Speaking Out for People, Planet and Peace

By Ramesh Jaura

BERLIN | NEW YORK (IDN) – "The seed of peace exists in all of us. It must be nurtured, cared for and promoted by us all to flourish. Peace cannot be imposed from outside – it must be realized from within," says Ambassador Anwarul K. Chowdhury in the run-up to the High-Level Forum on the Culture of Peace on September 13, 2019 in the UN headquarters in New York.

Exactly the same day 20 years ago, in 1999, the General Assembly adopted, by consensus and without reservation, the pioneering and norm-setting resolution 53/243 on the Declaration and Programme of Action on a Culture of Peace.

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.

By Lisa Vives, Global Information Network

NEW YORK (IDN) – Ghana’s first president, Kwame Nkrumah, warned as far back as the 1960s that political independence from European colonial oppressors without economic independence was a recipe for disaster.Nkrumah, who authored The struggle continues, Class Struggle in Africa and Neo-colonialism – the last stage of imperialism, among others, was deeply aware of the threats faced by the new states and the ploys of their former oppressors.

By Santo D. Banerjee

NEW YORK (IDN) – Although significant progress has been made since the adoption of the Addis Ababa Action Agenda in 2015, recent data confirm that the world is not on track to achieve the 17 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). This includes the slow pace at which the financing gap for the SDGs – amounting to trillions of dollars – is being filled.

This in turn is adversely affecting financing, which is the thread that connects many of the priorities from advances on climate action to universal health coverage to the SDGs and small island developing States. 

By Devinder Kumar

NEW DELHI (IDN) – As COP14, the 14th session of the Conference of the Parties to the United Nations Convention to Combat Desertification (UNCCD) entered the second week, India’s Prime Minister Narendra Modi opened the ministerial segment calling on the international community to set up a global water action agenda as the central theme to achieve land degradation neutrality (LDN).

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.

Viewpoint by René Wadlow*, TRANSCEND Media Service

GENEVA (IDN) – It has often been mentioned that the Chinese characters for “crisis” is a combination of the characters for “danger” and for “opportunity”. Thus it is today for the Iran Crisis. The dangers are evident and have been around for a while.  The Persian Gulf region has long been one of the flashpoints for conflict in the Middle East.  The strategic significance of the region has been magnified by the region’s oil resources.

By Devinder Kumar

NEW DELHI (IDN) – In 2018, the first 100% organic state in the world, Sikkim in the North of India, received the Gold Award of the UN backed Future Policy Award, also known as ‘Oscar’ for best policies. The policy enhances soil fertility and increases biodiversity at field and landscape level. Further states in India and the Himalayas have adopted 100% organic farming goals or aim to adopt them.

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.

By Kalinga Seneviratne

KATHMANDU (IDN) – The democratically elected Communist Party government in this former Hindu Kingdom is trying to change decades old media laws that were enacted before the digital age and is running into opposition from journalists who fear that the government is trying to muzzle a free media. 

“The communist party came to power with a two-thirds majority in 2017 and they didn’t come to enhance media freedom,” argues Kunda Dixit, Editor and publisher of the popular weekly Nepali Times. But he believes that the government does not want to do it suddenly.

By Alisher Kukanbekov

KHOROG (IDN) – “I’m surely grateful to  have lived in the Soviet Union. Our lives moved rather slower back then, we didn’t have to worry about putting food on the table. Everyone was equal,” says Amid, recalling the days when Tajikistan was part of the Soviet Union.

It is not uncommon for older people in the Central Asian region that was under the Soviet Union to express such nostalgia for the communist era, as the capitalistic get rich fast skim fades away failing to deliver a better lifestyle.

By Shanta Roy

NEW YORK (IDN) – India, Pakistan and Israel, three countries armed with nuclear weapons, are not recognized as nuclear weapon states by the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) – a “privilege” bestowed only on the world’s five major nuclear powers: the U.S., UK, Russia, France and China, which are also members of the Nuclear Suppliers Group (NSG)

But in a report titled “António Guterres backs India’s coveted NSG membership”, the New Delhi-based Economic Times said “India has received a shot in the arm for its civil nuclear program from the UN, with Secretary-General António Guterres announcing support for Delhi’s NSG membership in his meeting with Prime Minister Narendra Modi” (on August 25).

By Kizito Makoye

LUDEWA, Tanzania (IDN) – It’s almost midday in Nsisi – a fishing village nestled on the shore of Lake Nyasa – and Lucy Gwamaka is busy unfurling a canvas to dry her sardines in the sun.

For the 33-year-old mother of three, life is a daily struggle. Her wrinkled face and sun-parched skin makes her look older than her age.

Distraught and cash-strapped, Gwamaka has been grappling to make ends meet ever since her husband died four years ago after a short battle with malaria.