The risks of this detour, which will leave tens of thousands of people vulnerable to new infections, cannot be overstated…
Michael Specter on the on the devastating step backward Monday in the effort to wipe out polio: http://nyr.kr/ZL76tK
Photograph by Fareed Khan/AP.
Today’s VOA60 Africa: 9/28
Ethiopia: Leaders of Sudan and South Sudan sign agreements on security and economic relations in Addis Ababa.
Kenya: Somali reporters living in exile in Kenya say journalists in Somalia are targets of both al-Shabab and government forces.
Nigeria: Even though Bayelsa State is rich in oil, its drivers have to wait on long lines for fuel.
United Nations: Libyan President Mohammed Magarief apologizes to UN General Assembly for crimes committed by Moammar Gadhafi.
Rwanda: Project in Kigali uses yoga to help women and children living with HIV stay in good spirits.
Reblogged from crisisgroup|3 notes
Analysis: U.N.’s Iran atom probe “hostage” to big power diplomacy | Reuters
By Fredrik Dahl
Offering immunity or an easing of the sanctions pressure may be the only way - if there is one at all - to coax Iran to end years of stonewalling a U.N. watchdog investigation into suspected nuclear weapons research in the Islamic state.
Photo: openDemocracy/Flickr
As developed nations continue to struggle economically, how will financial tensions shape the United Nations’ upcoming Rio+20 conference? During today’s OnPoint, former Sen. Tim Wirth, president of the U.N. Foundation, previews the U.N. Conference on Sustainable Development and weighs in on the key issues that will be considered at the conference.
Reblogged from crisisgroup|7 notes
The Washington Post: U.N. monitors begin work in Syria
A team of six U.N. observers set up headquarters in Damascus on Monday and began reaching out to the Syrian government and its opponents, in hopes they could start healing the country’s violent divides.
The team is led by a Moroccan colonel named Ahmed Himmiche, and another 25 members are expected to arrive in the next few days, said a spokesman for U.N.-Arab League envoy to Syria, Kofi Annan.
The team is set to monitor the implementation of a six-point peace plan proposed by Annan, accepted by Syrian President Bashar al-Assad, and backed by Syria’s allies Russia and China as well as Western governments who have called for Assad to step down. The Syrian foreign minister was due to arrive in China on Monday for meetings, according to Chinese news agencies.
According to a U.N. Security Council resolution passed Saturday, the monitors’ work is dependent on the maintenance of a cease-fire that went into effect April 12. Despite numerous reported violations of the terms of the agreement by both security forces and armed opponents of Assad, the daily death toll remains dramatically lower than it has been in recent months, when dozens of civilians, soldiers and rebels were killed almost daily.
Top diplomats observed a minute of silence Wednesday after lighting five white candles in memory of more than 500,000 people killed in the Rwandan genocide 18 years ago. They vowed to pursue justice for the victims and survivors by apprehending fugitive Rwandan killers.
U.S. Ambassador Susan Rice recalled that the “United Nations was established in the shadow of a genocide,” the Nazi slaughter of six million Jews during World War II.
Reblogged from united-nations|659 notes
We’re making last-minute preparations for today’s Google Plus hangout with Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon! Above is a sneak peek of the set!
More information:
Six young people will join from the United States, Europe, Asia, Africa, the Middle East and South America, and have the opportunity to ask questions on the issues that matter to them.
One of the more surprising growth industries to have taken off during the current period of economic downturn and austerity has been “the happiness industry”—the increasing activity of economists (not philosophers) who study what constitutes happiness and make recommendations to governments about how best to increase it. This industry has recently achieved an early pinnacle of success with the publication of the first World Happiness Report. Commissioned for a United Nations Conference on Happiness, under the auspices of the UN General Assembly, it bears the imprimatur of Columbia University’s Earth Institute and is edited by the institute’s director, Jeffrey Sachs, and two happiness experts, Richard Layard of the London School of Economics and John Helliwell of the University of British Columbia. The report unmemorably finds that the world’s happiest countries world are in northern Europe (Denmark, Norway, Finland, Netherlands) and the most miserable are in Africa (Togo, Benin, Central African Republic, and Sierra Leone).
The wreck of the Titanic is to come under the protection of the United Nations cultural agency Unesco.
Israel cut working relations with the United Nations Human Rights Council on Monday and will bar a U.N. team from entering Israel or the West Bank for a planned investigation of Jewish settlements, the Foreign Ministry said.
Israel accuses the council of having a pronounced anti-Israel bias because of what it says is its disproportionate focus on Israeli policy toward the Palestinians.
Israeli leaders have been in an uproar over the council’s adoption of a resolution last week condemning Jewish settlement construction in the West Bank and east Jerusalem and its decision to send a fact-finding mission to investigate.
On Monday, Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman announced Israel was severing working ties with the council.
Reblogged from newyorker|73 notes