The UN’s trade and development body has downgraded its global economic growth projection for 2022 to 2.6% from 3.6% due to the Ukraine war and to changes in macroeconomic policies made by countries in recent months. While Russia will experience a deep recession this year, significant slowdowns in growth are …
WHEN THE UN Sub-Commission on Human Rights meets in Geneva in August, we may see another forward step by the growing movement for international acceptance for the concept of environmental rights. The meeting will review a three-year study on the links between human rights and the environment by the sub-commission's …
MOST OF the 300 million indigenous people in the world live in highly vulnerable ecosystems and have often been deprived of their human rights and fundamental freedom, resulting in dispossession of their land and resources. Because they are such a high risk group, they are also the most in need …
Brazil: All persons are entitled to an ecologically balanced environment. China: The state is to protect and improve the living environment and the ecological environment, and prevent and combat pollution and other hazards. Guyana: In the interests of the present and future generations, the state is to take all appropriate …
WHETHER the World Commission on Forests and Sustainable Development -- a kind of mini-Brundtland Commission in the forest sector -- being proposed by former Swedish prime minister Ola Ullsten will come into being depends greatly on the support it receives from UN secretary general Boutros Boutros-Ghali. But the idea will …
THE RADICAL Khmer Rouge has won enough seats in the May 1993 Cambodian elections to pose a definite threat to the newly elected Norodom Sihanouk government. But to sustain its success, the Khmer Rouge has ensure its teak trade with Thailand - a major source of its income - gets …
ATMOSPHERIC pollution is taking a heavy toll of European trees. The 1991 survey of trees conducted by the UN Economic Commission for Europe shows nearly a quarter of all trees are defoliated.The majority of critically affected forests are in Bulgeria, erstwhile Czechoslovakia, Germany, Poland and the UK. Overall conifires are …
IT IS SAD that the World Health Assembly did not accept the suggestion of AIDS campaigner Jonathan Mann, that the candidate for the director-generalship of the World Health Organisation take part in a globally broadcast debate on health issues. Mann, a candidate himself, was interested, of course, in pursuing his …
THE END of the East-West conflict and growing Western interest in environment is, at the root, interestingly, of the changes taking place in the UN. The stimulus for change comes from the organisation's major contributors, mainly the US, who had used the world body in the past to score successes …
FOR THE first time in many years, Ethiopian leaders are talking of self-sufficiency in food, buoyed by UN forecasts of a record harvest of 7.7 million tonnes of cereals and pulses this year. Such a crop would reduce the country's need for food aid by 50 per cent. The world …
THE UN Common Fund for Commodities has a problem that many would envy -- too much money. The Amsterdam-based body with 105 members has received $140 million in its first account, with the money earmarked for loans for buffer stock operations. However, the collapse of commodity agreements with economic clauses …
DID YOU know the total UN budget for 1992 was just US $5.2 billion? That's less than the cost of two Stealth bombers, but still enough to pay for all the UN programmes to care for children, feed the hungry, promote development and preserve the peace. A 11-member group convened …
RESETTLEMENT of people against their will constitutes a "gross violation of human rights", according to a resolution adopted by the UN Commission on Human Rights at a recent meeting in Geneva. The resolution was put together by groups led by Habitat International Coalition of Mexico. It applies to resettlement due …
You have questioned the appropriateness of the system of national parks in developing countries. What are your objections? The idea of national parks came up in the West with the object of preserving the wilderness. Given the size and population of countries like the United States, it was feasible. But …
AS THE United Nations labours to clear the mess it has been accused of creating in providing refugee relief in Somalia and in the elections and peace process in Angola, World Health Organisation director-general Hiroshi Nakajima is attempting to pre-empt complaints of still another delay. He called on the international …
OPERATING in defiance of a UN Security Council embargo on the export of logs from Cambodia effective from the new year, Thai loggers are sending hundreds of lorries loaded with tropical hardwood over the border to Thailand. The UN has also banned the supply of petroleum products to the Khmer …
FOR THE first time in a decade, developing countries have received more money from developed countries than they returned as interest on debt. But losses caused by declining terms of trade continued to offset the gains in aid. The United Nations secretary general's report, however, cautions this turnaround in resource …
SOMALI activist Rakiya Omaar, who helped establish Africa Watch and served as its executive director for four years, has been dismissed for opposing the United Nations military intervention in Somalia. Omaar said she believed the arrival of USA-led troops "without prior consultation with Somalia's underground and with the relief organisations" …
THE end of 1992, there was no dearth of Western libk vwring to the view that sovereignty, as a concept mming the interpersonal behaviour of nations, must be limited. For instance, Jan Tinbergen, the eminent Dutch nowist who won the world's first Nobel Prize for economists and who has been …
RESTRUCTURING the United Nations -- a subject actively debated internationally for several years now -- may soon become reality. Though the precise nature of changes in the UN system remains nebulous, the broad contours are quite evident. Various arms of the organisation have already undergone transformation. The secretary-general"s office, evolved …
The UN's World Investment Report 1992 indicates the data available on the geographical distribution of R&D; efforts of MNCs shows a growing trend towards internationalisation. A survey of 33 major firms shows 18 per cent of all their R&D; employees in 1989 were employed in affiliates abroad. Some leading European …
