Articles
The UN at 70: Time for Compliance
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At key anniversaries of the U.N., there have been calls for compliance with international instruments.
In 1995, Secretary-General Boutros Boutrous-Ghali indicated support at the 50th anniversary of the U.N., in San Francisco, and, at the 55th Anniversary, Secretary-General Kofi Annan urged states to sign and ratify international instruments.
Negotiations and their enemies
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Perhaps the correct title should be "negotiators and their enemies." These days, negotiations are very much in the news. The United States is negotiating with Cuba, with Iran and, most recently it seems, with Venezuela. The government of Colombia is negotiating with a long-time anti-government movement, the FARC.
Then, there are the pre-negotiations that may not get to the stage of negotiation: Russia and the European Union (and within that, the Kiev government of Ukraine and the "autonomist" governments in Donetsk and Lutsk; China and the United States; the government of Afghanistan and the Taliban.
And finally, in the spirit of Sherlock Holmes's mystery about "the dog that didn't bark," there are the negotiations that are NOT taking place: Israel and the Palestinians; Iran and Saudi Arabia; China and Japan.
Jim Kim Reflects on World Bank Reform
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After World Bank President Jim Yong Kim took the reins at the world’s largest multilateral donor in 2012, he didn’t wait long to begin changing the institution’s approach to development through an intensive and controversial reform process.
“I’ve done this before in other organizations, and what I’ve found is that If you know a change has to be made, just do it as quickly as you can, and get it done,” Kim told Devex Editor-in-Chief Raj Kumar in an exclusive interview on the sidelines of the World Bank and International Monetary Fund’s spring meetings in Washington, D.C.
Kim’s reforms, which began in 2013 and are still ongoing, include a dramatic shift in bank structure and a $400 million cut in operational expenses that necessitated staffing cuts.
Transforming Economies, Realizing Rights
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In this new report of UN Women, the organisation focuses on the economic and social dimensions of gender equality, including the right of all women to a good job, with fair pay and safe working conditions, to an adequate pension in older age, to health care and to safe water, without discrimination based on factors such as socioeconomic status, geographic location and race or ethnicity. In doing so, it aims to unravel some of the challenges and contradictions facing the world today: at a time when women and girls have almost equal opportunities when it comes to education, why are only half of women of working age in the labour force globally, and why do women still earn much less than men? In an era of unprecedented global wealth, why are large numbers of women not able to exercise their right to even basic levels of health care, water and sanitation?
Economic Diplomacy as a Weapon
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I think we are already in a Third World War that will decide whether the
future is an Anglo-Saxon unipolar one or a multipolar one. The military
aspect of the fight is done by proxies, because a direct confrontation
between the main players would result in mutual defeat. Money is the
nerve of war (Thomas More), the strategy is to economically exhaust
adversaries; the weapon of choice is economic diplomacy.
