via International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons (ICAN) 28 Sept
September 28, 2016
A group of governments have submitted a draft UN General Assembly resolution to start negotiations on a treaty banning nuclear weapons. The document was circulated on Wednesday by its lead sponsors Austria, Mexico, South Africa, Ireland, Brazil and Nigeria and follows on from the recommendation of a UN Working Group, at which the overwhelming majority of states supported the call for ban treaty negotiations in 2017.
... The voting on the resolution will take place at the end of October or early November.
Trump's bellicose statements about North Korea and the recent false missile alert in Hawaii have raised global alarm over nuclear war. Now, in an unprecedented step, a draft of the new U.S. Nuclear Posture calls for authorizing nuclear weapons use even in response to a non-military attack
"The UN is being turned into a public-private partnership": An interview with Harris Gleckman
Lynn Fries speaks to Harris Gleckman about the growing corporate influence over our global governance system.
21 July 2014 – The Security Council today called for an international investigation into last week’s downing of a Malaysia Airlines passenger flight in eastern Ukraine, and demanded that armed groups allow unfettered access to the crash site and ensure that its integrity is maintained. In a unanimously adopted resolution, the 15-member body condemned “in the strongest terms” the downing of flight MH17 on 17 July in Donetsk Oblast, Ukraine, which resulted in the tragic loss of 298 lives.
World trade growth has not returned to its pre-crisis rate; it fell to just 2% in 2012, and Unctad points out that imports to developed regions, including the US and Europe, are still below 2007 levels. It suggests this downward trend "highlights the vulnerabilities developing countries continue to face at a time of lacklustre growth in developed countries".
Jake Wallis Simons on Telegraph Blog, April 25th, 2013: "The UN Human Rights Council special rapporteur, Richard Falk, has provoked outrage by claiming in an essay in Foreign Policy Journal that American foreign policy was to blame for the Boston marathon bombings" ... "... the notion that Islamic terror arises merely as a response to US, Israeli and British action is gravely insidious." Jake Wallis Simons is a Telegraph features writer.
UN secretary general Ban Ki-moon told the committee in Iceland: 'The Snowden case is something I consider to be misuse.' Speaking to a gathering of the foreign affairs committee of the Icelandic parliament in Reykjavik on Tuesday, Ban said that in his personal opinion "the Snowden case is something I consider to be misuse." The UN chief added that the opening up of digital communications should not be "misused in such a way as Snowden did"
Vijay Prasad: " countries like Brazil, India, China, these countries are fighting to bring their own brands to market, to bring their own designs to market, and they are being held back by a global or international intellectual property regime that prevents many of them from pushing their brands forward. I mean, one of the real tricks in the 1980s that they are most upset by was the shift in intellectual property from where you copyright not the process by which you get to, say, a sneaker but the actual sneaker itself. "
Tikki Pang & Laurie Garrett The World Health Organization (WHO) is facing an unprecedented crisis that threatens its position as the premier international health agency. To ensure its leading role, it must rethink its internal governance and revamp its financing mechanisms.
Giddens feels that there is a huge disparity between the reality of climate change and the political and economic response. As well as system-level change, the situation needs action below the level of the nation state, he explained, with activists and civil society taking steps worldwide to obtain change on the ground, as the Transition Towns movement tried, for example. "The United Nations (UN) has lost a lot of influence, so we will need to look to states and groups of states," he said.
As Côte d’Ivoire's post-electoral crisis continues, Pierre Sané discusses the circumstances leading up to the contested election results and stresses the need for the country to be left to solve its own problems. "Why did the international community not i
Markku Vesikon raportti Pakolaisavun ryhmän vierailusta Liberiassa tammikuun alussa. "Tämänhetkisen valmiussuunnitelman mukaan UNHCR varautuu vastaanottamaan noin 100,000 pakolaisen tarpeet ja on siksi valmistelemassa hätäavustuspyyntöä, johon tarvitaan
Frontal21-Interview "Verloren hat die Vorsorge" von Karsten Deventer. -- Tom Jefferson ist Allgemeinmediziner und arbeitet im internationalen Gesundheitsnetzwerks Cochrane Collaboration. Zusammen mit zwei Kollegen aus Japan und den USA wertet der in Rom a