While horrific violence dominates the lives of millions of ordinary people inside Iraq, another kind of crisis, also due to the impact of war, has been slowly unfolding. Up to eight million people are now in need of emergency assistance. This figure includes: four million people who are 'food-insecure and in dire need of different types of humanitarian assistance' more than two million displaced people inside Iraq over two million Iraqis in neighbouring countries, mainly Syria and Jordan, making this the fastest-growing refugee crisis in the world.
Oxfam estimates that adapting to climate change in developing countries is likely to cost at least $50bn each year, and far more if global greenhouse-gas emissions are not cut fast enough. Yet international funding efforts to date have been woeful. In the year that the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) issued its direst warnings to date of the impacts of climate change on vulnerable developing countries, the rich and high-polluting countries increased their contribution to the Least Developed Countries Fund (LDCF) for urgent adaptation needs by a mere $43m. This brings the total pledged to $163m – less than half of what the UK is investing in cooling the London Underground. Worse, only $67m has actually been delivered to the Fund – that's less than what people in the USA spend on suntan lotion in one month.
There is a basis for moving forward on negotiations to achieve emissions cuts… The 'Bali roadmap' process has been launched, aiming for a long term agreement on emissions cuts, including commitments by the US Future actions by developing countries to reduce emissions are to be supported by scaling up finance, technology and capacity-building from rich nations Negotiations on further emissions cuts beyond 2012 have been launched under the Kyoto Protocol, for completion by end 2009, with a guideline for reductions of 25-40% by 2020 (from a 1990 base) Australia is now included in the Kyoto Protocol, leaving the US as the only major developed country outside these negotiations.
Many of today's international institutions were created at the end of World War II, more than 60 years ago. Since then they have responded in many significant ways to the challenges arising during the second half of the 20th century, including decolonization, the end of the cold war, global security, environmental threats, and global poverty. Even though many new global and regional organizations were added since 1945 — when the United Nations was created and the Bretton Woods organizations opened their doors — very little has been altered in the basic structure of these global institutions.
Topic:
International Law, International Organization, Regional Cooperation, and United Nations
Resolution 1540 (2004) is the most comprehensive response of the UN Security Council to the exposure of the transnational nuclear smuggling network set up by Pakistani scientist A. Q. Khan. The resolution is exceptional in that it compels every UN member state to criminalize the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction (WMD) to nonstate actors in its national legislation and establish effective domestic controls to prevent proliferation. If effectively implemented, Resolution 1540 would make a real difference. It would make proliferation more difficult and less attractive, facilitate the dismantlement of proliferation networks, and create momentum to strengthen other aspects of the nonproliferation regime.
Topic:
Security, Arms Control and Proliferation, Nuclear Weapons, and United Nations
From Somalia and Afghanistan to Bosnia, Haiti, Colombia, Rwanda, Sierra Leone, Liberia and Congo, small arms and light weapons were a common feature of the human rights calamities of the 1990's. More than a hundred low-intensity conflicts flared across the globe in that final decade of the bloodiest century, and virtually all of them were fought with small arms and light weaponry. Hand grenades, rocket-propelled grenades and bazookas, mortars, machine guns, and shoulder-fired missiles were the common weapons of warfare, along with the ubiquitous AK- 47--as readily slung over the shoulder of a 14 year old boy as a 40 year old man. Human rights and humanitarian organizations pondered the evidence: there was an inescapable linkage between the abuses they sought to curb, and the prevalence of these easy to handle, durable, and imminently portable weapons. In many instances the weapons were used as direct instruments of repression and devastation. In others, armed groups and government-sponsored militia used them to facilitate assaults with cruder weapons, spread fear, and create insecurity that effectively deprived people of their livelihood. Ironically, none of the countries in turmoil produced their own small arms. Behind the plethora of weapons lurked shadowy arms dealers looking for a profit, indifferent to the public's moral outrage and UN-imposed arms embargoes.
Topic:
Foreign Policy, Arms Control and Proliferation, Human Rights, Human Welfare, and United Nations
Political Geography:
Afghanistan, United States, Bosnia, Colombia, Democratic Republic of the Congo, Haiti, Liberia, Sierra Leone, Rwanda, and Somalia
On August 14, 2007, in a speech marking the first anniversary of the ceasefire ending the 2006 summer war, Hizballah secretary-general Hassan Nasrallah warned Israel of the consequences of further conflict. Addressing a mass rally in Beirut via a video link, he said: "Zionists, if you think of launching a war on Lebanon . . . I promise you a big surprise that could change the fate of war and the fate of the region." Israel is still trying to secure the release of two soldiers kidnapped from its territory by Hizballah in July 2006 -- the incident, along with the killing of three other soldiers, that provoked the war. Meanwhile, the United Nations Interim Force in Lebanon (UNIFIL) -- comprising approximately 14,000 soldiers from thirty countries -- endeavors to maintain a tenuous peace.
Six months ago, at the end of August 2006, the United Nations (UN) Security Council passed a critical resolution, authorizing a robust UN peacekeeping force for Darfur, western Sudan. This act was the result of years of advocacy and international political wrangling, against the backdrop of escalating violence in Darfur. The resolution expressed the will and intent of the international community to send a 22,000-strong UN force to Darfur, to supplement the African Union (AU) mission and to provide protection to civilians and humanitarian operations on the ground.
Ambassador Javad Zarif presented his credentials as the Permanent Representative of the Islamic Republic of Iran on 5 August 2002 to the Secretary-General of the United Nations. Dr. Zarif is a career diplomat and has served in different senior positions in the Iranian Foreign Ministry and at various international organizations. His responsibility from 1992 until his appointment as Permanent Represetative was Deputy Foreign Minister for Legal and International Affairs.
Topic:
International Relations, Politics, and United Nations
Kofi Annan did more than any UN Secretary-General before him to stress the close link between human rights and peace and security. In his inaugural address to the newly created Human Rights Council in Geneva on June 19, 2006, he said: ''. . . lack of respect for human rights and dignity is the fundamental reason why the peace of the world today is so precarious, and why prosperity is so unequally shared.'' With the creation of the Human Rights Council, ''a new era in the human rights work of the United Nations has been proclaimed.''