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Photo: Solar energy has become the way to go amid deepening electricity deficits across Southern Africa. Credit: Jeffrey Moyo/IDN-INPS.

Southern Africa Turns to the Sun as Energy Woes Bite

By Jeffrey Moyo

HARARE (IDN) - He struggles with a huge solar panel as he crawls on the rooftop of his house. Just below him, on the ground, stands his wife gazing upwards, with one hand partially covering her face from direct sun heat.

Nevson Devera, for that is his name, at the age of 44 and domiciled in Harare the Zimbabwean capital, has not had electricity from the country’s main power utility, the Zimbabwe Electricity Supply Authority, connected to his house, 15 years after he built it. Tired of using fossil fuels for energy, he and his wife Sarudzai have turned to the sun for electricity.

: Jeffrey Moyo; THE WORLD; Africa; 02 September 2017

Photo: Kofi Annan (second from left) and Aung San Suu Kyi (right of Annan) introducing the report of the Advisory Commission on Rakhine State.

Complex Realities of the Rakhine Issue in Myanmar

By Ye Htut*

Ye Htut was the Minister for the Ministry of Information of Myanmar (formerly Burma) from 2014 to 2016 and spokesperson for the President from 2013 to 2016. He previously served as a Lieutenant Colonel in Myanmar Army.

NAYPYIDAW (IDN-INPS) - On August 23, 2016 Myanmar’s de facto leader Daw Aung San Suu Kyi announced the formation of an Advisory Commission on Rakhine State. This Commission, established on September 5, 2016, is led by former Secretary-General of the United Nations, Kofi Annan, and with three international and six Myanmar experts as members of the Commission.

: IDN-INPS Asia Editor; THE WORLD; Asia-Pacific; 01 September 2017

Photo: The FEALAC 8th Foreign Ministers' Meeting & 16th Senior Officials' Meeting took place on August 29-September 1, 2017 in Busan, Korea, under the theme "One Vision, New Action." Credit. FEALAC

Little Known FEALAC Promotes Asia-Latin American Cooperation

By Tae Han Goo

SEOUL (IDN) – South Korea's large port city Busan hosted end of August the meeting of Foreign Ministers and Senior Officials of the little known Forum for East Asia-Latin America Cooperation (FEALAC) constituting 36 countries of East Asia, Southeast Asia and Latin America.

Though comprised mainly of developing countries, the two regions did not have an official cooperative mechanism bridging the two continents together until in September 1998, the then Prime Minister of Singapore Gho Chok Tong tabled a concrete proposal to enhance the relations. Subsequently, the EALAF (East Asia-Latin America Forum) Senior Officials' Meeting was held in Singapore in September 1999, marking the beginning of FEALAC.

: IDN-INPS Asia Editor; THE WORLD; Asia-Pacific; 31 August 2017

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: View of Shahr-i-Zohok (the "Red City") in Bamyan Province. The color comes from the red clay used in construction; the dry climate has allowed for the remarkable preservation. Source: CIA Factbook.

America Should Get out of Afghanistan Before it's Tool Late

Viewpoint by Jonathan Power*

LUND, Sweden (IDN-INPS) - It’s the most repeated maxim in all the reporting on Afghanistan: “The Americans have the watches, the Taliban have the time.”

Dead right! This is America’s longest war ever, 16 years and counting. President Donald Trump, admitting he was reversing his campaign call for pulling out, has now decided to stay in, sending to Afghanistan another 3,900 troops to reinforce the 8,400 there now.

Trump doesn’t claim it will do the job of defeating the Taliban. In fact he lays out no long-term strategy at all. It’s not difficult to imagine that in a decade the same stalemate will exist.

: Jonathan Power; OPINION; 29 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

Image: The Marshall Islands and Ambassador de Brum were nominated for pursuing a formal legal case against the world's nuclear-armed states for failing to meet their obligations under the NPT. Credit: Arms Control Association

The World Loses a Hero in Tony de Brum

Courtesy Nuclear Age Peace Foundation (NAPF)

SANTA BARBARA (IDN-INPS) - Tony de Brum, former Foreign Minister of the Republic of the Marshall Islands (RMI), passed away on August 22, 2017. He was a powerful and inspiring voice for the abolition of nuclear weapons as well as climate sanity. He was a visionary leader, respected and admired throughout the world for his strength, wisdom, warmth and unceasing optimism.

Born in 1945, de Brum was one of the first Marshall Islanders to graduate from college. He played a key role in the negotiations that led to the first compact of free association between the U.S. and the RMI, and participated in the development of the Constitution of the Republic of the Marshall Islands.