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Photo: Hambantota Port. Credit: Wikimedia Commons

Sri Lanka Clears Major Hurdle For China’s Silk Route Project

By Kalinga Seneviratne

COLOMBO (IDN) - The signing of a deal between the Sri Lankan government and a Chinese company, basically transferring the ownership on a 99-year lease of the strategically located Chinese-built Hambantota Port and 5,000 acres of land surrounding it for an industrial park in southern Sri Lanka has cleared a major hurdle for China’s ambitious Maritime Silk Route project while at the same time raising concerns about security and sovereignty issues.

The government-owned Sri Lankan Port Authority has signed a 1.1 billion dollar deal agreeing to sell a 70 percent stake in the Hambantota port to China’s state-run conglomerate China Merchants Port Holdings. The Cabinet approved the deal on July 25 and the government signed it at a ceremony opened to the media on July 29.

: Kalinga Seneviratne; THE WORLD; Asia-Pacific; 31 July 2017

Photo: Atomic bomb survivors from Japan and others activists march in New York to push for nuclear weapons abolition on April 26, 2015. Credit: OSV Newsweekly | Newscom

Treaty Banning the Bomb Takes UN Closer to its Prime Goal

By Somar Wijayadasa*

NEW YORK (IDN) - On July 7 2017, 122 member states of the United Nations voted to adopt a Treaty for the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons. It is the first legally binding international agreement to comprehensively prohibit nuclear weapons that may eventually lead towards their total elimination.

All nine nuclear weapons states and the U.S. allies under its nuclear “umbrella” in NATO, Japan, South Korea, and Australia boycotted the negotiations. Netherlands attended the Conference but voted against the treaty, as it is a member of NATO.

The treaty emphasizes the catastrophic humanitarian consequences that would result from any use of nuclear weapons. It forbids participating states to develop, test, use, threaten to use, produce, possess, acquire, transfer, test or deploy nuclear weapons.

: Somar Wijayadasa; ARMAMENTS; Nuclear Weapons; 31 July 2017

Photo: Every day too many men and women across the globe struggle to feed their children a nutritious meal. 795 million people – one in nine – still go to bed on an empty stomach each night. Credit: WFP Website.

A Long Way To Go Before Zero Hunger Appears Within Reach

By J Nastranis

UNITED NATIONS (IDN) – Hunger can be eliminated in our lifetimes: This was the underlying conviction when United Nations Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon launched the Zero Hunger Challenge in 2012. The Zero Hunger vision reflects five elements from within the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), which taken together, can end hunger, eliminate all forms of malnutrition, and build inclusive and sustainable food systems.

Nearly two years after the international community adopted a set of 17 SDGs to be achieved by 2030, some "20 million people are on the brink of starvation", the World Food Programme (WFP) has warned. "We can only achieve Zero Hunger if we transform the rural economy, put smallholders at the centre and invest in sustainable agriculture and food systems," said Maria Helena Semedo, FAO Deputy Director-General, Climate and Natural Resources.

: J Nastranis; UN INSIDER; 30 July 2017

Photo: Snapshot of a film: Spears to semi-automatics: The human cost of conflict in Papua New Guinea Highlands. Credit: ICRC

Women Bear the Brunt of Violence in Papua New Guinea

By Neena Bhandari

SYDNEY (IDN) – Violence is one of the most pressing issues, especially in the highlands, of Papua New Guinea (PNG) – one of the world’s most ethnically and linguistically diverse nations.

“Increased access to high-powered guns such as military style M16s and home-made shotguns, and the breakdown of traditional rules of warfare, has amplified the effects of violence, resulting in dozens – if not hundreds – of violent deaths and thousands of displacements each year, especially in the Highlands,” says International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) chief official in PNG, Mark Kessler. ”We are seeing wounds that one would see in war zones.”

: Neena Bhandari; THE WORLD; Asia-Pacific; 29 July 2017

Photo: Dr. Jargalsaikhan Enkhsaikhan, Chairman of 'Blue Banner'.

UN Nuclear Ban Treaty and the Vital Role of Nuclear Have-Nots

By Dr. Jargalsaikhan Enkhsaikan

Dr .Jargalsaikhan Enkhsaikhan is Chairman of Blue Banner – a Mongolian NGO devoted to promoting nuclear non-proliferation and disarmament – and a former Permanent Representative of his country to the United Nations. Blue Banner is organizing an 'International Conference on Nuclear Disarmament Issues: Global and Regional Aspects,' on August 31- September 1 2017 in Ulaanbaatar to encourage effective strategies to move jointly towards the common goal of achieving a nuclear-weapons-free world.

ULAANBAATAR (IDN) - An event of truly historic importance has taken place at the United Nations Headquarters: On July 7 the text of the Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons was approved at the final session of the General Assembly mandated conference to negotiate a legally binding instrument to prohibit nuclear weapons leading towards their total elimination. It is the first legally binding instrument for nuclear disarmament to have been negotiated since the end of the Cold War more than two decades ago.

: IDN-INPS Asia Editor; ARMAMENTS; Nuclear Weapons; 28 July 2017

Trade Can Deliver the 2030 Agenda, But Weaken Ecosystems Too

By Amina Mohammed

The author is Deputy Secretary-General of the United Nations. This article first appeared on UNCTAD website on July 21 with the caption: 'Can trade deliver the UN’s 2030 agenda?' – The Editor

UNITED NATIONS (IDN-INPS) - Trade can be a source of prosperity, new ideas and shared values and ambitions. Today, the world strives to harness globalization in realizing the social, economic and environmental goals embodied in the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development.

Making sure that trade plays its part is a must, which means both sustaining it and ensuring its consistency with sustainable development.

Trade can create jobs, promote investment, spread technological progress and speed up communications and connectivity.

: IDN-INPS UN Bureau; OPINION; 28 July 2017

Photo: Prime Minister Voreqe Bainimaram (second from left), and Secretary General of the African, Caribbean and Pacific Group of States (ACP) (second from right), and other members of the ACP delegation after a high level meeting on the margins of the UN Ocean Conference in New York on June 6, 2017. Photo: DEPTFO New

ACP Group Supports Oceans Conference Action Plan

By Dr Patrick I. Gomes, ACP Secretary-General

BRUSSELS (IDN) - Our Ocean, Our Future: Call for Action is the outcome document agreed by Heads of State and Government and High Level Representatives of the 193 member-states of the United Nations that met in New York from June 5 to 9 2017 at the first-ever Oceans and Seas Conference.

With the Republic of Fiji and the Kingdom of Sweden, as co-conveners, the Conference was a widely participatory event aimed at giving concrete support to the implementation of Sustainable Development Goal (SDG) 14 of the 2030 Agenda that seeks to Conserve and sustainably Use the Oceans, Seas and Marine Resources.

The participation of the African, Caribbean and Pacific (ACP) Group at the conference was very fitting and timely to shore up support and stand in solidarity with a hosting member state in its endeavour to rally unwavering commitment to accelerate the collective actions of the international community to deliver for the attainment of SDG 14.

: Dr. Patrick Gomes - ACP Seretary-General; OPINION; 27 July 2017

Photo: Hekitta: Pedestrians are forced to walk on the middle of the road because the garbage has taken over the pavement. Source: The Sunday Times | M.A. Pushpa Kumara

The Forgotten Professions: The Plight of a Nation

Viewpoint by Asanga Abeyagoonasekera

COLOMBO (IDN-INPS) - The Sri Lankan public has become the unfortunate victim of the nation’s health and sanitation crisis. The policymakers are questioned by both the public and the media of their inability to manage the ongoing situation.

One of the world’s most iconic cities, New York, was turned into a garbage dump in February 1968 due to the sanitation workers’ refusal to collect garbage. After 9 days, 100,000 tons of garbage had piled up and a state of emergency was declared. In Sri Lanka, garbage collection in Colombo and the surrounding areas has become a serious problem over the past few weeks. Sabotage by sanitation workers and relocation of the garbage dump, with an on-going blame-game, has aggravated the situation. A record high of 100,000 dengue patients is an indirect consequence. Hospitals have run out of beds compounding the health crisis.

: IDN-INPS Asia Editor; THE WORLD; Asia-Pacific; 27 July 2017

Photo: Najma Hassan cooking in her kitchen in Kakuma refugee camp, Kenya, Credit: Justus Wanzala | IDN-INPS

Clean Energy Coming to Kenya’s Kakuma Refugee Camp

By Justus Wanzala

KAKUMA, Kenya (IDN) – As the sun shrinks into a red ball steadily disappearing beyond the horizon, residents of Kakuma refugee camp in Turkana County, north-western Kenya, adjust to their evening routines. Late shoppers rush out to food stores, school children pick up their books and mothers start preparing the last meal of the day.

Darkness quickly envelopes the camp – which is administered by the UN Refugee Agency (UNHCR) – and only a few businesses and homesteads are in the fortunate position of possessing diesel generators or solar and kerosene lanterns to provide lighting.

: Justus Wanzala; THE WORLD; Africa; 26 July 2017

Show More Peace and Less Conflict

Viewpoint by Jonathan Power*

LUND, Sweden (IDN-INPS) - The most peaceful countries in the world are Iceland, Portugal, Austria, New Zealand and Denmark, according to the new Global Peace Index, in a new 136-page report, published by the Institute for Economics and Peace in Sydney, Australia. The most violent are Afghanistan, Iraq, Syria, Yemen and South Sudan.

Seen from a spaceship the most violent ones appear more or less clustered in a corner of the earth. It’s not that the rest of the globe is at peace but even where there is fighting there is not the wholesale destruction of cities that we see every day on TV, as, for example, when the cameras follow the multi-sided civil war in Syria. Indeed, violence away from these five countries is localised. Nowhere else does it consume whole societies. The fickle eye of television needs to show more peace and less conflict if it is to project a balanced picture.