UN Insider

Photo: IAEA Director-General Yukiya Amano (left) with Kazakh President Nursultan Nazarbayev with the symbolic key to the IAEA-LEU Bank. Credit: Official Site of the President of the Republic of Kazakhstan.

Kazakhstan Joins UN's Nuclear Watchdog in a Milestone Step Toward Non-Proliferation

By Ramesh Jaura

ASTANA (IDN) – While a moment of silence was observed on August 29 at 11:05 a.m. local time in Kazakhstan's capital city Astana to honour the memory of the victims of all nuclear weapons tests, some 2713 miles (4365 kilometres) away, North Korea fired an intermediate range ballistic missile that flew over Japan: The same day a new facility was inaugurated in Kazakhstan under the auspices of the UN's nuclear watchdog that could open a fresh chapter in non-proliferation.

In the five decades between July 1945, when the United States exploded its first atomic bomb, and the opening for signature of the Comprehensive Nuclear-Test-Ban Treaty (CTBT) in 1996, over 2,000 nuclear tests were carried out all over the world. After the CTBT was opened for signature in September 1996, nine nuclear tests had been conducted until 2016. Since then, only North Korea is known to have been conducting nuclear tests.

: Ramesh Jaura; ARMAMENTS; Nuclear Weapons; 30 August 2017

Photo: UK aid and UNFPA support the construction and rehabilitation of eight health care facilities in Sierra Leone in July 2017. UNFPA Sierra Leone representative is in the centre. Credit: UNF PA Sierra Leone.

UN Responding to the Humanitarian Crisis in Sierra Leone

Interview with Dr. Kim Eva Dickson, Representative of the UNFPA Sierra Leone

NEW YORK | FREETOWN (IDN) - UNFPA, the United Nations Population Fund, is paying specific attention to the needs of women and girls affected by the floods and mudslides in the country's capital city Freetown that killed over 495 people on August 14, 2017. Joan Erakit, UN correspondent of IDN, flagship agency of the International Press Syndicate (INPS) Group, spoke with Dr. Kim Eva Dickson, Representative of the UNFPA Sierra Leone. Following is the full text of the interview.

: IDN-INPS UN Bureau; THE WORLD; Africa; 30 August 2017

Photo: Slums like this have emerged over the years as poverty erupts in an area called Lion's Den, 20km outside Chinhoyi town in Mashonaland West province in Zimbabwe. Credit: Jeffrey Moyo/IDN-INPS

Poverty Swoops on Southern Africa's Urban Dwellers

By Jeffrey Moyo

HARARE (IDN) – At one stage in her life, she was a top accountant with the National Railways of Zimbabwe. Now, domiciled in Epworth, a crowded informal settlement in south-eastern Harare Province, 25 kilometres outside Harare, the Zimbabwean capital, hers has turned out to be a riches-to-rags tale.

Shuvai Chikoto, a 48-year-old mother of three who was widowed five years ago, is just one of millions of other Southern African urban dwellers who have plunged into poverty over the years – and she is not particularly impressed that the United Nations has set the goal of ending poverty in all its forms everywhere within the next 13 years.

: Jeffrey Moyo; THE WORLD; Africa; 28 August 2017

Photo: Harvesting rice in Viet Nam. Global rice consumption trends are rising. Photo: FAO/Hoang Dinh Nam

Climate Change Threatens Agriculture in Pacific Rim Economies

By J Nastranis

NEW YORK (IDN) – Global warming is expected to have a significant impact on future yields of everything from rice to fish, particularly in countries situated closer to the equator, the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO) has warned, and urged the Asia-Pacific economies to take a leading role in adaptation and mitigation.

“Many APEC [Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation] economies have already felt the full force of agricultural losses from natural disasters in recent years, with the vast majority of these being climate related,” said Kundhavi Kadiresan, Assistant Director-General and FAO Regional Representative for Asia and the Pacific, reported UN News.

: J Nastranis; UN INSIDER; 27 August 2017

Photo: A snow leopard in Kyrgyzstan’s Shamshy Wildlife Sanctuary. Credit: SLF Kyrgyzstan / Snow Leopard Trust

Globally Endangered Snow Leopard Draws the Focus

By Sultan Karimov

BISHKEK (IDN) - An elusive denizen of the mountains of Central and South Asia, the snow leopard (panthera uncia) inhabits parts of 12 countries: Afghanistan, Bhutan, China, India, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyz Republic, Mongolia, Nepal, Pakistan, Russia, Tajikistan, and Uzbekistan.

Its geographic range, 60 percent of which is in China, runs from the Hindu Kush in eastern Afghanistan and the Syr Darya through the mountains of Pamir, Tian Shan, Karakorum, Kashmir, Kunlun, and the Himalaya to southern Siberia, where the range covers the Russian Altai, Sayan, Tannu-Ola mountains and the mountains to the west of Lake Baikal.

: IDN-INPS UN Bureau; UN INSIDER; 26 August 2017

Kazakhstan Plays a Crucial Role in Making the Nuclear Fuel Bank a Reality

By Tariq Rauf*

ASTANA (IDN) - The International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) and Kazakhstan will formally inaugurate a Low Enriched Uranium (LEU) Bank located at the Ulba Metallurgical Plant at Öskemen (formerly Ust Kamenogorsk) on August 29.

This event will mark an important milestone in the long march for the IAEA to set up an IAEA owned and operated nuclear fuel bank as envisaged in the 1957 IAEA Statute. This initiative was proposed in September 2006 by the Washington, DC-based Nuclear Threat Initiative (NTI) which offered US$50 million to the IAEA, provided by global investor Warren Buffet, to set up an IAEA LEU Bank by raising an additional $100 million.

: IDN-INPS UN Bureau; UN INSIDER; 25 August 2017

Photo: Miroslav Jenca (right), Assistant Secretary-General for Political Affairs, addresses the Security Council on the situation in the Middle East. At his side is Ambassador Abdel Latif Aboulatta, Permanent Representative of Egypt to the UN and President of the Council for August. UN Photo/Kim Haughton

Senior UN Official Urges Security Council Support for the Two-State Solution to Israeli-Palestinian Conflict

By Santo D. Banerjee

UNITED NATIONS (IDN) – Despite the scepticism – if not opposition – of the veto-wielding United States to realizing a two-State solution, a senior United Nations official has urged the parties to the longstanding Israeli-Palestinian conflict to recommit to that solution and to ending the occupation of Palestinian lands.

This view was unequivocally supported by the representatives of Bolivia and Uruguay, two of the 10 non-permanent members of the Security Council in addition to five permanent members (P5): China, France, Russian Federation, the United Kingdom, and the United States.

: Santo D. Banerjee; UN INSIDER; 24 August 2017

Photo: A candle-floating ceremony in memory of Hiroshima and Nagasaki in which three officials of the Japanese embassy in Reykjavik participated. One of the speakers said there was now a great need for the Icelandic peace movement to encourage the Icelandic government to sign and ratify the Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons. Credit: Lowana Veal | IDN-INPS

Iceland, Norway Debate UN Nuclear Weapons Ban Treaty

By Lowana Veal

REYKJAVIK (IDN) – With a population of 344,000, Iceland does not have a military of its own. Nevertheless, it is a member of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) and as such was one of the countries that boycotted the discussions leading up to the potentially groundbreaking UN Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons, adopted on July 7.

Prior to the start of the conference leading up to the Treaty, Foreign Affairs Minister Gudlaugur Thor Thordarson replied to a parliamentary question by Left-Green MP Steinunn Thora Árnadóttir on whether Iceland would take part in the UN discussions about banning nuclear weapons, as she felt that the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation Nuclear Weapons (NPT) had not been very successful.

: Lowana Veal; ARMAMENTS; Nuclear Weapons; 23 August 2017

Photo: The 383rd meeting of the Committee took place on 8 August 2017. Over 36 Committee Members/Observers were in attendance in addition to several civil society organizations.

UN Committee Highlights Activities Marking 50 Years of Israeli Occupation of Palestine

By J Nastranis

UNITED NATIONS (IDN) - Fifty years after Israel occupied the West Bank and Gaza Strip, it continues to control these areas through repression, institutionalized discrimination, and systematic abuses of the Palestinian population’s rights.

Many of Israel’s abusive practices have been carried out in the name of security. Palestinian armed groups have carried out scores of lethal attacks on civilians and launched thousands of rocket attacks on Israeli civilian areas, also in violation of international humanitarian law.

But activities to mark 50 years of Israeli occupation of Palestine and support the two-State solution took the centre stage in recent efforts to quell tensions, especially in Jerusalem, and create conditions for mutual respect, the Palestinian Rights Committee heard on August 8, 2017.

: J Nastranis; UN INSIDER; 21 August 2017

Photo: An internally displaced woman and her daughter look over the city of Sana’a, Yemen, from the roof of this dilapidated building they call their new home. Photo: Giles Clarke/UN OCHA

UN Helpless While 'Death Looms For Yemenis'

By Bernhard Schell

AMMAN (IDN) – The United Nations is apparently incapable of pushing for a political solution to the more than two-year-old conflict plaguing Yemen, one of the Arab world's poorest countries, which has been devastated by a war between forces loyal to the internationally-recognised government of President Abdrabbuh Mansour Hadi and those allied to the Houthi rebel movement.

More than 7,600 people have been killed and 42,000 injured since March 2015, the majority in air strikes by a Saudi-led multinational coalition that backs the president, according to independent sources. The conflict and a blockade imposed by the coalition have also triggered a humanitarian disaster, leaving 70% of the population in need of aid.