Steve Radelet, one of the guest bloggers standing in for Nicholas Kristof, today penned a column detailing the remarkable turn-around in Liberia.
Last night Colbert suggests, "There is a real danger that this triumph of diplomacy could make people think diplomacy can triumph."
by Martine Apodaca
The UN Convention on Law of the Sea, which came into force in 1994 and has been ratified by 154 countries and the European Community, has been gathering steam in the U.S. Senate, is widely supported by both government and business leaders, and appears to be on track for ratification by the U.S.
This seems to be frightening a fringe group led by Frank Gaffney, a neocon columnist for the Washington Times and the National Review online, who has launched a nonsensical attack on the effort for U.S. ratification, claiming that the bid is a "UN power grab" and that US accession would transform the UN into a "world government" and force the United States to surrender sovereignty and immense resources in the sea and on the sea bed. Those unfounded views are reflected in Gaffney's column yesterday in the Washington Times.
by Congressman Bill Delahunt, Congressional Representative to the 62nd UN General Assembly
Last week I attended the opening of the 62nd United Nations General Assembly in New York, where I serve as one of two Congressional representatives in the United States delegation. I met with world leaders and UN officials to discuss several of the major challenges facing the world today: climate change, instability in the Middle East, global security, and humanitarian crises.
Following on Mark's post yesterday about the disheartening attacks on AU peacekeepers in Darfur comes this news from the Washington Post:
Senegal threatened Monday to withdraw its more than 500 troops from Darfur, moving the African Union's beleaguered peacekeeping mission closer to collapse after a spectacular militia attack over the weekend left 10 A.U. soldiers dead and dozens more missing or wounded .... Senegal, with the third-largest number of troops in Darfur now, was expected to be a key player in any future force.
*Photo:AP This morning, Blake makes a key point halfway through his post on the UN Human Rights Council and Burma. He writes:
It's important to remember that it's the 47 member states that make up the Council, not the U.N. itself, that is the source of the problem.
by Karl E. Watkin, Chairman of D1 Oils plc (D1), the UK-based global producer of biodiesel
Climate change is a global problem that can only be solved with globally implemented solutions. There is a Tsunami of dedication, commitment, and money being thrown at the problem. The commitment and enthusiasm is generally focussed and responsive, the money and regulation are sadly not; indeed the latter is probably the biggest remaining problem we need to address today. An ill-informed media distort the story making the implementation of sensible regulation ever more difficult, sometimes it seems there is someone trying to stop everyone doing anything.
Midtown Manhattan is a madhouse this week. Both the opening session of the 62nd UN General Assembly and the Clinton Global Initiative are in town and bring with them both an unprecedented group of world leaders and a complex security situation. As I shuttle back and forth between the two events, I am struck by the competence of the New York Police Department. I can't even imagine the intricacies involved in securing an area this large and vulnerable, but they have every appearance of having it under control. I'm confident at least. This is an apropos moment to bring up the UN's Capital Master Plan, a plan to renovate the UN Headquarters in New York City, which has not happened since the complex was built in 1950, and bring the building up to current safety and security codes.
Two interesting things that I heard during the CGI plenary on deforestation (see below): Franz Tattenbach, the Executive Director of FUNDECOR, talked about the progress that has been made in reforesting Costa Rica, which has gone from 26 percent coverage to 50 percent coverage. "How did we do it? We put a price on carbon." FUNDECOR works directly with individuals who own rain forest land to create incentives for not clear cutting their property. They do so by sending foresters and strategists to develop sustainable individualized plans to help the owners selectively harvest their forests and maximize their profits from that harvest.