Australia has always taken a lead role in international security debates at the United Nations. In Canberra, representatives from civil society organisations will meet with the government to discuss Australia…
The world’s getting more crowded – how do we all get what we need while protecting the environment?
James Cridland
Global population trajectories put us at nine billion people by 2050. Our demand for natural resources, particularly water, food and energy, will only rise in the coming decades.
With this in mind, how…
The approval of the first global arms treaty by the UN may be more a case of misplaced enthusiasm than cause for real celebration.
EPA/Inter Services Public Relations
The United Nations on Tuesday approved the first treaty on the global arms trade which would regulate a business that amounts to over US$70 billion. There were 154 nations in favour, three against and…
Rwandan warlord Bosco Ntaganda has handed himself into the International Criminal Court. What implications does this have for future cases?
AAP/Peter Dejong
On the morning of the 18th of March, Bosco “The Terminator” Ntaganda presented himself at the US Embassy in Kigali, Rwanda, and requested that he be handed over to the International Criminal Court (ICC…
We were delighted to be elected to the security council, now we must make the most of our tenure.
AAP/Andrew Gombert
Now that Australia has taken its seat on the UN Security Council, it is worth considering how we might make a difference. Former diplomat Bruce Haig has recently dismissed Australia’s new role as chair…
Boycotting the Hebrew University of Jerusalem is not Anti-Semitic; it’s a recognition of violations of international law.
Flickr/delayed gratification
The last weeks of 2012 saw a great amount of criticism levelled at the Centre for Peace and Conflict Studies at Sydney University and its director Jake Lynch following their boycott of an exchange program…
Governments should be careful to protect human rights when contracting with businesses, such as health services in immigration detention.
Department of Immigration & Citizenship
Last week, the UN held its first-ever business and human rights forum in Geneva. It’s part of a growing awareness that multinationals have a big impact on human rights. Opening the forum, the UN’s human…
Mahmoud Abbas and the Palestinian delegation applaud after the vote on a resolution to upgrade Palestine’s status in the UN.
EPA/Andrew Gombert
The road of history is a pot-holed one. But that doesn’t mean, despite the crashes and stutters, that we don’t eventually get past them. The UN vote over upgrading the Palestinians to non-member observer…
Australia has won a seat at the table; but how much is it actually worth?
EPA/Andrew Gombert
It took a herculean effort, a lot of lobbying and much cash, but Australia has now, with a certain degree of surprise, netted a non-permanent seat at the UN Security Council for two years, starting in…
With its natural beauty, Rio provided the ideal backdrop for the earth summit.
Anna Magal
Rio provided the ideal backdrop for the Rio+20 “earth summit” – with the jungle at its backdoor, nestled among magnificent jagged mountaintops, bordered by kilometres of white sandy Atlantic beaches, and…
Huge conferences with thousands of participants aren’t getting us anywhere.
Nic Bothma/EPA
Global sustainability conferences no longer fulfil a useful purpose, considering the existing dense institutional framework. We know what the problems are and need no further agenda setting. We need action…
We need to take a better look at the role women can play in the Millenium Devlopment Goals.
AAP/EPA/Harish Tyagi
In part 11 of the multi-disciplinary Millennium Project series, Danielle Logue and Mel Dunn note the striking absence of male voices in discussions of women’s empowerment, despite it being fundamental…
Big, ambitious strides aren’t the way to escape from this mess.
EPA/Zsolt Szigetvary
Yesterday, Nick Rowley looked at the history of sustainability agreements and why we’ve reached the impasse of Rio+20. Today he suggests a different approach.
Back in November 2005, your perspective on…
The Rio Earth Summit approach to saving the planet is looking pretty old-fashioned.
United Nations Photos
Twenty years ago in a clamour of global public and media interest, representatives of all UN member states gathered in Rio de Janeiro to take part in the first Earth Summit. Later this week, the Rio+20…
How bad do things have to get before we want to seriously address environmental issues?
AAP
The fifth edition of the Global Environmental Outlook (GEO-5) – a global environmental report card by the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) – reads like the results for a sedentary, middle-aged…
Can a booming coal industry and a Heritage-Listed reef co-exist?
AAP/Dave Hunt
Last Friday the World Heritage Centre and the International Union for the Conservation of Nature (IUCN) released a report on the state of the Great Barrier Reef, the world’s largest World Heritage Property…
The bodies of people, including children, that anti-government activists claimed were killed by the Syrian Army in Houla.
The appalling massacre of civilians, including children, in the town of Houla, near the Syrian city of Homs, was a senseless act beyond the unacceptable and ultimately self-defeating goal of crushing all…
Chronic diseases act as a driver for disadvantage in the developing world, leading to cycles of poverty.
Secom Bahia/Flickr
The eyes and ears of the global health world were firmly fixed on Geneva last week for the 2012 World Health Assembly, the annual meeting of the World Health Organization’s (WHO) member states. One of…
Knocking down forests and planting palm oil makes sense in Asia. Providing alternative income sources for villagers could make it less attractive.
Simon J. Rowntree
Reducing poverty in developing countries through economic development is often contrary to addressing climate change. In countries like Indonesia, many of the strongest drivers of the economy – palm oil…
Rudd’s commitment to Australia’s bid for a UN security council seat must continue under Bob Carr.
EPA/Jason Szenes
Now we have a new foreign minister, some have suggested it’s time for Australia to give up its bid for a permanent seat on the UN Security Council.
During his time as prime minister and foreign minister…
UNESCO is reviewing whether more needs to be done to preserve the reef’s heritage listing.
AAP
Obtaining a World Heritage listing for a national asset is a source of great pride for any country. The Taj Mahal (1983), Borobudur (1991) and Uluru (2007) are examples where countries have obtained the…
Manure is a great source of phosphorus, but we’ve largely removed it from agriculture.
Flickr/Amy Alana Star
By Stuart White, University of Technology, Sydney and Dana Cordell, University of Technology, Sydney
Without phosphorus we cannot produce food. Yet even as pressure mounts on this critical non-renewable resource, there is a startling lack of global governance of its use and supply. If no one takes responsibility…
A proposed United Nations panel could give biodiversity the same profile as climate change.
Dano/Flickr
It’s looking increasingly likely that this will be the year the United Nations introduces an Intergovernmental Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services (IPBES) – a group similar to the IPCC, but…
Food comes from forests: surely that’s worth talking about?
CIFOR
By Louis Verchot, Centre for International Forestry Research
In June 2012 around 40,000 participants are expected to attend one of the most important environmental gatherings in a generation – Rio+20. A draft agenda has been released, bearing the slogan “The Future…
Some jurisdictions are pushing for aviation emissions controls, but an international agreement seems far away.
Cardiff Friends of the Earth
Aviation is a growing source of emissions. Emissions from aviation are increasing against a background of decreasing emissions from many other industry sectors. Airlines – with their international reach…
Will the UN recommendations pull people out of poverty and reduce pressure on the environment?
The Advocacy Project
A recent cartoon (below) extrapolates the use of the word “sustainable”. It predicts that in 50 years each sentence will on average contain the word at least once.
The cartoon is clever, and “sustainable…
When people need to beg, the last thing we should be doing is seeing them as criminals.
Flickr/galawebdesign
The criminal offence of begging should be abolished.
Criminalising begging is tantamount to criminalising poverty. It perpetuates, rather than alleviates, the marginalisation and disadvantage experienced…
Shouldn’t we try harder to stop runaway climate change?
AAP
In the month and a half since the Durban climate change conference it has been said that the “international climate process” has been “strengthened” and that Durban resulted in “the means and the ends…
The US has information about its threatened species, but isn’t acting on it.
photommo/Flickr
We know very little about the world’s biodiversity. A recent study suggests that, despite 250 years of taxonomic effort, a mere 14% of the world’s species are recognised by scientists.
Worryingly, anthropogenic…
It’s time to slice through the chit-chat and reach an agreement on aviation emissions.
donbuciak
DURBAN CLIMATE CHANGE CONFERENCE: Whatever fruits ripen out of the United Nation’s Climate Change Conference in Durban, a global aviation emissions agreement is unlikely to be among them.
Thus far, Durban…
No new climate dawn at Durban? It’s not the end of the world.
Andrew Roos
DURBAN CLIMATE CHANGE CONFERENCE: Progress towards a binding international agreement on targets to tackle global warming has been more than glacial. Yet despite growing alarm among the climate science…
Asylum seekers held in detention centres like Villawood have been protesting that the current system doesn’t work.
AAP/Dean Lewins
With the collapse of offshore processing, and the likely increase in boat arrivals into a politically charged environment, a cross-road may have been reached regarding asylum policy in Australia.
Now…
The Palestinian delegation to UNESCO await the outcome of the vote on membership.
AAP
The United States announced last Monday that it would refuse to pay its 2011 funding commitment to the United Nations' lead cultural and educational body following that organisation’s decision to admit…
Solomon Island women were excluded from the peace-making process after the civil war.
AAP Image/Lloyd Jones
There is a profound silence in conflict. Women’s voices are absent. They are excluded from decision-making and peace processes across the world’s trouble spots.
This exclusion not only perpetuates political…
A Palestinian girl in Gaza atop a destroyed house on the day President Abbas formally requested UN recognition of Palestine.
AAP
President Mahmoud Abbas has formally submitted Palestine’s application for full member status of the United Nations.
The United States has already promised to veto the application at the Security Council…
Federal Health Minister Nicola Roxon addresses the UN High-Level Meeting on NCDs on September 19, 2011.
UN Photo/Marco Castro
Non-communicable diseases – Professor Stephen Leeder looks at what came out of the UN meeting on NCDs.
Despite the lack of definite goals and targets, the United Nations High-Level Meeting in New York…
The most promising interventions to curb obesity’s prevalence target the population as a whole rather than individuals.
Tobyotter
Non-communicable diseases – Lennert Veerman examines the reasons for the obesity epidemic and options for controlling it.
Obesity levels are on the rise the world over. This is a sign that something is…
Palestinian civilians outside a United Nations installation in the West Bank city of Hebron.
AAP
Some hypothetical situations just aren’t worth investing too much thought in. What would I serve the Queen if she turned up for dinner? What sort of private jet would I buy if I inherited a billion dollars…
We all think we know what a child soldier looks like, but we’d be wrong.
AFP/Georges Gobet
The commander of United Nations peacekeeping forces in Rwanda during the terrible conflict in the early 1990s has put forward legislation in Canada to help former child soldiers seek refuge there.
During…
Jubiliant Libyans celebrate the arrival of rebel forces in central Tripoli.
AAP
The situation in Libya remains fluid but with armed rebel fighters now in Green Square in central Tripoli, it appears the regime of Colonel Muammar Gaddafi is in its final hours.
Two of the dictator’s…
The UN is protecting your right to express yourself in social media.
Flickr/-lucky cat-
General Comment No. 34 on Article 19 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights may sound like something from a bureaucratic nightmare, but it drags your right to freedom of expression into the digital…
Syrian troops withdraw from the city of Hama where they were quelling pro-democracy protests.
AFP/STR
The United States has stepped up sanctions against Syria, targeting President Bashar al-Assad’s financial resources. Syria claims to have withdrawn its troops from the city of Hama, which has played a…
Palestinian medics attend to an elderly woman in the shadow of the Israeli wall.
AAP
The United Nations is set to vote on recognising Palestine as an independent state next month.
What the chances of the Palestinian initiative succeeding? What implications would recognition of Palestinian…
The UN General Assembly will discuss a global approach to combating non-communicable diseases in September.
AAP
Australia has done well by international comparison in addressing non-communicable diseases (NCDs) over the past fifty years and while there remains much to do, we could play a leading role in the upcoming…
