by admin | May 25, 2021 | Muslim World
Emir of Kuwait Sheikh Sabah Al-Ahmad Al-Jaber Al-Sabah
Kuwait : Emir of Kuwait Sheikh Sabah Al-Ahmad Al-Jaber Al-Sabah received here on Sunday United Nations Special Envoy for Yemen Martin Griffiths and his accompanying delegation.
According to Kuwait News Agency (KUNA), the UN envoy briefed the emir of Kuwait on the latest developments and communications related to the Yemeni crisis.
Griffiths left Sana’a on Friday after failing to persuade the Houthi militias to surrender Hodeidah and return to negotiations.
The UN envoy had been pushing to relaunch peace talks between the legitimate Yemeni government and the Houthis for the past few weeks. His visit to Sana’a followed meetings with Yemeni government officials in Saudi Arabia’s capital Riyadh on July 22.
—AB/UNA-OIC
by admin | May 25, 2021 | World
Rome : Rapid help to herders on Horn of Africa countries – where the weather has become ever-more unpredictable – can reduce the impact of drought and avert humanitarian emergencies, a UN Food and Agriculture Organisation report said on Thursday.
“Protecting livelihoods before disasters strike means greater resilience to future shocks, and less pressure on strained humanitarian resources,” said the director of FAO’s Emergency and Rehabilitation Division’s Strategic Programme on Resilience, Dominique Burgeon.
“Acting early is crucial and possible, and it is also the responsible thing to do. There is mounting evidence that the earlier we respond, the greater the capacity of communities to cope,” said Burgeon.
Natural disasters are on the rise in the region and it is also cost-effective to mobilise interventions as soon as drought looms, according to the FAO report.
For every dollar FAO spent on early livestock interventions in Kenya, Somalia and Ethiopia in early 2017 as herders braced for another harsh drought, each family saw benefits worth up to $9 due to fewer of their animals dying of hunger and disease and a three-fold increase in milk production, the report said.
The help to thousands of vulnerable herders centred on distributing highly nutritious emergency feed for key breeding animals; providing veterinary services to keep animals alive and healthy; rehabilitating water points and installing water tanks; delivering training on livestock best practices and management of livestock markets to government officers.
As a result, in Kenya, on average two more animals were saved per pastoralist family compared to those who did not receive assistance; each child under five in the programme drank about half a litre of milk more per day, which represent a quarter of the daily calories and 65 percent of the daily protein needs of a five-year-old, said the report.
At the peak of the drought, herds assisted by FAO were not only surviving, but were strong and producing three times the usual amount of milk. Families who received assistance reported that their animals were in much better health and condition.
Herders were also able to better safeguard their future as losing their animals means losing their life savings and becoming reliant on much more expensive emergency assistance, fuelling a “dangerous spiral of poverty,” FAO noted.
FAO’s interventions in Kenya – and in Somalia and Ethiopia- helped pastoralists to protect their core breeding herds, which in turn allowed them to keep their children healthy and in school – an important investment in their future, the UN agency underlined.
Kenyan herders who did not benefit from early assistance were forced to sell double the number of animals as prices slumped from $80 to $30. They also killed almost three times as many of their animals – for food and to ease the burden of feeding them, FAO reported.
In Somalia, it cost about 40 cents to provide veterinary treatment to a goat, and $40 to buy a new one. By treating over 1 million animals belonging to nearly 180,000 people in the worst hit areas of Somaliland and Puntland, FAO helped herders save over $40 million and to produce enough milk to nourish 80,000 vulnerable mothers and children.
Overall, FAO assisted more than 7 million Somalis and these activities also helped kick-start a large-scale and effective famine-prevention programme, the agency said.
In Ethiopia, for every dollar FAO invested in protecting over 100,000 animals owned by 60,000 people in the worst hit areas of Somali region, each herding family gained 7 dollars in benefits, said the agency.
—IANS/AKI
by admin | May 25, 2021 | News, Politics
UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres
By Arul Louis,
United Nations : UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres has backed Human Rights High Commissioner Zeid Ra’ad Al Hussein’s call for an international investigation into human rights situation in Kashmir saying that it represents the “voice of the UN”.
He also defended at a news conference on Thursday his own report on children in armed conflict that referred to situations in Jammu and Kashmir, Chhattisgarh and Jharkhand.
He denied India’s assertions that his report overstepped his mandate and that Zeid’s had no mandate and said that they were both covered by the “the general mandate of human rights instruments”.
On Monday, India’s Deputy Permanent Representative Tanmaya Lal told the Security Council that Zeid’s “so-called report” was “reflecting the clear bias of an official who was acting without any mandate whatsoever and relied on unverified sources of information”.
As for Guterres’s report, Lal said: “We are disappointed that the report of the Secretary General includes situations, which do not meet the definition of armed conflict or of threat to maintenance of international peace and security.”
Asked at his news conference if he supported Zeid’s call for the independent international investigation, Guterres said: “As you can imagine all the action of the Human Rights High Commissioner is an action that represents the voice of the UN in relation to that issue.”
Answering a question about the reports running counter to India’s long-standing assertion that Kashmir is a part of India and any problem between the neighbours was a bilateral issue among India and Pakistan, Guterres said there was a distinction between political matters and human rights.
He said: “One thing is the definition of mechanisms for a political solution of a situation in a country and the other thing is the general mandate of human rights instruments in relation to human rights everywhere.”
“What the Human Rights Commissioner did was the use of its own competencies and capacities as it does in all other parts of the world to report on what he considers to be relevant human rights violations,” Guterres explained.
“It does not mean that there is in that a preference for any kind of methodology for a political solution,” he added.
As for India’s saying that the situation in the three Indian states mentioned in Guterres’s report did not meet “a definition of armed conflict or of threat to maintenance of international peace and security,” he said that the same principles applied to it also.
His “report is a report about situations in which the rights of children have been put into question,” Guterres said.
In his report in June on children in armed conflict, Guterres accused Jaish-e-Mohammed and Hizbul Mujahideen in Kashmir and Naxalites in Chhattisgarh and Jharkhand of using children.
The report simultaneously assigned blame to the Indian government saying, “Children continued to be killed and injured in the context of operations of national security forces against armed groups.”
His report added that “unverified reports” indicate national security forces use children as “informants and spies”.
Zeid, whose term gets over at the end of 2018, asked the Human Rights Council to set up a Commission of Inquiry into the human rights situation in Kashmir.
The Council did not take up his suggestion at its session that ended last week.
His report said that “Indian security forces used excessive force that led to unlawful killings and a very high number of injuries” in dealing with protests in the state.
The report raised the issue of the Armed Forces (Special Powers) Act (AFSPA) that he asserted gave security personnel “virtual impunity”.
Zeid also called for the investigation to look into reports of mass graves in the state.
Rejecting Zeid’s report, India’s External Affairs Ministry Spokesperson Raveesh Kumar had said it was “overtly prejudiced and seeks to build a false narrative”.
“We are deeply concerned that individual prejudices are being allowed to undermine the credibility of a UN institution,” he said in a direct personal criticism of Zeid.
He said it was a compilation of “largely unverified information” and “the authors have conveniently ignored the pattern of cross-border terrorism emanating from Pakistan and territories under its illegal control.”
He added, “The entire state of Jammu and Kashmir is an integral part of India. Pakistan is in illegal and forcible occupation of a part of the Indian state through aggression.”
(Arul Louis can be reached at arul.l@ians.in)
—IANS
by admin | May 25, 2021 | News, Politics
New Delhi : US Ambassador to the UN Nikki Haley said on Wednesday that religious freedom is as important as the freedom of rights and of people.
The highest ranking American of Indian origin in US President Donald Trump’s administration, Haley said there were multiple opportunities between the US and India including in counter-terrorism or military cooperation.
Haley, who is on a visit from June 26-28, said her visit was aimed “at once again solidifying” love for India and there were more and more reasons for the two countries to come together.
The US envoy said she looks forward to the inter-faith tour on Thursday. “I look forward to the inter-faith tour we are going to take tomorrow because we think freedom of religion is just as important as freedom of rights and freedom of people.”
She said both India and the US share common values and have a lot in common.
“We look to the fact that we are two of the oldest democracies that share the value of people, the values of freedom, the values of opportunity. We see there are opportunities between the US and India in multiple levels.
“Whether it is countering terrorism, whether it is the fact that we want to continue our democratic opportunities, or start to work together more strongly on the military aspect, there are lots of things that India and the US have in common,” she said as she visited Humayun’s Tomb earlier in the day.
Haley said the US was keen to further strengthen its relationship with India.
“I am here to once again solidify our love for India, our belief in the friendship that India and the US have and our willingness to make that relation even stronger. In this day and time we see more and more reasons for India and the US to come together.”
She added: “It is great to be back.” The US envoy was on her first visit to India after becoming US ambassador to the UN.
The daughter of Sikh immigrants from Punjab, Haley last visited India in 2014.
—IANS
by admin | May 25, 2021 | Interviews
UN Environment chief Erik Solheim
By Vishal Gulati,
Da Nang (Vietnam) : Plastic drinking straws are just one example of some of the pointless plastic products that have proved to be a curse for the environment, United Nations Environment head Erik Solheim has said.
“We also have pointless packaging, pointless plastic bags and huge quantities of other products that are used for minutes or seconds and that we can easily live without,” Solheim told IANS in an interview here.
He’s in this Vietnamese port city for the Sixth Global Environment Facility (GEF) assembly.
The GEF is a crucial mechanism to provide grants for environment projects globally, mainly to the developing nations facing environmental crises.
“Certainly, tough rules to get rid of these (plastics) do work. More importantly, we need to use this as a spark to re-examine our wider consumption habits.”
Solheim was categorical in saying governments need strong policy action, the kind that blocks destructive behaviour and rewards innovators and new solutions.
The private sector needs to adopt a policy of extended producer responsibility, in other words taking responsibility for the full lifecycle of their products, and innovate for the solutions of tomorrow.
“From individuals, we need them to exercise their incredible power as consumers,” said the UN Environment Executive Director.
On India’s commitment to beat plastic pollution, he said: “India made a huge commitment by promising the elimination of single-use plastic by 2022.”
“It’s a bold commitment that sends an incredibly strong message around the world. It’s the kind of leadership and big ambition that the world needs right now.
Solheim, who was in India’s national capital to host a UN Environment-led global event to mark World Environment Day on June 5, said everything is possible with a strong political will. “In addition India is a great innovator. All the prerequisites for success are there.”
India on June 5 announced it would eliminate all single-use plastic in the country by 2022.
On the success of UN Environment’s global CleanSeas campaign that was launched last year, Solheim said the tide has clearly turned in terms of awareness.
The fact that plastic pollution has really captured the public imagination, and we are all beginning to think far more critically about our consumption habits. We’re also seeing very bold policy pledges, from key economies like India and the European Union.
“What we need to see next is action. That means upstream change in the way we use this miracle product. We need to be far smarter. We need to innovate.”
Is the electric vehicle boom coming across the globe? “Yes,” he replied.
“I think we’ll see a big boom for electrical vehicles in the near future, and early adopters will reap the benefits of cleaner air if they also manage to phase down petrol and diesel vehicles.”
“I would encourage emerging markets to do everything possible to leapfrog old technologies, but also to invest more in public transportation systems too.”
The UN Environment on Tuesday launched an electrical vehicle programme under GEF’s new four-year investment cycle, known as GEF-7.
The International Energy Agency (IEA) and the UN Environment are the leading global agencies this transformation to meet global and national emissions targets.
The IEA is a coordinator of the Clean Energy Ministerial’s Electrical Vehicles Initiative, while the UN Environment is supporting more than 40 countries, including India, with the introduction electrical public and private transport.
(Vishal Gulati is in Da Nang for the Internews’ Earth Journalism Network Biodiversity Fellowship Programme at the Sixth Global Environment Facility (GEF) Assembly. He can be reached at vishal.g@ians.in)
—IANS
