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Number 01 | 2021
Dear Reader,
Happy New Year 2021. We are pleased to send you Edition 01 | 2021 of IDN UN INSIDER, the first edition of UN INSIDER in the New Year. The weekly product of the Non-profit International Press Syndicate Group comprises news and analyses from 'UN News', associated websites and our correspondents in New York, Geneva, Vienna, Nairobi and Bonn.
Feel free to share and re-publish articles in this Newsletter free of charge but mentioning the source.
Previous editions are avaible on www.newsletter-archive.indepthnews.net.
Your feedback is most welcome.
Kind regards.
The Non-profit International Press Syndicate Group
By Marcel Alers
The author is Head of Energy of the UN Development Programme (UNDP)
NEW YORK (IDN) – The energy sector, still dominated by fossil fuels, is the largest contributor to greenhouse gas emissions. We know people and nations need reliable sources of energy to power hospitals and light schools, and to safely cook, heat or cool their homes. We know we need to switch to sustainable energy.
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Compiled by EEPA
BRUSSELS (IDN) – The TPLF is keeping control of mountainous areas in Tigray. As many analysts predicted when Mekelle was taken, the ENDF has had difficulties driving the TPLF out of well entrenched mountain positions.
The ENDF has launched an offensive towards Samre, East of Mekelle.
Meanwhile, cruelties against civilians are reported. These include forcing relatives to commit incest on women and girls under the threat of arbitrary execution.
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By Devinder Kumar
NEW DELHI (IDN) – With the start of the New Year, India joins the 15-member United Nations Security Council (UNSC) as a non-permanent member for the eighth time. Along with Norway, Kenya, Ireland and Mexico, India will have a two-year term: 2021-2022.
Of the 15 UNSC members, five occupy a permanent seat. They have the right to veto resolutions: China, France, Russia, the United Kingdom and the United States.
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By Caroline Mwanga
NEW YORK (IDN) – More than 371,500 children would be born on the first day of 2021, according to the UN Children’s Fund (UNICEF). The agency's Executive Director Henrietta Fore said on the eve of the New Year day: "The children born today enter a world far different than even a year ago, and a New Year brings a new opportunity to reimagine it."
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By Jaya Ramachadran
PARIS (IDN) – The UN Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) has urged adequate policies and actions to help the culture sector weather the crisis caused by the COVID-19 pandemic and its fallout. The sector employs more than 30 million people globally. It has been hit much harder than expected.
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The following is the text of 2021 United Nations New Year's message delivered by Secretary-General António Guterres.
NEW YORK (IDN) – 2020 has been a year of trials, tragedies and tears.
COVID-19 upended our lives and plunged the world into suffering and grief.
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NEW YORK (IDN | UN News) – The President of the United Nations General Assembly has urged everyone around the world "to continue to work together" to end the coronavirus pandemic, and to build an inclusive and sustainable future.
In a message for the New Year, Assembly President Volkan Bozkir said that each individual, community, and country has a role to play, locally and globally, to reduce inequalities, protect the most vulnerable people, and create more just, safer societies.
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TRIPS waiver proposal from India, South Africa and other members
Viewpoint by Brajendra Navnit
The author is Ambassador and Permanent Representative of India to the World Trade Organisation (WTO). The views expressed are personal.
GENEVA (IDN) – A proposal by India, South Africa and eight other countries calls on the World Trade Organisation (WTO) to exempt member countries from enforcing some patents, and other Intellectual Property (IP) rights under the organization’s Agreement on Trade-Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights, known as TRIPS, for a limited period of time.
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By J Nastranis
NEW YORK (IDN) – 2020 will be remembered as a year in which a contagious virus shut down the world, widened the gulf between the rich and the poor, triggered a spike in poverty for the first time in decades, and pushed back the United Nations efforts to create more equitable societies jeopardising the Sustainable Development Goals universally agreed in September 2015.
By early December, the United Nations was warning that a record 235 million people would require humanitarian assistance in 2021, comprising an increase of some 40 per cent on 2020 which is almost entirely a consequence of the pandemic.
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By Ambassador Anwarul K. Chowdhury
The author is a former Under-Secretary-General and High Representative of the UN, former Permanent Representative and Ambassador of Bangladesh to the United Nations, and founder of the Global Movement for The Culture of Peace (GMCoP). The following are extensive excerpts from his virtual special lecture at the International Studies Institute at University of La Verne, California on 19 November 2020. "The objective of the culture of peace," he said, "is the empowerment of people, as has been underscored time and again by the global leader for peace and Buddhist philosopher Daisaku Ikeda."
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EEPA Report on Horn of Africa Situation on December 26
BRUSSELS (IDN) – Reported that US Africom has begun an operation called Operation Octave Quartz (OOQ), with a mission to relocate U.S. forces in Somalia to other East Africa operating locations “while maintaining pressure on violent extremists and supporting partner forces”. US Africom is the military command for US operations in African. OOQ started after the Trump administration announced the reduction in the number of US military deployed in Somali territory.
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By Loraine Rickard-Martin*, Passblue
NEW YORK (IDN) – At the $79.4 billion United Nations pension fund, continuing tensions came to a head this month when the UN participant representatives to the pension board — elected representatives of 85,000 active UN staff members — wrote on December 2 to the General Assembly body that oversees the fund about their concerns on a range of issues regarding the fund’s administration and governance.
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By Reinhard Jacobsen
VIENNA (IDN) – A new report by the Nuclear Energy Agency (NEA) and the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) says that sufficient uranium resources exist to support the long-term, sustainable use of nuclear energy for low-carbon electricity generation as well as for other uses such as industrial heat applications and hydrogen production.
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EEPA Report on Horn of Africa Situation on December 24
BRUSSELS (IDN) – Ethiopia took the lead in creating Africa's continental organisation, the African Union (AU). But Alex Dewaal, Executive Director of the World Peace Foundation at The Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy at Tufts University, believes that its actions are now jeopardising the body's founding principles. "Who Will Call Out Eritrea’s War Crimes in Tigray?" he asks in a blog
He points out that Eritrea has deployed most of its army in Tigray region of Ethiopia. This is no secret. At minimum, 12 divisions have been fighting inside Tigray.
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