Tag: Thalif Deen

When the UN Came Under Attack from a Mis-Guided Rocket Launcher — Global Issues

Ernesto “Che” Guevara, Minister of Industries of Cuba, addresses the General Assembly on Dec. 11, 1964. Credit: UN Photo/TC
  • by Thalif Deen (united nations)
  • Inter Press Service

UNITED NATIONS, Sep 05 (IPS) – When 150+ world leaders, including Presidents and Prime Ministers, arrive in New York to address the high-level segment of the General Assembly beginning September 19, the UN neighborhood will be turned into a veritable war zone.

The streets will be littered with scores of police officers, US secret service personnel, UN security officers, bomb-sniffing dogs, road closures — and a stand-by ambulance in the UN campus ready to cope with any medical emergencies.

The US Secret Service also has an official chaplain ready to perform last rites in case of any political assassinations in the UN premises.

The only things missing are overhead surveillance drones since a sign in the UN premises, perhaps half-jokingly, reads: NO DRONE ZONE

Meanwhile, hundreds of UN staffers and journalists are double and triple-checked for their photo IDs, at least every 200 or 300 yards outside the UN building, reminiscent of security at the Pentagon and the CIA headquarters (where your visitor ID is geared to automatically change colour if you overstay your visit).

A flak jacket from conflict-ridden Middle East is also ideally suited for the war zone outside the UN when world leaders are in town.

Responding to questions on security, Paulina Kubiak, Spokesperson for the outgoing President of the General Assembly, said: … there are always restrictions during UNGA.

“As of right now, there are no COVID-related restrictions. So, no masks and no vaccinations are required,” she added.

Still, in 1964, with relatively less security, the UN building came under attack — perhaps for the first time in the history of the world body — from a mis-guided rocket launcher.

When the politically-charismatic Ernesto Che Guevara, once second-in-command to Cuban leader Fidel Castro, was at the United Nations to address the General Assembly sessions back in 1964, the U.N. headquarters came under fire – literally.

The speech by the Argentine-born Marxist revolutionary was momentarily drowned by the sound of an explosion.

The anti-Castro forces in the United States, backed by the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), had mounted an insidious campaign to stop Che Guevara from speaking.

A 3.5-inch bazooka was fired at the 39-storeyed Secretariat building by the East River while a boisterous anti-Castro, anti-Che Guevara demonstration was taking place outside the UN building.

According to Wikipedia, the bazooka is the common name for a man-portable recoilless anti-tank rocket launcher, widely deployed by the US army, especially during World War II.

The hidden hand was visible — only the finger prints were missing — in the first terrorist attack on the UN building.

But the rocket launcher – which was apparently not as sophisticated as today’s shoulder-fired missiles and rocket-propelled grenades – missed its target, rattled windows, and fell into the river about 200 yards from the building.

The African-American civil rights activist, the late Martin Luther King Jr. once said the US is home to “guided missiles and misguided men”.

One newspaper report described the attack as “one of the wildest episodes since the United Nations moved into its East River headquarters in 1952.”

As longtime U.N. staffers would recall, the failed 1964 bombing of the U.N. building took place when Che Guevara launched a blistering attack on U.S. foreign policy and denounced a proposed de-nuclearization pact for the Western hemisphere.

After his Assembly speech, Che Guevara was asked about the attack aimed at him. “The explosion has given the whole thing more flavor,” he joked, as he chomped on his Cuban cigar, during a press conference.

When he was told by a reporter that the New York City police had nabbed a woman, described as an anti-Castro Cuban exile, who had pulled out a hunting knife and jumped over the UN wall, intending to kill him, Che Guevara said: “It is better to be killed by a woman with a knife than by a man with a gun.”

A partial view of the exterior of the United Nations headquarters in Baghdad that was destroyed by a truck bomb on 19 August 2003. Credit: UN Photo/Timothy Sopp

Asked if there were any other attacks on the UN, Samir Sanbar, a former assistant secretary-general and head of the Department of Public Information, told IPS the only other attack he could remember was the bombing in the Iraqi capital of Baghdad in 2003.

He said two of his closest colleagues Sergio Viera de Mello and Nadia Younes died in that attack.

“Both did not wish to go but were pushed by someone who wanted them away,” said Sanbar, who served under five different secretaries-general.

On 19 August 2003, a suicide bomber drove a truck full of explosives to the United Nations headquarters in the Iraqi capital, and blew it up, killing 22 people – among them Vieira de Mello, the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights and the head of the UN mission in Iraq.

The attack on the Canal Hotel building also wounded more than 150; most of them aid workers who had come to Iraq to help reconstruct the country following the overthrow of President Saddam Hussein.

The bombing was one of the most lethal in UN history, and marked a turning point in how the UN and aid groups operate in the field.

On August 18, the UN commemorated its annual World Humanitarian Day which was inaugurated to mark the Baghdad bombing 20 years ago.

Meanwhile, the attacks on UN peacekeeping forces have continued with 32 United Nations peacekeeping personnel — 28 military and four police, including one woman police officer — killed in deliberate attacks in 2022.

By nationality, the peacekeepers who died in 2022 were from Bangladesh (3), Chad (4), Egypt (7), Guinea (1), India (2), Ireland (1), Jordan (1), Morocco (1), Nepal (1), Nigeria (2), Pakistan (7), Russian Federation (1) and Serbia (1).

This brings the death toll to at least 494 United Nations and associated personnel who were killed in deliberate attacks in the past 12 years from improvised explosive devices (IEDs), rocket-propelled grenades, artillery fire, mortar rounds, landmines, armed and successive ambushes, convoy attacks, suicide attacks and targeted assassinations.

Over the last 78 years, the United Nations and its specialised agencies, were awarded the prestigious Nobel Peace Prize 12 times. One agency, the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) received the prize in 1954 and 1981.

In 2001, the United Nations and then Secretary-General Kofi Annan of Ghana were awarded the prize “for their work for a better organized and more peaceful world”.

But the UN did pay a heavy price in human lives for those highly-deserving awards.

This article includes excerpts from a book on the United Nations titled “No Comment – and Don’t Quote Me on That” available on Amazon. The link to Amazon via the author’s website follows: https://www.rodericgrigson.com/no-comment-by-thalif-deen/

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More Promises, Less Deliveries — Global Issues

  • by Thalif Deen (united nations)
  • Inter Press Service

UNITED NATIONS, Aug 30 (IPS) – The United Nations will host six “high-level” meetings, including two summits of world leaders– over a short span of five consecutive days, beginning September 18.

The back-to-back meetings, described as unprecedented, includes the Sustainable Development Goals (SDG) Summit on September 18-19; a high-level dialogue on Financing for Development (FfD) on September 20; and a ministerial meeting of the Summit of the Future on September 21 (with the summit itself scheduled to take place September 2024).

The agenda of the 78th sessions of the General Assembly also include high-level ministerial meetings on Pandemic Prevention, Preparedness and Response (September 20); Universal Health Coverage (September 21), and the fight Against Tuberculosis (September 22).

The UN is also expected to announce a Climate Ambition Summit—scheduled to take place in September 2024.

But these summits and high-level ministerial meetings come at a time when UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres says he needs action, not empty promises or political rhetoric.

At the BRICS summit on August 24, he complained about the unfulfilled promises by Western donors.

“We need action to save our planet. Developed countries have a particular responsibility and so they must lead and they must deliver. They must also keep their promises to developing countries.”

He singled out the annual $100 billion pledge to developing countries; the proposed loss and damage fund; the doubling of adaptation finance; and the replenishment of the Green Climate Fund—promises made mostly at high-level meetings.

And on unimplemented plans for early warning systems, which are aimed “to protect every person in the world – including the 6 in 10 Africans who still lack those systems”. As a matter of justice, Africa must be considered a priority in all these crucial commitments, he noted.

Still, the months ahead will be vital.

“From the Africa Climate Summit, where I will be in Nairobi in two weeks times, the G20 Summit, to the SDG and Climate Ambition Summits at the United Nations in September, to COP28 in December – we have important opportunities to set a path to a better, more peaceful and more just world,” he said.

According to an article in the European Network on Debt and Development (EURODAD) website September 2022, developed countries agreed in 2009 to mobilise 100 billion dollars per year by 2020.

This deadline was then extended to 2025, with a view to setting a new global climate finance goal by 2025. At the time, developed countries hailed this as a seminal commitment that would ensure that developing countries in the global south were also able to tackle climate change.

Andreas Bummel, Executive Director, Democracy Without Borders, told IPS high-level summits that are usually preceded by intensive preparation play an important role by providing governments with a platform to express commitments and enabling the public to hold them accountable for their action or inaction. and of the international campaign for a United Nations Parliamentary Assembly

The Sustainable Development Goals summit this year is crucial as it marks the half-way point in implementing Agenda 2030, he said.

“At the time, civil society will convene for its own meeting across the UN building, the Global People’s Assembly, to provide its perspective and remind world leaders of their promises,” he said.

https://www.peoplesassembly.global/en/

Jens Martens, Executive Director of Global Policy Forum Europe, a think tank based in Bonn, told IPS the SDG Summit offers the Governments of the Global North the chance to demonstrate that they are serious about their much-vaunted global solidarity.

Because at the mid-term of the 2030 Agenda, the results are devastating: According to the United Nations, the countries are only on track with 15 percent of the targets. For the remaining 85 percent, progress is insufficient, or development is even heading in the wrong direction, he pointed out.

“A key reason for this is the failure of countries in the Global North to provide the necessary means to implement the SDGs. At the SDG Summit, they must declare their political willingness to change this”.

What is needed, he argued, is the mobilization of new and additional public resources to finance the SDGs. The UN Secretary-General has proposed an SDG Stimulus of $500 billion per year for this purpose.

“This would be extremely important. But what is also needed is effective debt cancellation, increased cooperation on tax matters at the UN level, and reforms in the international financial architecture”.

“If governments of the Global North do not make concessions on these issues, the SDG Summit will fail. And then the Summit of the Future planned for September 2024 is also doomed to fail. In view of the global crises, we cannot afford for that to happen”, he declared.

Purnima Mane, past President Pathfinder International and former Assistant Secretary General & Deputy Executive Director, UN Population Fund (UNFPA), told IPS the large number of meetings this September could be interpreted as a genuine effort to make up for the difficulties experienced over the last three years in coming together to monitor progress and enhance commitment on varied, equally relevant themes to push forward a collectively designed, multilateral agenda.

But the results of these meetings are also expected by the Secretary-General (SG) to be different from those held earlier, in that instead of empty promises and political rhetoric, these meetings would lead to action, she added.

“While this is a welcome move from the SG, it is not clear what steps will be taken to ensure that this in fact happens and what it will take to motivate Member States towards the action they needed to have taken all along”.

And more meetings than usual on critical themes — all of which demand minimally, for action to occur, commitment of political leadership at all levels, adequate resources, and solid planning and accountability measures, will not necessarily ensure that such action will follow, especially during this period of our history when the world is divided by increasing tensions that occupy the attention of national leadership.

She said the appeal the SG makes to the Western donors, in particular, in his message to them, is to live up to their promises to fulfill, what he refers to as a Rescue Plan for People and Planet.

The Plan demands better support to developing countries, and considerable changes to the international financial architecture which will amount to sacrifices on the part of groups like the G20.

“Whether these changes will happen is to be seen. Demanding action is obviously fully justifiable and we can hope that the action will occur but the track record so far has not been promising”, said Mane, currently an independent consultant on gender and development and global health, focusing on sexual & reproductive health.

Speaking during the International Day against Nuclear Tests August 29, Csaba K?rösi, President of the General Assembly was critical of public funds being diverted.

He noted that global military spending reached a record 2.2 trillion dollars in 2022.

When public funds are diverted in this way, the President said, “and when our own words are ignored, we have a duty to ask: “How serious are our pledges to focus on overcoming poverty and curbing pollution, climate change, or biodiversity loss?”

“Will we protect our newest human right: the right to a clean, healthy and sustainable environment? Or are our lofty pledges nothing but words?”, he asked.

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A Plea for a UN Summit on the Global Food Crisis — Global Issues

  • Opinion by Thalif Deen (united nations)
  • Inter Press Service

UNITED NATIONS, Aug 25 (IPS) – A coalition of civil society organizations, (CSOs), including climate activists, anti-poverty campaigners and celebrity chefs, are among those calling for an emergency meeting of world leaders on the global food crisis during the UN General Assembly (UNGA) sessions in New York next month.

With 735 million people going hungry, 122 million more than before the COVID-19 pandemic, the organizers of the ‘Elephant in the Room’ campaign say the food crisis is being overlooked by world leaders, with devastating consequences.

An open letter to world leaders, signed by supporters, including climate activist Vanessa Nakate, award-winning farming advocate Wangari Kuria, musician and philanthropist Octopizzo, SDG Advocate Richard Curtis, and US celebrity chef Andrew Zimmern, says the food crisis is being ignored – “a victim of siloed approaches as it’s so multidimensional”.

The letter calls for a massive joined-up response at the highest levels of government. “You know there is a global food crisis. You are ignoring it in your budgets. You do not address it enough with the media. It is not high on your agenda for the G20, UNGA or COP28. And so, it remains an elephant in the room.” (an obvious problem that people do not want to talk about.)

“As leaders, you have allowed this emergency to unfold. The solutions to end the food crisis exist. It is your responsibility to lead the world out of disasters, not compound them.”

Launched by Hungry for Action, the campaign is supported by over 40 organizations including Save the Children, the ONE Campaign and Global Citizen and is coordinated by the SDG2 Advocacy Hub.

https://sdg2advocacyhub.org/index.php/actions/elephant-room-0

The plea for a summit of world leaders on the global food crisis coincides with three unprecedented high-level political meetings in September: the Sustainable Development Goals (SDG) Summit on September 18-19; a high-level dialogue on Financing for Development (FfD) on September 20; and a Summit of the Future on September 21.

Danielle Nierenberg, President and Founder, Food Tank told IPS the world is facing multiple emergencies–the climate crisis, the public health crisis, the biodiversity loss crisis, and the hunger crisis.

To address these challenges, she said, “we need urgent action–not by 2030–but today. I am thankful for the efforts of activists and advocates who are pushing for change.”

“But we need policymakers to treat these crises like the emergency they are and push for positive transformation of how we produce and consume food at UNGA. We can’t wait any longer.”

Joseph Chamie, a former director of the UN Population Division, and an independent consulting demographer, told IPS there is no question about an increasing and worrisome global food crisis.

“About one billion people, or nearly 12 percent of the world’s population, face severe levels of food insecurity with 735 million people going hungry,” he said.

There is plenty of food in the world. While the world’s population has doubled from 4 to 8 billion over the past fifty years, global food production has more than tripled, said Chamie, who served as the Deputy Secretary-General for the 1994 International Conference on population and development and has worked in various regions of the world.

There is a consensus on the causes of the global food crisis, he argued.

Among the major causes of the global food crisis, he singled out “armed conflict and violence; climate change with extreme weather events and emergencies; poverty and economic shocks with soaring prices for fertilizer”.

He pointed out that there is much that can be done to address the global food crisis.

“World leaders need to adopt policies, provide additional funds and take action to address the major factors creating the global food crisis. The major media outlets need to do more to inform the world community about the global food crisis”.

There are no reasons, he said, for delays in addressing the global food crisis. “It is necessary and appropriate to convene an emergency meeting of world leaders on the global food crisis at the UN General Assembly in New York next month.”

Countries, international agencies and responsible others need to act today to address the global food crisis, not in some distant future.

“Hungry people, especially children, can’t eat excuses, they need food today,” said Chamie, the author of numerous publications on population issues, including his recent book, “Population Levels, Trends, and Differentials“.

Meanwhile, the Hungry for Action campaign says the global food crisis is caused by a combination of conflict, climate change, rising food prices and the punishing debt burdens faced by many poorer countries, 21 of which now face catastrophic levels of debt distress and food insecurity.

“Admitting the scope of the problem is the first step towards solving it,” said Rev. Eugene Cho, president and CEO of the U.S.-based Christian anti-hunger organization Bread for the World.

“Several countries, including the U.S., have acknowledged there is a problem and taken steps to address it. That is a good start. But it is not enough to get us out of the crisis. The global food and malnutrition crisis is a climate crisis, a conflict crisis, and a rising costs crisis: it demands a powerful and unified global response.”

This year’s UN appeals for emergency assistance are only just over a quarter funded, much lower than for the last global food crisis in 2008, and yet there are twice as many additional people going hungry compared to 2008 levels.

“There is nothing inevitable about children dying because they don’t have enough to eat, just as there is nothing inevitable about families in rich countries queuing for food banks,” said climate activist, Vanessa Nakate.

“There is nothing inevitable about a food system that cannot withstand shocks from climate change or conflict. There is enough food in the world for everyone.”

“During the last major global food crisis, following the 2008 economic crash, we saw world leaders coming together at the G8 summit in L’Aquila, Italy, to make bold commitments,” said David McNair, Executive Director for Policy at the One Campaign

“This year, as we live through a so-called ‘polycrisis’, the food crisis seems to be getting lost, a victim of a siloed approach to tackling the world’s problems.”

According to the campaign, action to tackle the global food crisis should focus on three key elements: saving lives, building resilience of affected communities to withstand climate and food price shocks, and securing the future by reform of the global food system to make it more sustainable and equitable.

Solutions world leaders should progress at an emergency meeting include:

    • Fully funding the UN’s $55bn humanitarian appeals and doubling climate adaptation funding for lower income countries, while also cancelling their debts and reforming the multilateral financial system to unlock vital funds.
    • Investing in the smallholder farmers, health workers and communities on the frontlines of the food crisis, including through social protection programmes.
    • Fixing the broken global food system by supporting more sustainable farming, diversifying crops, improving nutrition and access to a healthy diet, and reducing food waste.

These measures would break the cycle of crisis and could save the world billions at the same time, campaigners said.

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Artificial Intelligence Faces Charges of Left-Wing Political Bias — Global Issues

Credit: United Nations
  • Opinion by Thalif Deen (united nations)
  • Inter Press Service

UNITED NATIONS, Aug 17 (IPS) – The artificial intelligence (AI) platform ChatGPT, whose negative consequences include misinformation, is facing new charges of political bias.

According to a study by the University of East Anglia (UEA), released August 17, AI ChatGPT shows “a significant and systemic left-wing bias”.

Published in the journal Public Choice, the findings show that ChatGPT’s responses favour the Democrats in the US, the Labour Party in the UK, and President Lula da Silva’s Workers’ Party in Brazil.

Concerns of an inbuilt political bias in ChatGPT have been raised previously but this is the first largescale study using a consistent, evidenced-based analysis, say a team of researchers in the UK and Brazil, who developed a rigorous new method to check for political bias.

Lead author Dr Fabio Motoki, of Norwich Business School at the University of East Anglia, said: “With the growing use by the public of AI-powered systems to find out facts and create new content, it is important that the output of popular platforms such as ChatGPT is as impartial as possible”.

“The presence of political bias can influence user views and has potential implications for political and electoral processes.”

“Our findings reinforce concerns that AI systems could replicate, or even amplify, existing challenges posed by the Internet and social media.”

Asked if it was possible to avoid or circumvent the political bias in ChatGPT, Dr Motoki told IPS: “Our study does not directly address this issue. What you ask is a recent and active area of research. What we do create is a method to systematically measure bias by leveraging the ability of these more advanced models of answering questions in a human-like fashion, while statistically overcoming some issues around their randomness.”

The main contribution of the study, he pointed out, is addressing several standing issues in the AI bias literature with a simple procedure.

“We posit that our tool is a way of democratizing the oversight of these models, acting as a guide to measure their biases and hold their creators accountable”.

“I can’t go into details because of a non-disclosure agreement, but an entity (I cannot say whether a government agency or a private company) has asked me to produce a technical report using this method. Therefore, we expect it to have a real-world impact, helping address your concern of avoiding bias,” he said.

According to the study, the researchers developed an innovative new method to test for ChatGPT’s political neutrality.

The platform was asked to impersonate individuals from across the political spectrum while answering a series of more than 60 ideological questions.

The responses were then compared with the platform’s default answers to the same set of questions – allowing the researchers to measure the degree to which ChatGPT’s responses were associated with a particular political stance.

To overcome difficulties caused by the inherent randomness of ‘large language models’ that power AI platforms such as ChatGPT, each question was asked 100 times and the different responses collected.

These multiple responses were then put through a 1000-repetition ‘bootstrap’ (a method of re-sampling the original data) to further increase the reliability of the inferences drawn from the generated text, according to the study.

“We created this procedure because conducting a single round of testing is not enough,” said co-author Victor Rodrigues. “Due to the model’s randomness, even when impersonating a Democrat, sometimes ChatGPT answers would lean towards the right of the political spectrum.”

A number of further tests were undertaken to ensure the method was as rigorous as possible. In a ‘dose-response test’ ChatGPT was asked to impersonate radical political positions.

In a ‘placebo test,’ it was asked politically-neutral questions. And in a ‘profession-politics alignment test’ it was asked to impersonate different types of professionals.

“We hope that our method will aid scrutiny and regulation of these rapidly developing technologies,” said co-author Dr Pinho Neto. “By enabling the detection and correction of LLM biases, we aim to promote transparency, accountability, and public trust in this technology,” he added.

The unique new analysis tool created by the project would be freely available and relatively simple for members of the public to use, thereby “democratising oversight,” said Dr Motoki.

As well as checking for political bias, the tool can be used to measure other types of biases in ChatGPT’s responses.

According to the UEA study, while the research project did not set out to determine the reasons for the political bias, the findings did point towards two potential sources.

The first was the training dataset – which may have biases within it, or added to it by the human developers, which the developers’ ‘cleaning’ procedure had failed to remove.

The second potential source was the algorithm itself, which may be amplifying existing biases in the training data.

Besides Dr Motoki, other researchers included Dr Valdemar Pinho Neto (EPGE Brazilian School of Economics and Finance – FGV EPGE, and Center for Empirical Studies in Economics – FGV CESE), and Victor Rodrigues (Nova Educação).

Meanwhile, citing a report from the Center for AI Safety, the New York Times reported May 31 that a group of over 350 AI industry leaders warned that artificial intelligence poses a growing new danger to humanity –and should be considered a “societal risk on a par with pandemics and nuclear wars”.

“We must take those warnings seriously,” UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres said last June. “Our proposed Global Digital Compact, New Agenda for Peace, and Accord on the global governance of AI, will offer multilateral solutions based on human rights,” Guterres said.

“But the advent of generative AI must not distract us from the damage digital technology is already doing to our world. The proliferation of hate and lies in the digital space is causing grave global harm – now. It is fueling conflict, death and destruction – now. It is threatening democracy and human rights – now. It is undermining public health and climate action – now,” he warned.

Guterres also said the UN is developing “a Code of Conduct for Information Integrity on Digital Platforms” — ahead of the UN Summit of the Future scheduled to take place in September 2024.

“The Code of Conduct will be a set of principles that we hope governments, digital platforms and other stakeholders will implement voluntarily,” he told reporters.

A copy of the study is available via the following Dropbox link: https://www.dropbox.com/scl/fo/dsfdvc77xdaumuau74ry1/h?rlkey=0mu6cr88ax8fdrj8k1k174741&dl=0

The University of East Anglia (UEA) is a UK Top 25 university (Complete University Guide and HESA Graduate Outcomes Survey) and is ranked in the UK Top 30 in the Sunday Times and Guardian University guides. It also ranks in the UK Top 20 for research quality (Times Higher Education REF2021 Analysis) and the UK Top 10 for impact on Sustainable Development Goals.

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Russia Upstages Neo-Colonialist France in West Africa — Global Issues

  • Opinion by Thalif Deen (united nations)
  • Inter Press Service

UNITED NATIONS, Aug 11 (IPS) – Going back to the 16th century and continuing through the late 1960s, France was described as the world’s second largest colonial power—just behind the British Empire.

As the old saying goes: The sun would never set over the British Empire because God wouldn’t trust an Englishman in the dark. But would that also apply to the French colonial empire?

The military coups in three former French colonies — Burkina Faso, Mali and more recently Niger – are perhaps an indication of the beginning of the end of French post-colonial and neo-colonial ties to West Africa.

The three military leaders are turning towards Russia and the Russian mercenary group Wagner for new political, economic and military alliances.

The headline in a New York Times article last week read: “Waning Influence for France, the Colonizer that Stayed in West Africa “

The coup in Niger, a landlocked country of about 25 million people, is likely to result in the departure of more than 2,500 Western troops, including 1,100 Americans, who were stationed in the West African country to battle anti-US and anti-Western militant groups.

In Niger, there was also strong public support for the Russians, with demonstrators waving Russian flags.

Stephen Zunes, Professor of Politics at the University of San Francisco, told IPS many Africans harbor understandable resentment towards French neocolonialism and their local collaborators.

“Unfortunately, despite the lack of a colonial legacy, the Russian influence is even worse. They are backing some of the region’s worst warlords, reactionary military leaders, and criminal elements,” he said.

Asked for his comments, US State Department Spokesperson Matthew Miller told reporters: “I have heard questions about these protests, sometimes in this briefing room, and sometimes you see people assume that because you see people on the streets it is an expression of actual support rather than people who might have been paid to show up at protests”.

Playing down the pro-Russian demonstrators, he said: “It does seem odd to me that if your country is suffering an attempted military takeover, the idea that the first thing anyone would do is run to a store and buy a Russian flag. That strikes me as somewhat an unlikely scenario.”

Miller also said that Yevgeniy Prigozhin, head of the Wagner Group, was publicly celebrating the events in Niger and “we certainly see Wagner take advantage of this type of situation whenever it occurs in Africa”.

“We, as I’ve stated before, did not see any role by Wagner in the instigation of this attempted takeover, and we have not seen any Wagner military presence as of yet in Niger. I don’t have any specific Wagner activities to – that I can make public at this point, but we saw Yevgeniy Prigozhin publicly celebrating what’s happened. And as I said, it did seem a very odd event that we had a bunch of Russian flags show up at so-called protests – in support of the junta leaders,” he added..

Perhaps the longest and bitterest battles against French colonialism took place in North Africa during the Algerian war of independence.

That battle was a major armed conflict between France and the Algerian National Liberation Front (NLF) from 1954 to 1962, which led to Algeria winning its independence from France and represented “the most recent and bloodiest example of France’s colonial history on the African continent”, with approximately 1.5 million Algerians killed and millions more displaced in the eight-year struggle for independence.

A posting on the Foreign Policy website August 8 said Niger’s coup leaders had one week to relinquish power and reinstate ousted President Mohamed Bazoum or else face military intervention by the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS).

At midnight on Sunday, that deadline expired without Bazoum being reinstated. Now, Niger and its neighbors are preparing for possible war—and ECOWAS, which plans to hold a second emergency summit is questioning whether issuing its unprecedented threat was a smart idea to begin with.

On Sunday, Niger’s junta government sent troop reinforcements to the capital, Niamey, and closed Niger’s airspace to brace for ECOWAS’s potential invasion. A senior U.S. diplomat held “frank and at times quite difficult” talks on Monday with junta leaders, who rejected calls to restore democracy, according to Foreign Policy.

Asked about the Russian influence in Niger, US Secretary of State Antony Blinken told reporters August 7 “for sure we have concerns when we see something like the Wagner Group possibly manifesting itself in different parts of the Sahel, and here’s why we’re concerned: because every single place that this group, Wagner Group, has gone, death, destruction, and exploitation have followed.”

He said insecurity has gone up, not down. It hasn’t been a response to the needs of the countries in question for greater security.

“I think what happened and what continues to happen in Niger was not instigated by Russia or by Wagner, but to the extent that they try to take advantage of it – and we see a repeat of what’s happened in other countries, where they’ve brought nothing but bad things in their wake – that wouldn’t be good,” Blinken declared.

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Should Military Leaders be Barred from Addressing the UN? — Global Issues

  • by Thalif Deen (united nations)
  • Inter Press Service

UNITED NATIONS, Jul 31 (IPS) – A rash of military coups in African countries — including Burkina Faso, Sudan, Guinea, Mali, and most recently Niger– has raised a legitimate question: What should be the response of the United Nations, a world body that swears by multi-party democracy, on army take-overs?

Condemnation? Yes.

Last week, the strong denunciations of the coup in Niger came not only from Secretary-General Antonio Guterres and UN High Commissioner for Human Rights Volker Turk — but also from all 15 members of the Security Council in a rare unanimity on a seemingly politically divisive issue.

But what if these military leaders seek to exercise their right to address the upcoming General Assembly sessions, come September?

As the New York Times pointed out July 30, Africa’s coup belt stretches the continent from coast-to-coast that has become “the longest corridor of military rule on Earth”

In a bygone era, the UN provided a platform to at least four such leaders, including Fidel Castro of Cuba, Col Muammar el-Qaddafi of Libya, Amadou Toure of Mali (who assumed power following a coup in 1991 but later served as a democratically elected President), and Jerry Rawlings of Ghana (who seized power in 1979, executed former political leaders but later served as a civilian president voted into power in democratic elections).:

But ironically, there was at least one instance of a Prime Minister from Thailand – a country where military coups once arrived with clockwork frequency — being ousted from power when he was addressing the UN General Assembly rendering him homeless and sending him into political exile in a Middle Eastern country.

The 2006 Thai coup d’état took place on 19 September 2006, when the Royal Thai Army engineered a military take-over against the elected caretaker government of Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra.

As a result, there was an unsolicited piece of advice to world leaders visiting New York: If you are heading a politically unstable government, make sure to bring all your military leaders—army, navy and air force chiefs—as members of your delegation to prevent a coup back home during your absence from the country.

Ambassador Anwarul K. Chowdhury, Permanent Representative of Bangladesh to the UN (1996-2001) and Under-Secretary-General of the United Nations (2002-2007), told IPS any group of a few well-meaning countries at the UN, having respect for participatory democracy, should come together proposing a resolution of the General Assembly disbarring leaders of military coups, who overthrew democratically elected governments, from addressing any of the major organs of the UN system, particularly the General Assembly, Security Council, Economic and Social Council (ECOSOC) and the Human Rights Council in Geneva.

“I believe such a resolution would pass with a big majority. We need only a few Member States, believing in democracy. to take that much-needed courageous, resolute, and forward-looking first step. I would look forward to welcoming such a history-making decision by the General Assembly,” he said.

“I would also add that the military leaders should know that the UN would not allow their countries to join any of its peace operations and/or to hold any high office in the UN system. There should be a price that those leaders should pay for their anti-democratic actions,” said Ambassador Chowdhury, President of the UN Security Council (2000 and 2001) and Chairman of the UN’s Budgetary and Administrative Committee (1997-1998).

“In many of my public speeches on multilateralism and effectiveness of the United Nations, which is its most universal manifestation”, he said, “I have repeatedly alerted that ”… I have seen time and again the centrality of the culture of peace and women’s equality in our lives. This realization has now become more pertinent amid the ever-increasing militarism, militarization and weaponization that is destroying both our planet and our people.”

“I believe wholeheartedly that only participatory democracy can effectively and appropriately reflect the true spirit of the UN Charter which begins with the words, “We the peoples …”. Yes, understandably the democratic system has its deficiencies”.

“But is there anything more effective and have more legitimacy in representing the opinion of the peoples of various Member States in this deliberative global parliament?” he asked.

Stephen Zunes, Professor of Politics at the University of San Francisco, told IPS the United Nations was originally founded by the victorious allies in the war against fascism.

While having a democratic government was never a prerequisite for UN membership, the principle that there should be a rule-based international order implied that such principles should also apply to those of member states, he pointed out.

Similarly, the human rights provisions adopted by the United Nations also imply the necessity of democratic governance.

An important first step in living up to its democratic underpinnings would be for the United Nations to bar leaders of military regimes from speaking before the United Nations, said Dr Zunes who has written extensively on the politics of the UN and the Security Council.

“Unfortunately, powerful autocratic governments—like permanent UN Security Council members Russia and China—would likely oppose such a rule”, he said. And the United States, despite its pro-democracy rhetoric, could very well have objections, as well.

“The Biden administration is the world’s biggest supporter of autocratic regimes, providing arms to 57% of the world’s dictatorships. Indeed, Egypt’s General Sisi is the second largest recipient of U.S. military aid, with U.S. taxpayers spending over one billion dollars annually to prop up his military regime which seized power in a bloody military coup in 2013,” declared Dr Zunes.

Meanwhile, in 2004, when the then Organization for African Unity (later African Union) barred coup leaders from participating in African summits, Secretary-General Kofi Annan of Ghana went one step further and said he was hopeful that one day the UN General Assembly would follow in the footsteps of the OAU, and bar leaders of military governments from addressing the General Assembly.

Annan’s proposal was a historic first.

But it never came to pass in an institution where member states, not the Secretary-General, rule the Organization. However, any such move could also come back to haunt member states if, one day, they find themselves representing a country headed by a military leader.

The outspoken Annan, a national of Ghana, also said that “billions of dollars of public funds continue to be stashed away by some African leaders — even while roads are crumbling, health systems are failing, school children have neither books nor desks nor teachers, and phones do not work.”

Needless to say, the UN does not make any distinctions between “benevolent dictators” and “ruthless dictators.” But as an international institution preaching multiparty democracy and free elections, it still condones military leaders by offering them a platform to speak — while wining and dining them during the annual General Assembly sessions.

Asked whether the UN General Assembly should set a new standard, Ambassador Chowdhury said: “yes, of course!”

“This should have been done long ago when our much-loved, much-respected Secretary-General Kofi Annan suggested it at the outset of the new millennium”

That was the appropriate time for such a landmark decision as the African Group, the biggest regional group of UN Member States, would have championed it not only because the African Union’s predecessor OAU had decided in 2004 to bar coup leaders from African summits, but also because the proposal came from a Secretary-General who was a son of Africa, he said.

“We missed that opportunity when a visionary leader of the UN had the courage to suggest that the UN General Assembly should follow Africa’s lead. Two decades have gone by. I cannot envisage any other Secretary-General would have the guts to suggest that publicly,” declared Ambassador Chowdhury.

This article contains excerpts from the recently-released book on the United Nations titled “No Comment – and Don’t Quote Me on That,” available on Amazon. Thalif Deen, who authored the book, is Senior Editor at IPS, an ex-UN staffer and a former member of the Sri Lanka delegation to the UN General Assembly sessions. A Fulbright scholar with a Master’s Degree (MSc) in Journalism from Columbia University, New York, he shared the gold medal twice (2012-2013) for excellence in UN reporting awarded by the UN Correspondents Association (UNCA). The link to Amazon via the author’s website follows:

https://www.rodericgrigson.com/no-comment-by-thalif-deen/

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A Second Battlefront in the Ukraine War — Global Issues

  • by Thalif Deen (united nations)
  • Inter Press Service

UNITED NATIONS, Jul 27 (IPS) – The Secretary-General of the United Nations is the creature of—and subservient to — the 193 member states who largely reign supreme in the world body.

But, in reality, Antonio Guterres has been defiant and openly challenged one of the five permanent members of the Security Council lambasting Russia for its 17-month-old invasion of Ukraine.

Mercifully, and hopefully, he has no plans to run for a third term and face a Russian veto— as did former Secretary-General Boutros Boutros-Ghali, who defied the US, and was defeated in his bid for a second term (when 14 members of the Security Council voted for him while the US exercised its veto).

Guterres, a former Prime Minister of Portugal, has been consistent in his attacks on Russia pointing out that Moscow’s invasion of Ukraine is a violation of the United Nations Charter and international law.

In his most recent a statement released July 23, Guterres “strongly condemned the Russian missile attack on Odesa that resulted in civilian causalities and damaged the UNESCO-protected Transfiguration Cathedral and other historical buildings in the Historic Centre of Odesa, a World Heritage site.”

“In addition to the appalling toll the war is taking on civilian lives, this is yet another attack in an area protected under the World Heritage Convention in violation of the 1954 Hague Convention for the Protection of Cultural Property in the Event of Armed Conflict.”

Guterres said he was concerned about the threat that this war increasingly poses to Ukrainian culture and heritage. Since 24 February 2022, UNESCO has verified damage to 270 cultural sites in Ukraine, including 116 religious sites.

Still, is Guterres — and the international community– fighting a losing battle against Russian President Vladimir Putin? Are there any other alternatives in sight?

James Paul, a former Executive Director of the New York-based Global Policy Forum (GPF), told IPS the Secretary-General should really be able to help with negotiations– or even lead them.

“Thus, he cannot be too partial. But the Secretary-General (SG) is always partial to the US and any criticism is dealt with very severely as when Kofi Annan said the US had broken international law in Iraq,” said Paul, author of the 2017 book titled “Of Foxes and Chickens: Oligarchy and Global Power in the UN Security Council”.

“All his staff were stripped away, and he was humiliated in The New York Times,” he pointed out. “I think the SG should try to stay in a position that enables him to act as an intermediary”

“Did the then SG criticize the damage to heritage sites in Iraq by US forces? No. The P-5 are not equal”, said Paul, who was a prominent figure in the NGO advocacy community at the United Nations and a well-known speaker and writer on the UN and global policy issues.

Martin S. Edwards, Professor, School of Diplomacy and International Relations, Seton Hall University in New Jersey, told IPS the SG is playing this correctly, working to delegitimize Russia, and rightly so. There’s not much else that can be done to make Russia into a pariah state.

“The SGs voice on this in recent days (not only in criticizing this missile strike but also the end of the grain deal) has been both steadfast and needed,” he said.

“The main problem, sadly, is that this needs to be resolved on the battlefield”.

“ The more that Putin realizes he will not achieve any of his objectives, and the more that he realizes his regime is in danger, the more he would be willing to listen to overtures for peace. This war remains a huge tragedy for all involved,” declared Edwards.

Andreas Bummel, Executive Director, Democracy Without Borders, told IPS it is part of the UN Secretary-General’s duties to protect the rules and values of the UN Charter.

The Russian war of aggression against Ukraine, aimed at annexing territory and erasing Ukraine’s existence as an independent state, is the most blatant violation of the Charter’s fundamental rules and of international law, he pointed out.

“The Secretary General has no choice but to condemn Russia for its criminal actions even if this means that Russia does not accept him as a mediator. As the UN General Assembly has said, there is no solution to this war except for Russia to withdraw its troops and to cease all attacks,” declared Bummel.

Meanwhile, the United Nations has described the deaths and destruction in the nine-year-old civil war in Yemen as “the world’s worst humanitarian disaster”.

The killings, mostly civilians, have been estimated at over 100,000, with accusations of war crimes against a coalition led by Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates (UAE) battling Yemen, described as one of the world’s poorest nations in the UN’s list of least developing countries (LDCs).

But the weapons used in these killings originated in the US which has remained the primary arms supplier to both countries. But neither the UN nor successive SGs have at least hinted or accused the US of being implicitly responsible for the civilian killings,

The New York Times said in 2017 that some US lawmakers worry that American weapons were being used to commit war crimes in Yemen—including the intentional or unintentional bombings of funerals, weddings, factories and other civilian infrastructure—triggering condemnation from the United Nations and human rights groups who also accuse the Houthis of violating humanitarian laws of war and peace.

https://www.globalissues.org/news/2019/04/26/25240

Going back to 2003, then Secretary-General Kofi Annan challenged the United States, and surprisingly, lived to tell the tale—but paid an unfairly heavy price after being hounded by the US administration..

When the US invaded Iraq in March 2003, he described the invasion as “illegal” because it did not have the blessings of the 15-member UN Security Council, the only institution in the world body with the power to declare war and peace.

But the administration of President George W. Bush went after Annan for challenging its decision to unilaterally declare war against Iraq: an attack by a member state against another for no legally-justifiable reason.

The weapons of mass destruction (WMDs), reportedly in Iraq’s military arsenal, which was one of the primary reasons for the invasion, were never found.

Subsequently, Annan came under heavy fire for misperceived lapses in the implementation of the “Oil-for-Food” program which was aimed at alleviating the sufferings of millions of Iraqis weighed down by UN sanctions

Meanwhile, in his 368-page 1999 book titled “Unvanquished: A US-UN Saga,” Boutros-Ghali provided an insider’s view of how the United Nations and its chief administrative officer (CAO) were manipulated by the Organization’s most powerful member: the United States.

Although he was accused by Washington of being “too independent” of the US, he eventually did everything in his power to please the Americans. But still the US was the only country to say “no” to a second five-year term for Boutros-Ghali.

In his book, Boutros-Ghali recalls a meeting in which he tells the then Secretary of State Warren Christopher that many Americans had been appointed to UN jobs “at Washington’s request over the objections of other UN member states.”

“I had done so, I said, because I wanted American support to succeed in my job (as Secretary-General”), Boutros-Ghali says. But Christopher refused to respond.

When he was elected Secretary-General in January 1992, Boutros-Ghali noted that 50 percent of the staff assigned to the UN’s administration and management were Americans, although Washington paid only 25 percent of the UN’s regular budget.

When the Clinton administration took office in Washington in January 1993, Boutros-Ghali was signaled that two of the highest-ranking UN staffers appointed on the recommendation of the outgoing Bush administration– Under-Secretary-General Richard Thornburgh and Under-Secretary-General Joseph Verner Reed — were to be dismissed despite the fact that they were theoretically “international civil servants” answerable only to the world body.

They were both replaced by two other Americans who had the blessings of the Clinton Administration.

Just before his election in November 1991, Boutros-Ghali remembers someone telling him that John Bolton, the US Assistant Secretary of State for International Organizations, was “at odds” with the earlier Secretary-General Javier Perez de Cuellar because he had “been insufficiently attentive to American interests.”

“I assured Bolton of my own serious regard for US policy.” “Without American support” Boutros-Ghali told Bolton, “the United Nations would be paralyzed.”

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Guns for Hire? A Season for Mercenaries — Global Issues

  • by Thalif Deen (united nations)
  • Inter Press Service

UNITED NATIONS, Jul 17 (IPS) – Just after a band of mercenaries tried to oust the government in the Maldives back in 1988, I asked a Maldivian diplomat, using a familiar military catch phrase, about the strength of his country’s “standing army.”

“Standing army?”, the diplomat asked with mock surprise, and remarked perhaps half-jokingly, “We don’t even have a sitting army.”

With a population of about 250,000, around that time, the Maldives was perhaps one of the few countries with no fighter planes, combat helicopters, warships, missiles or battle tanks—an open invitation for mercenaries and free-lance military adventurers.

As a result, the island’s fragile defenses attracted a rash of mercenaries and bounty hunters who tried to take over the country twice– once in 1979, and a second time in 1988.

Although both attempts failed, the Indian Ocean-island refused to drop its defenses. It not only initiated a proposal seeking a UN security umbrella to protect the world’s militarily-vulnerable mini states but also backed an international convention to outlaw mercenaries, namely the 1989 ‘International Convention against the Recruitment, Use, Financing and Training of Mercenaries’

In the US, a mercenary is called a “soldier of fortune”, which is also the title of a widely circulated magazine, and sub-titled the Journal of Professional Adventurers.

The adventures– and mis-adventures– of mercenaries were also portrayed in several Hollywood movies, including the Dogs of War, Tears of the Sun, the Wild Geese, the Expendables, and Blood Diamond, among others.

When the Russian Wagner Group hit the front pages of newspapers worldwide, it was described as a private mercenary group fighting in Ukraine.

The New York Times said on June 30 the Wagner Group provided security to African presidents, propped up dictators, violently suppressed rebel uprisings and was accused of torture, murder of civilians and other abuses.

But the failed coup attempt by Wagner threatened, for a moment, the very existence of the Group.

A military adviser to an African president, dependent on mercenaries, implicitly linked the name Wagner to the German composer Richard Wagner.

And the official was quoted as saying “If it is not Wagner any more, they can send us Beethoven or Mozart, it doesn’t matter. We’ll take them”.

A July 14 report on Cable News Network (CNN) quoted a Kremlin source as saying the Wagner group, which led a failed insurrection against Russian President Vladimir Putin last month, was never a legal entity and its legal status needs further consideration.

“Such a legal entity as PMC Wagner does not exist and never existed. This is a legal issue that needs to be explored,” Kremlin spokesperson Dmitry Peskov said.

Peskov refused to disclose any further details on the meeting between Wagner head Yengeny Prigozhin and Putin, which reportedly took place several days after the aborted rebellion in June.

Besides Ukraine, mercenaries have been fighting in Central Africa, Mali, Syria, Yemen, Iraq and Libya. In Syria, there was a para military group called Slavonic Corps providing security to President Bashar al-Assad battling a civil war—and later by the Wagner Group.

And in Mali there were over 1,500 mercenaries fighting armed groups threatening to overthrow the government.

Ironically, the US which once used the Blackwater Security Consulting Group during the American occupation of Iraq, has imposed sanctions on several African nations deploying mercenaries.

Antony J. Blinken, US Secretary of State, said last week that the United States is imposing sanctions on several entities in the Central African Republic (CAR) for their connection to the transnational criminal organization known as the Wagner Group and “for their involvement in activities that undermine democratic processes and institutions in the CAR through illicit trade in the country’s natural resources”.

“We are also designating one Russian national who has served as a Wagner executive in Mali. Wagner has used its operations in Mali both to obtain revenue for the group and its owner, Yevgeniy Prigozhin, as well as to procure weapons and equipment to further its involvement in hostilities in Ukraine.”

The United States has also issued a new business risk advisory focused on the gold industry across sub-Saharan Africa.

Specifically, the advisory highlights “how illicit actors such as Wagner exploit this resource to gain revenue and sow conflict, corruption, and other harms throughout the region”.

Death and destruction have followed in Wagner’s wake everywhere it has operated, and the United States will continue to take actions to hold it accountable, said Blinken.

Dr. Stephen Zunes, Professor of Politics and International Studies at the University of San Francisco, told IPS it is certainly good that the United States is finally taking leadership in opposing the use of mercenaries.

The Iraq War—which then-Senator Joe Biden strongly supported—relied heavily on the use of mercenaries from the Blackwater group. Similarly, during the Cold War, the CIA used mercenaries to support its military objectives in Latin America, Southeast Asia, and sub-Saharan Africa.

“Whether such actions targeting the Wagner Group is indicative of an actual shift in U.S. policy or simply a means of punishing a pro-Russian organization remains to be seen,” he said.

Dr. Simon Adams, President and CEO of the Center for Victims of Torture, told IPS throughout history, big powers have often used mercenaries. From trying to hold back anti-colonial struggles to the horrors of the Cold War in Latin America or Africa, there is nothing new in that.

“But I think the big change is that the international community has become more intolerant of these guns-for-hire and privatized armies who believe that they can operate outside of International Humanitarian Law, and are often rampant abusers of human rights”, he pointed out.

And it is much harder these days for their state sponsors to deny responsibility for their actions, he added.

The Wagner Group has been implicated in numerous atrocities in Ukraine, Central African Republic and a number of other places, he said.

“They deserve all the opprobrium that has been heaped upon them. The challenge now is not just to sanction them, and to try to hold the main war criminals accountable under international law”.

The bigger challenge is to ensure that no other big state or major power engages in these same nefarious practices the next time it suits their own partisan interests to do so, declared Dr Adams.

Meanwhile, according to an article in the National Defense University Press, private force has become big business, and global in scope. No one truly knows how many billions of dollars slosh around this illicit market.

“All we know is that business is booming. Recent years have seen major mercenary activity in Yemen, Nigeria, Ukraine, Syria, and Iraq. Many of these for-profit warriors outclass local militaries, and a few can even stand up to America’s most elite forces, as the battle in Syria shows.”

The Middle East is awash in mercenaries. Kurdistan is a haven for soldiers of fortune looking for work with the Kurdish militia, oil companies defending their oil fields, or those who want terrorists dead, according to the article.

“Some are just adventure seekers, while others are American veterans who found civilian life meaningless. The capital of Kurdistan, Irbil, has become an unofficial marketplace of mercenary services, reminiscent of the Tatooine bar in the movie Star Wars—full of smugglers and guns for hire.”

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When the President of the General Assembly Was Given a Seat at a Summit a Back Row Seat — Global Issues

  • by Thalif Deen (united nations)
  • Inter Press Service

UNITED NATIONS, Jun 26 (IPS) – When the United Nations commemorated ‘International Day of Women in Diplomacy’ last week, the President of the General Assembly (PGA) Csaba K?rösi rightly pointed out the woeful absence of women to hold that position in the UN hierarchy.

“Women have played a central role in the history of the United Nations ever since the signing of the UN Charter,” he said, “but out of the 78 people elected to my role, President of the General Assembly, only four have been women.”

So far, the only four women elected as PGAs in the 78-year history of the UN were: Vijaya Lakshmi Pandit from India (1953), Angie Brooks from Liberia (1969), Sheikha Haya Rashed Al-Khalifa from Bahrain (2006) and Maria Fernando Espinosa Garces from Ecuador (2018).

The 193-member General Assembly (GA) is described as the highest policy making body at the United Nations – and according to a longstanding diplomatic protocol, the PGA is virtually treated as head of state at international conferences.

At a dinner hosted by a UN ambassador years ago, one of the former women PGA’s told a group of reporters she was at a summit meeting of world leaders in a Middle Eastern capital where all the heads of state were, rightfully, accommodated in the front rows of the hall.

But she was deprived of that honor because she was a woman — and was offered a back row seat – in a country which did not obviously believe in gender empowerment.

“Gender parity?”, one of the journalists at the dinner table remarked, “it’s always a losing battle”.

K?rösi told delegates only one in 4 Permanent Representatives (PRs) are women – “even if some of them are spearheading this session’s major, and very complicated, negotiation processes”.

He said the latest ‘Women in Diplomacy Index’ shows that, in 2023, only one fifth of all ambassadors in the world are women.

“I extend my gratitude to the women PRs for their strong leadership of some of the most challenging talks, including on the SDG Summit, Financing for Development, or Universal Health Coverage, just to mention a few.”

“In my own Office”, he said,” women account for two thirds of the team, with the same proportion in the management of the OPGA (Office of the President of the General Assembly).“

“For it is only by working together that we will achieve a sustainable future for both halves of humanity”.

According to a new report from the World Economic Forum it will take about 131 years for women to attain gender parity with men – and not until 2154.

Speaking during the commemoration of ‘International Day of Women in Diplomacy’, US Ambassador Linda Thomas-Greenfield shared a little history.

She said: “US Ambassador Madeleine Albright (1993-97), who was our representative at the Security Council, told me that she created this group called the G7. And it was all of the women that I thought were on the Security Council and I was amazed that there were seven women at that time”.

“And so, I went to see her after I started here, and I said there are only five women on the Security Council now. And she said that’s fantastic – because I was the only woman on the Council (during 1993-97).

Her G7 were all the women in the General Assembly—seven out of 193 ambassadors.

“So, we have made progress. But there’s still more to be made. And I think as women, we are able to bring out those issues that really highlight and amplify women in the Security Council”.

“We ensure that there are women speakers who come to brief the Council. We ensure that issues related to Women, Peace, and Security are amplified in our discussions. And it’s not that men don’t always do it, but they don’t do it enough. As women we’re constantly aware and constantly looking for opportunities to raise women up,” she said.

According to the UN, women have been playing a crucial role in global governance since the drafting and signing of the United Nations Charter in 1945.

“Women and girls represent half of the world’s population and, therefore, also half of its potential. Women bring immense benefits to diplomacy. Their leadership styles, expertise and priorities broaden the scope of issues under consideration and the quality of outcomes”.

“Research shows that when women serve in cabinets and parliaments, they pass laws and policies that are better for ordinary people, the environment and social cohesion. Advancing measures to increase women’s participation in peace and political processes is vital to achieving women’s de facto equality in the context of entrenched discrimination”.

Out of the 193 Member States of the United Nations, only 34 women serve as elected Heads of State or Government.

“Whilst progress has been made in many countries, the global proportion of women in other levels of political office worldwide still has far to go: 21% of the world’s ministers, 26% of national parliamentarians, and 34% of elected seats of local government.”

According to a new UN report, at the current pace of progress, equal representation in parliament will not be achieved until 2062.

The UN General Assembly (UNGA) is the world’s largest yearly meeting of world leaders. While the UNGA has been the setting for several historic moments for gender equality, much has yet to be achieved regarding women’s representation and participation.

The 15-member UN Security Council has primary responsibility for the maintenance of international peace and security. “While women currently represent slightly over a third of the Security Council’s members — far higher than the average — it is still far from enough”, says the UN.

“Historically, diplomacy has been the preserve of men. Women have played a critical role in diplomacy for centuries, yet their contributions have often been overlooked. It’s time to recognize and celebrate the ways in which women are breaking barriers and making a difference in the field of diplomacy”.

At the UNGA’s 76th Session, the General Assembly by consensus declared the 24th of June each year to be the ‘International Day of Women in Diplomacy’.

By its resolution (A/RES/76/269), the Assembly invited all Member States, United Nations organizations, non-governmental groups, academic institutions and associations of women diplomats — where they exist — to observe the Day in a manner that each considers most appropriate, including through education and public awareness-raising.

According to UN Women:

    • There are 31 countries where 34 women serve as Heads of State and/or Government as of January 2023.
    • Of the five United Nations-led or co-led peace processes in 2021, two were led by women mediators, and all five consulted with civil society and were provided with gender expertise.
    • In 2022, the Security Council held its first-ever formal meeting focusing on reprisals against women participating in peace and security processes.
    • In multilateral disarmament forums, wide gaps persist in women’s participation and women remain grossly underrepresented in many weapons-related fields, including technical arms control – only 12 per cent of Ministers of Defense globally are women.
    • Countries where there are more women in legislative and executive branches of government have less defense spending and more social spending.

Meanwhile, the Related “UN Observances” on Women include

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If Current Trends Continue, Worlds Poor may not Achieve a Single Development Goal by 2030 — Global Issues

  • by Thalif Deen (united nations)
  • Inter Press Service

UNITED NATIONS, Jun 21 (IPS) – When the 193-member General Assembly adopted the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development back in September 2015, it was aimed at transforming the world into an idealistic state of peace and economic prosperity.

But eight years later, most of the world’s low-income countries (LICs) have been struggling to achieve even a single goal, including the two key targets: the eradication of extreme poverty and hunger by 2030.

In a new report released June 21, the United Nations has singled out some of the key achievers—the top five, among the world’s high-income countries (HICs), which are led by Finland, and followed by Sweden, Denmark, Germany and Austria.

European countries continue to lead in the SDG Index – holding the top 10 spots -– and are on track to achieve more targets than any other region, with Denmark, Czechia, Estonia, Latvia, and the Slovak Republic as the top five countries that have achieved or are on track to achieving the largest number of SDG targets this year.

By contrast, Lebanon, Yemen, Papua New Guinea, Venezuela, and Myanmar have the largest number of SDG targets moving in the wrong direction

The findings are listed in the 2023 Sustainable Development Report (SDR) and Index, which ranks the performance of all 193 UN Member States on the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) and is produced by the UN Sustainable Development Solutions Network (SDSN).

There is a risk that the gap in SDG outcomes between HICs and the LICs will be larger in 2030 than when the goals were universally agreed upon in 2015, warns the report

  • Based on the current pace of progress since 2015, none of the goals will be achieved by 2030, and on average, less than 20% of the SDG targets are on track to be achieved.
  • Government effort and commitment to the SDGs is too low, and notably, LICs and LMICs (low middle income countries) obtained a higher average score than HICs on political and institutional leadership for the SDGs.
  • Among the G20 countries, average scores range from more than 75 percent in Indonesia to less than 40 percent in the Russian Federation and the United States.
  • Argentina, Barbados, Chile, Germany, Jamaica, and Seychelles obtained the highest score on a new pilot index for their efforts to promote multilateralism, yet no country obtains a perfect score.

The report includes the first pilot index of multilateralism that captures the overarching dimensions of support for multilateralism and comparisons of countries, including countries’ efforts to promote and preserve peace, percentage of UN treaties ratified, international solidarity and financing, membership in select UN organizations, and the use of unilateral coercive measures among other indicators.

Argentina, Barbados, Chile, Germany, Jamaica, and Seychelles obtained the highest score for their efforts to promote multilateralism, yet no country obtains a perfect score.

The report was released just ahead of the June 22-23 International Summit for a New Global Financing Pact in Paris hosted by French President Emmanuel Macron.

As the UN nears the mid-point of the SDGs and ahead of the Paris Summit, the report provides timely insights on the chronic shortfalls of SDG financing to developing and emerging economies and offers six priorities for reform of the Global Financial Architecture.

The report also features a new pilot Index that gauges countries’ support for multilateralism and a new Index to track government efforts and commitments to the SDGs.

Despite the grim news, the report demonstrates that while the world is off track at the mid-point of the SDGs, now is the time for countries to double down on SDG progress by endorsing deep reform of the global financial architecture and implementing the SDG Stimulus to close the significant financing gap facing developing and emerging countries.

Professor Jeffrey D. Sachs, President of the SDSN and a lead author of the report, says half way to 2030, the SDGs are seriously off track – with the poor and highly vulnerable countries suffering the most.

“The international community should step up at this month’s Summit for a New Global Financing Pact in Paris, and at the key upcoming multilateral meetings, including the G20 meeting in New Delhi, the SDG Summit New York in September, and COP28 in Dubai, to scale-up international financial flows based on SDG needs”.

“It would be unconscionable for the world to miss this opportunity, especially for the richest countries to evade their responsibilities. The SDGs remain fundamental for the future we want.”

Providing a critical analysis of the new report, Jens Martens, Executive Director of Global Policy Forum Europe, based in Bonn, told IPS the SDSN report brings no surprises.

That the world is not on track to achieve the SDGs was already noted by the Global Sustainable Development Report 2023, the UN Secretary-General’s SDG Midterm Report, and many other civil society Spotlight Reports before.

However, the message that the SDSN Report conveys with the SDG Index is absolutely misleading, he pointed out.

“It suggests that the Western industrialized countries at the top of the ranking are on the right development path. But this is only because it ignores the negative externalities of their consumption and production patterns and their economic and financial policies. For good reasons, SDSN has therefore also developed a Spillover Index, but this merely complements the SDG Index,” he noted.

The emphasis on the SDG Index, with its positive ranking of Western industrialized countries, sends the wrong political message, said Martens.

“To reduce growing global inequalities, governments in the UN must address the structural causes of these inequalities”.

First and foremost, he argued, this requires fundamental reforms in the global financial architecture. The SDG Summit 2023, the Summit of the Future 2024, and the Fourth FfD Conference 2025 provide pivotal opportunities to initiate these reforms, he declared.

Chee Yoke Ling, Executive Director, Third World Network, Malaysia, told IPS the 2030 Sustainable Development Agenda with its 17 SDGs has fallen victim to the failure of means of implementation – new and additional financing as well as appropriate technology transfer to developing countries.

“We see the same fate for the climate and biodiversity treaties”.

At the same time, she said, the barriers in the external environment have worsened. “So, we see alarming debt burdens because the international financial architecture remains stacked against developing countries, while public funds and governments are pushed to take on a “de-risking” role to shore up private creditors”.

Look beyond, she said, the buzz of the World Bank’s Evolutionary Roadmap and the Macron New Global Financing Pact and “we see a fundamentally similar and even stronger set of policies and measures to maintain the status quo and further subject countries to financing sources beyond public control.

Meanwhile middle-income countries and even LDCs are faced with private creditors who refuse to do their part in debt reduction, and G7 governments do not want to rein them in either.

Trade protectionism is also rearing its head. The roll-out of the EU’s carbon border adjustment mechanism has raised alarms. In the name of a green transition for Europe, this new carbon border tax CBAM will directly impact Sub-Saharan Africa that relies heavily on exports of fossil fuels, minerals and metals that are carbon intensive, she pointed out.

Studies show that African countries will be highly exposed to the CBAM since 26% of continental trade was with the EU, while only 2.2% of the EU’s trade was with Africa.

The CBAM could reduce Africa to EU exports by up to 5.7%, based on current carbon prices. This may have the effect of reducing Africa’s GDP by about $16 billion at 2021 levels.

“Without clean technologies being shared with Africa, the EU’s new tax penalizes those countries that are already under increasing debt burden”.

IPS UN Bureau Report

© Inter Press Service (2023) — All Rights ReservedOriginal source: Inter Press Service

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