Number 06 | 2022

 By Rosemary A. DiCarlo

Ms DiCarlo is the UN Under-Secretary-General for Political and Peacebuilding Affairs.

NEW YORK (IDN) — United Nations Security Council sanctions are no longer the “blunt instrument” they once were, having transformed since the 1990s into “a vital tool” that minimizes negative consequences for civilians, and States that are not directly being targeted.

That was the main message the Under-Secretary-General for Political and Peacebuilding Affairs, Rosemary A. DiCarlo, conveyed to the Security Council on February 7 during a debate on sanctions, focused on the unintended consequences that stem from them, especially in the humanitarian context.

By Reinhard Jacobsen

VIENNA (IDN) — The International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) and the World Health Organization (WHO) have a long-standing collaboration to support Member States to address their cancer burdens. The two specialized agencies of the United Nations work together to help countries improve cancer control planning, ensure safe delivery of cancer treatment through a dose audit service to achieve and maintain accurate dosimetry for radiotherapy, and to provide joint guidance on important topics relating to cancer, among others.

By Jamshed Baruah

GENEVA (IDN) — The World Health Organization (WHO) and the London-based Commonwealth Secretariat have signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) that focuses on ending the COVID-19 pandemic, advancing Universal Health Coverage, addressing vaccine equity, strengthening digital health systems and working towards global health security

By Reinhard Jacobsen

VIENNA (IDN) — The head of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), Rafael Mariano Grossi, has launched an initiative to convince more countries to join the majority of states in giving Agency inspectors wider access to locations and information as part of a push to further bolster the global nuclear non-proliferation regime.

The Director General's move is intended to support the full implementation of a long-standing annual resolution adopted by IAEA Member States on strengthening Agency safeguards activities carried out to verify that nuclear material is not used for weapons purposes.

By Thalif Deen

UNITED NATIONS (IDN) — The term “apartheid”, describing institutionalized racial discrimination, was widely prevalent both in white-ruled South Africa and in Southwest Africa (now Namibia), beginning in 1948 until it ended with the election of Nelson Mandela in 1994 in Pretoria.

But elsewhere it was treated as a four-letter word—and largely shunned both by the United States and the United Nations—particularly when it was tagged onto Israel to describe its treatment of Palestinians.

Viewpoint by Alice Slater

The writer is a Member of the Board of Directors of World BEYOND War. She is also the UN NGO Representative of the Nuclear Age Peace Foundation. www.warbeyondwar.org

NEW YORK (IDN) — It seems hard to believe that in these possible end times in the midst of a global pandemic with an endless succession of catastrophic climate disasters and thousands of nuclear weapons poised and pointed in the US and Russia, ready to destroy life on earth, we are beset by a bought, corrupted mainstream media that assaults us with the “wrongdoings” of Russia and China, and most recently North Korea, with barely a mention in their assaultive reporting of how the US might be a cause.