Author Mark Leon Goldberg

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Mark Leon Goldberg

Meeting the Challenges of International Terrorism

For the next seven days, UN Dispatch, The Washington Note and On Day One will host an online discussion about international terrorism and offer recommendations for how the next United States president can meet these challenges. Leading this discussion is an international panel of experts on terrorism, counter-terrorism, international law, and national security. We are honored to have Steve Clemons as a moderator and co-host on The Washington Note. Our panel of experts (full bios here) include:
Peter Bergen, New America Foundation Paul Cruickshank, NYU Center on Law and Security Greg Djerejian, The Belgravia Dispatch Stephanie Kaplan, Woodrow Wilson Center Matthew Levitt, Washington Institute on Near East Policy Alastair Millar, Center on Global Counter Terrorism Cooperation Eric Rosand, Center on Global Counter Terrorism Cooperation Yosri Fouda, Al Jazeera
Stay tuned for the first discussion prompt.

The UN’s New “Next-of-Kin” Notification System

Via the UN News Center, an announcement that the UN is helping to create global standards for the ways in which rescue workers can notify the next-of-kin of injured people.
Next-of-kin information for injured people will now be easier to find thanks to a new telephone code from the United Nations telecommunications agency. By adding prefixes such as "01," "02" and "03" before contacts -- for example, "01husband" -- in a person's mobile telephone directory, rescuers will be able to notify relatives or friends worldwide. "This simple addition to a person's next-of-kin or nominated contact details has the potential to greatly reduce stress for overworked emergency workers around the world," said Malcolm Johnson, Director of ITU's Telecommunication Standardization Bureau. "Anything that can be done to reduce the workload of these remarkably brave people and assist in getting injured people the right care and attention is commendable." The code "ICE" -- short for "In Case of Emergency" -- has appeared in some mobile phones in English-speaking nations, but ITU members stressed the need for a global unified standard that would be effective regardless of language or script.
Add this to the list of "little ways" that international cooperation can make life easier for everyone around the world.

Nabbed!

These have been a rough couple of weeks for suspected war criminals. First, Sudanese President Omar el Bashir finds the International Criminal Court's sights set on him. Now, one of the world's most wanted men is arrested by Serbian authorities. Halleluja!
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Radovan Karadzic, indicted war criminal, was arrested yesterday outside Belgrade. He is awaiting extradition to the International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia (ICTY) in the Hague. Karadzic was the political mastermind behind the ethnic cleansing in the Balkans in the 1990s. He is also alleged to have orchestrated the Srebrenica massacre, in which 8,000 Bosnian men and boys were killed in a few short hours after Dutch UN peacekeepers were over run by the Bosnian-Serb militia. Karadzic's partner in crime, General Radko Mladic directed the Srebrenica killings. He remains at large. Karadzic has been on the run for thirteen years--and it was always suspected that Serbian authorities were protecting him. So why was he nabbed yesterday? It seems that a combination of international pressure and internal politics made the arrest possible. In June the coalition backing the moderate and pro-west Serbian President Boris Tadic won a decisive victory in parliamentary elections over hard line nationalist elements. Tadic quickly moved against the hardliners, purging them from positions of influence in the government. The move against Karadzic can be seen as a kneecapping of Tadic's political opposition and shows just how politically marginalized the hardliners really are. Second, the international community--chiefly the European Union and the United States--have made Serbian cooperation with the ICTY the sin qua non of relations with Serbia. The pull of the European Union--and the recognition that unless Serbia cooperate with the ICTY it will never enjoy benefits of membership--was the larger force reason behind Karadzic's arrest. With yesterday's arrest, Boris Tadic showed the international community he can deliver. (To be sure, Mladic still remains at large. But with the veil of government protection now firmly cast off, one wonders for how long.) The international community should respond in kind -- and I suspect they will. Rich Byrne has more.

99 Problems–But Carbon Neutrality Ain’t One

Via the UN News Center, Jay-Z is headlining the HoveFestival in Norway -- a concert that has signed onto the United Nations Environmental Program's Climate Neutral Network. What does this mean? UNEP explains:
Morten Sandberg, the festival's organizer, said that the carbon footprint of the 2007 festival accounted for just over 1,300 tons. This was calculated among others by the use of a specially developed online carbon calculator and in close cooperation with CO2-emissions data experts. This year's carbon footprint is now being quality checked, and we are eager to see the difference and analyze this further in order to learn more about how we can continuously reduce our impact on the climate.
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Participants, including staff and acts, where invited to pay by SMS or credit card for their individual carbon footprint caused by their travel to the festival and during the event's operations. The funds are being used to support a methane-into-electricity project on a landfill in China approved by the United Nations as a Clean Development Mechanism project. Other energy saving measures at the Hovefestival included solar charging points for mobile phones, electric golf carts for on site travelling, and LED lighting systems powered by wind and solar power.
In addition to Hovefestival, a Norwegian Jazz and Blues festival which kicks off today--Canal Street--is also climate neutral. How green are your music habits? Take the Grist Quiz and you'll be entered to win tickets to Bumbershoot in Seattle.

New Report: Over 2 Billion People Lack Access to Improved Sanitation

From the UN News Center:
Despite recent progress, more than 2.5 billion people lack access to improved sanitation, while nearly 1.2 billion people defecate without sanitary facilities, posing a major health threat to their communities, according to a report released today by the UN Children's Fund (UNICEF) and the UN World Health Organization (WHO). "At current trends, the world will fall short of the Millennium [Development Goals] sanitation target by more than 700 million people," said Ann Veneman, UNICEF Executive Director. "Without dramatic improvements, much will be lost." The report shows some progress in access to improved drinking water sources, with the number falling below one billion for the first time since data were first compiled in 1990. At present, 87 per cent of the world's population can access improved water sources with the figure expected to rise to 90 per cent by 2015.
Read the full report. Unicef TV has more on the situation in the Niger, where less than 45% of the population has access to clean water and less than 10% have access to adequate sanitation.

World Court Orders US Stay the Execution of Mexican Nationals

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The International Court of Justice (sometimes called the World Court--and not to be confused with the International Criminal Court) is a forum where United Nations member states can hash out legal disputes in a neutral setting. The cases can range from the somewhat banal (like a dispute between Ukraine and Romania over Black Sea maritime rights) to the highly contentious (like Bosnia accusing Serbia of committing genocide in the 1990s). One of the more contentious cases before the court is Mexico's action against the United States to stay the execution of Mexican nationals being held on death row. The case of one of these Mexican nationals went all the way to the Supreme Court this year. In 1993, Jose E. Medellin confessed to raping and killing two teenage girls in Texas and was sentenced to death. The catch, though, is that under the 1963 Vienna Convention, foreign nationals have the right to notify their consulate when detained. Medellin was not given that right, so Mexico sued the United States at the International Court of Justice on his and other nationals behalf. In March, the Supreme Court ruled that Medellin's execution can go ahead, despite the World Court's ruling. (Technically, the Supreme Court ruled that the Bush Administration had no right to tell the state of Texas to re-open the case, per the ICJ's direction). Mexico, however, has not given up. The case is still pending at the ICJ and yesterday the court once again ordered the United States to stay the execution of five Mexican nationals on death row. Julian Ku of Opinio Juris explains some of the technicalities of yesterday's ruling and makes a prediction of his own:
The U.S. Supreme Court will reject any efforts to enforce this ICJ order. Texas will also ignore it and go ahead and execute the said Mexican nationals. In this way, the U.S. will act in admitted violation of its international law obligations under Article 92 and the ICJ Statute, thus further exposing the ICJ's orders as having no domestic legal significance and of relatively little moral significance either. Congress has other things on its mind, and there won't even be a bill introduced to try to give effect to the ICJ order. The presidential candidates won't even be asked about their views on this order. But I suppose Mexico's lawyers have to try everything they can, and I can't fault them for pulling out all the stops, no matter how hopeless.
He's probably right. That said, I know if I were arrested in a foreign land, I'd want access to my consulate. (Image: The Peace Palace in the Hague, seat of the ICJ. Credit: The Hague Justice Portal)

Creative Capitalism

I've been remiss in plugging Creative Capitalism -- a new project by Conor Clark and Michael Kinsley. Creative Capitalism is the public blog of a private website in which economists discuss and debate the premise of a speech Bill Gates delivered in January at the World Economic Forum in Davos. In the speech, Gates ruminates on the limits of private philanthropy and the need for free-market solutions to global health and development challenges. The contributions on the blog will turn into a book sometime this fall. But here's the interesting part: Clark and Kinsley (and Simon and Schuster) are not interested in publishing elusively the opinions of economists on their website. Rather, they are opening up the project to the blogosphere as a whole in the hope of soliciting contributions to their book from blog authors and blog commentators. In a recent post, Lawrence Summers suggests a creative capitalist solution to the mortgage crisis:

The Link Between Child Solidiers and the Small Arms Trade

Experts on the small arms trade gather at UN headquarters in New York to discuss the nexus between the phenomenon of child soldiers and the trade in small arms, like the AK-47.
"It is argued by many that it is the proliferation of small arms that has actually contributed to this rise -- the ready availability of small arms in the period 1970 -- 2000 led to the rise and the phenomenon of child soldiers as we know it today," Radhika Coomaraswamy, the UN envoy on children and armed conflict, said. "For $5 one can find a serviceable weapon in most countries in the developing world," she added, noting that it takes a child on average only 40 minutes to master an AK-47, one of the most common weapons used around the world today. The UN envoy also stressed that there were 600 companies in 95 countries around the world producing small arms, in addition to the growing reach of private arms dealers "who sell arms to anyone and who are accountable to no one."
(Note to the NRA: The United Nations is not trying to take away American's constitutional right to bear arms. Rather, UN efforts on the small arms trade are geared toward making sure that AK-47s do not end up in the hands of small children in the developing world.) Emmanuel Jal, an emerging world music and hip-hop star and former child soldier in Sudan attended the meetings. He's now an advocate for child soldiers around the world--and is the subject of the new documentary War Child. Below is his first official music video release, which is for his song War Child.