UN Peacekeeping Should Not Violate Charter or Principles of Sovereignty of Member States

Posted on by admin

Armed Conflicts, Civil Society, Featured, Global, Global Governance, Headlines, Humanitarian Emergencies, IPS UN: Inside the Glasshouse, TerraViva United Nations

Opinion

Ambassador Kshenuka Senewiratne is Permanent Representative of Sri Lanka to the United Nations

Sri Lankan Peacekeeping troops

UNITED NATIONS, Nov 8 2019 (IPS) – Given the political, economic and social exigencies of contemporary peacekeeping, it is important that the Department of Political and Peacebuilding Affairs (DPPA) remains engaged in the process.

To achieve durable peace, there must be cooperation and coordination between the United Nation’s peacebuilding architecture, its peacekeeping operations and the respective member states.

As peacekeepers are being deployed in increasingly dangerous environments, the UN faces multi-dimensional challenges in a constantly changing landscape. In order to address these new challenges, the management methods of peace operations within the UN must strive to be fair and equitable, and field operations must adapt and acquire specialized capabilities.

It is fundamental to the values of this august body, that the Secretariat adheres to accepted procedures, in order for the work of the United Nations not serve misplaced political interests of a few. This could affect the proper deployment of capable and qualified peacekeepers, thus jeopardizing the respective operations.

In this regard, Sri Lanka is compelled to refer to a matter of questionable procedure, having experienced unjust treatment at the hand of the Secretariat, in terms of the Department of Peace Operations (DPO).

This situation arose when an unilateral decision was made and conveyed by the DPO, on the adjustment of Sri Lanka’s contribution to a peacekeeping operation. This violated the provision of the related MoU, thereby bringing into question the adopted procedure, which has been flawed from the very beginning.

The DPO sought to link its decision of not replacing a contingent of peacekeepers on rotation to an internal appointment made by Sri Lanka as a sovereign right, thereby challenging the Head of State of a member country. Further the nominations of the replacing peacekeeping contingent had been made well before that of the high appointment in question to the DPO.

Ambassador Kshenuka Senewiratne

Hence the linking of the appointment of the commander of the Army to that of the peacekeepers is an anomalous situation. The UN which prides itself on humanitarian work in this instance chose to practice its tenets in the breach, by overlooking the denial of the identified peacekeepers added aspirations once nominated for the respective operation.

The flawed procedure began with the decision to adjust a Sri Lankan peacekeeping contingent and the reasons for such punitive action, being originally communicated verbally. A request was made by Sri Lanka for all these details to be informed formally in writing.

Surprisingly only the troop details were thus communicated, and the DPO chose instead to formally make a statement to the media regarding the reason; while to date Sri Lanka is yet to receive the requested information in writing.

Furthermore, though USG Lacroix even yesterday assured that every single area of Peacekeeping is rule-based, it is disconcerting that DPO chose to violate Article 15 of the related MOU, by not consulting with Sri Lanka prior to the decision being taken thus presenting a fait accompli to the UN member state. Such action has unfortunately and plausibly culminated in the creation of a trust deficit concerning DPO.

Furthermore, this manner of treatment could lead to precedent setting which member states must seek to arrest, lest the practice becomes systemized only to entrench politicization within the UN system.

It also opens the window for the pernicious violation of the principles of the UN Charter on non-interference and sovereignty of States which must be adhered to not only in relation to Peacekeeping mandates, but also in troop deployment.

It is imperative for the Secretariat, to hold sacrosanct the fact that the UN system is member state led, and discharge of its responsibilities in that context, while upholding equal treatment. This will also avoid the Secretariat contributing to the possible erosion of multilateralism.

Furthermore, while appreciating the Secretary General’s assurance to meet obligations to Member States providing troops and equipment as promptly as possible based on the availability of funds, Sri Lanka also urges the Secretariat to fulfill its financial obligations vis-a-vis peacekeepers when identified to be replaced, at the point of their repatriation.

Additionally, it is important to ensure a predictive system of payment on all dues concerning peacekeeping operations.

With the paucity of funding, peacekeeping mandates should take into account the complexities of their current operations and be clear and operable. The UN should consult TPCCs and recipient states in developing and renewing the mandate, as without those inputs, the operations may not reflect real needs.

It is also important to address the causes of instability and conflict, and peace operations must seek to build local information networks, in order to protect civilians and non-combatants. Additionally, peacekeepers should be deployed in support of robust diplomatic efforts.

At the very heart of these mandates, must be the protection of children and the most vulnerable among the community. The images of the suffering of children in conflict especially as recently seen, are particularly unacceptable.

The UN apparatus must seek coherence among its agencies in order to address this issue. As we mark 20 years of UN Security Council Resolution 1325(2000), it is important to make every effort at national, regional and global levels to include women in peacekeeping and peacebuilding.

In order to address the disproportionate and unique impact of armed conflict on women, gender perspectives must be incorporated in all UN peace and security efforts. Women are received differently by the local population and are often successful in building relationships within those communities.

In this regard it is worthy to note that Sri Lanka is currently in the process of developing by October 2020 an Action Plan on Women Peace and Security for the implementation of Resolution 1325 with the support of the Government of Japan.

Sri Lanka has demonstrated its wholehearted commitment to the elimination of Sexual Exploitation and Abuse and its zero-tolerance policy by signing the Secretary General’s related Voluntary Compact, joining his Circle of Leadership and making contributions to the Trust Fund to help such victims.

The country has also adopted several best practices including a stringent vetting procedure for selecting peacekeeping troops with the involvement of the Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights and the Independent National Human Rights Commission of Sri Lanka.

Sri Lanka’s involvement with UN peacekeeping has covered six decades. The country commenced contributing to UN Peacekeeping Operations in 1956 initially with Military Observers. Since then a total of 22,587 peacekeepers have rotated within the Missions. Today, contributions by Sri Lanka to UN Peacekeeping stand at 657 personnel and in field support with equipment and a hospital.

Currently Sri Lanka maintains a Level II Hospital and a fleet of Combat Support Helicopters in South Sudan (UNMISS), a fleet of Helicopters in Central Africa (MINUSCA), an Infantry Company each in Lebanon (UNIFIL) and Mali (MINUSMA) and Military Observers and Staff Officers in most Missions.

It is worth noting that operating under trying circumstances, Sri Lanka’s troops – in particular under MINUSMA, the helicopter units operating in UNMISS and MINUSCA – have come in for high praise from senior officials of the UN system.

Our troops are highly professional and have been part of many endeavours of the United Nations to maintain peace and security around the world. Sri Lanka has considerable experience in combating violent unruly elements, and providing humanitarian assistance and disaster relief.

Sri Lankan peacekeepers continue to work in difficult terrain and having acquired multiple skills while facing complex situations, and possess excellent operational experience and expertise, having ended nearly three decades of separatist terrorism domestically.

Finally, over the years, hundreds of thousands of military personnel, as well as tens of thousands of UN police and other civilians from more than 120 countries, have participated in UN peacekeeping operations.

Many, including Sri Lankan peacekeepers, have paid the ultimate sacrifice while serving under the UN flag. Sri Lanka pays the highest tribute to them, and with grateful thanks and humility, recognize and commend their achievements.

  Source

The Nairobi Summit Is about the Future of Humanity and Human Prosperity

Posted on by admin

Africa, Conferences, Crime & Justice, Development & Aid, Education, Featured, Gender, Gender Violence, Global, Headlines, Health, Labour, Population, TerraViva United Nations, Women’s Health

Opinion

Kenyan President Uhuru Kenyatta hailed the strong partnership between his government and UNFPA during a meeting with UNFPA’s Executive Director, Dr. Natalia Kanem in March 2019, which will jointly convene the ICPD 25 from 12 to 14 November 2019 along with the Government of Denmark. Credit: PSCU

NAIROBI, Kenya, Nov 8 2019 (IPS) – As we count down the remaining days to the opening of the Nairobi Summit or the International Conference for Population and Development(ICPD), I am confounded by how much humanity has managed to simultaneously empower more women than at any other time in history, while at the same time failing to see that ‘women’s issues’ are actually ‘everyone’s issues’.

That countdown evokes memories of my own grandmother, who followed a common trend in India at the time, dropping out of school to get married and give birth to her first child at age 11. In many parts of the world, girls have over the years faced unthinkable obstacles while trying just to get an education, often jeopardizing their personal safety and risking being ostracized by their families and communities.

It wasn’t until a mere 25 years ago at the ICPD in Cairo that the world agreed that population and economic development issues must go hand in hand, and that women must be at the heart of our efforts for development.

Back then, governments, donors, civil society, and other partners made commitments to reduce infant and child mortality, reduce maternal mortality, ensure universal education, and increase access to sexual and reproductive health and rights, amongst many others. These commitments were a massive step forward for the rights of women and girls.

At the Conference in Nairobi, we all have an opportunity to repeat the message that women’s empowerment will move at snail-pace unless we bolster reproductive health and rights across the world. This is no longer a fleeting concern, but a 21st century socio-economic reality.

We can choose to take a range of actions, such as empowering women and girls by providing access to good health, education and job training. Or we can choose paths such as domestic abuse, female genital mutilation and child marriages, which, according to a 2016 Africa Human Development Report by UNDP, costs sub-Saharan Africa $95 billion per year on average due to gender inequality and lack of women’s empowerment.

Fortunately, the world has made real progress in the fight to take the right path. There is no lack of women trailblazers in all aspects of human endeavour. It has taken courage to make those choices, with current milestones being the result of decades of often frustrating work by unheralded people, politics and agencies.

Leaders like the indefatigable Dr. Natalia Kanem the Executive Director of UNFPA and her predecessors, supported especially by the Nordic countries, are pushing the global change of paradigm to ensure we demolish the silo of “women’s issues” and begin to see the linkages between reproductive rights and human prosperity.

Numerous studies have shown the multi-generation impact of the formative years of women. A woman’s reproductive years directly overlap with her time in school and the workforce, she must be able to prevent unintended pregnancy in order to complete her education, maintain employment, and achieve economic security.

Denial of reproductive health information and services places a women at risk of an unintended pregnancy, which in turn is one of the most likely routes for upending the financial security of a woman and her family.

A lot has been achieved since the years of my grandmother, when girls were expected to be demure and remain in the background. In many places the current teenage girl believes that every door is open to them; they can rise to any heights.

Yet in a lot of other countries, girls are up against a system that seems rigged against them for the long-term. These are countries where greater leadership and the right policies are sorely missing; where women and girls are robbed of the education they deserve and the jobs they need to lift themselves and their families out of poverty; where they are victims of sexual and physical abuse in their own homes or sold into child marriage.

As the UN Resident Coordinator to Kenya, I am privileged to serve in a country, which is hosting this very important conference. It has shown leadership to advance the cause of women’s right-from criminalizing female genital mutilation to stepping up the fight to end child marriage and pushing hard on improving reproductive, maternal and child health.

When the ICPD opens in Nairobi on 12 November 2019, I wonder how my grandmother’s life might have been different if she had been able to learn how to read and write and achieve her full human potential, but also appealing to all Governments to work towards giving half the world population the final and absolute control over their own bodies.

Siddharth Chatterjee is the United Nations resident coordinator to Kenya.

 

Urgent Need to Replace Competition with Cooperation in the Aral Sea Basin

Posted on by admin

Asia-Pacific, Climate Change, Conferences, Development & Aid, Economy & Trade, Education, Environment, Featured, Global, Headlines, Humanitarian Emergencies, Poverty & SDGs, TerraViva United Nations, Water & Sanitation

Opinion

Stefanos Xenarios is a Professor at Nazarbaev University, Kazakhstan and co-editor-in-chief of the Central Asian Journal of Water Research; Iskandar Abdullaev is Deputy Director, CAREC Institute, China and Vladimir Smakhtin is Director, UN University Institute for Water, Environment and Health, Canada and series editor of the Routledge publishers’ Earthscan Series on Major River Basins of the World, in which the Aral Sea Basin Book is the latest addition.

The Aral Sea Basin, defined in red, straddles six countries in Central Asia. See detailed map in full at http://bit.ly/2BQPpRm. Credit: UNU-INWEH

NUR-SULTAN CITY, Kazakhstan, Nov 7 2019 (IPS) – The water resources in Central Asia’s Aral Sea Basin support the lives and livelihoods of about 70 million people — a population greater than Thailand, France, or South Africa.

And unless well-funded and coordinated joint efforts are stepped up, with competition replaced by cooperation, ongoing over-withdrawals compounded by climate change will cause dangerous water shortages in this huge, highly complex watershed spanning six nations: Afghanistan, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan, and Uzbekistan.

That’s the key message of a new book co-authored by 57 regional and international experts from 14 countries and the United Nations, who spent years examining a suite of challenges in the Aral Sea Basin.

The new book assembles the views of nearly all major regional and international experts on the great challenges faced in the Aral Sea Basin. They include three co-authors from the UN University’s Institute for Water, Environment and Health, in Hamilton, Canada.

And almost half of the authors are based in Central Asia, creating a unique blend of regional and international voices and expertise on these critical issues.

The Basin’s two major rivers, the Amu Darya and Syr Darya, discharge now only about 10% of what flowed into the Aral Sea until the 1960s, shrinking the sea by more than 80 percent — “one of the world’s most severe and emblematic environmental disasters.”

Freshwater is key to food, energy, environmental security and social stability among the six Aral Basin countries. And given the countries’ prospective economic and population growth, reliance on water resources will increase, compelling cooperation in sharing benefits and reducing costs.

Intensive, wasteful irrigated farming when the nations were part of the Soviet Union was the main cause of the Aral Sea drying up and irrigation continues to consume about 90 percent of the total water withdrawal in the Basin, with agriculture contributing from 10 to 45 percent of GDP, and 20 to 50 percent of rural employment.

Most irrigation, hydropower and other water-related infrastructural systems and facilities are in transition, a blend today of past and present. Unfortunately, the existing observational meteorological and hydrological networks in the Basin, which declined in the 1990s when the Soviet period ended, are insufficient to support informed water management, and regional water data sharing is suboptimal.

Degradation of land and water are among the major hindrances to sustainable development in the region, with land degradation alone estimated to cost about US$3 billion of losses in ecosystem services annually.

There has been uneven progress across the countries on the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), and particularly Goal 6 (Clean Water and Sanitation), with contrasting progress also between urban and rural populations within each nation, most particularly Afghanistan.

The new book suggests a number of interventions and initiatives to end and reverse deterioration of the Aral Basin. For example, if existing large hydropower projects were managed in a collaborative manner, they can bring all countries multiple benefits, including improved reliability of supply and availability of water for agriculture, domestic use and electricity generation.

Monitoring of snow and glaciers in high altitude mountain areas, as well as permafrost, is essential for sound estimates of water availability and water-related hazards. Such systems need to be re-installed.

Also needed: institutions for decentralized management of natural resources, such as water user associations to promote cooperative, sustainable, intra-regional management between upstream and downstream countries and integrated rural development approaches.

Existing regional frameworks must either be reformed or replaced by new mechanisms of cooperation in order to successfully translate political will into highly effective, integrated regional water management.

Reforming the water sector, however, goes well beyond new policies and initiatives, updating the legislative framework, and building new institutions. A key challenge is to achieve continuous, strong, high-level political engagement throughout the Basin countries, the active participation of stakeholders, and technical and financial support.

The Aral Basin’s many water-related issues must be addressed jointly by all involved states within the concept that water, energy, and food issues represent a critical, interlinked nexus of needs.

Major geopolitical and economic development interests are placing increasing pressure on countries of the Basin to end resource competition and find a way to closer cooperation and effective pursuit of their shared interests.

 

Maverick Life: Turn that mic off! A brief history of the political gaffe

Posted on by emandowa


WASHINGTON, DC – MAY 01: Counselor to President Donald Trump, Kellyanne Conway talks to reporters outside the White House May 01, 2019 in Washington, DC. Conway was interviewed at the same time that U.S. Attorney General William Barr was testifying before the Senate Judiciary Committee about special counsel Robert Muller’s report. (Photo by Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images)

Where does the gaffe, that awkward and embarrassing misstep caught on camera or on microphone, come from? We investigate.

On 21 October, former speaker of the National Assembly Baleka Mbete appeared on Al Jazeera’s Head to Head, presented by Mehdi Hasan. Business Day’s Jonny Steinberg, who was in the audience, wrote about the event: 

“It was a dismal experience, leaving me and many others depressed, listless and bad-tempered. It is not that Mbete’s performance was shockingly bad. Something more epic than mere incompetence was on display. It was as if the sheer rottenness of what happened under Jacob Zuma spilled from the stage.” 

Stupid – and hurtful – things politicians say when they go off-script (sometimes firing blunt truths in the process) is nothing new and definitely not specific to South Africa, but as Jennifer Rubin writes in the Washington Post:

“We may be in a post-gaffe era. We’ve regrettably gotten used to the president saying ridiculous, cruel and racist things. The country largely tunes him out, as he has defined political rhetoric down. Perhaps voters just don’t pay attention to stupid things politicians say as much as they used to, or maybe there is so much news that a gaffe is old news before most people have heard of it”.  

And indeed, thanks to US President Donald J Trump, the gaffe – that very uncomfortable “oops” moment that should have stayed in obscurity but instead explodes under the spotlight like the DA upon Helen Zille’s return – might soon be an obsolete concept.  

The word gaffe comes from the French, and more precisely the Provençal, “gaf”, a word used to label a sort of boathook. Although it is unclear how it became the defining term for a total political blunder, it has been used as such for at least the last century. A Google Ngram Viewer graph (a program that can chart the frequencies of any single word or sentence “with the text within the selected corpus”) shows that the word “gaffe” has made increasing appearances since the 1920s, and has been flying high in our vocabulary since 1992.

In 2017, the Merriam-Webster dictionary even named “gaffe” as one of its Words of the Year. It made the top 10, along with the word “feminism”, which first spiked following the #Metoo movement and later, when, as per the Merriam-Webster, Kellyanne Conway proclaimed during an interview that “she didn’t consider herself a feminist”. 

Also one of 2017’s Words of the Year was “complicit”, this time again listed because of someone’s gaffe. Asked in April of that year by CBS News’s Gayle King about “whether she and her husband were ‘complicit’ in what was going on in the White House”, a dumbfounded Ivanka Trump responded: “[I] don’t know what it means to be ‘complicit.’”

A gaffe is often accidental and comes up when no one – especially those who have worked hard behind the scenes at scripting a whole tight scenario – expects it. 

Think La La Land, called on stage as the winner of the 2017 Best Picture Academy Award when, in fact, the real winner – announced a few minutes later – was Moonlight.

HOLLYWOOD, CA – FEBRUARY 26: ‘La La Land’ producer Jordan Horowitz (C) speaks while holding an oscar and the winner card before reading the actual Best Picture winner ‘Moonlight’ onstage during the 89th Annual Academy Awards at Hollywood & Highland Center on February 26, 2017 in Hollywood, California. (Photo by Kevin Winter/Getty Images)

Sometimes a gaffe can be a glimpse into what politicians really think, like, when back in 2013, former president Zuma said: “We can’t think like Africans in Africa generally. It is not some national road in Malawi.” Or when current Trump attorney Rudy Giuliani proclaimed on NBC’s Meet the Press, “Truth isn’t truth”. 

In the universal world of bloopers, gaffes are not all the same; an article written by Dan Amira and published in The Intelligencer, dubbed “Taxonomy of Gaffes”, discerns six types of gaffes, including the Kinsley Gaffe, the Undisciplined Surrogate Gaffe and the Microphone Gaffe.

The Kinsley Gaffe, which is named after US journalist Michael Kinsley (who was the first to draw attention to it) is when the gaffe gives up the truth, like when acting chief of staff Mick Mulvaney said, when asked by ABC’s Jonathan Karl if Trump’s actions over Ukraine amounted to quid pro quo: “I have news for everybody: Get over it, there’s going to be political influence in foreign policy.”

There is also the former governor of Alaska, Sarah Palin, who, in 2010, when asked in a radio interview how she would handle tensions between the two Koreas,  said, “But obviously, we’ve got to stand with our North Korean allies.”

The Microphone Gaffe, as its name suggests, happens when a microphone should be off but isn’t, and the person miked makes inappropriate comments thinking no one hears except for the ones nearby. Trump gave us a taste of the “hot mic gaffe”’ when, in September 2005, during the preparation for of an Access Hollywood episode, he said, “When you’re a star, they let you do it. You can do anything… grab them by the pussy,” something that was then dubbed, “the locker room talk.”

NEW YORK, NY – JANUARY 20: Donald Trump (R) is interviewed by Billy Bush of Access Hollywood at “Celebrity Apprentice” Red Carpet Event at Trump Tower on January 20, 2015 in New York City. (Photo by Rob Kim/Getty Images)

There have been many more gaffes made by politicians and celebrities around the world, but very few were as damaging as the one uttered by US President Gerald Ford in October 1976, during a debate with Jimmy Carter.

Facing the camera, he confidently said: “There is no Soviet domination of Eastern Europe”, to which the New York Times’ Max Frankel responded: “I’m sorry, what?… Did I understand you to say, sir, that the Russians are not using Eastern Europe as their own sphere of influence in occupying most of the countries there and making sure with their troops that it’s a communist zone?” It cost Ford the presidency.

More recently, former VP and 2020 presidential candidate Joe Biden, jokingly self-proclaimed himself a “gaffe machine”. Biden once told a paralysed man in a wheelchair to “Stand up, Chuck”, and described Obama as “the first mainstream African-American who is articulate and bright and clean”. These gaffes, just two among many others, might also cost him a seat at the democratic table.

Closer to home, South African politicians haven’t spared us from blunders. In February 2019, Daily Maverick’s Marianne Merten called it political self-sabotage when International Relations Minister Lindiwe Sisulu issued a diplomatic summons claiming “interference by the Western imperialist forces”, and “latter-day colonialists” to five embassies, following the publication of an eight-month-old draft memo.

In March, DA (former) leader Mmusi Maimane told the Tembisa community on the East Rand, “44 out of 10 South Africans don’t have a job”, while in September, Minister of Mineral Resources and Energy Gwede Mantashe promoted “hazenile” at the annual Mining Down Under conference in Perth, Australia. Hazenile, he said, was a fabulous mineral discovered in the “Congo Caves”. Except Hazenile was someone’s April Fool’s joke and does not exist in real life. ML

Gallery

Comments – share your knowledge and experience

Please note you must be a Maverick Insider to comment. Sign up here or if you are already an Insider.

Source