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 …
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 …
CONTRARY to what environmentalists may think, a prestigious United Nations report -- the World Investment Report (WIR), 1992 -- has virtually given a clean chit to multinational corporations (MNCs). It says there is very little evidence to show that MNCs shift environmentally dangerous industries to poor countries. But not all …
THE PROPOSED establishment of the Commission for Sustainable Development (SDC), hailed as "one of the quiet victories" of the Rio conference, is becoming a source of North-South contention that is expected to peak at the 47th session of the UN General Assembly in New York. Among the issues to be …
CORAL reefs in various parts of the world are getting bleached and scientists are debating whether this is an early warning of global warming, or simply a local warming of sea waters. Tom Goreau of the Global Reef Alliance says bleaching results from "expulsion by the coral of their symbiotic …
LEADERS of developing countries today find in environment a cause of great worldwide concern -- a concern that is steadily growing in their own countries and one that already has deep roots in the rich North. Political leaders from the South, who attended the recent 10th summit of the Non-Aligned …
THE EARTH summiteers who assembled at Rio in June this year have gone back to their respective countries. The hard preparatory work, the almost endless discussions to reach a consensus and the excitement of an earth summit are all over. One talks of a lull before a storm; but there …
THE NISGA: are a proud people who live in the Naas river valley of northwestern British Columbia in Canada. Today, they are still attached to their land. Joseph Gosnell, a NISGA:, who was in Rio, puts it this way, "Ours is a land like no other. Rich in salmon, steelhead, …
NOT EVERYTHING was smooth sailing for the indigenous community in Rio. Shock and outrage gripped the community when Paulinho Paiacan, one of the chiefs of the Caiapo nation in the Brazilian Amazon region, was accused of having raped a white woman. Paiacan, incidentally, was the winner of the UN Environment …
THE FIRST World has just discovered the relationship between environment and indigenous people. This is the primary reason for putting indigenous people on the environmental agenda. They have realised that if the world's rainforests are in danger so are the forest's inhabitants. "If they go, so do the forests," says …
THE ONE lasting reminder of the Rio conference will be the Commission on Sustainable Development, which is to be set up under the aegis of the United Nations to supervise the implementation of Agenda 21. There was much opposition to the idea of the commission from both southern and northern …
