdom’s Prime Minister Boris Johnson, applauded this effort by China, they also reminded listeners of the grave situation the world is in currently — at the meeting point of a climate crisis and a global pandemic.

“Most people did not imagine that the world would be afflicted in the way we have…we were woefully underprepared,” Johnson said regarding the pandemic. “But for climate change, nobody can say that we have not been warned, nobody can say that we’re not, now, capable of  making the preparation.”

European Union President Ursula von der Leyen shared how the pandemic has only highlighted the glaring holes in how we live and build.

“[The] corona pandemic has not lowered the threat of climate change,” she said. “On the contrary, it has made us aware of the fragility of our life on this planet.”

She added that recovery from this moment will require “substantial investment” to ensure that economies are moving forward.

“It will require a determined action to leave no one behind,” she said,  announcing the EU’s agreement to make Europe the first climate neutral continent in the world by 2050.

“The European leaders have decided to set up the next generation EU: this is a €750 billion recover and resilience fund that will invest in Europe’s green and digital transition for building a resilient and competitive economy,” she said. At least €275 billion has been budgeted for environmental and climate goals.

Despite these big promises and gestures, there are some who believe that a lot more work needs to be done to ensure those at the grassroots level are being included in the conversation.

“Our solutions are not taken seriously,” Villalba, who has worked in the climate movement for 15 years, told IPS. “Racism makes white people think that they are the best people to decide how to use those resources. Classism makes wealthy people decide they are the best decision makers and that power should be theirs. They want to “help” people like us but charity is not what’s needed. Power and wealth need to be redistributed so that we can all be less at-risk.”

She also painted a comprehensive, all-encompassing picture of how different social issues are intricately linked with climate justice concerns.

At the center of racism, and classism, she says is “an oppressive system that distributes resources.”

“Poor people and people of colour live with pollution. Poor countries have become the trash dumps of rich countries,” she said, drawing a parallel to a food chain where something as vast as climate change can trickle down to affect people on an individual level.

“Our work wears down our bodies faster because we cannot regenerate when we can’t sleep, eat, and live properly. But the people, communities and ecosystems that are being most severely impacted are where people of colour and poor people live and work and play,” she added.

Villalba, a single mother, is raising three children and is an organiser for housing justice: all factors that she says play into, or add to, the climate crisis.

“Many environmental activists assume people like me are not interested in climate activism. But we are. We have the most to lose – we lose our livelihoods and our families face risks first in ANY crisis – whether it is the COVID crisis or the climate crisis,” she said. “Fight because climate solutions MUST come from people like me. People who can barely make ends meet, and people who cannot meet all their needs to be able to live.”

Ahead of the United Nations General Assembly (UNGA), the U.N. Secretary-General António Guterres warned against the rapid rise in misinformation campaigns about vaccines, leading to “vaccine hesitancy and igniting wild conspiracy theories”. Credit: Jorge Luis Baños/IPS

By Samira Sadeque
UNITED NATIONS, Sep 17 2020 (IPS)

Key focuses of the upcoming 75th session of the United Nations General Assembly (UNGA) High Level Week will be the accessibility of vaccines and a renewed plea for a global ceasefire. “I will make a strong appeal to the international community to mobilise all efforts for the global ceasefire to become a reality by the end of the year,” U.N. Secretary-General António Guterres said on Wednesday. 

At the briefing, where he discussed the issues the UNGA will address, he also announced the launch of a report on how the U.N. has responded to the current pandemic. It details three approaches the U.N. has taken to address the crisis: a health response, a focus on safeguarding lives and livelihoods, and a transformative recovery process that aims to address the “underlying fragilities and identifying opportunities for transformative change towards more just, equal and resilient societies and economies”.

In an interview with U.N. News on Sept. 15 Guterres called for a COVID-19 vaccine to be made available to everyone. 

“To think that we can preserve the rich people, and let the poor people suffer, is a stupid mistake,” he said.

The report calls for the “most massive public health effort in history” — a move that is made possible by a global collaboration between countries putting together the Access to COVID-19 Tools (ACT) Accelerator. 

The ACT-Accelerator, which the Secretary-General also mentioned in his speech, has been designed to accelerate the development, production and proper access to tests, treatments as well as vaccines, according to the report. The ACT-Accelerator employs different stakeholders such as governments, those in the field of science and health, and civil society members among others. 

Guterres further reiterated that while it’s important to keep driving towards a vaccine, it’s crucial to keep other factors in mind when discussing a vaccine. 

“A vaccine alone cannot solve this crisis; certainly not in the near term,” he said. 

“We need a vaccine to be affordable and available to all – a people’s vaccine,” Guterres added later. “That means a quantum leap in funding for the ACT-Accelerator and its COVAX Facility.”  

“For any vaccine to work, people across the globe need to be willing to take it.”

He warned against the rapid rise in misinformation campaigns about vaccines, leading to “vaccine hesitancy and igniting wild conspiracy theories”. 

This concern is also highlighted in the report, which introduces the U.N.’s “Verified” project, an initiative to “share clear, compelling content, and fight lies with fact-based advice and solutions”. With the work of more than 18,000 people battling misinformation, the initiative has reached 400 million people, according to the report.  

The report also showed a glaring difference in the budget required to address the current crisis against the resources raised. 

For a “Strategic Preparedness and Response Plan”, which prioritises addressing immediate health needs, there is a need for $1.74 billion, but so far $1.44 billion has been raised. 

For the Global Humanitarian Response Plan, which focuses on 63 highly vulnerable countries, the requirement is $10.31 billion, but only $2.48 billion has been raised. 

For responses to the socio-economic response and recovery in middle- and lower-income countries, the “U.N. COVID-19 Response and Recovery Fund”, the required amount is $1 billion, and the amount raised is $58 million. 

Meanwhile, Guterres also highlighted other issues the world is reeling from at the moment and put a light on how these issues are all interlinked in different ways: such as climate change, gender inequality. He added that the world’s recovery from this crisis should address all of these issues. 

“Recovery must be green. Subsidising fossil fuels and bailing out polluting industries means locking in bad patterns for decades to come,” he said. “Recovery must advance gender equality. And recovery requires effective multilateralism.”

Nobel Peace Laureate Jody Williams won the prize for her work to eradicate landmines in 1997. She is pictured here speaking at a youth protest at the World Summit of Nobel Peace Laureates held in Merida, Mexico. Courtesy: Albany J Alvarez/ Nobel Women’s Initiative

By Anna Shen
UNITED NATIONS, Sep 26 2019 (IPS)

On Monday, United States President Donald Trump continued to float the idea that he should be awarded a Nobel Prize, but that it would never happen because the system was rigged.

Nobel Peace Laureate Jody Williams, who won the prize for her work to eradicate landmines in 1997, would likely agree Trump would never win – but not because the system was rigged, but because under his leadership she said: “We have swung into the dark ages.”

Speaking at the World Summit of Nobel Peace Laureates, in the heart of the Yucatan, in Merida, Mexico, she was asked which conflict she was most concerned about, and she replied, “Trump. He is a global crisis in and of himself.”

“He is pulling out of treaties on the climate, recharging the nuclear weapons that the U.S. has, and modernising the weapons arsenal. We don’t need more nuclear weapons,” she said, adding that everything he does is about ruining institutions.

Trump-like behaviour has spread everywhere, she continued. “Around the world, Trump has given voice to xenophobia, hatred, racism and emboldened several leaders like him. In Brazil and Italy, the leaders are the same,” she said.

Williams had much to speak about, including Trump, the state of world peace, why women are critical to the global peace process, and how to engage youth.

In an interview after the Summit, she stopped to give her thoughts — before continuing on to Rome for meetings at the Vatican to discuss killer robots and artificial intelligence, which she is increasingly concerned about because “nobody is talking about them.”

Excerpts from her interview:

Inter Press Service (IPS): You are chairing the Women’s Nobel Initiative (NWI). Why and how did that come about?

Jody Williams (JW): In 2004, Nobel Laureate Shirin Ebadi and I were in Nairobi for an international landmine meeting.  She had started an NGO to protect children from landmines on the border between Iraq and Iran. A handful of Nobel women, in support of women’s rights, met with Nobel Laureate Waangari Maathai.

All six of us decided to use whatever influence we had to shine a spotlight on grassroots women’s organisations working on sustainable peace. We believe that if there is no justice there is no peace, and if there is no equality there is no peace. Women are critical to the peace process globally.

The Nobel Women’s delegation focuses on women because nobody listens to women. We have worked in the Democratic Republic of Congo with women, and at the height of Bangladesh’s Rohingya crisis. We have done a lot in Mexico, especially to protect indigenous land in Ateneco, where, in 2001, government officials wanted to take over, some would say steal, the lands of the farmers of Atenco.

This was to build a new international airport near Mexico City. Forty-seven women were raped, and the men who organised defending the land were imprisoned for four years. Others spent years in hiding. Suddenly, the women found themselves thrust into the role of leadership.

Over the next years, the Nobel Women’s Initiative became involved in supporting the efforts of the women of Atenco by lending our voices to amplify theirs.  It seemed to help. I went to Atenco to show further support on behalf of NWI and other Nobel Laureates supporting their efforts.

At one point the women protested, and with indignation they came – How dare you take our land and imprison our men? They were setting a precedent for “public protest” that this was their land and they wanted to keep it.

Finally, the cases of the 12 men came to the Supreme Court in mid-2010 and at a strategic moment, I was able to return, meet with the Justices themselves and other public officials – and then be there when the court decided to set the twelve political prisoners free. It was unreal. Amazing. Just think about the precedent set by freeing the men, something that underscored the freedom of assembly and all, but for one acquittal.

Later, I was able to go back to Atenco to see the women we’ve supported in their struggle to defend their land and their rights. Also, I got to meet the twelve men.  They are strong, dignified, and proud of their struggle to defend their land and their livelihoods. They even gave me my own machete. It is not a weapon, but more of a symbol, as it something used to slash in the fields.

IPS: Why are women essential to the peace process globally?

JW: I ask — why aren’t women needed? I followed the route of Syrian refugees up through Balkans to Germany – through Serbia, Croatia, Slovenia and Germany and met with Syrian women who had formed an organisation to push for peace and for reconciliation.

During a press conference, a young man stands up and asks: ‘What is the role of women in the peace process?’ I gave him a death stare. I asked him: ‘What is the role of men?’ He is dumbfounded, fascinated in positive way, as if he was hit by a bolt of lightning. He replied that he had never thought about that way.

If all sectors of society are not involved in peace negotiations, the root causes of the conflict are not addressed. In El Salvador’s peace agreement, three-quarters of it was given to separating combatants and disarming the guerillas and trying to help them with a political party.

There were only a few pages talking about the root causes of the problem. The thought was that once all of this is done, they would try to look at the root. But the problem is that we need to look at those causes now. How do you have a full-blown agreement and get buy-in during the process?

Women — who are trying to hold their families together — have a lot to say about the peace process. Our role as women is everything — community, life, keeping people together. You don’t have to love everyone, but accept they are different, as long as they are not breaking the law.

IPS: How can we solve the climate crisis?

JW: When I think about ways to address solve the climate crisis immediately, it is about redefining security. It is not about having more bombs, but making sure that we continue to exist and live on this planet, and that we stop destroying it every day.

We should be protesting the government’s budgets on the military. If we think about it, trillions and trillions and trillions of dollars are spent building weapons of war. If you are constantly planning for war, then you have to practice and invade somebody.

I am proposing that governments reduce military budgets by 25 percent and put it into a fund to save the planet. If they did reduce, we would have enough money to save the planet and fulfil every one of the United Nations’ Sustainable Development Goals.

We also have to put at the forefront our corporations, whose bottom line is making money and is not worrying about a better planet. We need to raise our voices in companies, tell them that if they do care about what they are doing to destroy the planet, and if they don’t change, we won’t buy their stuff. It takes a community to come together and not buy their stuff. It’s doable. All these elements can change this planet quickly.

We have to work together. No one person changes the world and I don’t care who pretends they do. It takes collaboration and communication about what we are doing to make a difference. Together we can. A small group of people working together can do a lot on this planet.

IPS: What is the role of youth, and especially of young women in creating peace?

JW: Often people will say to me that young people don’t care. But look at Greta Thunberg and the climate strikes. Not all young women, but many, know they have a place. Young people aren’t waiting, they are using their voices to hold adults who messed up everything, to account. Young people are playing a role. I’m proud of them and especially to walk with them and learn more from them.

From farm to fork, the global food industry needs to start aligning their operations with the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals or SDGs. Pictured here, a farmer tends to vegetables in a greenhouse in Antigua, where a climate-smart agricultural initiative seeks to improve farm productivity. Credit: Desmond Brown/IPS

By Samira Sadeque
UNITED NATIONS, Sep 25 2019 (IPS)

With up to one billion undernourished people around the world, and agriculture and land use systems increasingly vulnerable to climate change and land degradation, more companies within the global food industry need to start aligning their operations with the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals or SDGs.

As climate action remained a heightened focus at this year’s U.N. General Assembly, the Barilla Center for Food and Nutrition held an event in New York where different parties came together to discuss how to fix food security and get different stakeholders from governments to private sector to come together to make an impact.

Guido Barilla, President of the Barilla Foundation, announced the launch of the report “Fixing the Business of Food, the Food Industry and the SDG challenges” at the event held on Tuesday, Sept. 24.

The report noted that the food industry is a key sector in achieving sustainable food, land, water, and oceans. But current agriculture and food systems “lead to widespread hunger, malnutrition, and obesity”, accounting for almost a “quarter of greenhouse gas emissions, over 90 percent of scarcity-weighted water use, most losses of biodiversity, overexploitation of fisheries, eutrophication through nutrient overload, and considerable pollution of water and air, for example through the burning of crop residues”.

The report found that while food industry leaders have already taken steps towards aligning with the SDGs, “more work is needed in terms of business action towards sustainable development, as well as to make sustainability reporting more systematic, detailed, and useful for all parties”.

“Our planet is crying out for us to make these changes,” said Barilla during his remarks. “Together with our partners we set ourselves the challenge of assessing the food industry progress…in aligning the sustainable development goals.”

Columbia University professor and Sustainable Development Solutions Network Director, Jeffrey Sachs, and Director General of the Food and Agriculture Organisation of the United Nations (FAO), Qu Dongyu, shared their thoughts among others at the event.

Qu called on the food industry to do more to support healthy foods and reduce food loss and waste.

“Nutrition is just the approach, not the end goal. The goal is a happy and healthy life.” Director-General @FAODG of @FAO discusses why fixing the business of food is a priority. #foodsustainability #fixingfood

— BCFN Foundation (@BarillaCFN) September 24, 2019

“We know that agriculture is pushing against ecosystems all over the world to an absolutely shocking extent,” Sachs said at the workshop. “We’re losing the ecosystem…of course it’s complex, it requires good science to understand what are the drivers but agriculture is certainly the lead driver.”

Scarlett Benson, Associate at SYSTEMIQ Ltd, presented the report “Growing Better: Ten Critical Transitions to Transform Food and Land Use”.

“If we continue as we’re going, we’re going to deforest 400 million more hectares of natural ecosystem for agricultural land,” Benson said. “But if we can implement this reform agenda, we’ll actually save 1.2 billion hectares of land that is currently used for agriculture and that land will be available for return to nature so that will allow us to…achieve all biodiversity agenda.”

She mentioned the part of the research that often garners a lot of attention is about freeing up land.

“Because freeing up land, by changing our diets, by reducing food loss and weight and including agriculture productivity through better use of technology, actually enables us to use land more efficiently,” Benson said.

“Land has an opportunity cost and it is an asset for us,” she said. 

When asked how many companies are actually adapting sustainable development practices with high priority, Charlotte Ersboll, U.N. Global Compact Senior Advisor, said “too few,” citing a recent study by the organisation.

“It’s very clear that despite all the excitement around SDGs it’s really very superficial what companies are doing,” she said.

During the event she said that only 27 percent of companies where carrying sustainability through their supply chain.

Charlotte Ersboll @C_Ersboll of @globalcompact says only 27% of companies are carrying sustainability through their supply chain. “We want to see sustainability achored with every member of [an organization’s] senior management team.” #foodsustainability #fixingfood

— BCFN Foundation (@BarillaCFN) September 24, 2019

“We can see that companies are certainly trying to embed sustainability in their strategy, they’re embedding policies,” she added, “but when we look at what kind of impact they are having on the ground, it’s far from what we need to see.”

“We found that companies look at health as mainly a responsibility for their workplace health departments but they don’t think about the potential negative impacts they can have in the production, supply, market chain and so we really want to see is they view health as a leading indicator for their activities.”

Accountability a key

A key highlight of the workshop was the lack of accountability and the need for each sector to hold other sectors accountable.

Sachs shed light on the importance of the different sectors coming together.

“We will not get sustainability on the planet, unless there’s co-responsibility,” he said. “We’re going to lose the resilience of the food sector itself if climate change, loss of biodiversity, destruction of land, scarcity of water continues the direction we’re going.”

In terms of achieving the SDGs, while there’s an obvious role for governments to play, Gerbrand Haverkamp, executive director of World Benchmarking Alliance (WBA), says they stay focused on the private sector.

“That means we want to make sure that business is conducted – so the way that coffee is sourced, the way that we grow bananas…that is done in a way that it doesn’t undermine progress and also starts to contribute towards progress on the SDG,” Haverkamp told IPS in an exclusive interview.

“But to make sure companies do that, we need to make sure that we are able to articulate what that means [so] that we can measure how good they are doing, and then we make those results publicly available,” he said, adding that this allows both the consumers and investors a way to tell the company how they’re performing and what risks their under-performance can pose. 

Haverkamp added that while companies tend to be generally interested to engage in these practices, a bigger challenge remains the data collection.

“Companies do not adequately collect a lot of data or they fail to disclose it, so that’s a technical issue,” he added. “And to be able to hold someone accountable, you need to understand the issue.”

Others who spoke at the workshop include Emanuela Claudia Del Re, Vice Minister of Foreign Affairs and International Cooperation, Representative of the European Commission; Angelo Riccaboni, Full Professor Of Business Administration, University of Siena as well as Chair of the Prima Foundation; and Diane Holdorf, Managing Director of Food and Nature at the World Business Council for Sustainable Development (WBCSD), based in Geneva, Switzerland.

US President Donald Trump addressing the General Assembly 24 September 2019. Courtesy: United Nations

By Thalif Deen
UNITED NATIONS, Sep 25 2019 (IPS)

The United Nations is an institution which promotes multilateralism and preaches some of the basic tenets of multiparty democracy and liberalism, including the rule of law, universal human rights, free speech, civil liberties, the rights of refugees and freedom of the press.

But, paradoxically, the first four speakers during the opening day, September 24, of the 74th session of the U.N. General Assembly—Brazil’s Jair Bolsonaro, U.S. president Donald Trump, Egypt’s President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi and Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan —represented the very anti-thesis of what the world body stands for.

They have been best described either as rightwing nationalists, populist strongmen or authoritarian leaders—who, like Al-Sisi, presides over a repressive regime.

Martin S. Edwards, Associate Professor and Chair, School of Diplomacy and International Relations at Seton Hall University, told IPS, “I watched these speeches with students from several of these countries.  To be sure, the rhetoric can scare you.”

But these students were not scared, because of two things, he pointed out.

First, they know history. Just as President Trump spoke of national renewal, there is also a reformist tradition in the US as in other countries that practices a politics based on inclusion and not fear. These traditions haven’t gone away, and they will return, he said.

Second, they know facts.

“The U.N. is tremendously popular across the globe, and they know that we can no more deny the necessity for international cooperation than we can deny the existence of gravity,” said Edwards, who is also director of the Center for U.N. and Global Governance Studies.

So, many called today—the opening day of the General Assembly sessions–“the day of populist strong men”. But their time won’t last, he predicted.

And it’s interesting to juxtapose their speeches with student activist Greta Thurnberg’s on the climate change crisis on Monday.

Secretary-General Antonio Guterres is banking on the optimists, and the rest of the week will be about their loud reply to today’s early speeches, Edwards said.

State Luncheon for world leaders hosted by Secretary-General Antonio Guterres. Courtesy: Kim Haughton/United Nations

Abby Maxman, President of Oxfam America, was quick to point out that President Trump, once again, led with a tired, nationalistic foreign policy of fear and blame, “seeking to discredit and undermine the multilateral institutions and the international cooperation that is so critical to promoting our shared prosperity and security”.

She said that Trump restated his foreign policy’s central false premise: that necessary efforts to build a better, safer world are somehow a threat to Americans.

He pointed fingers at others for some of the biggest challenges, like the crises in Yemen and Syria, but took no responsibility for his administration’s role in fuelling them, and failed to commit to do his part to stop the violence and save lives.

“The challenges we are all facing – growing inequality, influx of forced migration, the climate crisis — are the same for families and countries around the world. At a time when all of us are worried about the future, we must work together to build and renew international cooperation – not tear it down.

“But as usual, President Trump’s rhetoric falsely pits Americans’ love of country and passion for our planet and all its people against our interests. It’s not a choice we have to make. We can, and must, choose both.”

Amnesty International came down heavily both on Bolsonaro and Al-Sisi, singling out Bolsonaro’s dangerous rhetoric at the General Assembly as a “blow to human rights”.

Jurema Werneck, executive director of Amnesty International Brazil, expressed concern over Bolsonaro’s statement about confronting the media and the work of the national and international press.

She said these are fundamental to the right to freedom of expression, due to their role in denouncing human rights violations and addressing other political, environmental, social and economic problems.

“Without freedom of expression, the promotion and protection of human rights would be in grave danger. The government must also respect the right of civil society to monitor, demand accountability and take action to promote and protect the rights of all people,” Werneck added.

Meanwhile, Amnesty International also called on world leaders to confront Egypt’s Al- Sisi and “utterly condemn the crackdown he has waged to counter the outbreak of protests in recent days”.

Amnesty said it has documented how the Egyptian security forces have carried out sweeping arrests of protesters, rounded up journalists, human rights lawyers, activists, protesters and political figures in a bid to silence critics and deter further protests from taking place.

The government has also added the BBC and Alhurra news to the list of 513 other websites already blocked in Egypt and disrupted online messaging applications to thwart further protests.

“The government of President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi is clearly shaken to its core by the outbreak of protests and has launched a full-throttle clampdown to crush demonstrations and intimidate activists, journalists and others into silence,” said Najia Bounaim, North Africa Campaigns Director at Amnesty International.

“The world must not stand silently by as President al-Sisi tramples all over Egyptians’ rights to peaceful protest and freedom of expression. Instead of escalating this repressive backlash, the Egyptian authorities must immediately release all those detained for peacefully exercising their rights to freedom of expression and assembly and allow further protests on Friday to go ahead.”

Amnesty International said it has documented the arrests of at least 59 people from five cities across Egypt during protests that took place on the nights of Sept. 20 and 21.

Local human rights organisations have reported hundreds of arrests all over Egypt. The Egyptian Center for Economic and Social Rights reported that 964 individuals have been arrested in relation to the protests between September 19 and 24.

In New York, President Al-Sisi responded to questions from the media claiming that the protests were instigated by “political Islam.” 

However, Amnesty International said it found that, in fact, the protesters came from an extremely diverse range of age, socioeconomic, gender and religious backgrounds, including non-political backgrounds. All those detained faced the same “terrorism”- related charges.

In its 2018 World Report, Human Rights watch was strongly critical of the authoritarian tendencies of the Turkish government.

An April 2017 referendum, which voters approved by a slim margin, introduced constitutional amendments switching Turkey to a presidential system of governance, the most significant change to its political institutions in decades, said HRW.

The referendum took place under a state of emergency imposed after the July 15, 2016 attempted military coup, and in an environment of heavy media censorship, with many journalists and parliamentarians from the pro-Kurdish opposition in jail.

The new presidential system, which consolidates the incumbent’s hold on power, is a setback for human rights and the rule of law. It lacks sufficient checks and balances against abuse of executive power, greatly diminishing the powers of parliament, and consolidating presidential control over most judicial appointments. The presidential system will come fully into force following elections in 2019, according to the report.

The writer can be contacted at thalifdeen@ips.org

Anti-US demonstrations in Iran

By Thalif Deen
UNITED NATIONS, Sep 24 2019 (IPS)

Jim Mattis a former United States Defense Secretary in the Trump administration quotes a Marine Corps dictum in a recently released book titled “Call Sign Chaos: Learning to Lead”.

“When you’re going to a gun fight” he says, “bring all your friends with guns”—a piece of advice obviously directed at the Trump administration which remains increasingly isolated in the international community.

“Having fought many times in (international) coalitions, I believe that we need every ally we can bring to the fight – from imaginative military solutions to their country’s vote in the [United Nations], the more allies the better,” says the retired U.S. Marine Corps General, who recently quit the Trump administration in not-so-happy circumstances.

But how many of the U.N.’s big powers armed with big guns—and nuclear weapons– including UK, France, Russia and China, are willing to join the U.S. as it contemplates an attack on Iran?

Or even give its blessings to a Trump administration which has treated the U.N. with contempt by abandoning multilateralism, withdrawing from international treaties and drastically reducing funds to U.N. agencies?

And now, in an irony of ironies, Trump is turning to the U.N. for help– as it plans to lobby U.N. member states whose leaders will be attending a slew of high-level summit meetings in New York through Sept. 27. The lobbying is euphemistically described as “a diplomatic outreach campaign”.

Secretary of State Mike Pompeo set the stage for a confrontation when he accused Iran last week of carrying out an “act of war”—the strongest condemnation so far from any American official on Iran.

At the same time, he has sent mixed signals, like Trump, because he told reporters during a two-day trip to the Gulf: “We’re still striving to build out a coalition.”

The Iranian have denied responsibility for the recent drone and missile strikes on Saudi oil installations which have been claimed by the Houthi rebels in Yemen.

Iranian Foreign Minister Javid Zarif

Asked for a response, visiting Iranian Foreign Minister Javid Zarif said in New York: “Had Iran been involved in this attack, there would have been nothing left of that refinery.”

In a front-page story Sept. 19 headlined “White House seeks allies at U.N. to press Iran on Saudi oil attack,” the Wall Street Journal (WSJ) says the British U.N. ambassador Karen Pierce has already said responsibility hadn’t been determined as to who was behind the attacks on the Saudi oil fields while Japan and France have also signalled they aren’t convinced that Iran was behind the attacks.

The newspaper quotes Trump as telling the American Israeli Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) in a bygone era: “the U.N. is not a friend of democracy, not a friend of freedom and not even a friend of the United States”

Meanwhile, Russia and China, two veto-wielding members of the Security Council who are close allies of Iran, are unlikely to support any UN resolution authorising an attack on Iran.

But the Trump administration is apparently trying raise a “coalition of the willing” – as did the administration of President George W. Bush when it invaded Iraq in March 2003.

Ian Williams, UN correspondent for the Tribune and Senior Analyst, Foreign Policy in Focus

Ian Williams, U.N. correspondent for the Tribune and Senior Analyst, Foreign Policy in Focus, told IPS Trump has not pulled out of the U.N. precisely in anticipation of contingencies like this where the U.S. can abuse what Annan called the unique legitimising power of the U.N.

However, the case the U.S. brings to the U.N. members is even weaker than when it had to resort to the “Coalition of the Coerced,” to back the U.S. assault on Iraq.

After decades, Williams pointed out, U.N. members reluctantly accepted Israel is a de facto exception because the U.S. veto protects it from any practical consequences for its breaches of international law and the U.N. Charter. Saudi Arabia has tried hard to use similar leverage. 

Iran is not the most popular country in the 193-member General Assembly, but the hard evidence of its involvement in the attack on the Saudi refineries is yet to pin down and the entire international community except for the U.S.-Israel- Saudi Arabian axis knows that it was the U.S. that unilaterally broke the JCPOA and is waging economic war on Iran while Israel and the Gulf monarchies have been trying to incite U.S. military strikes against Teheran.

They also know that the UAE and Saudis have been dropping American and British bombs on Yemen, including on hospitals, so the oil refinery attack is, on the face of it, a very proportionate response from the Houthis, said Williams, author of “UNtold: The Real Story of the UN in Peace and War,” released by Just World Books..

Stephen Zunes, Professor of Politics and International Studies at the University of San Francisco, who has written extensively on the politics of the U.N. Security Council,  told IPS the U.S., as with the invasion of Iraq, might be able to assemble a “coalition of the willing,” this time consisting of Israel, Saudi Arabia, and other right-wing allies from the region and launch an illegal war without U.N. authorisation.”

He pointed out it will be no easier for the U.S. to garner allies at the U.N. for an attack on Iran based on false claims than it was to garner allies for an attack on Iraq based on false claims.

“This is particularly true given that both the Trump administration, like the Bush administration, has repeatedly attacked the United Nations and longtime U.S. allies for not supporting their unilateralist agenda and Washington’s willingness to violate the U.N. Charter and other international legal principles,” said Zunes who also serves as a senior policy analyst for Foreign Policy in Focus project at the Washington-based Institute for Policy Studies.

Emeritus Professor Ramesh Thakur, Crawford School of Public Policy, at the Australian National University in Canberra, told IPS: “Like many Americans, most countries and people believe the cause of the surge in tensions in the Persian Gulf is the foolish decision by the Trump administration to pull out of the multilaterally negotiated and U.N. Security Council endorsed nuclear deal with which Iran was fully compliant.”

This will make it very challenging for the US to garner much support in the UN for any anti-Iran military action, he declared.

Asked about UN support for US, Williams told IPS it seems that four out of five Security Council members are unlikely to countenance any substantial action against Iran, leading to instant humiliation for the Trump administration when it deplores its patently mediocre diplomatic team to the UN that it has, almost actively and ostentatiously neglected for Trump’s term so far.

Raising the issue could allow embarrassing questions in the Council about US and UK complicity in manifest Saudi war crimes in Yemen, he noted. 

On a larger scale, Williams argued, Iran and the Houthis have shown that they can cause quick economic harm to the Saudis and that there are few effective defenses.

Ironically, since the US won’t let the Iranians sell their oil on the world markets anyway, any counterstrike on Iranian refineries will be far less effective, declared Williams, a former President of the UN Correspondents’ Association (UNCA).

When the US invaded Iraq in 2003, then Secretary-General Kofi Annan described the invasion as “illegal” because it did not have the blessings of the 15-member UN Security Council (UNSC), the only institution in the world body with the power to declare war and peace.

But the administration of President George W. Bush went after Annan for challenging the decision to unilaterally declare war against Iraq: an attack by one member state against another for no legally-justifiable reason.

The weapons of mass destruction (WMDs), reportedly in Iraq’s military arsenal, which was one of the primary reasons for the invasion, were never found.

The writer can be contacted at thalifdeen@ips.org

United Nations experts warned this week that world leaders attending this month’s United Nations General Assembly should listen harder to scientists if they want to tackle climate change and meet global anti-poverty targets. Pictured here is the 2017 damaged caused by Hurricane Irma on the British Virgin Islands. Credit: Kenton X. Chance/IPS

By James Reinl
UNITED NATIONS, Sep 13 2019 (IPS)

World leaders attending this month’s United Nations General Assembly should listen harder to scientists if they want to tackle climate change and meet global anti-poverty targets, U.N. experts warned this week. 

Shantanu Mukherjee, from the U.N.’s Department of Economic and Social Affairs, said the presidents, prime ministers and princes coming to discuss development and global warming in New York must boost their efforts to avert global calamity.

Politicians must start “recognising the impact of science and policy and strengthening it among the people who are here so that it becomes a reliable basis for decision-making,” Mukherjee said in answer to a question from IPS.

“If there is a commitment among the leaders who come here, even some of them that they will take this seriously and use it to inform their policy, which we will support with scientific evidence, that would be great.”

Environmentalists have expressed fears of wavering commitments among leaders to limiting climate change, pointing to such skeptics as United States President Donald Trump and his Brazilian counterpart Jair Bolsonaro.

Mukherjee spoke with reporters in New York on Wednesday while releasing a report, called The Future is Now: Science for Achieving Sustainable Development, which warns of deepening inequalities and irreversible damage to ecosystems.  

The document says that mankind can still achieve the U.N.’s so-called Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) towards ending poverty and other targets, but not without boosting efforts to reduce waste, pollution and inequality.

Between 2017 and 2060, the annual global consumption of material goods is expected to climb from 89 Gigatons to 167 Gigatons, leading to more greenhouse gas emissions, mining and other resource extraction, researchers said.

Meanwhile, the global population is expected to reach 8.5 billion people by 2030, meaning more mouths to feed and greater demand on power stations, most of which still pump carbon dioxide into the atmosphere. 

Endah Murniningtyas, a former Indonesian minister who helped write the report, said producing enough food while keeping the global rise in temperatures below a benchmark figure of 2 degrees Celsius could prove impossible.

“This is not inevitable. We have the knowledge and the means already to change and ensure that all our wellness [is maintained] even as we scale back the adverse impacts,” of climate change,” Murniningtyas told reporters.

“Focus on the policy must be enabling equitable global access for food and maximising the nutritional value of produce while at the same time minimising the climate and environmental impact of production.”

The 250-page report was drafted by an independent group of 15 scientists. The document will be at the centre of high-level talks on the SDGs on Sept 24-25, when Trump, Bolsonaro and others are expected in New York.

Peter Messerli, director of the Centre for Development and Environment at the Bern University in Switzerland, said leaders must start changing how we design cities, harness energy and feed growing populations.

“All these systems are currently we can say to a certain degree dysfunctional, but they hold the promise that if we address those trade-offs, that way, they will really leverage transformation,” Messerli told reporters.

But the politicians attending a U.N. climate summit on Sept 23. and other high-level talks in New York will be swamped with other hot issues, said Messerli, with wars in Syria and Yemen high up the global agenda.

“We will not change the world. But we need to change their minds in this direction. Because if we change the minds, I think we can change the world,” Messerli, a co-author of the report, said in answer to a question from IPS. 

Bolsonaro and Trump are the first two leaders listed to speak at the start of the U.N.’s general debate on Sept. 24, followed shortly afterward by Egyptian president Abdel Fattah el-Sisi and others.

Swedish teen climate change activist Greta Thunberg last month sailed across the Atlantic Ocean aboard a carbon-neutral racing yacht bearing the slogan “unite behind the science” to attend the summit and put pressure on leaders.

This story is part of Covering Climate Now, a global collaboration of more than 250 news outlets to strengthen coverage of the climate story. 

A farmer walks past the solar panels used to pump water in the Soan Valley. The Global Green Growth Institute (GGGI) works closely with countries to diversify their economies, promote solar energies, and connect financial investors with specific green growth projects. Credit: Zofeen Ebrahim/IPS

By Carmen Arroyo
UNITED NATIONS, Oct 8 2018 (IPS)

In May the United Nations Secretary General Antonio Guterres announced next year’s summit on climate. This assertion has given the Global Green Growth Institute international momentum, which was reflected in the events of the 73rd session of the United Nations General Assembly (UNGA) in New York City.

During the UNGA week the Global Green Growth Institute (GGGI), an international organisation based in Seoul, South Korea, led the conversation on green growth. Frank Rijsberman, the institute’s director general, highlighted that green growth is not a matter of the future but of the present. Green growth, defined as sustainable economic growth, is essential due to the damage caused by climate change and increased pollution.

While at UNGA, GGGI participated in the Sustainable Development Impact Summit, organised by the World Economic Forum, the P4G (Partnering for Green Growth and the Global Goals 2030), and the Sustainable Investment Forum, organised by Climate Action and U.N. Environment Programme Finance Initiative.

GGGI also helped organise the event named “Leveraging Green Growth Potential in Vulnerable Countries,” which took place at the U.N. headquarters. Representatives from the Rwandan and Ethiopian governments, the U.N.-OHRLLS (U.N. Office of the High Representative for the Least Developed Countries, Landlocked Developing Countries and Small Island Developing States), and the European Union participated.

Challenges and best practices for green growth

At the event, the speakers discussed the challenges green growth encounters, the best practices in the field, and how public opinion regarding sustainable energies has shifted in the last years. Green growth, at the core of the Paris Agreement and the 2030 Sustainable Development Goals, is not at the sidelines of international policy anymore, but at the centre of the conversation.

The United Kingdom, Denmark, Norway, and even South Korea are already pursuing green growth agendas. But the shift is especially important for developing countries, which are more at risk due to climate change.

“Mainstreaming green growth is the only option for vulnerable countries,” stated Rijsberman at the event. “This is not just a challenge but also an opportunity.”

For Fekitamoeloa Katoa ‘Utoikamanu, High Representative for U.N.-OHRLLS, promoting sustainable growth in developing countries is a priority. She told IPS: “Leveraging the potential for green growth in vulnerable countries is critically important.”

Often times environmental damages are linked with other issues, explained Katoa. “Poverty and its alleviation are intricately linked to the environment and climate change is a threat which demands our immediate attention,” she commented.

Policy and finance obstacles to green growth

Despite its importance, getting governments to change to sustainable growth is not always easy.

According to Rijsberman, “policy obstacles, government, and finance” need to be taken into account. But the biggest challenge remains shifting investment patterns. The breakthrough for renewable energies comes with lower prices, he says.

“It is hard to compete fossil fuels if they are cheap,” said Rijsberman at the event. When fossil fuels become more expensive than renewable energies, it is easier to find investment for green growth projects. That, claimed Rijsberman, is already happening.

“Solar and wind have become cheaper than coal,” Rijsberman told IPS.

Now, the challenge for GGGI and national governments is to find investors to fund green growth projects —for example, increasing solar panels.

“Our goal for 2020 is to raise more than two and a half billion dollars in green and climate finance,” said Rijsberman.

Katoa, from U.N.-OHRLLS, stated: “It is clear that global financing needs to be stepped up considerably and directed towards investments that contribute to green growth and building resilience. This includes both traditional as well as new channels.”

The difficulties of changing public opinion have been overcome in the most part. Natural disasters, heat waves, and pollution have made public opinion aware that climate change is real, and solutions are needed.

During the event at the U.N. headquarters, Mauro Petriccione, director general for Climate Action at the European Union, pointed out how European opinion has shifted.

“It has taken the last two summers to make Europeans aware of the effects of climate change,” he said. Now, he added, “Europe is taking strong legislative action to this respect.”

New skills for renewable energies

Finally, the loss of jobs in the fossil fuel industry needs formal solutions. Rijsberman suggested formal retraining, because the skills needed in renewable energies are different from those required in the coal and oil industries.

Despite these difficulties, there are many cases of success in this transition. Rwanda and Ethiopia have already changed to sustainable growth. They are, as Rijsberman calls them, “champions of green growth.”

For countries like Ethiopia the change to sustainable energies is crucial. Climate disruptions have an immediate effect on their economy, which depends mainly on agriculture. Thus, the government prioritises climate resilience to secure its citizens’ livelihood.

Selamawit Desta, the Ethiopian representative at the event, shared with IPS how they succeeded in transitioning to green growth. “In 2008, we stopped subsidising fossil fuels. It was hard, but we gave an option. Food or fossil fuels,” she explained. And since then, Ethiopia barely has emissions.

Other countries with vast natural resources, also affected by climate change, need to take advantage of their ability to develop renewable energies.

Katoa stated: “Natural resource bases play a critical role in the economies of least developed countries, landlocked developing countries and Small Island Developing States.”

She continued: “These nations also typically have a large untapped potential for renewable energy, which can help to bring sustainable energy access to underserved and remote rural communities.”

Collaborative work with GGGI

The institute, founded in 2010, relies upon 36 countries, both members and partners of GGGI. They work closely with them to diversify their economies, promote solar energies, and connect financial investors with specific green growth projects.

Inevitably, their work depends on the will of the national governments. But more and more states are willing to collaborate with the Institute. During the event “Leveraging Green Growth Potential” both the Rwandan minister of environment, Vincent Biruta, and the representative for the Pacific Islands expressed their gratitude to GGGI.

GGGI also counts with a large institutional network, working with organisations such as the U.N., the World Bank, and the OECD, to promote green growth knowledge.

She added: “We look forward to ongoing cooperation with GGGI particularly in addressing climate change challenges and improving access to sustainable energy in vulnerable countries.”

Poor dietary intake and lack of food varieties affect huge numbers of children, who mostly hail from large, impoverished families in Nepal. Malnutrition is a significant concern in Nepal as around one million children under 5 years suffer from chronic malnutrition and 10 percent suffer from acute malnutrition. Credit: Naresh Newar/IPS

By Tharanga Yakupitiyage
UNITED NATIONS, Oct 4 2018 (IPS)

A dramatic shift in the way we eat and think about food is more urgent than ever to prevent further environmental degradation and an even larger health epidemic.   

A diverse group of experts from academia, civil society, and United Nations agencies convened at the sidelines of the General Assembly to discuss the pervasive issue of food insecurity and malnutrition and potential solutions to overhaul the system.“Sustainable food choices is starting to both look good and taste good which hasn’t been the story of the past.” -- founder of EAT Gunhild Stordalen

“It’s striking that we are still, despite all the advances we have seen in science and technology, we still have this big gap between those who eat too much and those who don’t have enough food to eat,” Barilla Centre for Food and Nutrition Foundation’s head of media relations Luca Di Leo told IPS.

According to the State of Food Security and Nutrition in the World 2018, the number of hungry people increased to over 820 million in 2017 from approximately 804 million in 2016, levels unseen for almost a decade.

At the same time, and perhaps paradoxically, obesity rates have rapidly increased over the last decade from 11.7 percent in 2012 to 13.2 percent in 2016. This means that in 2017, more than one in eight adults, or over 670 million people, in the world were obese.

Adult obesity and the rate of its increase is highest in North America, and increasing trends can now also be seen across Africa and Asia.

Participants at the International Forum on Food and Nutrition stressed the need to deal with both forms of malnutrition, and pointed to the lack of access to healthy food as the culprit.

“It’s not just what’s in the food, it’s what’s in the discourse about food…there is more than one way to eat badly,” said director of Yale University’s Prevention Research Centre David Katz.

However, many noted that there is a lack of a unified, factual consensus on what constitutes a healthy diet from a sustainable food system.

“Without goals to mobilise collective action, and also no mechanisms to either coordinate nor monitor progress, it is really hard to achieve large-scale system change,” said founder of EAT Foundation, a science-based global platform for food system transformation, Gunhild Stordalen.

Katz echoed similar sentiments, stating: “You will never get there if you can’t agree where there is…we must rally around a set of fundamental truths.”

Fighting the System

Among these truths is the need to overhaul the entire food and agricultural system.

Despite the notorious and shocking findings from the 2004 ‘Supersize Me’ documentary, the consumption of unhealthy processed foods and sugar has only increased.

According to the Barilla Centre for Food and Nutrition’s Food Sustainability Index (FSI) 2017, the United States had the highest sugar consumption out of 34 countries in 2017.

The average person in the U.S. consumes more than 126 grams of sugar per day, twice the amount that the World Health Organization (WHO) recommends for daily intake.

This not only leads to increasing obesity rates, but it has also contributed to a rise in levels of cardiovascular diseases and diabetes.

“The number of lost years to nutritional deficiencies and cardiovascular diseases has been going up very sharply in the United States,” said Leo Abruzzese from the Economist Intelligence Unit, which develops the index.

“One of the U.S.’ less impressive exports has been bad nutrition…people aren’t necessarily dying but they are living pretty miserable lives. Under those circumstances, wouldn’t you think there has to be something done?” he told IPS.

The FSI also found that the U.S.’ consumption of meat and saturated fat is among the highest in the world, contributing to unhealthy diets and even climate change.

According to U.N. University, emissions from livestock account for almost 15 percent of global greenhouse gas emissions. Beef and dairy alone make up 65 percent of all livestock emissions.

In fact, meat and dairy companies are on track to become the world’s biggest contributors to climate change, surpassing the fossil fuel industry.

However, Stordalen noted that delivering healthy and sustainable diets is within our reach.

Alternatives to meat have taken many countries by storm, and could slowly transform the fast food and meat industries. Consumers can now find the ‘impossible burger,’ a meatless plant-based burger, in many restaurants and fast food chains such as White Castle.

Recently, the U.S.-based vegan meat companies Beyond Meat and Impossible Foods was recently honoured by U.N. Environment with the Champions of the Earth award.

“Sustainable food choices is starting to both look good and taste good which hasn’t been the story of the past,” Stordalen said.

“Once people get the taste of better solutions, they not only start craving but even demanding  a better future. They come together to make it happen,” she added.

The FSI is also a crucial tool to guide governments and policymakers to pay attention to progress and weaknesses in their own country’s food systems.

“By collecting all of these [indicators] together, we essentially have a framework for what we think a good food system would look like,” Abruzzese said.

In some African countries even though there is enough food, it is the type of food that is available that counts. In Malawi, for instance, even though families had increased access to maize, nearly half the children are malnourished. In this dated picture, these children from south Madagascar are malnourished. Credit: Miriam Gathigah/IPS

A Problem of Power

The lack of access to healthy food and its consequences can also be seen at the other end of the food value chain: producers.

Women account for up to 60 percent of agricultural labour across Africa, yet still have poor access to quality seeds, fertiliser, and mechanical equipment. At the same time, they often look after the household, taking care of children and cooking meals.

Such gender inequality has been found to contribute to poorer household nutrition, including increases in stunting among children.

Forum participants highlighted the need to empower women farmers and address the gender inequalities in agriculture in order to advance food and nutrition security as well as establish sustainable societies.

“The opposite of hunger is power,” said University of Texas’ research professor Raj Patel, pointing to the case of Malawi.

In Malawi, more than half of children suffer from chronic malnutrition. The harvesting of corn, which is the southeastern African country’s main staple, is designated to women who are also tasked with care work.

“Even when there was more food, there was more malnutrition,” said Patel.

One northern Malawian village tackled the issue through the Soils, Food, and Healthy Communities Project and achieved extraordinary results.

Alongside actions to diversify crop, the project brought men and women together to share the workload such as cooking together and involving men in care work.

Not only did they achieve gender equality in agriculture, the village also saw dramatic decreases in infant malnutrition.

“We need to value women’s work,” Patel said.

Future of Food

Fixing the food and agricultural system is no easy task, but it has to be done, attendees said.

“We know what the problems are, we’ve also identified the potential solutions…and the main solution is each and every one of us,” Di Leo told IPS.

One of the key solutions is education and empowering people to be agents of change.

“Healthy production will come if the consumer ask for the healthy eating. And healthy eating will come if the consumer has the right education and information,” Di Leo said.

For instance, many do not see or know the link between food and climate change, he added.

In fact, a 2016 study found that there was a lack of awareness of the association between meat consumption and climate change and a resistance to the idea of reducing personal meat consumption.

“It’s a kind of change that needs a bottom-up approach,” Di Leo said.

Stordalen echoed Di Leo’s comments, calling for a global ‘dugnad’—a Norwegian word describing the act of a community uniting and working together to achieve a goal that will serve them all.

“The state of the global food system calls for new collaborative action,” she said.

“It’s time to officially ditch the saying that ‘the more cooks, the worse soup’ because we need everybody involved to serve our people and planet the right future.”

Evidence shows that when women are empowered, farms are more productive, natural resources are better managed, nutrition is improved, and livelihoods are more secure. Credit: Kristin Palitza/IPS

By Tharanga Yakupitiyage
UNITED NATIONS, Sep 30 2018 (IPS)

Despite women being key figures in agriculture and food security, gender inequality is holding back progress towards ending hunger, poverty, and creating sustainable food systems. 

During a high-level event on the sidelines of the United Nations General Assembly, the African Union (AU) and the Food and Agriculture Organization of the U.N. (FAO) reviewed the persistent gender gaps in agri-food systems in Africa and highlighted the need for urgent action. “It is therefore economically rewarding to invest in women’s education and economic empowerment since women often use a large portion of their income on children and family welfare.” -- AU commissioner for Rural Economy and Agriculture Josefa Leonel Correa Sacko.

“There is a strong momentum to advance gender equality and women’s empowerment in agri-food systems because women constitute the majority of agricultural labour,” said AU commissioner for Rural Economy and Agriculture Josefa Leonel Correa Sacko.

However, despite women’s crucial role in such systems, there are persistent gender gaps.

“We need to better recognise and harness the fundamental contribution of women to food security and nutrition. For that, we must close persisting gender gaps in agriculture in Africa,” said FAO’s Director-General Jose Graziano da Silva.

“Evidence shows that when women are empowered, farms are more productive, natural resources are better managed, nutrition is improved, and livelihoods are more secure,” he added.

While women account for up to 60 percent of agricultural labour, approximately 32 percent of women own agricultural lands across 27 countries in Sub-Saharan Africa through either joint, sole ownership, or both.

Only 13 percent of women, compared to 40 percent of men, have sole ownership on all or part of the land they own, according to the Regional Outlook on Gender and Agrifood Systems, a joint report by the FAO and AU that was presented during the event.

In 2016, thousands of rural women across Africa gathered at Tanzania’s Mount Kilimanjaro to protest and demand the right to land and natural resources.

Some even climbed to the peak of Africa’s highest mountain, showcasing their determination for change.

Even when women are able to own their own land, many still lack access to productive resources and technologies such as fertiliser, agricultural input, mechanical equipment, and finance.

This poses numerous challenges along the food value chain, including food loss.

Globally, approximately one-third of all food produced is lost or wasted. Food loss and waste is a major contributor to climate change and in Sub-Saharan Africa, the economic cost of such losses amount up to USD4 billion every year, FAO found.

Closing productivity gaps could increase food production and consumption by up to 10 percent and reduce poverty by up to 13 percent.

While women account for up to 60 percent of agricultural labour, approximately 32 percent of women own agricultural lands across 27 countries in Sub-Saharan Africa through either joint, sole ownership, or both. Credit: Busani Bafana/IPS

The FAO-AU assessment also estimated that agricultural output could more than triple if farmers had access to the finance needed to expand quality and quantity of their produce.

Panellists noted that addressing the agricultural gender gaps in Africa could additionally boost food security and nutrition in the region.

Globally, hunger is on the rise and it is worsening in most parts of Africa. Out of 821 million hungry people in the world in 2017, over 250 million are in Africa.

Many African nations are also seeing a rapid rise in obesity, which could soon become the continent’s biggest public health crisis.

“It is therefore economically rewarding to invest in women’s education and economic empowerment since women often use a large portion of their income on children and family welfare,” Sacko said.

Graziano da Silva noted that among the key issues is the lack of women in governance systems and decision-making processes. 

Between five and 30 percent of field officers from ministries and rural institutions are women while only 12 to 20 percent of staff in ministries of agriculture are female.

This coincides with the lack of gender targeting and analysis mechanisms, resulting in services that target male-dominated sectors.

If such trends continue, Africa will not be close to achieving many of the ambitious development goals including the Malabo Declaration, which aims to achieve inclusive growth, sustainable agriculture, and improved livelihoods.

There has been some positive trends as many African countries have started to recognise the importance of putting women at the heart of the transformation of rural food systems.

Botswana’s Women’s Economic Empowerment Programme provides grants to women, enabling them to start their own enterprises and advance their economic well-being.

First Lady of Botswana Neo Jane Massi attended the high-level event and stressed the “importance of inclusive growth in our national development agendas in order to ensure that no one is left behind.”

Similarly, the Joint Programme on Accelerating Progress towards the Economic Empowerment of Women, implemented by various U.N. agencies including FAO and U.N. Women, has provided more than 40,000 women with training on improved agricultural technologies and increased access to financial services and markets.

While women’s participation in decision making has increased from 17 to 30 percent, Graziano da Silva stressed the need for better and more balanced representation of women at all levels.

Presenting the recommendations from the AU-FAO outlook report, Sacko called for an “enabling environment,” reinforcement of accountability mechanisms for gender equality and women’s empowerment, and a “gender data revolution” to better inform gender-sensitive policies and programs.

“Let us be ambitious, and let us all put our wings together,” Massi concluded.

The Bangui Wind Farm located in the northern Philippines hosts 20 wind turbines with a capacity of 33 megawatts. GGGI works mainly with governments that express an interest in sustainable growth and is supporting the Philippines in mainstreaming green growth into the country’s development planning. Credit: Kara Santos/IPS

By Carmen Arroyo
UNITED NATIONS, Sep 30 2018 (IPS)

When the Global Green Growth Institute (GGGI) was founded eight years ago, the general public thought that renewable energies would never replace oil and coal. Today, the tables have turned.

Dr. Frank Rijsberman has been the director general of the institute since 2016, and for him, green growth is no longer a matter of morality, but of economics. Renewable energies are now cheaper than fossil fuels. They create employment, do not pollute and provide countries with the amount of energy they need. Last week he joined several side events at the 73rd session of the United Nations General Assembly in New York.

GGGI is an intergovernmental organisation that works with over 60 countries. It seeks commitments among governments and private companies to switch to green growth—economic growth that takes into account environmental sustainability.

The organisation, based in Seoul, South Korea, works mainly with governments that express an interest in sustainable growth. Its work does not directly depend on changes in administrations.

Under Rijsberman, GGGI has consulted with Colombia on their protection of the Amazon rainforest, the United Arab Emirates on how to diversify its economy, and more recently with New Zealand. Rijsberman is especially proud of the organisation’s work in Ethiopia and Rwanda, with its president Paul Kagame, who he considers a “champion of green growth”.

Rijsberman is not only very knowledgeable, he also calls his job “his passion”. When he describes GGGI’s presence worldwide, he jumps from Australia to Ethiopia, from South Korea to Mexico, and from Norway to the Philippines.

He talks slowly, like a teacher giving his first class, or a father trying to get his point through. And when he talks about GGGI’s achievements, he smiles in the affable way most Dutch people do. His excitement is justified: renewable energies are the present. And public opinion cares. Excerpts of the interview follow:

Director general of the Global Green Growth Institute (GGGI) Dr. Frank Rijsberman outside the Office of the Natural Resources and Environmental Policy and Planning in Thailand Photo Credit: Sinsiri Tiwutanond/IPS

Inter Press Service (IPS): Why has green growth become relevant?

Frank Rijsberman (FR): A variety of countries are already convinced green growth is their only option for pollution and climate reasons. For example in Asia, air pollution is a strong driver of investors in green growth. In Seoul, everybody checks the air condition in the morning, because it is a real issue. We have to decide whether we are going to wear air masks or not. In the West, last summer we saw fires and heat waves. And in Africa, the average farmer is convinced the climate has changed."In the end there are gonna be more jobs with renewables than with coal." -- Director general of the Global Green Growth Institute (GGGI) Dr. Frank Rijsberman.

I’ve been involved in climate change for a long time, and it used to be something we talked about that would happen in a 100 years. Then for our grandchildren. Then our children and then… it’s today.

Before, ministers of finance used to say they wanted first to develop and then they would care about the climate. Now, they also care about the quality of growth.

IPS: Has that international public opinion changed since United States president Donald Trump’s election?

FR: The truth is that the U.S. government was very influential in making the Paris Agreement exist in the first place. We have to thank them for that. They brought China to the table.

And after Trump was elected, the Chinese government did not back out, because solar and wind have become cheaper than coal. Wind energy prices have dropped by 66 percent and solar by 86 percent. In the last three years, the atmosphere has changed. There is a stronger belief that renewable energies are making a breakthrough.

Apart from the prices, the second big deal is batteries.Generally, you need a grid or a diesel generator to back solar and wind up. But instead of using diesel generators, now we can use batteries that store energy. Battery prices have also gone down by 80 precent. And over the next five years, batteries will be cheaper than the diesel backups. The investment recommendation we make is to buy batteries now, not diesel generators.

IPS: Where have renewable energies impacted the most?

FR: For example, in electricity production, we’ve seen a huge disruption. Most of the investments go to renewable energies. However, electricity is only 20 percent of energy use.

The other 80 percent is transportation and buildings. But I am confident that in some years, electric vehicles will be cheaper than normal fuel cars. These autonomous vehicles could reduce the number of vehicles in cities by three, which would reduce pollution, traffic, and costs.

IPS: The institute must also face challenges when promoting green growth. Is shifting investment patterns its biggest challenge?

FR: Yes. The hardest has been convincing Southeast Asian countries with fast-growing economies. They still invest in coal. Convincing those governments that solar and wind are cheaper remains the biggest challenge.

Sometimes we also find resistance in the utilities, companies that work with fossil fuels. We’ve had one government for which we did a plan for renewable energies, and then they told us they had already signed with fossil fuels. There are also countries where hotels want to put solars on their rooftops, but utilities say: “we will cut you off the grid.”

However, once the government agrees, it can take a short amount of time for them to transition to sustainable energies. In India it took two years. India had coal fired power plants. But as soon as the price of renewables decreased, the coal fired plants went down.

The example of Canberra (Australia) is also enlightening. They decided they wanted to be renewable by 2020. So, they put solars in schools, and they made it accessible so people could also put it on their homes. People got used to it and then they moved to utility-scale renewables.

IPS: Does this resistance in transitioning have to do with the loss of jobs?

FR: In the end there are gonna be more jobs with renewables than with coal. Trump talks about the job losses in coal, but he doesn’t talk about the new jobs with renewables. It’s true they may not be the same people, so you need some formal training. But that is normal. One industry dies and another is born.

IPS: You have been director general for two years, what have you achieved so far?

FR: GGGI has been strong in policy for a number of years. My predecessor saw there was a gap in developing bankable projects, and he started green investment finance services.

In 2017, we mobilised half a billion dollars in green and climate finance for the first time. I increased our goals to mobilise a couple billion dollars in our strategic planning. We raise it by investor commitments. Although our clients are governments, sometimes they can’t find investment themselves for renewable plans. We help find projects, we bring investors to the table, they sign a letter of intent, we hand it to the government and they decide over it.

IPS: And what do you want to accomplish in the next two years?

FR: We want to demonstrate that we can do it. Our goal for 2020 is to raise more than two and a half billion dollars in green and climate finance. And then convince more governments that this is crucial. Not only renewable energy, also waste management, pollution, and green jobs. We want to get more evidence that this works, and scale it to more countries. Our goal is to transform countries’ economies to green growth.

Two mothers and their children look to shore after arriving by boat to Mingkaman, Awerial County, Lakes State, South Sudan. In 2014 in less than a month close to 84,000 fleeing the fighting in Bor crossed the river Nile. South Sudan has been mired in civil conflict since December 2013. Some 2.8 million people, a majority of whom depend on livestock for their livelihoods, are now facing acute food and nutrition insecurity, according to FAO. Credit: Mackenzie Knowles-Coursin/IPS

By Tharanga Yakupitiyage
UNITED NATIONS, Sep 27 2018 (IPS)

Reversing years of progress, global hunger is on the rise once again and one of the culprits is clear: conflict.

A high-level side event during the 73rd session of the United Nations General Assembly brought together, U.N. officials, governments, and civil society to assess and recommend solutions to the pressing issue of conflict-based food insecurity. “The use of hunger as a weapon of war is a war crime. Yet, in some conflict settings, parties to conflict use siege tactics, weaponise starvation of civilians, or impede life-saving humanitarian supplies to reach those desperately in need." -- Action Against Hunger’s CEO Veronique Andrieux

“Conflict-related hunger is one of the most visible manifestations to human suffering emerging from war…this suffering is preventable and thus all the more tragic,” said United States’ Agency for International Development’s (USAID) administrator Mark Green.

According to the State of Food Security and Nutrition in the World 2018, the number of hungry people increased to over 820 million in 2017 from approximately 804 million in 2016, levels unseen for almost a decade.

The Global Report on Food Crises found that almost 124 million people across 51 countries faced crisis-level food insecurity in 2017, 11 million more than the year before.

Conflict was identified as the key driver in 60 percent of those cases.

The report predicts that conflict and insecurity will continue to drive food crises around the world, including in the Democratic Republic of Congo, South Sudan, Syria, and Yemen.

Panellists during the “Breaking the Cycle Between Conflict and Hunger” side-event noted food insecurity is often a tell-tale sign of future potential conflict and can lead to further insecurity.

“Building resilience…is indeed fundamental for strengthening social cohesion, preventing conflict, and avoiding forced migration. Without that, there is no peace,” said Food and Agriculture Organization of the U.N. (FAO) director-general Jose Graziano da Silva.

World Food Programme’s executive director David Beasley echoed similar sentiments, stating: “If you don’t have food security, you’re not going to have any other security. So we have to address the fundamentals.”

In an effort to address conflict-based hunger and the worrisome reversal in progress, the U.N. Security Council for the first time recognised that armed conflict is closely linked to food insecurity and the risk of famine earlier this year.

The group unanimously adopted resolution 2417 condemning the use of starvation as a weapon of war and urged all parties to conflict to comply with international law and grand unimpeded humanitarian access.

While participants lauded the historic resolution, they also highlighted that it alone is not enough.

“Humanitarian action and technical solutions can mitigate the effects of food crises but we desperately need political solutions and we need to implement [resolution] 2417 if we are to reverse the shameful, upwards trajectory of hunger primarily resulting from conflict,” said Action Against Hunger’s CEO Veronique Andrieux.

In order to prevent food crises and thus conflicts from escalating, the international community must take a holistic, preventative approach and strengthen the humanitarian-development nexus.

Before the long-running war began, Syria faced a drought which caused a spike in prices and led to food shortages. Many theorise that it was these very conditions that set off the civil war in 2011. This is a picture dated August 2014 of the then rebel-held Aleppo city, Syria. The government has since taken control of the city. Credit: Shelly Kittleson/IPS

Beasley pointed to the case of Syria where a seven-year long conflict has destroyed agricultural infrastructure, local economies, and supply chains and has left over six million food-insecure.

“The cost for us to feed a Syrian in Syria was about 50 cents a day which is almost double the normal cost because it is a war zone. If that same Syrian was in Berlin, it would be euros per day,” he told attendees.

“It is a better investment if we address the root cause as opposed to reacting after the fact,” Beasley added.

Before the long-running war began, Syria faced a drought which caused a spike in prices and led to food shortages. Many theorise that it was these very conditions that set off the civil war in 2011.

“Early action response to early warning is critical. We cannot wait for the conflict to start. We know that it will start,” said Graziano da Silva.

And it is data that can help establish early detection and prevent such crises, Graziano da Silva along with the other panelists stressed.

The Global Network against Food Crises (GNFC), which publish the Global Report on Food Crises, brings together regional and national data and analysis to provide a comprehensive picture of food insecurity globally.

It was the GNFC that enabled agencies to mitigate food crises and avert famine in northern Nigeria and South Sudan.

Just prior to the side event, FAO and the European Commission partnered to boost resilience and tackle hunger by contributing over USD70 million.

Panelists stressed the importance of such partnerships in addressing and responding to the complex issue of conflict-based food insecurity.

“At the ground, when we work together, it’s not only that we do better…we are much more efficient,” Graziano da Silva said.

Andrieux highlighted the need to uphold respect for international humanitarian law and that the U.N. and member states must hold all parties to the conflict to account.

“The use of hunger as a weapon of war is a war crime. Yet, in some conflict settings, parties to conflict use siege tactics, weaponise starvation of civilians, or impede life-saving humanitarian supplies to reach those desperately in need,” she said.

“We believe this is failing humanity,” Andrieux added.

Green pointed to the conflict in South Sudan where fighters have blocked desperately needed humanitarian assistance and attacked aid workers.

The African nation was recently ranked the most dangerous for aid workers for the third consecutive year.

“All the parties to the conflict are culpable, all the parties to the conflict are guilty, and they have all failed themselves, their people, and humanity,” Green told attendees.

Though the task of tackling conflict-based hunger is not easy, the solutions are there. What is now required is commitment and collective action, panelists said.

“All of us working together with effective solutions—we can truly end world hunger,” Beasley said.

In Cameroon, a nutritionist assesses the health of a child: red indicates severe malnutrition. Credit: Kristin Palitza/IPS

By Matthew L. Norman
NEW YORK, United States, Sep 26 2018 (IPS)

Each year as hundreds of billions of dollars are invested and critical decisions are made in agriculture, there is often little evidence or research to back these choices. 

According to experts, this lack of data “leads to less than optimal decisions, causing losses in productivity, lost agricultural income, and ultimately more hunger and poverty.”

“The data gaps in agriculture are widespread, affecting 800 million, or 78 percent of the world’s poorest. The problem is especially dire in Sub-Saharan Africa, where nearly half of countries have incomplete information about the [agriculture] sector and farmers,” Emily Hogue, a senior advisor with Food and Agriculture Organisation of the United Nations (FAO), explains to IPS.

“Assessments have shown that those countries are able to meet half or less of their basic data needs, largely due to a lack of [agriculture] surveys.”

Citing the foundational role data plays in directing development efforts and monitoring progress towards the U.N’s Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), the Gates Foundation, World Bank, FAO and others have launched a partnership aimed at investing in the agricultural data capabilities of low and middle-income countries. 

Dubbed the 50 x 2030 Initiative, the plan aims to invest USD 500 million in data gathering and analysis across 50 developing nations by 2030.

On Monday, the governments of Ghana, Kenya and Sierra Leone joined the coalition in hosting an event at the U.N. General Assembly to announce the initiative. Panellists representing several of the initiative’s key partners shared the impetus behind their involvement.

Rodger Voorhies, executive director for Global Growth and Opportunity at the Gates Foundation, noted that “almost no country has come out of poverty in an inclusive way without agricultural transformation being at the centre of it.” 

However, the panellists noted, the data needed to design evidence-based agricultural policy and target agricultural investments is severely deficient in many developing nations. This data gap represents a “critical obstacle to agricultural development,” according to Beth Dunford of USAID.

“There is no efficient path to meeting SDG2 or other [agriculture] development goals without improved agricultural data. Improved data will promote more effective targeting of interventions, improved national [agriculture] policies, and increased resources for the sector. As FAO is the organisation that is at the forefront of the activities to promote [agriculture] development and reduce hunger and malnutrition, we see filling in the agricultural data gap as a prerequisite to achieving agricultural development goals,” Hogue says. SDG2 is the goal to end hunger, achieve food security and improved nutrition and promote sustainable agriculture.

The 50 x 2030 Initiative’s announcement comes in the wake of the FAO’s recent revelation that world hunger has risen for a third straight year, with 821 million people worldwide facing chronic food deprivation. 

Panellists emphasised that the data gap limits the ability of many nations to direct resources towards populations most in need, including smallholders affected by gender inequality or climate change. 

The International Fund for Agricultural Development (IFAD) president Gilbert Houngbo, formerly the prime minister of Togo, observed that granular data could reveal regional, ethnic or gender disparities that are obscured by aggregate data. He recalled that during his time as Togo’s leader, progress in achieving inclusive poverty reduction was made more challenging because the country “did not have the disaggregated data to better adjust the implementation of our policies.”

In addition to driving better policy design and implementation, improved agricultural data will make it possible to better monitor progress in achieving the SDGs. 

Claire Melamed, CEO of the Global Partnership for Sustainable Development Data, noted that many countries lack any data for several of the most critical SDG indicators, making it impossible to set a baseline and monitor progress towards the goals.

José Graziano da Silva, director general of FAO, explained that the initiative would initially focus on scaling up existing surveys of farming households. The FAO’s AGRISurvey is expected to expand to nineteen nations by 2021, and Graziano da Silva noted that this initiative would allow it to eventually expand to 50 or more. The initiative will also build upon the World Bank’s Integrated Surveys on Agriculture (ISA), part of the Bank’s Living Standards and Measurement Study (LSMS).

“The goal of this initiative is to have 50 low and lower-middle income countries (LMICs) with strong national data systems that produce and use high-quality and timely agricultural data for evidence-based decision-making. The survey programs are the vehicle through which we will build capacities and strengthen the institutions in those systems. We also aim to include the private sector, especially agribusinesses, as users and supports of these data,” Hogue adds.

Over time the initiative should allow more countries to take advantage of advances in data gathering and analytics. Laura Tuck, vice president of Sustainable Development at the World Bank, suggested that new tools for “real-time, high-definition data” would lead to smarter policies that increase sustainable food production. Tuck also noted that the structure of the 50 x 2030 initiative would allow countries the autonomy to drive their own use of data.

*Additional reporting by Carmen Arroyo in New York.

A Rohingya woman and her child at a refugee camp in Bangladesh. Credit: Kamrul Hasan/IPS

By Tharanga Yakupitiyage
UNITED NATIONS, Sep 26 2018 (IPS)

Over one year ago, Bangladesh opened its doors in response to what is now the world’s fastest growing refugee crisis. But questions still remain on how to rehabilitate the steadily growing population. 

After a military crackdown on suspected terrorists in August 2017, over 700,000 Rohingya fled from their homes in Rakhine State, Myanmar to Bangladesh, bringing with them stories of the horrors they have experienced.

The United Nations described the military offensive as a “textbook example of ethnic cleansing” and a recent fact-finding mission called for the investigation and prosecution of top officials from Myanmar’s military for possible crimes of genocide.

However, recurring cycles of violence can be traced back to 1978 and now 1.3 million Rohingya reside in Bangladesh, leaving the small South Asian nation straining for resources to provide to grief-stricken refugees and overcrowded camps.

So far, only one third of the humanitarian appeal for refugees and local host communities have been met and still many challenges remain from environmental stress to trafficking to the lack of shelters.

Bangladesh’s prime minister Sheikh Hasina, who was in Time Magazine’s list of 100 most influential people of 2018, has been lauded for her humanitarian gesture and her government’s work in addressing the crisis.

Many international and national organizations are working to support the Rohingya refugees. The International Organization for Migration (IOM) in particular and its head William Lacy Swing have worked relentlessly to not only provide support to the refugees but also to find a lasting solution to the crisis. Swing has worked closely with the prime minister and her government and engaged with the many parties involved to bring about an end to the tragedy.

In recognition of his untiring efforts, Inter Press Service (IPS) is honouring Swing with the Person of the Year Award at an event to be held at the U.N. headquarters on Sept. 27. The prime minster will receive the IPS U.N. North America’s Humanitarian Award for her decision to give shelter to the over one million Rohingya refugees who were driven out of their homes, tortured, burnt, raped and left stateless and hopeless.

Ahead of the Hasina’s speech to the U.N. General Assembly, which is expected to focus on the Rohingya crisis and call for international action to resolve the crisis, IPS spoke to ambassador Masud Bin Momen, permanent representative of Bangladesh to the U.N.about the ongoing challenges, support, and future action plans.

Excerpts of the interview follow:

Inter Press Service (IPS): Could you talk about the situation in Bangladesh—are refugees still arriving? What conditions are Rohingya refugees arriving in and what conditions are they seeing and living with in Bangladesh?

Masud Bin Momen (MBM): The situation in Cox’s Bazar is terrible. Having to shelter more than 700,000 Rohingyas from Myanmar’s Rakhine state, which is the fastest-growing crisis of its kind in the world, and provide them with humanitarian support is an onerous responsibility. It was the bold decision of our honourable prime minister to take up such a huge responsibility responding to humanity’s call. It takes a lot of courage and magnanimity of heart to make such a politically sensitive decision.

And the influx of Rohingyas has not stopped. It is continuing although in much smaller numbers. The freshly-arrived Rohingyas are still giving a grim picture of the ground situation in the Rakhine state. They are telling us about insecurity, threat, persecution, hunger, lack of livelihood opportunities, which is forcing them to leave Myanmar.

IPS: What has the government been doing as of late with regards to supporting Rohingya refugees there now? What have been some of the challenges to support these refugees?

MBM: The camp conditions in Cox’s Bazar may not be perfect and surely, one would understand how difficult it is for a developing country to cater to the humanitarian needs of such a huge population. But our government is trying its best to further improve the camp conditions to ensure basic necessities of the Rohingyas.

The challenges are manifold, I would mention only a few. Providing them with the basic amenities has been the biggest challenge.

For firewood, the Rohingyas have destroyed the forest and vegetation around the camps creating serious threat to the ecology of the area. The shelters that they have built on the slope of the hills are vulnerable to landslide during the monsoon.

For livelihood they are competing with the locals. This is reducing employment opportunities of the local population thus creating concern among the host communities. Their presence is affecting the local law and order situation. The possibility of radicalisation looms large. As their stay lingers, there is the possibility of mingling with the local population which could make their repatriation more difficult.

A Rohingya girl proudly holds up her drawing at a UNICEF school at Balukhali camp, Bangladesh. Credit: Farid Ahmed/IPS

IPS: Could you talk about the controversies surrounding repatriation? Why has it been stalled, and are conditions favourable or safe for Rohingya refugees to go back to Myanmar right now? 

MBM: Although Rohingyas want to return to their homes in Rakhine they would not return to Myanmar until and unless the ground condition in the Rakhine state is conducive for their return. This is the singular impediment to return. Improving ground conditions is entirely Myanmar’s responsibility. Since the ground condition is not yet conducive, the Rohingyas are not signing the declaration for voluntary return and hence repatriation is being delayed.

IPS: If refugees cannot return to Myanmar yet, what does Bangladesh plan to do with regards to support? Are there future actions planned to enhance camps and living conditions?

MBM: If they do not return in the foreseeable future we perhaps have no other option but to continue to give them refuge. We would not send them back against their will. As our prime minister said, we would share our meals with them (Rohingyas). There cannot be a more poignant message of our goodwill to the Rohingyas. Our government is relentlessly working to improve the camps and the living conditions therein. We are also developing an island for relocation of some of the Rohingyas.

IPS: What are your thoughts to the criticism that the island which you mentioned is not safe to live, particularly due to violent weather and high risk of floods? 

MBM: This is an entirely wrong perception. Keeping the entire Rohingya population in a geo-politically sensitive place like Cox’s Bazar is not feasible at all. Cox’s Bazar simply does not have the physical capacity or the infrastructure to sustain such a huge Rohingya population. So, they have to be relocated and the island you are talking about is one such place for possible relocation.

Initially about 100,000 Rohingyas are planned to be relocated. The criticism that you have referred to is baseless coming from ill-informed quarters. Our government is working hard to make the island livable with self-sustaining livelihood options. And until it is made entirely livable, Rohingyas are not going to be relocated there.

IPS: What are your thoughts on the International Criminal Court (ICC) launching a preliminary examination? 

MBM: We feel that this is a positive development in ensuring accountability of the perpetrators. If the ICC can come up with some concrete outcome, it might also serve as an important factor in building confidence among the Rohingyas which will facilitate their repatriation.

IPS: Do you have a response or message to Myanmar’s government regarding the crisis? And perhaps a message to the International community in addressing the situation? 

MBM: We would urge upon Myanmar to make ground conditions in the Rakhine state conducive for return and take back the Rohingyas as soon as possible. The comprehensive implementation of the Kofi Annan Commission’s recommendations would be able to address the root causes of the Rohingyarians.

We urge upon the international community is to take custodianship of the bilateral arrangements for return that Bangladesh and Myanmar have signed and impress upon Myanmar to take back the Rohingyas.

*Interview has been edited for length and clarity

Excerpt:

Graça Machel, member of The Elders and widow of Nelson Mandela, makes remarks during the Nelson Mandela Peace Summit. Credit: United Nations Photo/Cia Pak

By Tharanga Yakupitiyage
UNITED NATIONS, Sep 25 2018 (IPS)

In honour of Nobel Peace Laureate Nelson Mandela’s legacy, nations from around the world convened to adopt a declaration recommitting to goals of building a just, peaceful, and fair world.

At the Nelson Mandela Peace Summit, aptly held in the year of the former South African leader’s 100th birthday, world leaders reflected on global peace and acknowledged that the international community is off-track as human rights continues to be under attack globally.Guterres highlighted the need to “face the forces that threaten us with the wisdom, courage and fortitude that Nelson Mandela embodied” so that people everywhere can enjoy peace and prosperity.

“The United Nations finds itself at a time where it would be well-served to revisit and reconnect to the vision of its founders, as well as to take direction from Madiba’s “servant leadership” and courage,” said Mandela’s widow, and co-founder of the Elders, Graça Machel. The Elders, a grouping of independent global leaders workers for world peace and human rights, was founded by Machel and Mandela in 2007.

Secretary-general Antonio Guterres echoed similar sentiments in his opening remarks, stating: “Nelson Mandela was one of humanity’s great leaders….today, with human rights under growing pressure around the world, we would be well served by reflecting on the example of this outstanding man.”

Imprisoned in South Africa for almost 30 years for his anti-apartheid activism, Mandela, also known by his clan name Madiba, has been revered as a symbol of peace, democracy, and human rights worldwide.

In his inaugural address to the U.N. General Assembly in 1994 after becoming the country’s first black president, Mandela noted that the great challenge to the U.N. is to answer the question of “what it is that we can and must do to ensure that democracy, peace, and prosperity prevail everywhere.”

It is these goals along with his qualities of “humility, forgiveness, and compassion” that the political declaration adopted during the Summit aims to uphold.

However, talk along of such principles is not enough, said Amnesty International’s Secretary-General Kumi Naidoo.

“These are words that get repeated time and time again without the political will, urgency, determination, and courage to make them a reality, to make them really count. But we must make them count. Not tomorrow, but right now,” he said to world leaders.

“Without action, without strong and principled leadership, I fear for them. I fear for all of us,” Naidoo continued.

Both Machel and Naidoo urged the international community to not turn away from violence and suffering around the world including in Myanmar.

“Our collective consciousness must reject the lethargy that has made us accustomed to death and violence as if wars are legitimate and somehow impossible to terminate,” Machel said.

Recently, a U.N.-fact finding mission, which reported on gross human rights violations committed against the Rohingya people including mass killings, sexual slavery, and torture, has called for the country’s military leaders to be investigated and protected for genocide and crimes against humanity by the International Criminal Court (ICC).

While the ICC has launched a preliminary investigation and the U.N. was granted access to a select number of Rohingya refugees, Myanmar’s army chief General Min Aung Hlaing warned against foreign interference ahead of the General Assembly.

Since violence reignited in the country’s Rakhine State in August 2017, more than 700,000 Rohingya fled to neighbouring Bangladesh.

Still some remain within the country without the freedom to move or access basic services such as health care.

Naidoo warned the international community “not to adjust to the Rohingya population living in an open-air prison under a system of apartheid.”

This year’s U.N. General Assembly president Maria Fernanda Espinosa Garces of Ecuador said that while Mandela represents “a light of hope,” there are still concerns about collective action to resolve some of the world’s most pressing issues.

“Drifting away from multilateralism means jeopardising the future of our species and our planet. The world needs a social contract based on shared responsibility, and the only forum that we have to achieve this global compact is the United Nations,” she said.

Others were a little more direct about who has turned away from such multilateralism.

“Great statesmen tend to build bridges instead of walls,” said Iranian president Hassan Rouhani, taking a swipe at U.S. president Trump who pulled the country of the Iran nuclear deal and has continued his campaign to build a wall along the Mexico border.

Trump, who will be making his second appearance at the General Assembly, is expected to renew his commitment to the “America First” approach.

Naidoo made similar comments in relation to the U.S. president in his remarks on urging action on climate change.

“To the one leader who still denies climate change: we insist you start putting yourself on the right side of history,” he told attendees.

Trump, however, was not present to hear the leaders’ input as he instead attended a high-level event on counter narcotics.

Guterres highlighted the need to “face the forces that threaten us with the wisdom, courage and fortitude that Nelson Mandela embodied” so that people everywhere can enjoy peace and prosperity.

FAO director general José Graziano da Silva (l), honourary member of the FAO Nobel Peace Laureates Alliance Graça Machel (centre) and 2006 Nobel Peace Prize winner Muhammad Yunus (r) at the award ceremony in New York. Courtesy: FAO

Machel urged against partisan politics and the preservation of ego, saying “enough is enough.”

“History will judge you should you stagnate too long in inaction. Humankind will hold you accountable should you allow suffering to continue on your watch,” she said.

“It is in your hands to make a better world for all who live in it,” Machel concluded with Mandela’s words.

The Food and Agriculture Organisation of the U.N. awarded Machel an honorary membership of its Nobel Peace Laureates Alliance for Food Security and Peace in recognition of her late husband’s struggle for freedom and peace.

“It is an honour for us to have her as a member of the Alliance. In a world where hunger continues to increase due to conflicts, her advocacy for peace will be very important,” FAO director general José Graziano da Silva said.

In addition to honouring the centenary of the birth of Nelson Mandela, the Summit also marks the 70th Anniversary of the Declaration of Human Rights and the 20th Anniversary of the Rome Statute which established the ICC.

Peter Thomson, President of the UN General Assembly.

By Lyndal Rowlands
UNITED NATIONS, Nov 1 2016 (IPS)

Development should be about more than building roads or buying air conditioners, the President of the UN General Assembly, Peter Thomson told IPS in a recent interview.

Thomson, who started his career working as “a rural development man in Fiji” says he had become disillusioned with development before the Sustainable Development Goals came along.

After studying development studies at Cambridge Thomson returned to Fiji where he spent much of the 1970s working in villages for the Fiji government: “digging pit latrines and building sea walls.”

However he began to feel disillusioned by development when he saw that it ultimately led to communities breaking up. Young people would leave to sell produce at the markets on newly constructed roads, and then eventually would stop coming back.

“I got quite disillusioned with this whole idea of this is what humanity is set on: growth (where) every government had to produce growth and every government had to put in roads.”

“It just seemed we were covering all our best agricultural land with urban sprawl.”

However Thomson believes that the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) – which UN member states have agreed to implement between 2016 and 2030 – represent a different paradigm, as for example shown in goal 12 – which promotes responsible consumption and production.

He observes how Fiji has become reliant on air conditioners which didn’t even exist there 30 years ago.
“We were brought up to sleep in a room that had cross breeze.”

As President of the 71st session of the UN General Assembly from September 2016 until September 2017, representing his home country of Fiji, Thomson is now tasked with leading the second year of implementation of the goals among UN member states.

He sees the sustainability aspect of the development goals as being about ensuring that his grandchildren’s generation will have a future on this planet.

“With that sustainability added to development you have a future for humanity, as opposed to what we’re on at the moment which is just this path towards (economic growth).”

“Now the goal is give them a sustainable future, do not accept that it’s ok to steal from future generations, make sure that every development is going to produce a better life for your grandchildren.”

However Thomson acknowledges that achieving all 17 of the goals will not be easy.

“I still think the stakes are very high in that there are elements of the SDGs which are not necessarily attainable, but we have to nevertheless fight for their attainment.”

Two targets he notes will be particularly difficult to achieve are Goal 13 on Carbon Dioxide (CO2) levels, and Goal 14 on ocean acidification.

In order to achieve the goals Thomson now believes that it is important that they go beyond the four walls of the UN General Assembly.

“I see the SDGs as rights and responsibilities of people (but) you can’t fight for your rights unless you know what they are and at present the great majority of humanity does not know what the SDGs are.”

Realising the goals will also require a complete rethink of development funding.

“It’s not just throw some money at the SDGs it’s how do you transform the financial system to make it financially sustainable?” says Thomson, noting that the current financial system will collapse at a certain point if it continues on its current trajectory.

“At a point somewhere between three percent and four percent of CO2 levels over pre-industrial age the insurance industry stops functioning because they just can’t handle the risk,” he says.

Achieving the goals therefore requires transforming the global financial system so that the world’s capital – the majority of which is handled by about half a dozen firms – is invested in long term rather than short term projects, he said.

Thomson sees the role of Official Development Assistance – the official term for government aid – as being more effective when it is used to encourage private sector investment, an idea which he says is gaining traction at the UN.

However he also notes that addressing tax cooperation is also needed.

“I’ve seen the calculations on Africa. If they had proper taxation on their wealth Official Development Assistance isn’t even a toenail compared with what good taxation would produce for governments to build schools and roads.”

Tax cooperation has been an issue particularly of interest to the 133 developing countries at the UN which form the Group of 77 or G77.

Thomson a former Chair of the group in 2013, believes that tax cooperation will be a key issue for Ecuador which will chair the group from January 2017.

At the heart of the G77 he says is the objective of equity.

“The fact that we do come together eventually – after long discussions, in common positions, not always but most of the time, is because everybody believes in this principle of equity in this world.”

“The fact is that there’s still so much to do to bring developing countries into an equitable position in the community of nations so that’s the grand work of the G77.”

“I think there’s also a recognition within the UN system that the G77 is necessary because you always think about a house of parliament there’s got to be government and opposition to argue through to get progress.”

On Nov. 29, 138 member states of the United Nations General Assembly voted in favour of giving Palestine “non-member observer state” status. Only nine voted no, 41 abstained. Beyond Middle East politics, the vote also mirrors the limits of the U.S. global, and the Israeli regional, empires: 138 defy their grip and favour change, 41+9=50 do not for various reasons. Who wants what?

Johan Galtung

First: the Organisation of Islamic Cooperation (OIC) did not yield to U.S.-Israel in spite of the efforts against the Arab awakening. Israel is alone in the region: Greece-Turkey-Cyprus all voted yes.

Second: more than half of the states not in favour of the move were Eastern Europe (16) and the Pacific (10 – nine mini-states, and Australia). Add seven from Latin America, five from Africa, three from Asia (not Japan) and we get 41.

Third: Western Europe-NATO was divided. The Nordic European Free Trade Association (EFTA) countries (Iceland, Liechtenstein, Norway and Switzerland) were in favour, as well as Austria, France and GIPSI (Greece-Italy-Portugal-Spain-Ireland), the indebted EU periphery. Not in favour: UK, Germany, Netherlands; three mini-states; and the hard core, U.S.-Israel-Canada, making 50, only a quarter of the U.N. members.

The General Assembly is the closest we have to world democracy: no Security Council ‘big power’ veto. Israel has no regional support and the U.S. only little, shaky, insignificant, world support. U.S. clout does not even reach Afghanistan-Iraq-Libya, recently bombed-invaded-occupied. The UK remains at heel, like poodle to master.

Read the vote in terms of a world regionalisation process: Green light for OIC; some political leadership is needed in the Latin America-Caribbean, Africa and Asia regions. The Nordic-EFTA moral light is intact, and the new Third World, GIPSI, is joining the old.

The U.S. is out of touch. Stop droning, killing; make a beautiful North America with Mexico and Canada.

But empires also crumble from within through demoralisation. With political demoralisation, world clout is disappearing. Also watch the “fiscal cliff” for doubts about the U.S. political process: two parties, at loggerheads. No cancelling of mortgage debts, no lifting of the bottom 16 percent – many not knowing where the next meal comes from – into the economy, increasing domestic demand.

With economic demoralisation: the West is outcompeted. And the financial crisis and Great Recession scared the wits out of most Americans –cautious, risk-averse and defensive- spending less and saving more. Not a single person was imprisoned for exorbitant commissions and bonuses, secret deals and obscure derivatives; but Wall Street continues to lobby against new legislation.

With military demoralisation: the U.S.-NATO is losing. And consider the lifestyle and affair of a top U.S. Army official in Afghanistan and director of the CIA, killing machines: general David Petraeus. Imagine the effect on soldiers risking their lives for an unwinnable and dubious war while the top fools around.

With cultural demoralisation: faith in U.S. exceptionalism is decreasing. Public figures ignore what happens in the real world. Truth will soon dawn upon them.

With social demoralisation: the U.S. birthrate plummets to the lowest level since the 1920s. This may imply a decline in the U.S. population and in tax revenue, as in much of the West.

Add it all up: the fall of the U.S. empire is on track.

How about Israel? Heading for a cliff of its own making.

The United Nations vote was on the 65th anniversary of the U.N. two-state resolution 181. Shortly after the adoption of the resolution, Swedish diplomat Folke Bernadotte was murdered by the Zionist group Lehi. Then the Nakba, the expulsion of Palestinians from their land in 1948. The problem is not Zionism but hard, revisionist Expansion-Occupation-Siege (E-O-S) Zionism driving to the cliff.

The U.N. vote legitimised Palestine and delegitimised that kind of Israel.

Direct negotiations lead nowhere: the Oslo process left security, Jerusalem, refugees, Israeli settlements, boundaries, for “later”.

But Israel had to react to the rockets! Yes, by dropping E-O-S for ‘2-6-20+’: two States in a six-state community with Arab neighbors in a 20+ states Organisation for Security and Cooperation with a nuclear free zone. But Israel delegitimised itself by choosing violence. Israel also reacts to nonviolence-boycott, non-cooperation, civil disobedience, with violence, as it did against boats trying to break the siege. And delegitimises itself even further.

Together with mainstream U.S., Israel tries to control the discourse by branding all critics as anti-Semites and self-hating Jews. A non-starter in democracies. Jimmy Carter, Desmond Tutu, Noam Chomsky, Norman Finkelstein, Richard Falk, to mention some recently branded that way, are neither anti-Jewish nor anti-Israel, but use transparency and dialogue – the hallmarks of democracy – constructively. Stifle that, and we get two elites listening only to themselves.

Travel these roads: delegitimise yourself, meet violence with violence, meet nonviolence with violence, control discourse, and down the road, very close to the cliff, the South African scenario is waiting. The U.S. decides one day that Israel is more of a liability than an asset.

Israel is out of touch. A regime change from within is needed. (END/COPYRIGHT IPS)

Johan Galtung, rector of the TRANSCEND Peace University, is author of ‘The Fall of the US Empire – And Then What?’, published by the TRANSCEND University Press.

One day after voting against a United Nations General Assembly draft resolution seeking to abolish the death penalty, India executed Pakistani national Mohammad Ajmal Kasab for the November 2008 terror rampage in Mumbai that left 166 people dead.

Kasab was executed Wednesday morning by hanging – the approved method for carrying out the death penalty in India. He was the sole survivor of a ten-man squad of armed militants who landed in Mumbai harbour on a terror mission after sailing out from the Pakistani port city of Karachi.

While the other nine were killed in firefights with Indian security forces, Kasab was pinned down and disarmed by policemen.

After pictures of him – snapped as he attacked Mumbai’s main railway station – were circulated around the world, he emerged as the face of the massacre, and a test of India’s capital punishment policy.

The country’s Supreme Court had, in 1983, ruled that the death penalty should be imposed only in “the rarest of rare cases.” Kasab was the first person to be executed since 2004.

Speaking to members of the press on Wednesday India’s foreign minister Salman Khurshid said Kasab’s was “certainly a rarest of the rare case”. He described the execution as a “sober, sombre duty that had to be carried out”.

In India, capital crimes, or crimes that merit the death sentence, include murder, gang robbery involving murder, and terrorist activities. Hanging sentences are carried out only after appeals are duly heard in higher courts and clemency denied by the government.

After Kasab’s 2010 death sentence was upheld by India’s Supreme Court, the case went before President Pranab Mukherjee who, following advice from the cabinet as is customary, denied clemency on Nov. 5, clearing the way for Wednesday’s execution.

On Tuesday, India had joined 39 other countries in voting against the General Assembly draft calling for a non-binding moratorium on executions, after insisting that every country had the sovereign right to frame its own legal system.

The draft resolution was adopted by the U.N. Third Committee on social and humanitarian issues with an overwhelming 110 countries voting in favour and 36 abstaining.

“It is unfortunate that India has voted against the moratorium, since this is a country that is capable of promoting progressive and liberal ideas in global forums,” Maja Daruwala, a leading campaigner against the death penalty, told IPS.

Daruwala, executive director of the Commonwealth Human Rights Initiative, a New Delhi-based international non-governmental organisation, said, “India should be leading the movement for the realisation of a compassionate global society.”

Considering that several older death row cases are still under consideration for grant of clemency, Kasab’s case appears to have been disposed of quickly.

There are, according to the home ministry, 14 mercy petition cases now pending before the government, including that of Mohammed Afzal Guru, condemned for his role in the December 2001 terror attack on India’s parliament building.

Guru’s lawyer, Colin Gonsalves, says Kasab’s relatively quick hanging may have an effect on other pending death row cases in India.

“There should not be any death sentence at all, but Kasab’s was an extreme case,” Gonsalves, founder of the New Delhi-based Human Rights Law Network (HRLN) told IPS.

“Kasab’s case is a significant setback for the move towards complete abolition of the death penalty in India,” Prof. Anup Surendranath at the National Law University of New Delhi wrote in an opinion piece in The Hindu newspaper on Sep. 17.

“A profoundly hurt and grieving society, the guilt of the accused established through damning photographs and videos, wounded nationalism and the possible involvement of state actors across the border all contributed towards making Kasab’s case a strong validation of the need for the death penalty,” he wrote.

Gonsalves said he does not see India agreeing to any U.N. moratorium on the death penalty.

Human rights activists like Gonsalves and Daruwala are also concerned at the arbitrary application of the death penalty in the country – as borne out by an analysis of cases between 1950 and 2006 carried out by Amnesty International (AI) – and also by too many erroneous judgements.

In August, a group of 14 former judges sought the intervention of President Mukherjee to commute death sentences passed on 13 convicts, currently incarcerated in different jails across the country, on the grounds of erroneous judgements.

In their appeal the judges pointed out that the Supreme Court had itself admitted that at least seven of the sentences were awarded ‘per incuriam’ (out of error or ignorance) and did not fall in the “rarest of rare” category.

“Executions of persons wrongly sentenced to death will severely undermine the credibility of the criminal justice system and the authority of the state to carry out such punishments in future,” the appeal to the president said.

Participants of Duan Yuezhong’s Chinese language class conducted in a local park. Credit: Suvendrini Kakuchi/IPS

By Suvendrini Kakuchi
TOKYO, Sep 29 2012 (IPS)

While the 40^th anniversary of the normalisation of Japan-China relations passed under a dark shadow of rising tensions and bitter territorial disputes in East Asia, a strand of citizen-based diplomacy at the grassroots level is emerging in Japan as a path towards regional reconciliation.

Sabre rattling between Japan and its neighbours – namely its primary economic competitors, China and South Korea – reached new heights at the United Nations General Assembly currently underway in New York when Chinese president Hu Jintao dismissed Japanese Prime Minister Yoshiko Noda’s claims to a disputed chain of islands as “illegal and invalid”.

The uninhabited archipelago in the East China Sea, which may shelter large deposits of natural gas, are known as the Senkaku Islands in Japan, Diayou in China and the Tiaoyutai Islands in Taiwan.

The possibly resource-rich cluster that lies below Japan’s southernmost island of Okinawa has long been a major bone of contention between China and Japan, with Taiwan, too, laying claim to the territory.

The Japanese government’s proposal to buy the islands from a private owner sparked a wave of protest across 50 cities in China earlier this month.

The violence, which included the destruction of several Japanese establishments, forced a number of staff members to relocate back to Japan, while hundreds of Japanese tourists cancelled their visits to China.

The Senkaku Islands were not the only source of conflict at the U.N. this week. On Thursday, South Korean President Lee Myung-bak rejected Noda’s vow to protect Japan’s sea and land space – an obvious reference by the latter to the dispute with South Korea over ownership of Takeshima, a pair of rocky islets known in Korean as Dokto.

A street poll conducted by the Tokyo-based Nippon Broadcasting Corporation this month indicated the Japanese public wants the government to take a stronger stance in these territorial disputes, particular where South Korea is concerned.

East Asia political experts here view these tensions as a further threat to the rocky bilateral relations that have existed since diplomatic ties were established with China in 1972 and with South Korea in 1965.

But a growing number of concerned citizens are convinced that grassroots efforts and local diplomacy can help defuse tensions between the agitated neighbours.

These concerned voices are calling for a cooling down of the situation in an attempt to prevent mutual economic losses, trade boycotts or suffocation of the free flow of students, professionals, artists and information between the various countries.

A citizens’ movement for change?

Duan Yuezhong, a Chinese national living in Tokyo, is very dedicated to this movement. Undeterred by political hot-headedness, he is conducting a discussion group for the Japanese public.

“Nothing can stop my efforts in Japan towards a citizen-based approach to nurture closer ties between China and Japan. To withdraw now is to give up on the future,” he told IPS.

Yuezhong, a former journalist in China, has spent almost two decades in Japan. He owns a publishing company that prints books specialising in Japan-China relations and also conducts popular Chinese-language classes at a local park.

Yuezhong has great faith in the fledging citizen’s movement that highlights the need for political restraint and the importance of objective negotiations between countries.

Akiko Ozaki, a Japanese businesswoman who set up a travel agency in China two years ago, echoed these sentiments. She appealed to participants of her annual tour to Dalian, a major port city in the northeast of China, to go ahead with their visit scheduled for next month.

“My tour may survive. For ordinary people like us who have developed close business ties with China it is very difficult to throw away (our) hard work because of political (stubbornness),” she told IPS.

While economic ties have cemented East Asia as a formidable bloc — China has now overtaken the United States to become Japan’s top trading partner — mistrust is deep-rooted due to Japan’s history of colonisation in the region.

“There is a huge perception gap when it comes to understanding Japanese colonisation in all the three countries,” according to professor Masao Okonogi, an expert on Japan-Korea relations at Kyushu University.

“Against the growing international clout of China and South Korea, Japan must seek to put the past behind it,” he explained.

In an effort to do just this, Okonogi participated in several joint study programmes on history that took place on an annual basis between Japan and South Korea until the project was disbanded two years ago.

“Political interference on both sides dealt a severe blow to crucial attempts to foster a deeper sense of mutual understanding of the historical past but we must persevere,” he explained.

Yoichi Tao, scientist and manager of Global Voices – a website that hosts a myriad opinions including those of Chinese and Korean students in Japan – says space for wider debate on differences between Japan and its East Asian neighbours is crucial.

“Pursuing economic development has pushed the vital importance of bridging (misunderstandings) to the back burner. The latest upheaval has (proven) that the economy alone does not bring stability in East Asia,” he told IPS.

Kao Hui Fen, a Taiwanese national in Tokyo, cannot agree more. Fen says after fifteen years in Japan she has become more outspoken about Japanese colonisation of her country, an approach that has not caused her problems.

“I tell my Japanese friends that colonisation is bad. They do not respond angrily and some are even willing to discuss the past objectively,” she said.

Tao believes that sharing honest opinions at the civilian level can weaken conservative and narrow political agendas that have long divided Japan and its closest Asian neighbours.

“People can lead the way forward in East Asia where emotional historical issues have bogged us down for too long,” he said.

(END)

U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon last week  designated Nassir Abdulaziz al-Nasser, President of the 66^th session of the United Nations General Assembly, as High Representative for the Alliance of Civilizations, replacing Jorge Sampaio.

During his tenure as President of the General Assembly,  Al-Nasser exerted efforts to mainstream the importance of the Alliance of Civilizations as a tool for building peace and stability across all nations, Ban said.  As High Representative, he will provide the vision and leadership required to strengthen the work of the Alliance and enhance dialogue with stakeholders to exert their influence in progressing the objectives of the Alliance.

Ban also expressed his gratitude to Sampaio, former President of Portugal, for his commitment to advancing understanding across cultures, religions, and communities.  He said he was  particularly appreciative of  Sampaio’s visionary stewardship of the Alliance over five years since its early days.

For the past 13 years, from 1998 to 2011,  Al-Nasser served as Ambassador and Permanent Representative of Qatar to the United Nations.  He represented his country on the U.N.  Security Council during the two-year term of Qatar as a non-permanent member (2006 to 2007).  He also presided over three of the subsidiary bodies of the Council, according to a statement released here.

During his term as Ambassador to the United Nations,  Al-Nasser also served as a Vice-President of the fifty-seventh session of the  General Assembly (2002 to 2003).  At the same time, he served as non-resident Ambassador to a number of countries in the Americas, including Argentina, Belize, Brazil, Canada, Colombia, Cuba, Nicaragua, Panama, Paraguay and Uruguay.

Earlier,  Al-Nasser was appointed as his country’s resident Ambassador to Jordan (1993 to 1998), before which he was first posted to the Permanent Mission of Qatar to the United Nations, New York, as Minister Plenipotentiary (1986 to 1993).

The recipient of numerous decorations and awards,  Al-Nasser was made an honorary fellow of the Foreign Policy Association in New York in 2009.  He also holds three honorary doctorates:  in international affairs from the Government of China through Chongqing University; from the Institute of Oriental Studies of the Russian Academy of Sciences in recognition of his efforts to foster cross-cultural understanding and strengthen the work of the United Nations Alliance of Civilizations initiative; and an Honorary Doctorate of Laws from Fordham University in the United States.

A wide range of countries have conferred on him their national awards, including the Medal of Independence of the Government of the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan; Grand Officer, Order of Merit (Italy); Medal of Grand Commander of the Order of Makarios III (Cyprus); National Order of Doctor José Matias Delgado (El Salvador); and Commander of the National Order of the Republic (Côte d’Ivoire).