by admin | May 25, 2021 | Corporate, Corporate Governance, News
By Arul Louis,
United Nations : UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres has held up the India-United Nations Development Partnership Fund as a model of deepening South-South cooperation that helps the poorest countries by working with them on their priorities.
Delivering the keynote address on Friday at the Fund’s first anniversary celebrations, he said its “focus on supporting people in least developed countries, small island developing states and landlocked developing states reflects our ambition to reach those that are left furthest behind and to reach them first.”
Guterres and other leaders of UN organisations as well representatives of the fund’s beneficiaries praised India for leading the way in South-South cooperation.
The celebrations heard testimonies from officials, diplomats and UN Development Programme representatives from the field, who connected via video links, to the uniqueness of the Fund’s responsiveness and its effectiveness by not earmarking the contributions and letting the recipients decide what their most pressing needs are.
India has committed $100 million over the next decade for the Fund and an additional $50 million during the next five years for Commonwealth countries under a separate window under the fund, India’s Permanent Representative Syed Akbaruddin said.
The Fund has more than 20 projects underway across the world in 25 countries, ranging from hurricane rehabilitation and climate early warning system to government accountability and agriculture.
Akbaruddin called for speeding up the implementation of the projects done through the UN agencies under what he called a “1-2-3 process.”
India has cut down the time it takes to assess and accept a project in under one month and hopes the projects will be completed in two years and none should go beyond three years, he said.
Akbaruddin said the at Fund was in addition to the various other aid programmes that India has bilaterally with countries and multilaterally with organisations.
Palau’s Permanent Representative Ngedikes Olai Uludong gave an example of how the Fund takes up the priorities of the recipients and not restrict them to match the donor’s.
None of the major donors were willing to finance the small community health programmes vital to the small Pacific island nation as they only wanted to underwrite big hospitals, he said.
When he proposed a modest $50,000 community health project, he said India offered to provide even more money to extend the programme that was more important than hospitals to ensure its people’s well-being.
India’s leadership in technology could be harnessed to help the countries deal with their problems, many speakers said.
Uruguay’s Permanent Representative Elbio Rosselli said that in his country the Fund has put a special emphasis on technology with a system for government accountability and dialogue.
Grete Faremo, the Executive Director of the UN office of Project Services, which has partnered with India on Fund projects, said that India lives up to the values of its ancient saying, “Vasudhaiva kutumbakam” – World is one family – through the Fund.
(Arul Louis can be reached at arul.l@ians.in)
—IANS
by admin | May 25, 2021 | World
By Arul Louis,
United Nations : US President Donald Trump, who has had an adversarial relationship with the world body, surprisingly showered praise on Secretary-General Antonio Guterres saying he was “working hard to ‘Make the UN Great Again'”.
The unexpected kudos in his tweet came after their meeting on Friday, which played off his election slogan of “Make America Great Again” and appeared to show a newly found appreciation that the world body could help Washington by dealing with conflicts after several developments that have highlighted the rift between Trump’s US and the UN.
Trump’s praise of Guterres was centred on monetary savings for the US as he added in his tweet, “When the UN does more to solve conflicts around the world, it means the US has less to do and we save money.”
The UN has been at odds with Trump’s world view with the General Assembly criticising Trump’s decision to recognise Jerusalem as Israel’s capital and move the US embassy there, Guterres opposing Washington’s decision to withdraw from the Iran nuclear deal, and the UN failing to act jointly with the US against Syria.
The White House said that two of those issues — Iran and Syria — figured in the talks between Trump and Guterres.
A UN statement said: “The Secretary-General expressed his appreciation for the continued US engagement in the work of the UN.”
The meeting with Trump capped two days of Guterres’s diplomacy in Washington where he made rounds of Congressional leaders to try and revive the flagging support for the world body, especially with cuts in US contributions to the UN looming.
While neither the UN nor the White House gave details of who were at the talks, Trump’s tweet included a photograph that showed them with Deputy Secretary-General Amina Mohammed, Permanent Representative Nikki Haley, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo and Trump’s National Security Adviser John Bolton.
Trump also praised Haley, saying in the same tweet that she “is doing a fantastic job!”
She is credited with squeezing out $285 million out of the 2018-2019 UN budget of $5.4 billion, saving about $63 million for the US, which foots 22 per cent of budget.
The White House said they also discussed UN reform — which is focused on saving even more — and “the President reiterated his support for the Secretary-General’s efforts to improve the efficiency and effectiveness of the UN”.
Another topic in their discussions was North Korea, where Trump is hoping for a breakthrough in his upcoming talks with that nation’s leader Kim Jong-un leading to Pyongyang’s denuclearisation.
The UN statement said that they discussed the “broader situation” in the Middle East, without indicating if this week’s Palestinian protests in Gaza during which more than 60 people were killed in firings by Israeli forces came up.
Guterres’s Deputy Spokesperson Farhan Haq said that before the talks with Trump, he met with Pompeo and Bolton.
A former permanent representative, Bolton once said that if the UN headquarters building “lost ten stories, it wouldn’t make a bit of difference”.
On Thursday Guterres even had a meeting with the Freedom Caucus, a hardline right-wing group of Republican members of the Congress, who are very critical of the UN.
(Arul Louis can be reached at arul.l@ians.in)
—IANS
by admin | May 25, 2021 | World
By Arul Louis,
United Nations : UN Under-Secretary-General Jeffrey Feltman is to visit the Sri Lankan city of Kandy, at the centre of incidents of communal violence. He will meet religious leaders there this week, a UN spokesperson said.
UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres is concerned by reports of communal violence in Sri Lanka and is urging dialogue to solve the differences, his Spokesperson Stephane Dujarric said on Tuesday while announcing the visit.
The visit by Feltman, who is in-charge of Political Affairs at the UN, starts on Friday and it is “part of ongoing UN engagement with Sri Lanka”, Dujarric said.
During the three-day visit, Feltman is also expected to meet Sri Lankan President Maithripala Sirisena, Prime Minister Ranil Wickremesinghe and representatives of political parties and civil society groups, he said.
“We’re obviously concerned over the reports of the ongoing communal violence, and we welcome the government’s commitment to addressing the tensions and achieve reconciliation,” Dujarric said. “We urge all Sri Lankans to resolve their differences through dialogue.”
On Tuesday, Maithripala Sirisena declared a 10-day state of Emergency after communal clashes involving Buddhists and Muslims erupted in Kandy district.
The violence flared up on Sunday after the funeral of a Sinhala Buddhist truck driver who died after a confrontation involving Muslims, according to officials.
One Muslim man was reportedly killed when Sinhala mobs attacked Muslim houses and businesses, setting some on fire.
The government has deployed police and military forces to patrol potential trouble spots to prevent violence.
In February in another incident, five persons were injured and several shops and a mosque damaged in a clash involving the same communities in Ampara in eastern Sri Lanka.
(Arul Louis can be reached at arul.l@ians.in)
—IANS
by admin | May 25, 2021 | World
By Arul Louis,
United Nations : Secretary-General Antonio Guterres is betting that the battle against climate change will be won through the technological advances and public mobilisation even if governments fail to act.
While “there are reasons to be alarmed” about the rapid pace of climate change, “we believe that the right bet is the bet that technology is pointing to, and that bet is the green technology, and cities, companies, consumers are making that bet,” he said on Monday.
“I think that what is clear is that the reality is changed by the companies that produce, the consumers, the cities that manage,” he said. “Very little depends today, in relation to climate change, on central government.”
“I am very confident that this battle will be won, because the realities of today’s economy are such that the wise decision is the green decision,” he added, while speaking to reporters announcing the re-appointment of Michael Bloomberg, the media tycoon and former New York mayor as his Special Envoy for Climate Action.
“Because of technological advances, the cheapest energy today is green energy,” Guterres said.
Reinforcing it is the “enormous capacity to mobilise the civil society, the business community and the cities” he said. “And we see cities, but also companies and civil society everywhere, leading climate action, leading the capacity of the international community to be able to beat climate change.”
In an apparent warning to US President Donald Trump, who has tried to roll back some of the environmental regulations and programmes for countering climate change, Guterres said without naming him, “Countries that do not back today the green economy will not be leading countries in the global economy of the future.”
Bloomberg said that “without any help whatsoever from the federal government” the US was way ahead in meeting the greenhouse gas reduction goals set for 2025.
“In fact, we have done more than any other industrial country in the world to meet those goals.”
The multi-billionaire is the founder of the financial news and information company that bears his name and he also runs a philanthropy devoted to fighting climate change and issues of immigration, gun control and public health.
He was first appointed the Secretary-General’s Special Envoy for Climate Action by Guterres’s predecessor Ban Ki-moon in 2015.
“Because of public pressure and the low price of natural gas, 268 of about 500 coal-fired electricity plants in the US have closed or are in the process of closing,” Bloomberg said.
“Corporations today are very, very sensitive to their responsibilities to be environment friendly,” Bloomberg said.
“When a big money manager goes to visit a corporation to check on their earnings, the first question that comes in this day and age is, ‘What are you doing to fight climate change?'” he said. This is because the pension funds, endowments and other investors want their money to be invested responsibly, he explained.
As for Trump, he said he hoped that the president “listens to his advisers and looks at the data and changes his mind.”
“And if that is the case, that shows a great leader, who, when facts change, they recognise something different, they are not bound to what they did before, they are willing to change,” he said. “And I think it is fair to say that this president does change his view, generally from one day to the next, but over a longer period of time, hopefully he will.”
(Arul Louis can be reached at arul.l@ians.in)
—IANS
by admin | May 25, 2021 | World
Ban Ki-moon
By Arul Louis,
United Nations : Warning of the changing threat situations around the world, US Secretary General Antonio Guterres and his predecessor, Ban Ki-moon, making an unprecedented joint appearance before the Security Council, called on it to focus on prevention of conflicts, staving them off before they arise.
“Our goal must be to do everything we can to help countries avert the outbreak of crises that take a high toll on humanity,” Guterres said at a meeting of the Council on the UN Charter on Wednesday. “This vision extends beyond wars and conflicts, to natural disasters, fragility and other kinds of stress.”
Otherwise the UN “ends up serving as a ‘crisis baby-sitter,’ or focusing on simple containment – and this is simply not sustainable,” he said.
The session was convened by Kuwaiti Deputy Prime Minister Sabah Al Khalid Al Sabah, whose nation is the president of the Council for this month, which also coincides with the anniversary of the liberation of the Gulf country from Iraqi occupation in 1991.
Khalid Al Sabah, who is also the Foreign Minister, said that the liberation of Kuwait is a success of the Council when it was able to end foreign aggression and occupaton.
Ban said: “Addressing the root causes of conflict and working towards preventing conflicts before they escalate, alongside national and international stakeholders, will ultimately make the Council, and the (UN) organization, stronger as a result.”
To meet these challenges, “reform of the Security Council is long overdue,” he said. “In order to effectively respond to non-traditional and transnational security challenges such as climate change, terrorism and violent extremism, nuclear proliferation, and cross-border insecurity, the Security Council should undergo reforms to be more flexible in its decision-making process.”
Ban said the Council should take more robust action to hold politicians accountable for creating “dire political and economic instabilities where innocent civilians bear the bulk of the suffering.”
“We have learned by now that in order to hold such leaders accountable, the Security Council should not limit itself to simply calling for actions in rhetoric or statements,” he said. “The Council must act on those situations.”
Guterres stressed the importance role of peacekeeping, which does not appear in the Charter. “But this flagship UN activity is firmly rooted in the Charter’s ideals – and demonstrates the Charter’s flexibility.”
The Department of Peacekeeping Operations is undergoing a strategic review, he said. “Our aim is to refocus peacekeeping with realistic expectations, with well-structured, well-supported and well-equipped forces, and with the support we need from host countries.”
Echoing a suggestion made often by India, which is historically the biggest contributor of troops to UN operations, Guterres said: “We look to the Security Council to provide clear and focused mandates, and we call for greater engagement for all member nations in providing personnel as well as political, material anf financial backing.”
(Arul Louis can be reached at arul.l@ians.in)
—IANS
