By Ernest Corea *

IDN-InDepth NewsAnalysis

WASHINGTON DC (IDN) – Gloom-and-doom headlines in the waning days of the 2010 review conference of the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) caused many observers to assume that negotiations would collapse in deadlock, but the Final Declaration of the conference was adopted without dissent. Consensus on potentially contentious issues was a significant milestone on the path toward nuclear disarmament.
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Analysis by Jerrold Kessel and Pierre Klochendler

JERUSALEM, May 31, 2010 (IPS) - What exactly happened on the high seas off the Gaza-Israel coast remains in murky waters.

Already though, the implications of Israel’s assault on the peace flotilla of civilian vessels headed with humanitarian relief supplies for the besieged Palestinian territory are becoming starkly clear.
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By Stephen Leahy

NAIROBI, May 27, 2010 (IPS) - Women provide up to 90 percent of the rural poor’s food and produce up to 80 percent of food in most developing countries, and yet they are almost completely ignored when policy decisions are made about agriculture and biodiversity.

That’s about to change thanks to a United Nations agreement on biodiversity that will ask countries to ensure women are involved in decisions regarding biodiversity - including agriculture.
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By Ben Adler - Newsweek

The U.S. public has moved on, but it is still a troubled country.

May 27, 2010. If you went abroad a few weeks ago, and upon returning today were told that in your absence a debate swirled throughout in the media over the enduring, if diminished, political salience of America’s last major war, which conflict would you assume they were discussing? If you guessed the Iraq invasion, you’d be wrong. Connecticut Attorney General Richard Blumenthal’s misrepresentation of his service in the Vietnam era created a career-threatening brouhaha, but Vice President Joe Biden’s statement to The Washington Post that the administration intends to complete its planned troop reduction from a current 90,000 in Iraq to 50,000 this summer is just another day in Washington.
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msnbc.com*

Amnesty International says ‘09 a year of human rights setbacks, progress

May 26, 2010. LONDON - From Iran’s repressive crackdown on anti-government demonstrators to China’s bloody suppression of minority Uighurs, millions of people’s lives across the world continued to be torn apart last year by repression, violence, discrimination and death, Amnesty International says.
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By Beatriz Bissio

RIO DE JANEIRO, May 27, 2010 (IPS) - “Bridging Cultures, Building Peace” is the slogan of the third United Nations Alliance of Civilisations Forum which opens Friday in Brazil, gathering together some 3,000 heads of state, members of parliament and delegates of international bodies and civil society organisations.
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Leonardo Boff *

Economics Nobel laureate, Joseph Stiglitz, recently said: «the legacy of the economic-financial crisis will be a great clash of ideas about the future of the Earth.» I agree completely. As I see it, that great debate will center on the two cosmologies which appear, and conflict, over the historical landscape.
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By Hannah Rubenstein

UNITED NATIONS, May 26, 2010 (IPS) - A decade after the passage of the Optional Protocols to the Convention on the Rights of the Child, the United Nations and human rights groups are urging 44 unsigned countries to join in ratifying the treaty.

Two-thirds of all U.N. member states - 132 countries - have ratified the optional protocols that call for protection of children from armed conflict and sexual exploitation - what U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon has called a “moral and legal shield for children".
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By Ramesh Jaura

IDN-InDepth NewsAnalysis

BERLIN (IDN) – The botched UN conference in Copenhagen may prove to be a blessing in disguise by way of correcting the imbalance that has favoured climate change but nearly ignored desertification and biodiversity that are two other centerpieces of the three ‘Rio Conventions’ emerging from the Earth Summit in June 1992.
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By Martin Khor (*)

GENEVA, May (IPS/South Centre) The World Trade Organisation’s Doha Round appears to be stuck in a strategic deadlock, with no end in sight, and little hope for completion in the forseeable future. The latest bout of negotiations, a “stocktaking exercise” held in Geneva in the last week of March ended with no direction and without plans for a further meeting of senior officials from capitals, or for Trade Ministers. The target of finishing the Round by the end of this year was not even mentioned.
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IRIN

NEW YORK, 20 May 2010 (IRIN) - A five-year campaign to boost the number of UN female peacekeepers is progressing steadily in police units, but “seems to be stuck” at a minuscule percentage in military contingents, Lt-Col Alejandro Alvarez of the UN Department of Peacekeeping Operations (DPKO), told IRIN.
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By Johan Galtung (*)

BRUSSELS, May (IPS) There are three major issues concerning nuclear weapons, all very difficult: disarmament-nonproliferation, military use, and theological significance. But there is a universal remedy: solve the underlying conflicts. Achieving disarmament through peace is much easier than achieving peace through disarmament.
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By Sabina Zaccaro

ROME, May 21, 2010 (IPS) - Biodiversity in agriculture is about culture. Traditional knowledge and culture are as important as research and investments aver farmers, researchers and academicians who are gathered in Rome to celebrate International Day for Biodiversity on Saturday.
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By Jutta Wolf

IDN-InDepth NewsAnalysis

BERLIN (IDN) – A new study has expressed concern about the long-term energy security of the Middle East oil producing and exporting countries and classified these as “high risk” nations.
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By Fabiana Frayssinet

RIO DE JANEIRO, May 20, 2010 (IPS) - Although the European Union’s financial bailout of Greece to avoid contagion of the crisis to other eurozone countries has had positive effects, South America is not ruling out collateral damage, especially from austerity measures demanded from Spain and Portugal and being considered for other EU countries.
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By Ramesh Jaura

IDN-InDepth NewsAnalysis

BERLIN (IDN) – As the global financial crisis remains far from resolved and the world’s major currencies continue a roller coaster ride, a sound and safe global financial system appears to be sliding into the realm of utopia.
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By Prakash Joshi

IDN-InDepth NewsAnalysis

NEW DELHI (IDN) – While preparing to close the notorious U.S. prison at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, President Barack Obama appears to be supporting the expansion of another secretive prison in Afghanistan, according to reports.
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By Jerrold Kessel & Pierre Klochendler

JERUSALEM, May 19, 2010 (IPS) - Noam Chomsky, a fierce espouser of left-wing causes, is widely admired in countries which parade themselves as “democracies". Apparently, the admiration does not extend to Israel.
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By Michael Miller | Newsweek Web Exclusive

Mexican soldiers are outgunned by drug traffickers. Too bad Washington won’t let them buy better arms.
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By Ignacio Ramonet (*)

“For the dead man here abandoned, build him a tomb.” Sophocles, Antigone (442 A.D.)

PARIS, May (IPS) “Senseless", “astounding” , “unheard of” … The world press, human rights associations, and the finest international jurists can’t get over it. Why is the Spanish judicial system, which has done so much in recent years to punish and prevent crimes against humanity in many parts of the world, bringing charges against Baltasar Garzon, the judge who best symbolises the contemporary paradigm of applying universal justice?
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By Nirode Massion

IDN-InDepth NewsAnalysis

LONDON (IDN) – Rich countries will continue to crushingly dominate the World Bank in spite of recent shifts in countries’ voting power, which have been described as “historic changes to position the poverty fighting institution for the transformed world emerging from the global crisis".
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By Mario Soares (*)

LISBON, May (IPS) Even Pangloss from Voltaire’s Candide, with his incurable optimism, would find today’s world hard going. Nature and humanity have let loose their respective demons and no one can rein them in. In many areas, the earth has battered us repeatedly with cyclones, tidal waves, earthquakes, floods, and most recently the eruption of a volcano in Iceland that shut down airports across northern and central Europe. It is a sad and unprecedented spectacle.
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By Christine Hackenesch*

IDN-InDepth NewsAnalysis

BONN (IDN) – Global changes are felt at country level. The necessity to enlarge the G-8 to a G-20 while trying to address the global economic and financial crisis illustrated clearly the increasingly important position of emerging powers in the global economy.
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By Julio Godoy

BERLIN, May 14, 2010 (IPS) - If an oil spill similar to that in the Gulf of Mexico were to happen in the North Sea, it would devastate the Wattenmeer, one of the most fragile and important biodiversity hotspots in northern Europe.
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By Indira Srivastava

IDN-InDepth NewsAnalysis

GENEVA (IDN) – Armed violence destroys lives and livelihoods, breeds insecurity, and hampers prospects for human development. According to the most recent estimates, the total cost of armed violence in non-conflict countries amounts to $163 billion – more than the total annual spending on official development assistance.
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By Joaquin Roy (*)

MIAMI, May (IPS) On Sunday May 9, the European Union (EU) turns 60. Decades ago, to become a sexagenarian meant to cross the line towards old age. Today it is simply to start a third act of a professional and personal life, in which one cannot afford to make a fool of one’s self. At 60, one has to be serious and responsible. The EU has to honour its birthday.
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By Julio Godoy*

IDN-InDepth NewsAnalysis

LONDON (IDN) – Critics of post-modernism say that this “condition”, as David Harvey once aptly put it, is marked by the aim of “having the best possible narrative” of history. That is, for post-modernity the content of the historical analysis is no longer interesting – it is the words that you use for it that count.
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By Mario Lubetkin (*)

ROME, May (IPS) There is a striking asymmetry between the new political and economic world order that has been emerging from the South over the last five years and the relative immobility of the international system of information, which only partially reflects the major transformations of our age.
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By Julio Godoy

BERLIN, May 11, 2010 (IPS) - Under pressure from its European Union (EU) peers and confronted with the undeniable realities of the Greek financial collapse, the German government has finally given up its resistance to a multinational bailout programme for the Mediterranean EU member states.
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Leonardo Boff*

As is well known, in December, 2009 the World Conference of the States on the climate took place in Copenhagen. No consensus was reached in that Conference because it was dominated by the logic of capital and not by the logic of ecology. This means that the delegates and heads of State present were more concerned with their own economic interests than with the real or global interests of their peoples. The question for them was: how much will it affect my earnings if I accept ecologic precepts that seek to purify the planet, thus guaranteeing the conditions for the continuity of life. It was not the whole, life and the Earth, but the particular interests of each country, that was taken into consideration.
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By Juan Somavia*

IDN-InDepth NewsViewpoint

GENEVA (IDN) – This Global Report comes at a critical juncture. Looking back to 2008-09, the world has had to cope with the impact of a financial and economic crisis. Ahead lies the challenge of sustaining recovery and building an employment-oriented framework for strong and balanced growth. This defines the context for future action to end child labour. The task is enormous; our commitment must not waver and it must be reflected in deeds.
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By Hazel Henderson (*)

ST. AUGUSTINE, May (IPS) If governments don’t work together and face down the bankers who operate the global casino, the dominoes will start falling, one by one.

The fate of Greece lies between the excesses of its previous government and its past Wall Street-friendly policies, the still-dominant ideology of market fundamentalism, their bondholders and marketmakers, and Goldman Sachs and the still-obscure USD 600 trillion derivatives market, a massive bet on Greece’s eventual default.
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By A. D. McKenzie

PARIS, May 7 , 2010 (IPS) - Faced with rising sea levels, dying coral reefs and decreasing fish stocks, small island developing states (SIDS) are feeling the effects of ocean decline, and they want wealthier countries to do more to ensure the survival of the world’s seas and other waterways.
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By Yilmaz Akyüz*

IDN-InDepth NewsViewpoint

GENEVA (IDN) – Because of the global financial crisis, a number of developing countries and emerging economies are unable to import goods and services as much as required to satisfy the basic needs of their population, reduce poverty and sustain acceptable growth because of foreign exchange shortages even though these are among multilaterally agreed development objectives, notably in the MDGs.
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By Pascal Lamy (*)

GENEVA, Apr (IPS) Economists have long analysed trade, why nations need it to prosper, and what governments do to reap the gains while managing the costs. But if the economics of trade policy are clear, the politics of trade are highly complex. Trade policy, like so many other areas of policy, has ramifications on how resources are distributed, and this inevitably creates competing interest groups within society.
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IRIN

DAKAR, 5 May 2010 (IRIN) - Parliamentarians from all over Africa are pushing for a continent-wide ban on female genital mutilation/cutting (FGM/C) and are calling on the UN to pass a General Assembly resolution appealing for a global FGM/C ban, as it violates human rights, they say.

Some 17 African states have banned FGM/C, among them Burkina Faso, Togo, Senegal and Uganda.
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By Jutta Wolf

IDN-InDepth NewsAnalysis

BERLIN (IDN) – Thirty governments around the world will soon be approached by Transparency International (TI) and members of the Freedom of Information Advocates Network as well as the United Nations Convention against Corruption (UNCAC) to give information on what they have done to combat bribery.
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By A. D. McKenzie

PARIS, May 5, 2010 (IPS) - The disastrous oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico has given increased urgency to the fifth Global Oceans Conference taking place here at the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organisation (UNESCO).

The five-day meeting, which ends May 7, has brought together 823 delegates from 80 countries to discuss ways to preserve marine biodiversity and improve “governance” of the oceans, in the face of pollution, climate change and over-fishing.
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By Joaquin Roy (*)

MADRID, Apr (IPS) Washington seems rather uninterested or at least unconcerned with what Europe, collectively as the European Union or country by country, could do in its relations with the rest of the Americas. In reality, this attitude is a reflection of a drop in US interest in what lies to its south as a result of the urgency of action in other areas, like the Middle East and China, and terrorism in general.
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By Jaya Ramachandran

IDN-InDepth NewsAnalysis

GENEVA (IDN) – Indigenous peoples are among the poorest of the world, who suffer from higher poverty, lower education, and a greater incidence of disease and discrimination than other groups of the society. But they are benefitting from the “rapidly declining” poverty rates in Asia, which hosts an overwhelming majority of them.
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By Martin Khor*

IDN-InDepth NewsAnalysis

GENEVA (IDN) – The World Trade Organisation’s Doha Round appears to be stuck in a strategic deadlock, with no end in sight, and little hope for completion in the foreseeable future.
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By David Cronin

IPS interviews OLIVIER HOEDEMAN, expert on corporate lobbying

BRUSSELS, May 3, 2010 (IPS) - The intimate relationship between Europe’s top policy-makers and major corporations has been underscored once more in recent days. Barely six months after they ceased being members of the European Commission, Germany’s Günter Verheugen and Ireland’s Charlie McCreevy have been handed lucrative posts with the Royal Bank of Scotland and the no-frills airline Ryanair.
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