OPINION

Photo: UN Secretary-General Guterres shakes hands with Chinese President XI while UN censors 100 rights groups on Chinese abuses, blocks publication of joint appeal. Source: UN Watch.

Censorship at the Heart of the UN is a Betrayal of its Charter

Viewpoint by Jonathan Power

LUND, Sweden (IDN-INPS) – The UN Human Rights Council (UNHRC) has long been controversial. Back in the days of the Soviet Union, Moscow protected communist and ultra-socialist dictators around the world from any attack on their human rights abuses. At the same time routine attacks on Israel, even the extravagant ones, were given free reign in the Council.

Indeed, this still continues with the protagonists often unable in their minds to separate criticizing Israel, which deserves it, with criticizing the religion of Judaism, so-called anti-Semitism. (One should add that many Jews conflate the two as well.)

: Jonathan Power; OPINION; 17 September 2019

Photo: Outgoing IMF Chief Christine Lagarde. Source: IMF Flickr

Keeping Up Anti-Corruption Momentum in the Post-Lagarde IMF

Viewpoint by M. Emilia Berazategui

The author is Global Advocacy Coordinator at Transparency International, the global civil society organisation leading the fight against corruption

BERLIN (IDN) – In recent years, the International Monetary Fund (IMF) has repeatedly demonstrated its ambition to play a leading role in tackling corruption worldwide. Under the leadership of Christine Lagarde, it made public commitments at the 2016 UK Anti-Corruption Summit and during the High Level Segment of the 2018 International Anti-Corruption Conference (IACC) in Denmark.

: Phil Harris; OPINION; 13 September 2019

Photo: ACP Secretary-General Dr Patrick I. Gomes at the first-ever United Nations Trade Forum, organized by UNCTAD in Geneva, Switzerland, from 9 to 13 September 2019. Credit: Timothy Sullivan (UNCTAD)

ACP Reiterates Call for Urgent Ambitious Climate Action

Viewpoint by Dr. Patrick I. Gomes

The writer is the Secretary-General of the African, Caribbean and Pacific Group of States (ACP). Following are extensive excerpts from his presentation at the United Nations Trade Forum from 9-13 September 2019 in the Session ‘Climate Action and Trade’ in Geneva.

GENEVA (IDN) – The ACP Group of States shares with the great majority of well-informed persons, globally, that climate change is the most significant challenge, this century, for the achievement of sustainable development on planet Earth.

: Dr. Patrick Gomes - ACP Seretary-General; GLOBAL GOVERNANCE; ACP Group of States; 13 September 2019

Top Photo by Robert Mandel: Boris Johnson as one of the figures satirised on a float created by anti-Brexit protesters in Manchester. CC BY 4.0

Burning Down the House

Viewpoint by John Feffer

The author is the director of Foreign Policy in Focus at the Washington-based Institute for Policy Studies and this viewpoint is published with his kind permission. It was written prior to the latest events in the UK Parliament.

WASHINGTON (IDN) – Doesn’t idiocy ever take a vacation?

As August wound down, the populist troika of Donald Trump, Boris Johnson and Jair Bolsonaro proved once again that the United States, the United Kingdom and Brazil would be better off with no leaders rather than the dubious characters that currently pretend to govern these countries.

: Phil Harris; OPINION; 11 September 2019

Photo: Aerial view of the Amazon rainforest, near Manaus. CC BY-SA 2.0

The Emerald Forests Need Not Die

Viewpoint by Jonathan Power

LUND, Sweden (IDN-INPS) – Belem is the Brazilian city at the mouth of the Amazon. Unlike its slummy counterpart, Kinshasa, at the mouth of the Congo, it’s full of resplendent streets with beautiful nineteenth century houses. It has squares and marketplaces full of cafes, fountains and life.

The large city grew up shipping rubber from the Amazon forest, which begins on its doorstep. This made it wealthy. One can see the beautiful baroque Theatre of Peace, a fluffy pink building where Anna Pavlova danced. On the main square, ornate with pavements of black and white quartz, is the Hotel Grao Para where Xavier Cugat and his orchestra would play and Zsa Zsa Gabor would stop over on her way, by propeller plane, on the slow flight to Rio.

: Jonathan Power; OPINION; 10 September 2019

Photo credit: U.S: National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA)

Continuing Upsurge in Costs of U.S. Nuclear Warheads

Viewpoint by Kingston Reif

The writer is the Director for Disarmament and Threat Reduction Policy at the Arms Control Association. This article was first published in Arms Control Today (ACT).

WASHINGTON, DC (IDN | Arms Control Association) – The estimated cost of sustaining U.S. nuclear warheads and their supporting infrastructure continues to rise, according to the Energy Department’s latest annual report on the Stockpile Stewardship and Management Plan.

: UN Bureau; OPINION; 09 September 2019

Image credit: sustainabledevelopment.un.org/sdgsummit

Everything Has to Change for Our Planet to Stay the Same

By António Guterres, Secretary-General of the United Nations

NEW YORK (IDN) – Our planet is changing dramatically. Forests are burning, sea ice is shrinking, and the Greenland icecap is pouring unprecedented amounts of water into the ocean. Levels of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere are higher than they have been in human history, climate disruption is the new reality, and scientists are warning that the planet is simply not capable of coping with the growing pressure being placed on it by humanity.

Since I became Secretary-General, I have witnessed what it means to live in a world that is, on average, one degree Celsius hotter than it was before the industrial revolution. I have come to know the dramatic force of natural disasters supercharged by climate change.

: UN Bureau; OPINION; 06 September 2019

Photo: Police firing tear gas to disperse protesters near Central Government Complex on 5 August 2019. VOA Cantonese. Source: Wikimedia Commons.

Non-violence Is the Need of the Hour in Hong Kong

Viewpoint by Jonathan Power

LUND, Sweden (IDN-INPS) – The gloves are off in Hong Kong. Judging from the pictures on September 3 BBC News the police no longer have any compunction about beating protestors. Ironically, they don’t appear to get close to the fringe of protestors who are using violent tactics. Rather they are swinging their batons left right and centre at any young person they meet, even chasing them on to the metro trains where commuters get thwacked too.

It reminds me vividly of the tough sheriffs of Alabama and Mississippi in the 1960s who used dogs against the civil rights protestors and cracked heads.

: Jonathan Power; OPINION; 03 September 2019

Photo: Soviet Union conducted its first nuclear test in eastern Kazakhstan near the secret town of Semipalatinsk on August 29, 1949. Credit: Katsuhiro Asagiri | INPS-IDN August 2019

It Is Time to Close and Lock the Door on Nuclear Testing

Viewpoint by Daryl G. Kimball

The writer is Executive Director of the Arms Control Association. The following is the text of his article published in Arms Control Today.

WASHINGTON, DC (IDN | Arms Control Association) – Everybody knows that nuclear weapons have been used twice in wartime and with terrible consequences. Often overlooked, however, is the large-scale, postwar use of nuclear weapons: At least eight countries have conducted 2,056 nuclear test explosions, most of which were far larger than the bombs that leveled Hiroshima and Nagasaki. The United States alone has detonated more than 1,030 nuclear explosions in the atmosphere, underwater, and underground.

: Daryl G. Kimball; OPINION; 02 September 2019

Photo: The night of 22 to 23 August 1791, in Santo Domingo (today Haiti and the Dominican Republic) saw the beginning of the uprising that would play a crucial role in the abolition of the transatlantic slave trade. Credit: UNESCOPhoto: The night of 22 to 23 August 1791, in Santo Domingo (today Haiti and the Dominican Republic) saw the beginning of the uprising that would play a crucial role in the abolition of the transatlantic slave trade. Credit: UNESCO

Remembering a Founding Tragedy of Our Modern World

Viewpoint by Ali Moussa

The writer is Coordinator of UNESCO's Slave Route Project. This article first appeared on UNESCO Website on 22 August 2019, a day before the International Day of Remembrance of the Slave Trade and its Abolion initiated by UNESCO.

PARIS (IDN-INPS) – Among the major crimes that have marked human history, the slave trade and slavery are distinguished by their magnitude, their duration and the violence that accompanied them. It is difficult to understand how a tragedy of this scale could have been ignored for so long.