|
|
News for a Sustainable World
Published by The Non-profit International Press Syndicate Group
with IDN-InDepthNews as the Flagship Agency
Dear Reader,
We are pleased to send you Edition 24 | 2021. This weekly is the flagship news product of the Non-Profit International Press Syndicate Group with registered offices in Canada, Germany, Japan and Singapore, and correspondents around the world. Feel free to share and re-publish articles pro bono mentioning the source. Previous editions are available on https://newsletter-archive.indepthnews.net. Your feedback is most welcome.
Kind regards from the Non-Profit
International Press Syndicate
By Radwan Jakeem
NEW YORK (IDN) — The coronavirus disease (COVID-19) pandemic has brought to light not only the systemic interdependence of countries, but also the socioeconomic fragility of the global economy. From a trade and development perspective, this has been felt most acutely in the most vulnerable developing countries—the least developed countries (LDCs), says the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD).
Read More
But would the West Respect the Majority Will?
Viewpoint by Sugeeswara Senadhira
COLOMBO (IDN) — Majority of members of the UN, especially from the Global South, have refused to donate funds to the United Nations Human Rights Council’s (UNHRC’s) move to set up a separate secretariat to enforce matters relating to the Resolution it passed on Sri Lanka in March this year. The inability to raise sufficient funds is a major setback to UNHRC plans to implement the Resolution, but there are fears here that the West will not respect the will of the majority in the international community, and may chip in with funds to implement their project.
Read More
Viewpoint by Jonathan Power*
LUND, Sweden (IDN) — The biggest war at the moment is the civil war in Somalia, started in 1991. It has claimed over half a million lives. Second, is the civil war in Syria which has led to about 400,000 deaths. Third, is South Sudan where approximately 400,000 have been killed. Yemen is a younger conflict, with over 230,000 deaths. Human suffering is at its worse in Yemen—it is held in the pincers of Saudi Arabia and the Arab Emirates. Food and medical supplies have often been squeezed to a dribble. The US and the UK contribute to relief in the Yemen via the UN’s World Food Program and UNICEF, while supplying arms to the side of Saudi Arabia.
Read More
Viewpoint by Sunil J. Wimalawansa *
The COVID-19 pandemic has brought “a tsunami of suffering”, taken over 3.4 million lives and 500 million jobs, while wiping trillions of dollars from global balance sheets, Secretary-General António Guterres told business last May, for equitable vaccine distribution worldwide.
NEW JERSEY, USA (IDN) — While the COVID-situations are significantly improving in the USA, UK, and most European nations, the situation in Asian countries such as Sri Lanka, Nepal, and India worsened. Flawed policy decisions and fraud considerably worsen the situation.
Read More
Viewpoint by Yossef Ben-Meir
The writer is a former Peace Corps Volunteer and president of the High Atlas Foundation.
MARRAKECH (IDN) — The United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) are aspirationally universal, addressing globally relevant issues with earnest objectives. Despite the profound good that they represent, fundamental problems exist with the Goals. They lack prescriptiveness, even to the extent of not explicitly aligning with what we know is indelible to sustainability: local people’s participation.
Read More
By Lisa Vives, Global Information Network
NEW YORK (IDN) — South African anti-apartheid activist Dulcie September was the representative of the African National Congress (ANC) in France, Luxembourg, and Switzerland until her murder outside of ANC offices in Paris in 1988. Despite an array of clues, her killer was never identified and the story of the 52-year-old activist drifted into oblivion.
Read More
By Lisa Vives, Global Information Network
NEW YORK (IDN) — For her “ability to capture and communicate vital truths even amidst times of upheaval”, Zimbabwean writer Tsitsi Dangarembga will receive the PEN Pinter prize in memory of the Nobel laureate Harold Pinter.
Dangarembga is the author of Nervous Conditions, which she wrote when she was 25, and which was described by Doris Lessing as one of the most important novels of the 20th century.
Read More
Viewpoint by Jon Queally*
PORTLAND | USA (IDN) — Anti-poverty groups, climate campaigners, and public health experts reacted with outrage and howls of disappointment Sunday after the G7 leaders who spent the weekend (June 11-13) at a summit in Cornwall, England issued a final communique that critics said represents an extreme abdication of responsibility in the face of the world's most pressing and intertwined crises—savage economic inequality, a rapidly-heating planet, and the deadly Covid-19 pandemic.
Read More
By Jaya Ramachandran
GENEVA (IDN) — The leaders of seven industrial nations, constituting the Group of Seven (G7 Summit), have pledged in a landmark agreement to share COVID-19 vaccine doses internationally, in support of global equitable access and to help end the acute phase of the pandemic. In doing so, they have built on the momentum of the G20 Global Health Summit hosted by Italian Prime Minister Mario Draghi and European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen on May 21 and the Gavi COVAX AMC Summit hosted by Prime Minister Yoshihide Suga of Japan on June 2.
Read More
By Thalif Deen*
NEW YORK (IDN) — Just after a band of mercenaries tried to oust the government of the Maldives, I asked a Maldivian diplomat about the strength of his country's standing army. "Standing army?", the diplomat asked with mock surprise, "We don't even have a sitting army."
With a population of about 250,000, back in March 1999, the Maldives was perhaps one of the world’s few countries with no fighter planes, combat helicopters, warships, missiles or battle tanks. As a result, the island's fragile defenses attracted a rash of free-lance mercenaries and bounty hunters who tried to take over the country twice—once in 1979, and a second time in 1988.
Read More
Viewpoint by Manish Uprety F.R.A.S. and Jainendra Karn
Manish Uprety is an ex-diplomat & ALCAP’s Special Advisor for Asia & Africa and Jainendra Karn is a senior leader of the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP). Any views or opinions expressed are solely those of the authors and do not necessarily represent those of IDN-InDepth News.
NEW DELHI (IDN) — Who would have thought that Heroin which inspired Lou Reed to write a cult classic in 1967 would be discussed in the strategic circles of global democracies especially for its national security implications in the twenty-first century.
Read More
By Reinhardt Jacobsen
BRUSSELS (IDN) — Together with the United Nations, the European Commission has urged "all parties to the conflict" in Ethiopia’s Tigray region to agree to "a ceasefire immediately to facilitate humanitarian assistance to reach all people in need in Tigray regardless of where they are and to stop violence against civilians".
Leading representatives of the two organizations had a virtual meeting on June 10 to discuss the situation seven months into the conflict in Ethiopia’s Tigray region.
Read More
Viewpoint by Jayasri Priyalal *
SINGAPORE (IDN) — The new normal has become a famous phrase with the outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic. This new normal could become an eternal abnormality if lessons learned about inequality in the globalized world economy exposed by the COVID-19 are not recognized and acted upon.
Today, people feel frustrated about adjusting to the health crisis's eternal uncertainties with looming confusions and contradictions between the normality of the past and not the usual present.
Read More
India is witnessing a worrying decline in the social status of the Dalits, coupled with an economic decline. This makes the marginalised groups even more vulnerable.
Viewpoint by Dr Ram Puniyani
This article is the 13th in a series of joint productions of South Asian Outlook and IDN-InDepthNews, the flagship of the International Press Syndicate. The writer is a former professor of biomedical engineering and former senior medical officer affiliated with the Indian Institute of Technology Bombay (now Mumbai) and meanwhile a social activist and commentator.
Read More
Viewpoint by Maíra Martini *
NEW YORK (IDN) — Governments gathered for the first-ever UN General Assembly Special Session (UNGASS) against corruption June 2-4, 2021. This could have been an opportunity for the more and the less advanced economies to come to the table and discuss bold improvements to the current international anti-corruption framework and architecture. It fell short.
Read More
By Carlie Daniel
Carlie Daniel is an Intern with the High Atlas Foundation and a student at the University of Virginia.
MARRAKECH (IDN) — Heart disease is a prevalent chronic disease in Morocco and has been one of the leading causes of death over the last 10 years. Heart disease can be prevented through lifestyle changes, but people must be made aware of the steps they should take to effectively curb this health concern.
Read More
Viewpoint by Azu Ishiekwene
The writer is the Managing Director/Editor-in-Chief of LEADERSHIP newspaper based in Abuja, Nigeria.
ABUJA (IDN) — The Nigerian government thinks Twitter is the greatest source of its misery. After straining at the leash for months, it couldn’t resist swatting the microblogging platform with a ban last week. But what does the ban mean, really?
It means that about 40 million users in Nigeria who are mostly young people would be unable to access the service through local service providers.
Read More
Viewpoint by Jonathan Power*
LUND, Sweden (IDN) — There’s hardly a person alive who doesn’t know that the Third World continents of Africa, Asia and Latin America are having a desperate struggle fighting the Coronavirus. At a time when the richer countries are winning the fight against the virus many Third World countries—like Brazil, India and South Africa—are overwhelmed by it.
Read More
|
|
|