2 January 2021 (UN News)* — In a bid of optimism for the new year, the UN Development Programme (UNDP) expressed confidence that clean energy would grow in 2021.
UNDP Yemen | Men install solar panels for a hospital in Yemen.
Despite that the world is not on track to meet climate objectives and achieve Sustainable Development Goal 7 (SDG7) for universal access to clean, affordable and reliable energy, Marcel Alers, UNDP Head of Energy, said that “clean energy solutions exist that can get us there”.
“There is growing momentum to make them political and investment priorities”, he added.
1 January 2020 (Wall Street International)* — Right from the beginning of time, man has always searched for the key to longevity. Man sought after elixirs of immortality, fountains of youth and even tried to obtain pills or potions of immortality.
No matter the time in history, man has always desired to live longer without the complications that come with being old.
1 January 2021 (UNHCR)* — For most people, 2020 cannot end soon enough. The COVID-19 pandemic has killed nearly 1.8 million people and caused extreme hardship. As the year comes to an end and vaccinations begin, many are hopeful the virus can be contained. But the socioeconomic effects of the pandemic could be felt for years – especially in the world’s least developed countries, where most of the world’s forcibly displaced people live. | Français
Sylvana Simons’ party will stand in the 2021 Dutch general election. ‘We’re activating people who’ve never felt politicians speaking to them.’ #12DaysofResistance
Sylvana Simons attends a demonstration against racism and discrimination in Amsterdam, Netherlands in March 2019. | SOPA Images/SIPA USA/PA Images.
1 January 2021 (openDemocracy)* — “The Dutch have perfected their facade. They are the definition of ‘facade!’” Sylvana Simons tells me, laughing, on a video call from her home in the Netherlands. “Things look great from the outside. We have told ourselves that we’re tolerant and we’re understanding and we’re progressive, and the rest of the world is so backwards.”
Now is a time to emphasize what we should always do anyway, namely: align across sectors for the common good.
The unbounded idea includes sharing surplus, moving resources from where they are not needed to where they are needed, following the ancient principle Pope Francis is now repeating in one form or another almost every day: our property belongs not only to us but also to those we can help with our surplus.
It is about peace by peaceful means; education, ethics, and practical applications; more than about playing hardball with people who choose to live by a different philosophy.
In this editorial I refer especially to the United States, where the future of democracy now hangs in the balance. Surely similar considerations apply at least to some extent elsewhere.
Recently the University of Chicago historian Kathleen Belew and others have been meticulously documenting how widespread, well-organized, and well-armed anti-democratic movements are.
He goes on to say that that the central ambition of the United Nations for 2021 is to build a global coalition for carbon neutrality – net zero emissions – by 2050.
31 December 2020 (Wall Street International)* — While the Coronavirus has rightly taken much of our attention, a fundamental geopolitical realignment has been taking shape in the world, and it will become clearer in 2021. The realignment is the start of a Second Cold War, which hopefully will not become a ‘hot’ war.
The new Cold War will be between China and the West, but it will be quite different from the one with the Soviet Union. The world has changed significantly since 1989, the year of the fall of the Berlin Wall.
On July 4, 2020, the U.S. Navy dispatched an unprecedented two aircraft carriers and four other warships to the South China Sea for naval manoeuvres in waters claimed by China. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo subsequently broke with the official U.S. policy of neutrality in territorial conflicts in the South China Sea and declared that China’s claims to most of the Sea were “completely unlawful,” though many of the disputed territories had been part of China prior to being taken over by Japan in the 1895 Sino-Japanese War.[1]
(UN News)* — The Netherlands has violated a child’s rights by registering children under the category “nationality unknown” as opposed to Stateless – leaving them ineligible to access international protections, the UN Human Rights Committee declared on Tuesday [29 December 2020].
“The right to nationality ensures concrete protection for individuals, in particular children”, said Committee member Shuichi Furuya.
In what they called “a ground-breaking decision”, the Committee’s first on the right of a child to acquire a nationality, the members referred to a petition by a boy named Denny, who in 2010 was born in the Dutch city of Utrecht to a 21-year-old mother from China.
(UN News)* — Five independent UN experts condemned United States President Donald Trump’s pardoning of private security contractors, convicted in 2015 for war crimes in Iraq, on Wednesday [30 December 2020].
UNAMI | Baghdad, the capital of Iraq.
The four Blackwater Worldwide contractors were prosecuted and found guilty of multiple criminal acts committed during a 2007 massacre at Nisour Square in Baghdad, which left 14 unarmed civilians dead and at least 17 wounded.
“Pardoning the Blackwater contractors is an affront to justice and to the victims of the Nisour Square massacre and their families,” said Jelena Aparac, Chair-Rapporteur of the Working Group on the use of mercenaries.
HUMAN WRONGS WATCH 