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UN Chronicle - Volume 52, Issue 4, 2016
Volume 52, Issue 4, 2016
A must-read for every concerned world citizen, the United Nations Chronicle is a quarterly, easy-to-read report on the work of the United Nations and its agencies. Produced by the United Nations Department of Public Information, every issue covers a wide range of United Nations related activities: from fighting the drug war to fighting racial discrimination, from relief and development to nuclear disarmament, terrorism, and the worldwide environmental crisis.
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Harnessing the Potential of Boys and Girls to Fulfil the Promise of the Sustainable Development Goals
Author: Leila ZerrouguiThe Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) have now come into force and there is much hope for their potential to bring about positive change to the lives of millions of people.
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Climate Change and Conflict: The Tail Wagging the Dog or New, Cascading Tensions and Inequalities?
Author: Fatima DentonThe Paris Agreement adopted at the 21st Conference of the Parties (COP 21) to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change, held in December 2015, heralds a new dawn in the evolution of our efforts to mitigate the adverse consequences of climate change. In many ways, it clearly indicates how climate change-related policies have shifted from the narrow prism of environmental concerns to a new world order where the transition to a low carbon development is replete with economic, social and cultural ramifications. 1
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Women’s Participation in Transforming Conflict and Violent Extremism
Author: Mossarat QadeemFew countries in the world match Pakistan in its political, social or economic complexities and securityrelated challenges. It is a country of nearly 200 million people, from over a dozen ethnic and minority groups, and myriad tribes who have coexisted peacefully for decades. It is the same country, however, that has been grappling with violent extremism in different shapes and forms for the past 15 years. In Khyber Pakhtunkhwa (KP) and the Federally Administered Tribal Areas (FATA), violent extremism is most acute, and women are on the front lines of warfare. They are the widows, victims and survivors of the suicide bomb blasts, the displaced and the traumatized. Their male relatives are either fighting or gone, and therefore many women are de facto household heads, shouldering the responsibility for feeding, nursing and sheltering the old, the young and the injured.1 Yet their mobility, access to education and health facilities, and ability to fully care for their families are severely impacted. Extremists have exploited women in the name of religion, forcing them to raise funds and send their own sons and those of other members of their families and communities to work with and for extremists, particularly in the Swat District. Often women have supported extremists in their own ways by stitching suicide jackets, collecting gold and money, serving as informants and providing shelter.
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No Peace, No Sustainable Development A Vicious Cycle That We Can Break
Author: Khalida BouzarThe Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) have an intrinsic relationship to peace and stability. Without peace, all other goals—from focusing on youth and women’s needs, to addressing climate change and water, energy and food security—will be impossible to achieve. At the International Fund for Agricultural Development (IFAD), we have long been aware of the obstacles to development that are posed by conflict and fragility. Nowhere has this challenge been felt more acutely than in our programmes in the rural areas of the Near East and North Africa (NENA), where we have supported US $5.5 billion of investment in agricultural and rural development over the past four decades.
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2030 Agenda: A Unique Opportunity to Address Conditions Conducive to the Spread of Terrorism
Author: Amr Abdellatif AboulattaDespite the international community’s efforts to stop terrorism and stem the flow of foreign fighters joining the terrorist organization that calls itself the Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant (ISIL), the number of fighters has more than doubled in a year and a half. It is estimated that over 30,000 individuals from over 100 countries—more than half of all of the United Nations Member States—have joined the ranks of ISIL as foreign terrorist fighters.
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Fostering Peace and Sustainable Development A Genuine Commitment of the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe
Author: Lamberto ZannierThe 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development, adopted by the United Nations General Assembly on 25 September 2015, recognizes not only that peace and security are prerequisites for achieving sustainable development, but that sustainable development provides the pathway to peaceful societies.
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A Pathway to the Sustainable Development Goals Silencing the Guns in Africa
Author: Tarek A. SharifIn July 2015, the General Assembly of the United Nations endorsed the Addis Ababa Action Agenda, which is an integral part of the United Nations 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development. The United Nations vision, outlined in a comprehensive agenda of 17 sustainable development goals (SDGs), includes economic, security, social and environmental dimensions.1 The implementation of these development goals will require partnerships with the relevant regional bodies and strategies.
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The Legacies of Armed Conflict on Lasting Peace and Development in Latin America
Author: Angelika RettbergIt has been widely documented that the relationship between armed conflict and development is circular. On the one hand, conflicts have been more frequent in less developed countries. On the other hand, in the course of conflict, conditions favorable to development tend to deteriorate, causing new conflicts to emerge and old ones to linger (Collier, and others, 2003; 1 Gates, and others, 2014). Even when armed conflicts end, by military or negotiated means, the legacies of violent confrontation remain. These legacies include the atrophy of crucial social institutions, weak democratic regimes, corrupt practices in the distribution of natural resources, the ongoing circulation of weapons and the transformation or proliferation of crime. In sum, conflicts have lasting negative impacts on society.
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The 2030 Agenda: Reducing All Forms of Violence
Author: Alex J. BellamyThe first target of Sustainable Development Goal (SDG) 16, which is included in the 2030 Agenda, calls for significant reductions in “all forms of violence and related death rates everywhere”. Yet the “war on war”—to borrow a phrase coined by Joshua Goldstein—is not going well. After decades of progress in reducing the global burden of violent conflict, the last four years have seen a global increase of armed conflict, violence against civilians, and other forms of violence. This has been accompanied by an unprecedented crisis of global displacement and significant deterioration of human well-being in conflictaffected areas. To address the challenge, the international community must find the energy, strategy, commitment and resources needed to reduce violence in all its forms by preventing conflict, protecting vulnerable populations and rebuilding States and societies in the wake of violence. By including the reduction of all forms of violence among the SDGs, United Nations Member States have laid the groundwork for doing just that. Like the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) that preceded them, the SDGs do not provide all the answers, but they do signal the world’s priorities and expectations, set benchmarks against which we can judge progress, and sound the starting gun for a concerted global effort. Reducing violence is now one of those goals. The question is how to achieve this?
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Global and National Leadership in Good Governance
Author: Amitav BanerjiThe United Nations can claim many achievements over the 70 years of its existence. In preventing another World War, it has done what the League of Nations singularly failed to do. It can legitimately take credit, however, for much more—for upholding human rights, promoting the rule of law, providing international dispute settlement mechanisms, protecting the environment, eradicating diseases, and bettering the living conditions of millions of people around the world. Just in the last five months it has shown its enormous convening power and consensus-building capacity—in New York last September when the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development was agreed, and in Paris in December 2015 when the Paris Agreement on climate change was adopted.
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Post-Conflict Leadership Key to Building Sustainable Peace and Development
Author: Sukehiro HasegawaThe 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development, adopted unanimously by the United Nations General Assembly in September 2015, declares its ultimate goal as transforming the world. The declaration states rightly that “There can be no sustainable development without peace and no peace without sustainable development.” The fact that this goal was placed only 16th out of 17 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) should not underestimate the importance of transforming conflict-prone countries into peaceful nations engaged in the pursuit of sustainable development.
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A New International Law of Security and Protection
Author: Bertrand RamcharanRadical changes are taking place in the world and international law must change with them. Sovereign states still predominate and power remains the decisive element in the prevailing international order. International organizations still have to operate within their mandates and are under the sway of powerful states or voting majorities. And yet, there is room for structural change in the content and procedures of international law of the future, which must become an international law of security and protection with the United Nations indispensably in the forefront.
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