RECEIVED FROM: Editeur : RIAED | Réseau international d’accès aux énergies durables
http://www.riaed.net/portail

from RIAED | Réseau international d’accès aux énergies durables reply-to dufail@gret.org date Mon, Jul 19, 2010 subject: La lettre d’information du RIAED, n°41

THIS IS THE INFORMATION No. 41 from RIAED WHICH IS THE INTERNATIONAL NETWORK FOR ACCESS TO SUSTAINABLE ENERGY FOR THE FRENCH SPEAKING COUNTRIES OF WEST AFRICA, BUT THEY HAVE ALSO A LINK TO THE ENGLISH FORM OF THIS LETTER. THE POSTING IS INTERESTING AS IT SHOWS LOTS OF ACTIVITIES THAT GO ON IN THE REGION SINCE 2006 AND CONTINUE TO DATE.

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THE BLOGGS LINK IS THE FOLLOWING BUT IT SEEMS  OLD: http://www.riaed.net/spip.php?rubrique41

Water Wars

By Jeffrey Sachs

May 1, 2009

Many conflicts are caused or inflamed by water scarcity. The conflicts from Chad to Darfur, Sudan, to the Ogaden Desert in Ethiopia, to Somalia and its pirates, and across to Yemen, Iraq, Pakistan, and Afghanistan, lie in a great arc of arid lands where water scarcity is leading to failed crops, dying livestock, extreme poverty, and desperation.

Extremist groups like the Taliban find ample recruitment possibilities in such impoverished communities. Governments lose their legitimacy when they cannot guarantee their populations’ most basic needs: safe drinking water, staple food crops, and fodder and water for the animal herds on which communities depend for their meager livelihoods.

Politicians, diplomats, and generals in conflict-ridden countries typically treat these crises as they would any other political or military challenge. They mobilize armies, organize political factions, combat warlords, or try to grapple with religious extremism.

But these responses overlook the underlying challenge of helping communities meet their urgent needs for water, food, and livelihoods. As a result, the United States and Europe often spend tens or even hundreds of billions of dollars to send troops or bombers to quell uprisings or target “failed states,” but do not send one-tenth or even one-hundredth of that amount to address the underlying crises of water scarcity and under-development.

Water problems will not go away by themselves. On the contrary, they will worsen unless we, as a global community, respond. A series of recent studies shows how fragile the water balance is for many impoverished and unstable parts of the world. The United Nations agency UNESCO recently issued the UN World Water Development Report 2009; the World Bank issued powerful studies on India and Pakistan; and the Asia Society issued an overview of Asia’s water crises.

These reports tell a similar story. Water supplies are increasingly under stress in large parts of the world, especially in the world’s arid regions. Rapidly intensifying water scarcity reflects bulging populations, depletion of groundwater, waste and pollution, and the enormous and increasingly dire effects of manmade climate change.

The consequences are harrowing: drought and famine, loss of livelihood, the spread of water-borne diseases, forced migrations, and even open conflict. Practical solutions will include many components, including better water management, improved technologies to increase the efficiency of water use, and new investments undertaken jointly by governments, the business sector, and civic organizations.

I have seen such solutions in the Millennium Villages in rural Africa, a project in which my colleagues and I are working with poor communities, governments, and businesses to find practical solutions to the challenges of extreme rural poverty. In Senegal, for example, a world-leading pipe manufacturer, JM Eagle, donated more than 100 kilometers of piping to enable an impoverished community to join forces with the government water agency PEPAM to bring safe water to tens of thousands of people. The overall project is so cost effective, replicable, and sustainable that JM Eagle and other corporate partners will now undertake similar efforts elsewhere in Africa.

But future water stresses will be widespread, including both rich and poor countries. The United States, for example, encouraged a population boom in its arid southwestern states in recent decades, despite water scarcity that climate change is likely to intensify. Australia, too, is grappling with serious droughts in the agricultural heartland of the Murray-Darling River basin. The Mediterranean Basin, including Southern Europe and North Africa is also likely to experience serious drying as a result of climate change.

However, the precise nature of the water crisis will vary, with different pressure points in different regions. For example, Pakistan, an already arid country, will suffer under the pressures of a rapidly rising population, which has grown from 42 million in 1950 to 184 million in 2010, and may increase further to 335 million in 2050, according to the UN’s “medium” scenario. Even worse, farmers are now relying on groundwater that is being depleted by over-pumping. Moreover, the Himalayan glaciers that feed Pakistan’s rivers may melt by 2050, owing to global warming.

Solutions will have to be found at all “scales,” meaning that we will need water solutions within individual communities (as in the piped-water project in Senegal), along the length of a river (even as it crosses national boundaries), and globally, for example, to head off the worst effects of global climate change. Lasting solutions will require partnerships between government, business, and civil society, which can be hard to negotiate and manage, since these different sectors of society often have little or no experience in dealing with each other and may mistrust each other considerably.

Most governments are poorly equipped to deal with serious water challenges. Water ministries are typically staffed with engineers and generalist civil servants. Yet lasting solutions to water challenges require a broad range of expert knowledge about climate, ecology, farming, population, engineering, economics, community politics, and local cultures. Government officials also need the skill and flexibility to work with local communities, private businesses, international organizations, and potential donors.

A crucial next step is to bring together scientific, political, and business leaders from societies that share the problems of water scarcity—for example, Sudan, Pakistan, the United States, Australia, Spain, and Mexico—to brainstorm about creative approaches to overcoming them. Such a gathering would enable information-sharing, which could save lives and economies. It would also underscore a basic truth: The common challenge of sustainable development should unify a world divided by income, religion, and geography.

• Water: A Global Innovation Outlook Report (Policy Library)
• Managing Water Well (Briefings)
• Ethics Be Dammed? China’s Water Projects (Commentary)
• Beyond Scarcity: Power, poverty and the global water crisis (Policy Library)

EU facing ‘slow motion crisis’ in UN.
 http://euobserver.com/9/26757/?rk=1

PHILIPPA RUNNER, Brussels, for EUobserver, September 17, 2008.

The EU is losing its ability to push through human rights projects at the UN, with Islamic, African and Latin American states increasingly alienated from Europe while Russia and China play a more assertive role, a new study says.

EU human rights positions gained over 70 percent support in the UN general assembly in the 1990s but just 48 to 55 percent in 2007 and 2008, while Russia and China have gone from less than 50 percent to over 80 percent in the same time, the report by the European Council on Foreign Relations (ECFR) shows.

In what it calls the EU’s “slow motion crisis,” the ECFR highlights EU defeats on recent Iran, Burma and Belarus votes, where just 80 out of a potential other 165 UN member countries joined the EU position.

Russia and China’s doctrine of non-interference in sovereign states has also attracted support in the UN security council, leading to EU setbacks on Sudan, Burma and Zimbabwe in the past year.

 {we wonder about this conclusion whenviewing Russia’s actions in Georgia, and China’s “resource colonialism” in Africa.}

“If Europe can no longer win support at the UN for international action on human rights and justice, overriding national sovereignty in extreme cases, it will have been defeated over one of its deepest convictions about international politics as a whole,” the study says.

At the UN level, the ECFR links the problem to confrontations between Europe and the Bush-era US as well as growing EU introversion, with European diplomats in New York holding over 1,000 internal meetings a year instead of focusing on outward diplomacy.

“This reflects not only disputes over the Middle East, but a fundamental clash over cultural and religious values,” the ECFR says. “The EU needs an engagement strategy to win back the support of the African and Latin American countries that it has lost, and win over more moderate members of the Islamic bloc.”

The report suggests a mixed bag of initiatives, including transparency-building measures such as an annual European Commission report on EU voting and coalition-building at the UN.

It also pushes for the appointment of two or three new EU officials to co-ordinate UN diplomacy with third countries, backed up by a panel of “senior Europeans” to draft and review strategies.

The EU’s Cotonou Agreement – a long-standing development accord with African and Caribbean countries – should be used to expand coalitions on the model of old French and UK colonial ties, while moderate Islamic states such as Jordan and Senegal could help build new relationships in the Muslim bloc.

From:      Jeremy.Houssin at erm.com
Subject: CASCADe – Call for projects (CDM & Voluntary Carbon Market) for Senegal – Technical support and training co-finaced by the UNEP – Dakar from the 8th to the 12th of september
Date: August 27, 2008

ERM and UNEP organise a training workshop in Dakar, Senegal, from the 8th to 12th of September 2008, to help African project sponsors. You will find below and attached to the mail a call for CDM projects and projects in the Voluntary Market.

 CASCADe Workshops in SENEGAL – From the 8th to 12th of September 2008

A Call for CDM projects and projects in the Voluntary Carbon Market for project sponsors in Senegal who want to participate in a Capacity Building workshop.

Types of projects eligible:
The workshop is open to project sponsors who work on Agro forestry, reforestation, avoided deforestation, and bioenergy (e.g., cogeneration, renewable energy linked to agriculture and reforestation).

The workshops
The workshops are composed of three training days focusing on CDM (Clean Development Mechanism in Kyoto protocol) and the Voluntary Carbon Market; followed by two days devoted to face to face discussion with experts to provide technical support.

Workshop financing:
The workshop is financed by the UNEP (United Nations Environment Programme).

Registration:
As a result of a limited number of spaces available for project sponsors, registration is to be done by sending a file introducing the project, to:
Jeremy Houssin:  Jeremy.Houssin at erm.com
or
to the Senegalese Designated National Authority of (DNA) : Miss Madeleine Diouf Sarr –  mad1 at sentoo.sn

For the project sponsors who are already registered by the UNEP for the Africa Carbon Forum, please indicate your UNEP registration number.

Programme objectives:
CASCADe primarily aims at enhancing expertise to generate African carbon credits in LULUCF as well as bioenergy activities. The programme will provide institutional support, training workshops, and both regional and international knowledge transfer.

Pilot projects and case studies in asset classes such as plantation forestry, agro forestry, and bio fuels will open up opportunities for African participation in the CDM and the voluntary carbon markets. In addition, the project will facilitate the establishment of a stakeholder network for technical cooperation and linkages between carbon buyers and sellers. The programme’s findings will also serve to contribute to the policy debate towards a post-2012 climate regime, casting light on key issues such as eligibility of avoided deforestation and land degradation projects in CDM-type initiatives.

CASCADe Project in Senegal and Benin:
As far as Senegal and Benin are concerned, the CASCADe project is managed by ERM France and in particular by its Energy and Climate Change team leader, Robert Vergnes supported by his teams in France, Senegal, and Benin. In the sixteen months that follow, ERM France and UNEP, working in partnership with local governments, NGOs, and industry will organise training modules, workshops and provide technical support to help local actors to develop PDDs (CDM and Voluntary Projects in AFOLU (Agriculture, Forestry and Other Land Uses), Energy and Bioenergy).

For more information :
>> http://www.unep.fr/energy
>> http://www.uneprisoe.org
>> http://www.cd4cdm.org

Houssin Jérémy
Energy and Climate Change consultant

Global Markets – latest news

No formal greenhouse targets at G8 summit.
Bush: Call for reductions marks ‘significant progress’

By William L. Watts & Chris Oliver, MarketWatch. a Wall Street Journal Blog.
July 9, 2008

LONDON (MarketWatch) — Leaders of 16 nations at a multilateral gathering in Japan agreed to back a plan for making long-term reductions in greenhouse-gas emissions, although the deal fell short of establishing formal reduction targets.

“We, the leaders of the world’s major economies, both developed and developing, commit to combat climate change in accordance with our common but differentiated responsibilities and respective capabilities,” the nations said Wednesday in a communiqué at the Group of Eight summit in Hokkaido.

The G8 nations include the United States, Japan, Germany, France, Great Britain, Italy Canada and Russia.

Backers included Brazil, China, India, Indonesia, South Korea, Mexico and South Africa, in addition to the G8.

But the joint statement didn’t include language from Tuesday’s statement issued by the G8 leaders, in which they said they shared a vision to cut greenhouse emissions in half by 2050. See full story.

Only three of the non-G8 countries in attendance — South Korea, Australia and Indonesia — backed the 50% reduction, Reuters reported, and this prevented inclusion of the language in Wednesday’s statement.

Leaders of emerging economies have argued that developed countries should first spell out their own goals for emissions reductions.

All the same, President Bush hailed the final statement as a sign of “significant progress.”
“The G8 expressed our desire to have a significant reduction in greenhouse gases by 2050. We made it clear and the other nations agreed that they must also participate in an ambitious goal, with interim goals and interim plans to enable the world to successfully address climate change,” Bush said. “And we made progress, significant progress, toward a comprehensive approach.”

In the end, Wednesday’s statement said the leaders shared a vision for “long-term cooperative action, including a long-term global goal for emission reductions that assures growth, prosperity, and other aspects of sustainable development, including major efforts towards sustainable consumption and production, all aimed at achieving a low-carbon society.”

William L. Watts is a reporter for MarketWatch in London.
Chris Oliver is MarketWatch’s Asia bureau chief, based in Hong Kong.

So both gentlemen were not in Hokkaido – their reporting is based on material they read on the web – Did the WSJ really see it like we did – that this G8 exercize, under Japan leadership subservient to the US wishes, will not come up with real and meaningful results?

——————

If it was a G8 meeting – why not take as final decision what was decided already on Friday without the participation of the other 8?

Brazil, China, India, Mexico, and South Africa – the remaining 5 out of the additional 8 – plain and simple said that they do not participate in games when the G8 do not have the stomach for real figures put down in real time. By saying that they want first to see a real offer from the G8, before putting on the record their own participation in emissions reduction, they are actually in full rights and have done nothing worse then pointing flashlights at the meager document of the G8.

As we said already in another posting today, it was the Bush, Harper Fukuda position that doomed these 2008 G8 meetings under Japan leadership. President Bush won this battle.

Our only remaining question is – why did Fukuda invite the other 8 to participate? Had the G8 met in their own closed cocoon and come up with a final declaration, was that not expected to be better then having a bigger show with folks to be held later as responsible for this failure? What does now Fukuda frame next to his Prime Minister chair in order to say that the meeting he chaired was a success?

—————–

And the previous article – a day earlier – that was referenced in the July 9, 2008 article – The VISION thing that came to nothing a day later:

G8 leaders share ‘vision’ on emission cuts.
By MarketWatch
July 8, 2008

LONDON (MarketWatch) – Leaders of the Group of Eight wealthy nations on Tuesday said they shared a “vision” to cut global greenhouse gas emissions in half by 2050.

In a joint statement on the environment and climate change, the G8 leaders said they “seek to share” with all parties involved in U.N.-brokered talks “the vision of … the goal of achieving at least 50% reduction of global emissions by 2050, recognizing that this global challenge can only be met by a global response.”
Leaders of the G8 nations – the United States, Japan, Germany, France, Great Britain, Italy, Canada and Russia – are meeting in Toyako, Japan.

Japan and the European Union are seeking to formalized emission-reduction targets, building on last year’s general agreement among the G-8 nations to “consider seriously” the reductions.
Senior officials held a late-night session Monday to iron out the wording behind the agreement that would allow leaders to sign onto the deal without committing to a numerical target, a Reuters report said.

The U.S. and several other developed countries { read here Canada and Japan } have said they will not enter an agreement to reduce future greenhouse gas emissions which does not include binding commitments by growing industrial powers such as China and India to cut carbon.

German Chancellor Angela Merkel said she was pleased with progress made toward climate change and other issues following a morning meeting with President Bush.

“As always, we’ve had a very interesting exchange of view, very intensive exchange of view, and let me tell you that I’m very satisfied with the work that has gone on, on the G8 documents, as regards progress on the issue of climate change, cooperation in the area of food and oil,” Merkel said at a photo opportunity with Bush.

This year’s summit, held at a lakeside resort on the northern Japanese island of Hokkaido, brought together leaders from 22 nations, including the top G8 officials.

{ 8+8+5 – the last five are Africans in need and they were not even deemed a reference in the article the following day that speaks of 16 – so, our question is even more to the point – if you had no intention in bringing these other 13 into the decision making process, except for eventually blaming the first 5 from among the second group of 8 for the failure, who needed here also the second group of five that did not even get invited to dinner? All of this is part of our various postings these last few days. We predicted disaster – and here it is starring at us }

Let Us Look Closely At Some Of The UN DAILY NEWS from the UNITED NATIONS NEWS SERVICE
28 April, 2008 =========================================================================
Analyzing the news we find that now even the UN makes clear prediction that climate change in Africa is bound to become a security problem with the Sahel countries of Burkina Faso, Mali, Mauritania, Niger and Senegal among the first that must address this inevitable danger. All these countries belong to the Arabized Africa.

But Mr. Ziegler of the UN “Right to Food” Program just shoots his mouth at the US and at the EU for trying to decrease their dependence on imported oil by emulating the great Brazilian experience with biofuels. Rather then being helpful, Mr. Ziegler calls for a moratorium that could only benefit his Arab friends.

Mr. Ban Ki-moon visits now the economic offices of the UN in Vienna and Geneva, and speaks up about the real World needs. He will then meet high level UN officials from Economic and Human Rights offices. He will also meet the foreign ministers of Austria and Slovenia, and the President of Switzerland. Our main attention is drawn to this last meeting and we think that the best reason for his trip could come true if he were to negotiate with the Swiss President’s removing Mr. Ziegler from his UN related functions, as he did enough damage by now. Also, perhaps, if needed, Switzerland could take over from South Africa the hosting of that Durban II event. By bringing the hotheads of that planned disaster to their senses, Switzerland could have the chance to redeem itself from all these other problems that its citizen, Ziegler, managed to create on the world stage. We really do not want to see that the Swiss flag will remain stained for any further length of time.

Further, While in Vienna, in his meetings there, Mr. Ban could obtain further information about farm policy and biofuels. The Austrians were very good at that. When “Gemma Brott Verbrennen” was the anti-ethanol call that was all over the frontpage of the daily “Kurrier” – the Austrians moved to the production of biodiesel made from oil of the ricinus plant in order to avoid the Food-for-fuel misrepresentation of the European agriculture. The Slovenians think in this respect like the Austrians.

UN TO ASSIST AFRICAN FARMERS THREATENED BY CLIMATE CHANGE

Some 10,000 farmers in five African countries, where crops are expected to be badly affected by climate change, are to receive help from the United Nations World Meteorological Organization (WMO) in the form of low-cost rain gauge equipment and roving seminars provided by agricultural experts.

With the help of Spain, WMO will distribute the rain gauges to volunteer farmers in Burkina Faso, Mali, Mauritania, Niger and Senegal, and train them in using rainfall data to plan sowing, fertilizer application and harvesting.

The goal of the roving seminars is to support farmers’ self-reliance by supplying them with information on weather and climate risk management.

In West Africa, the area suitable for agriculture, the length of the growing season, and crop yields, especially along the margins of arid and semi-arid areas, are all expected to decrease, according to projections by the UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). In some African countries, yield from rain-fed farming could be reduced by up to 50 per cent by 2020.

The assistance plan was announced on Friday after a meeting in Niamey, Niger, which was organized by WMO and the State Meteorological Agency of Spain.

* * *

BIOFUEL PRODUCTION IS ‘CRIMINAL PATH’ LEADING TO GLOBAL FOOD CRISIS – UN EXPERT

The United States and the European Union have taken a “criminal path” by contributing to an explosive rise in global food prices through using food crops to produce biofuels, according to the United Nations Special Rapporteur on the right to food.

Speaking at a press conference today in Geneva, Jean Ziegler said that fuel policies pursued by the US and the EU were one of the main causes of the current worldwide food crisis. Mr. Ziegler said that last year the US used a third of its corn crop to create biofuels, while the European Union is planning to have 10 per cent of its petrol supplied by biofuels. The Special Rapporteur has called for a five-year moratorium on the production of biofuels.

Mr. Ziegler also said that speculation on international markets was behind 30 per cent of the increase in food prices. He said that companies such as Cargill, which controls a quarter of all cereal production, have enormous power over the market. He added that hedge funds are also making huge profits from raw materials markets, and called for new financial regulations to prevent such speculation.

The Special Rapporteur warned of worsening food riots and a “horrifying” increase in deaths by starvation before reforms could take effect. Mr. Ziegler was speaking before a meeting today in Bern, Switzerland, between Secretary General Ban Ki-moon and the heads of key UN agencies.

Meanwhile, speaking in Rome today, a nutritionist with the UN World Food Programme (WFP), said that “global price rises mean that food is literally being taken out of the mouths of hungry children whose parents can no longer afford to feed them.”

Andrew Thorne-Lyman said that even temporarily depriving children of the nutrients they need to grow and thrive can leave permanent scars in terms of stunting their physical growth and intellectual potential. He said that families in the developing world are “finding their buying power has been slashed by food price rises, meaning that they can buy less food or food which isn’t as nutritious.”

* * *

SECRETARY-GENERAL BAN CHAIRS MEETING OF TOP OFFICIALS FROM ACROSS THE UN

The current global food crisis triggered by soaring prices, the safety and security of United Nations personnel and climate change dominated talks today involving Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon and other senior officials from the world body.

The topics were discussed at the spring session of the Chief Executives Board, which brings together the heads of the world body’s various entities for regular meetings, in Bern, the Swiss capital, where Mr. Ban is on an official visit.

At a panel in Vienna last Friday, the Secretary-General stressed the urgency of tackling the food issue, noting that it is “very closely interlinked with development issues, climate change, food prices, our fight against disease and other equally important areas.”

He noted that the food crisis has hurt the world’s poorest and pushed 100 million people further into poverty, impeding the achievement of the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs), eight targets to slash a host of social ills by 2015.

“This has been a global challenge, so we need to address it in a collective way – globally,” Mr. Ban said in his remarks to a forum entitled “The United Nations and the European Union: Joining Forces for the Challenges of the 21st Century.”

Also participating in the events were Foreign Minister Ursula Plassnik of Austria and Dimitrij Rupel, Foreign Minister of Slovenia, which currently holds the EU’s rotating presidency.

Speaking to reporters in Vienna, the Secretary-General said that as a short-run response to the food crises, all humanitarian crises must be addressed.

“In the longer term, the international community, particularly the leaders of the international community, should sit down together on an urgent basis and address how we can, first of all, improve these economic systems, distributions systems, as well as how we can promote the improved production of agricultural products,” he added.

Later today, Mr. Ban is scheduled to meet with Pascal Couchepin, the President of Switzerland.

* * *

International Conference on Renewable Energy in Africa
16-18 April 2008 | Dakar, Senegal

EU aid chief says rising food prices risk African ‘humanitarian tsunami:’ As food riots sweep the developing world, the EU’s foreign aid chief has warned that sky-rocketing food price rises threaten a “humanitarian tsunami” in Africa, and has promised a boost in aid to support food security.

“A global food crisis is becoming apparent,” said EU humanitarian aid commissioner Louis Michel after a meeting with African Union Commission President Jean Ping, “less visible than the oil crisis, but with the potential effect of a real economic and humanitarian tsunami in Africa.”

By Leigh Phillips, April 9, 2008, the EUobserver, Brussels.

The commissioner said that the EU would boost emergency food aid from the European Development Funds from its current €650 million to €1.2 billion.

In recent weeks, food riots have swept the developing world as UN World Food Programme officials warn that a ‘perfect storm’ of poor harvests, rising fuel prices, the growth of biofuels and increased pressure from a growing middle class in China and India is rapidly increasing world hunger.

Elsewhere, China, Vietnam, India and Pakistan are introducing restrictions on rice exports.

The UN’s undersecretary for humanitarian affairs and emergency relief co-ordinator, John Holmes, on Tuesday said that rising food prices are threatening political stability throughout the developing world.

“The security implications [of the food crisis] should also not be underestimated as food riots are already being reported across the globe,” said Mr Holmes, speaking at the Dubai International Humanitarian Aid & Development (DIHAD) Conference, according to the Guardian. “Current food price trends are likely to increase sharply both the incidence and depth of food insecurity,” he added.

Kanayo Nwanza, vice president of the UN’s International Fund for Agricultural Development (IFAD) said on Tuesday: “Escalating social unrest as we have seen in Cameroon, Mauritania, Burkina Faso and in Senegal could spread to other countries,” reports AFP.

African finance ministers met last week in Addis Ababa to consider the food crisis. In a statement, the ministers warned that food price rises “pose significant threats to Africa’s growth, peace and security.”

Last month, the head of the UN World Food Programme, Josette Sheeran, said that high oil prices, low food stocks, growing demand from China and the push for biofuels are causing a food crisis around the world.

“We are seeing a new face of hunger,” she said. “We are seeing more urban hunger than ever before. We are seeing food on the shelves but people being unable to afford it.”

UN Human Rights Council, 7th Session
Item 3: Promotion and protection of all human rights, civil, political,
economic social and cultural rights, including the right to development

UN Watch Statement Delivered by Hillel Neuer, March 13, 2008

Thank you, Mr. President.

The nations represented here gather at a momentous time — the 60th anniversary of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. In what manner can we pay tribute?

We can pay tribute by protecting the most fundamental of all human rights — the right to life.

Mr. President, nowhere is this right being violated more than in Darfur — as well as every other right guaranteed in the Declaration — and by no one more than the government of Sudan.

In Senegal there is now a critical summit underway to address Darfur. But yesterday U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon and African, U.S. and European diplomats were kept waiting for hours with no sign of Sudan’s President Bashir. In a phone call to the president of Senegal, President Bashir said he “had a headache.”

Mr. President, who will tell the victims of Darfur that their suffering will be prolonged because the president said he “had a headache”?

As many as 400,000 people have been killed in Darfur. Another two and a half million have been driven from their homes and into danger. The threat of rape, torture, murder and malnutrition pursue the women and children of Darfur wherever they flee. World leaders must unite now to end the atrocities and establish a lasting peace in Darfur.

We urge this Council to take action:

To make ending the massive crimes in Darfur one of its top priorities;

To push for the fastest and fullest deployment of the peacekeeping force authorized by the U.N. Security Council in July;

To pressure contributing nations to fully and immediately meet their pledges of troops, funding, equipment, and logistical support;

To ensure the Sudanese government’s full participation in a just and inclusive peace process, and to overcome any attempts to obstruct or delay the protection of civilians or the peace process;

To increase humanitarian aid and ensure access for its safe delivery.

Mr. President, this Council must send a powerful message to Sudan that the killings, the burnings, the rape of its own citizens — all of this must end.

We ask Sudan: For how long will “headaches” and other excuses continue to afflict the lives of the men, women, and children of Darfur?

Mr. President, we need action.

If not from the highest forum of human rights, then from who?

If not now, when?

Thank you, Mr. President.

Sudan Responds: UN Watch director “lives in a world
of media exaggeration on the subject of Darfur”

Statement by Sudanese Ambassador Omer Dahab Fadol Mohamed

Thank you Mr. President.

I’d like to comment on the statement of United Nations Watch. I think the representative of this organization is continuing to live in a world of media exaggeration on the subject of Darfur, where the sufferings of people are exploited for an agenda which has nothing to do with Darfur.

The government knows that the armed rebellion is the primary party responsible for suffering in Darfur. The rebels have caused many people to leave their villages. The government of Sudan has done a lot of humanitarian work in order to reduce the sufferings of persons, and has allowed all necessary facilities. The government at the same time realizes that it is only a political solution which will put an end to all these sufferings.

Accordingly, the government has been working very hard to deal with the rebels. It signed the Abuja agreement with some of them. But certain others refuse because they were given support by countries giving shelter to them. These countries seem to be nevertheless expressing sympathy for people in Darfur.

The government, however, has continued to work for a solution that will restore peace and stability in that region, and calls upon the international community to assume its obligations against those who refuse solutions, and notes that countries give media coverage to this situation while refusing to sit down to work on a peaceful agreement to this situation.

Thank you.

———————

And the UN Secretary-General probably was the subject of a UN press release saying how great his achievements were in his trip to Dakar, Senegal, to meet there with the Organization of Islamic Countries’ Leadership. This must have created Sudan’s headache.

 The intenational press was made to believe that the Dakar Summit was called in order to talk down Israel and to talk about the state of Muslim Immigrants to Europe. But see – there are other real problems that have to be looked at.

IOM –   International Organization for Migration –   Press Briefing Notes from:  unobserver at iom.int                                                               Friday 14 March 2008,   Spokesperson: Jemini Pandya
SENEGAL – IOM Director General At OIC Summit – At the invitation of the government of Senegal and the Organization of Islamic Conference (OIC), IOM Director General Brunson McKinley is attending the OIC summit in Dakar, where he has also held talks with Senegalese President Abdoulaye Wade and other heads of governments and ministers.

Migration and its consequences are top policy issues for the Islamic world and IOM in recent years has made a broad and concerted effort at close cooperation with OIC member states and its Secretariat. IOM has operational agreements with the OIC and with several of its constituent bodies such as the Islamic Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (ISESCO).

In his statement to the OIC summit, McKinley expressed his concern that migrants from Muslim countries are often at the receiving end of anti-Islamic sentiments in destination countries where stereotyping can lead to social exclusion.

The two-day summit, which began yesterday and which is attended by heads of state and representatives   from the 57-member organization is looking at how to combat ‘Islamaphobia’ in the West as one of the key issues to be addressed.

McKinley who has participated in many previous meetings of the OIC, both at the summit and ministerial level, witnessed the signing late last night of a peace agreement between Sudan and Chad.

OIC countries represent a significant number of IOM’s 122 member states, having increased over the past decade from 11 to 40 with another three currently holding Observer status.

“The OIC and its member states can count on IOM for continued support in the many tasks they must accomplish to make migration and overseas work an engine for prosperity and better international relations,” McKinley added.

 
An important new area of cooperation between IOM and the OIC is climate change and environmental degradation. Many Islamic states face strong migration pressures because of desertification, rising sea levels, loss of agricultural capacity and other environmental problems.

For further information, please contact Abye Makkonnen, IOM Dakar, Tel: +221 33 8696200, email:  amakkonnen at iom.int

For more information please contact Public Information Officer Angela Sherwood at  asherwood at iom.int   or +670 723 1576, or Counter-Trafficking Project Manager Heather Komenda at  hkomenda at iom.int   or +670.723.0810.
For additional information:

USA
Office of the Permanent Observer to the United Nations Ÿ 122 East 42nd Street, Suite 1610, New York, NY 10168
Tel: 1(212) 681 7000 – Fax: 1(212) 867-5887 – E-mail:  unobserver at iom.int – Internet: www.iom.int or www.un.int/iom
Geneva
Jean-Philippe Chauzy ŸTel: 41 22 717 9361 – Mobile: 41 79 285 4366 Ÿ E-mail:  pchauzy at iom.int
Jemini Pandya Ÿ Tel 41 22 717 9486 – Mobile : 41 79 217 3374 Ÿ E-mail :  jpandya at iom.int

GATES FOUNDATION AND UN JOIN FORCES TO MECHANIZE WOMEN’S WORK IN French Speaking WEST AFRICA (Burkina Faso, Mali and Senegal) - says a UN Press Release.

The United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) said today it had joined forces with the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation in an effort to empower rural West African women with diesel engines, and, in doing so, boost their incomes.

The centrepiece of the project is a diesel-run engine mounted on a chassis, called a multifunctional platform, or MFP, to which a variety of processing equipment can be attached, including a cereal mill, husker, battery charger, and joinery and carpentry equipment, according to a UNDP press release.

The MFP takes domestic tasks such as milling and husking sorghum, millet, maize and other grains, normally done with a mortar and pestle or a grinding stone, and mechanises them, making them profitable economic activities.

The machine, which the project will distribute in Burkina Faso, Mali and Senegal, can also generate electricity for lighting, refrigeration and water pumps.

“By investing in this simple power source for rural communities, women no longer need to spend all their time grinding grains or pumping water,” UNDP Administrator Kemal Dervis said as he announced the initiative in Dakar, Senegal. “They have more hours in the day to develop profitable activities that could boost their productivity, enabling them to sell better quality products and increase their income using low-cost, effective technology,” he added.

A $19 million, four-year grant from the Gates Foundation will help establish 600 new sustainable, rural agro-enterprises based on the machine in West Africa, with at least 24 of the MFPs to be biofuel-based, according to UNDP.

As part of the enterprise projects, UNDP and its extensive network of local non-governmental organizations (NGOs) will back the women’s groups with literacy and management training and support.

The benefits of the MFP have already been proven in parts of West Africa, the agency said. In Senegal, S. Sakho of Batantinty explained that before the platform was introduced in her village she rarely earned more than 25,000 CFA ($55) from processing and selling shea butter from nuts.

“With the platform I easily earn 100,000 CFA ($220) at the end of the harvest,” Mrs Sakho said. The yield is high because the time is there. The platform has improved my life. I spend the earnings for the children’s education and clothing; I no longer look like a peasant,” she said.

—————

We have seen models of the MFPs at UN Commission for Sustainable Development events in the UN basement. Those days the accent was on improving conditions in rural areas of poor countries, and pushed by the Tata Affiliated Institute from India, this was to be done by supplying oil products – diesel, kerosene and Liquefied Petroleum Gas (LPG) to those on these programs. We thought then that this was nothing less then an attempt to increase the market for oil by making the rural poor, who were not yet buyers of petroleum products, get also into the addiction to an oil economy. We, obviously were skeptical at that time. Now it seems UNDP is ready to move on with the times and think of biofuels. This is progress indeed. We hope that the Tata folks can drop their – “we are different – we have have other priorities for development for the poor” – rhetoric.  www.SustainabiliTank.info comment)

 http://search.japantimes.co.jp/cgi-bin/eo20071222a1.html
Saturday, Dec. 22, 2007, WRONG APPROACH TO AFRICA, by David Howell, former UK Minister and Now Member Of The House of Lords, for The Japan Times.

LONDON — An acrimonious summit meeting between EU leaders and the leaders of African countries ended last week in Lisbon. The EU was trying to offer the Africans a new trade deal, but many of the African representatives argued that the deal would make them worse off, not better off. They denounced European efforts as a continuation of colonialism that would “amputate” African state budgets and ruin African industries.

The atmosphere was further soured by the presence of Robert Mugabe, who has brought his own nation of Zimbabwe to its knees in a frenzy of repression — a living symbol of human rights abuse who ought never to have been invited to the gathering. British Prime Minister Gordon Brown stayed away from the event in protest.

It was not meant to be like this. The declared intention of the European Union policymakers in Brussels was to wash away postcolonial guilt, forge a new strategic partnership and open a new development chapter for the peoples of 76 former European colonies, 40 of them former British colonies and the others mostly part of the Francophone group.

This stuck in African throats. They did not see the concept as one of partnership, and 10 of them refused point-blank to sign up, including major participants South Africa, Nigeria, Zambia and Senegal. For them it was tantamount to exposing their infant industries to fierce European competition and, in the words of one leader, “slamming the door on development.”

Poorer countries of Africa, they insisted, with their weak and fledgling economies, need more protection, not less. They also claimed that the EPAs would damage African trade with Pacific countries.

Behind the European approach was a deeper fear — namely that Europe is losing its influence on the African continent to the Chinese. The Chinese are indeed everywhere in Africa these days with ready cash and no strings attached, “sweet” and easy agreements to provide infrastructure, as well as weapons and military support. Their products are also highly competitive with European goods.

As one delegate put it “For the price of one European car, you can buy two Chinese cars.”

Why was the European approach so clumsy? At root are two major flaws in EU policy. The first is to push the theory of absolutely free trade too far and too fast and to ignore the practical realities of development in very impoverished economies. A belief lingers in official minds in Europe that protection in all circumstances is bad and must be swept aside. Inequalities in trade relations, they appear to believe, can be compensated for with large aid packages.

This completely overlooks the fact that much of Europe’s own industry grew under cover of protective tariffs and that without a certain amount of well-focused tariff protection, the infant industries in Africa’s struggling economies will just never take off. It also overlooks the glaring fact that most of Europe’s agriculture is still protected by high tariffs, subsidies and quotas.

The second and much deeper fallacy is that Africa is a bloc or that Europe is a bloc, and that by putting the two together, face to face, trade and development solutions can be found.

Not only is the geographical continent of Africa a conglomeration of vastly diverse societies and cultures, each with its own unique problems that require understanding and solutions. But on the European side interests vary and a real unity of approach is lacking.

The proposition that if the EU countries all stick together they will always carry greater weight in trade negotiations — with America, China, Japan or anybody else — sounds superficially true.

In practice, and in the modern global context, it could well be that bilateral negotiations and bargains — say between Britain and Nigeria, or France and Senegal, or Germany and South Africa — could create more business opportunities and generate more growth than mighty deals between the whole of Europe and the whole of Africa — which anyway are proving impossible to achieve except in general, watered-down terms that have little impact on Africa’s starving millions.

And that is a tragedy both for Africa and for Europe.

David Howell is a former British Cabinet minister and former chairman of the Commons Foreign Affairs Committee. He is now a member of the House of Lords  www.lordhowell.com).

A Presentation of The Edwin O. Reischauer Center for East Asia Studies at the Paul H. Nitze School of Advanced International Studies (SAIS), Johns Hopkins University, Washington DC. The book, just of the printing press, is volume No. 1 in the Asia-Pacific Leadership Series of SAIS, and was initiated by Professor Kent E. Calder, the Director of the Reischauer Center, who also wrote the Forward to this volume. The book is an abridged, updated, focused, translation into English of memoirs Dr. Han Seung-soo wrote in Japanese while a Senior Fellow at the National Graduate Institute for Policy Studies (GRIPS) in Tokyo, 2004-2006, upon retirement from Korean politics. Dr. Han kept a diary during his events-rich year as UNGA President, and his writings, amazingly, are literally the only record about the UN, to-date, written by a person in high position who was not the UN Secretary-General, and as such is an excellent recording of the functioning mechanism of the UN.

The book has 111 pages plus 36 pages of major speeches of the President of UNGA, 19 pages of the listing of major events during that year, and 15 pages of the index. The book can be obtained from SAIS or the UN bookstore and costs $25.

Dr. Han did not write this because he had anything to defend, this is rather a gallant attempt to explain to the reader how the UN functions, and as it happened his year was a very eventful year, so it makes objectively for interesting reading.

As we shall see, Dr. Han had a very interesting career, and he is still active today. His year as UNGA President may not even have been the high-point of his career, and as said he might yet be slated for future high positions. This just to say that we highly recommend this book as what seems to us a very frank recording of the UN with many of its warts exposed, but also with the high potential of the organization being pointed out.

We went to the book-signing event that was held on October 22, 2007, at the UN Bookstore in the basement of the UN Headquarters, because we knew that Dr. Han Seung-soo was one of the three Special Envoys on Climate Change appointed by the current UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon. (The other two were Dr. Gro Harlem Brundtland of Norway, the person that made famous the concept of Sustainable Development and is now involved in issues of the environment and climate change, and Dr. Ricardo Lagos of Chile, who now is President of the Club of Madrid and President of the Foundation for Democracy and Development that he created after stepping down from the Presidency of Chile.)

In this position as Special Envoy of the UNSG, Dr. Han is a roving Ambassador to UN Member States in the Secretary-General’s effort to drum up a solid program for this year’s meeting in Bali. We wanted to ask him questions on this topic, and so we did; but we will not write about this in the present posting – this because we intended this posting merely as an introduction of our readers to this book, which we are convinced is a MUST READ for anyone interested in the UN – its promise and also the dangers from irrational expectations.

Korea became independent of Japan in 1945, the nation then fell into the 1950-1954 tragedy of becoming first active battle ground between the two ideologies that survived the World War, and stayed divided since. Dr. Han points out that it was the UN Temporary Commission on Korea (UNTCOK), founded by a UN resolution of November 14, 1947, that supervised the democratic election of Korea’s first National Assembly, and the formal establishment of the Republic of Korea on August 15, 1948. Then it was UN resolutions that provided the basis for 16 nations, including the US, to enter the Korean War and fight on the side of the South Korean forces. It was the UN Korean Reconstruction Agency (UNKRA) that helped Korea after the war; thus Korea fully appreciates the UN and Korea is one of the few countries where the day of the founding of the UN – United Nations Day – October 24 – is a National Holiday.

The Republic of Korea (ROK) became a member of the UN in 1991, so it was only ten years after admission to the UN that the Asian Regional group backed the Korean Foreign Minister, Dr. Han, to become UNGA President.

Dr. Han was born born on December 28, 1936 in Gangwon Province in a remote village in the mountainside. He had to cross two rivers by ferry to go to school in Chuncheon City, but his hopes were to become part of the world that was symbolized by the UN. He reminds us of a popular song, the United Nations Song, that everybody in Korea knew its lyrics.

He got a Master in Public Administration from Seoul National university and a PH.D. in Economics from York University, York, England where he staid on to teach, and moved later to the Department of Applied Economics at Cambridge. His doctoral dissertation, titled “The Growth and the Function of the European Budget,” was awarded by the Commission of European Communities, in 1971, the Prize as the best doctoral thesis on the European economic integration.

He returned to Seoul National University in 1970 and taught until 1988 and in parallel started work as Financial Adviser on secondment of the World Bank, holding also appointments at the Univerity of Tokyo and at Harvard University.

From 1987 to 1988 Dr. Han served as the first Chairman of the Korea Trade Commission and helped with Tax Reform, Bank Reform, and Tariff Reform. He was also adviser to quite an array of public and private-sector financial and trade organizations.

In 1988 he entered political life winning a place in the Korean National Assembly, assuming an array of functions: Minister of Trade and Industry (1988-90), Ambasador to the US (1993-94), Chief of Staff to the President (1994-95), Deputy Prime-Minister and Minister of Finance and Economy (1996-97), Minister of Foreign Affairs and Trade (2001-02) . It was from this last position that he was catapulted to the UN.

Among his many achievements in those years are most notable his leadership in bringing Korea into the OECD (1996) and in smoothing out relations with the US in an attempt to deflect the North Korean nuclear ambitions (1994).

After his stint at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and the UN, (2001-2002), he staid in politics until 2004, when after 18 years he retired from political life and accepted the invitation by National Graduate Institute for Policy Studies (GRIPS) in Tokyo (2004-2006), which resulted in his writing the book we are reviewing now. All these years he was helped along by his wife, Soja, to whom he dedicates this book. She was present at the book signing event and I appreciated her interest in my questions on climate change. It was clear to me that she intended to convey later to her husband the things I mentioned to her.

Further, his book, among the many truths it conveys, is indeed also an eye opener in explaining the function of a President of UNGA. Many times the President is the Foreign Minister of a country that belongs to a rotating roster of the five regional groups that were created informally at the UN. So, it was the turn of the Asian Regional Group to suggest a candidate for the Presidency, and their decision was to put up for the negotiations with the other regional groups the candidacy of Korea. After the agreement between the five groups, the decision is then to approve the candidacy unanimously. Korea then made Dr. Han its Foreign Minister, and he had to provide assurances to the Koreans that he will be able to juggle the two positions simultaneously. Dr. Han does not hide that the matter was something of a personal ambition of his, and that this was the dream position – President of the UNGA – that he always aspired to. A further point was that in 2001 the US – ROK relations started to fray because of overtures South Korea was making to North Korea. Dr. Han thought that with his experience he could help defuse the situation.

The President’s physical presence at the UN is not necessarily required at all times throughout the year, except for the four months September – December. So, this makes it possible for Ministers to hold the job while continuing to hold on to their regular job. In his case, seemingly there were folks back home that thought he will be neglecting his Korean position, so Dr. Han, was pushed, despite the fact that even during those four months he shuttled back and forth, to bring to New York a large group of Koreans he would trust to run things while he is away. The stuff provided by the UN to the office of UNGA President is in any case ridiculously small. It amounts to four staff personnel – to the Office of the President: two secretaries, one security person, and driver and car for the President’s exclusive use.

Among the people Dr. Han brought to New York was Ambassador Ban Ki-moon, a former Vice Foreign Minister, whom he asked to become his Chef de Cabinet. That is how the UN learned to appreciate the man who is now Secretay-General and who did a lot of “stand in” for his boss. Today, after Dr. Han’s retirement from service to ROK, it is his former protege, now UN Secretary-General, who makes offers to Dr. Han to keep him active in UN affairs.

UNGA is one of six major organs that were created by the UN Charter. The others are The UN Security Council, The UN Trusteeship Council, The Economic and Social Council (ECOSOC), the International Court of Justice, and The Secretariat.

The Trusteeship Council has pretty much ended its functions and staid on as a fossil. On the other hand, the UN has not made it clear who is the UN Boss – is it the President of UNGA or the Secretary-General. One could assume that the head of the collective of UN Member States is the head of the UN, but then he is appointed only for one year, and mainly as a part-time job. So, the UN Secretary-General, whose appointment to a full-time job extending for five years, has the obvious advantage. Dr. Han, with full frankness, describes his relations with Mr. Kofi Annan – though friendly they had their frictions, in many cases resulting from frictions between staff members. In some cases, there were clear difficulties because the UN Charter was not more explicit. Whatever the stories, cases of previous UN Secretary-Generals were much worse – such a difficulty resulted in the expulsion of the President of UNGA’s office from the glamorous 38th floor of the Secretariat. To his credit, Dr. Han did not ask to return to that floor, but was happier expanding the new location that is on the 2nd floor.

Having been agreed upon to become President of the General Assembly, the actual ceremony of the handover of the job to him was slated for September 11, 2001 – and this was nixed by the events of that day. In effect the UN was without a head of the GA for a full day, and the ceremony was held on the 12th. Was that event what the terrorists had in mind when they chose to attack on 9/11?

The book presents many interesting details of what went on at the UN those days – of extremely interest to us was what is presented in Chapter 2 – specifically sentences on page 31:

“This was a glimpse of the political machinations that go on within the United Nations. I felt as if everyone was testing the resolve of the new President. Discussions within the UN about whether to schedule the General Debate for 10 to 16, 12 to 18, or 14 to 20 November were spinning out of control. There was growing confusion and discord among the Member States.

I believed that if I, the President, did not exercise strong leadership, the carefully achieved concensus would evaporate…”

All of this came about after an agreed set of dates – 10-16 November – and an after the fact intervention by the Vietnamese Ambassador, who acting as Regional Chairman for Asia for the month of September, brought up an Arab opposition to those dates because of a WTO meeting that was scheduled for Doha, Qatar, for 9 to 14 of November. This in full knowledge that there could not be found alternate dates before the end of 2001 – this in part also because of the Ramadan that is important to Muslims.

The use of the appropriate words “POLITICAL MACHINATIONS” and “Testing the Resolve” – this in relation to Arab Member States of the UN at this time of 9/11 is what shows that Dr. Han is out there to describe the UN as it really is – warts and all. This gets further amplified in Chapter 3 when he writes on The Challenges of International Terrorism, when the Ambassador of Sri Lanka, the October Chairman of the Asia Regional Group, backed by the Ambassador from Sudan, the Chairman for October of the African Regional Group, was set up by the Arab States, to interfere with the discussion on terrorism under the pretext that the only resolution that had a chance to pass was too weak – and it had to be “strengthened” in order to make it really unacceptable. Dr. Ban was also confronted by a direct Arab delegation made up of four Ambassadors of the Arab League – one Syrian, two Lybians, and Ambassador Husein Hassouna of the Arab League itself, who using code language of “national liberation movements” made it clear that Palestinians should not be considered terrorists (see page 48 of the book). Dr. Han did not take the bait and was nobody’s fool. Cudos to him and thanks for putting this material in the book.

Chapter 4 of the book deals with “Reform or Not to Reform the Security Cuncil,” and Chapter 6 deals with “Revitalizing the General Assembly.” – both topics of extreme relevance for an organization that grew from an original number of 45 members in 1945 , to 189 members by 2001.

In 1945, with a Security Council that numbered 11 Member States, it was close to 25% of the membership, in 2001, with a total of 15 members of the UNSC – this was only 8% of the membership. That was all old hat to us, but what the book tells us in very clear words is about the existence at the UN of a “Coffee Club” to which belong some 30 countries including – Pakistan, Egypt, Italy, Spain, Mexico, Argentina, Korea … who oppose increasing the number of permanent members of the Security Council, and by doing so have blocked by then for 10 years the expansion of the UNSC. This opposition is against the front runners, Germany and Japan who are surpassed only by the US in the financial support they give to the UN – in effect each one of them contributes more then the total of the four remaining present permanent members, subtracting the US. What the Coffee Club does, besides Italy and Spain blocking Germany and Japan, seemingly for historic reasons of having also lost in WWII, but they also block the three front runners among the developing countries, those we like to call IBSA at www.SustainabiliTank.com (India, Brazil, South Africa) – with Spanish Latins objecting Brazil, Pakistan objecting India, and Egypt objecting anyone who is not an Arab. The Arab nations, because they comprise 12% of UN Member States, contend that this gives them the automatic right at a permanent seat at the UNSC. Now – that is a further example in the book of “machinations at the UN.” This is a clearly hopeless situation and the Coffee Club wins.

In 2001, Africa counted for 53 UN Member States, Asia for 50, Latin America and the Caribbean for 33, The “Western Europe and Others” group for 27, and the US, Estonia, Kiribati, Palau and Tuvalu not belonging to any group. The rotation for choosing the UNGA President is between the 5 groups and as a result there have been, including Dr. Ban, by 2001, 13 presidents from Asia. The President is supported by 21 Vice-Presidents, such as one from each one of the five Permanent members with one additional from Eastern Europe and two additional from Western Europe – with further 4 from Asia, 6 from Africa, and 3 from Latin America and the Caribbean. It is these Vice-Presidents that actually know the workings of the UN. Dr. Han is not shy to say that the outsider that was parachuted from his capital into the presidency chair, besides the fact that he is part-time only, in many cases he, or she as it lately happened, might not even know the UN, and has thus to “learn on the job.” Dr. Han arranged for meetings on May 16, 2002, chaired by Ambassador Juan Gabriel Valdez of Chile, and including Ambassadors from France, Singapore, the Czech Republic, and South Africa, to look into how the UNGA can be “revitalized.” Brazil suggested to move the inauguration of a new UNGA President to January 1st – this so the new learning experience of the new President does not start at the busiest time of year at UNGA – the time of the meetings that include the high-level meetings. Another proposal would have started the year several month ahead of the year’s session so there is no need to change the official date of the take-over. The second alternative was agreed upon, and accordingly on July 8, 2002, the next incoming President, who happened to be Deputy Prime Minister Kaban of the Czech Republic, arrived in New York to start his learning experience for his Presidency of UNGA. This change at the UN is clearly an achievement that Dr. Han can be proud off.

At the book release /book signing event at the UN bookstore, Dr. Han was introduced by Mr. Kiyotaka Kiyo Akasaka and before the book signing event ended, UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon dropped in to congratulate Mr. Ban.

Further events that are memorable from the 2001- 2002 “Han Year” at the UNGA:

9/11, the day without an UNGA President, the opening of the 56th session, the delayed General Debate of November 2001, we mentioned already.

October 1, 2007, Mayor Giuliani speaks at the UN – this is the first time a New York City Mayor spoke at the UN.

October 8, 2007, while visiting with his wife and with Mr. Ban Ki-moon and his wife, the Mount Washington Hotel in Bretton Woods, New Hampshire, a touristic trip that is a must to any economist, he learned about the US attack on Afghanistan.

WTO at the Doha meeting approved the accession of China on November 11, 2001, and of Taiwan on November 12. Proof that China can be reasonable when it fits its interests.

December 10, 2001, the Nobel Prize for Peace is awarded in Oslo, in equal parts, to UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan and to the UN organization as a whole. Dr. Han represents the UN at the ceremonies but agrees that Mr. Annan be the only speaker-recipient at the event. The November-December bimonthly publication of the World Economic Forum – “Economic Link” – publishes their yearly “Dream Cabinet” and mentions Dr. Han, together with Secretary of State Colin Powell, as Foreign Ministers in the Dream Cabinet of the year.

January 29, 2002, President Bush makes the “axis of evil” speech that includes North Korea, Iran, Iraq and February 1 suggests talks with North Korea if the latter reduces its conventional weapons deployed around the demilitarized zone. Dr. Hahn is in the middle of things. He also re-engages Iraqi Foreign Minister Naji Sabri.

January 31, 2002, The World Economic Forum of Davos, Switzerland, in solidarity with New York City, starts its yearly meeting in New York rather then Davos. February 1st there is a symposium on “Constructing Solidarity for a Stable World” at Waldorf-Astoria Hotel. Dr. Hahn is on the panel together with US Secretary of State Colin Powell, the Secretary-General of NATO, the EU High Representative for the common foreign and security policy, and the Foreign Ministers of Australia, France, and Turkey. (At SustainabiliTank.info we remember the event as we were there) Dr. Han talked about the UN activities following the September 11 attacks including the UNGA debate in which 167 countries spoke, the speech by Mayor Giuliani, the UNSC resolution “authorizing intervention in Afghanistan to punish the Taliban regime, which was aiding and refusing to turn over al-Qaeda terrorists,” and the general UN aggressive response to terrorism – referring also to the Nobel Peace Prize that was awarded the UN. He obviously had to pass over the fact that the UNGA debate on “Measures to Eliminate International Terrorism” had to end with a “Presidential Statement” because of the objections put up by the Arab States.

March 21, 2002 the summit-level meeting Financing for Development at Monterrey, Mexico.

April 2002 Dr. Han makes his only official tour of Africa – Ghana, Sierra Leone, Gambia, Senegal. He saw a war ravaged Sierra Leone, and was present in Dakar, Senegal, at the New Partnership for Africa’s Development (NEPAD) meeting with the leaders of 53 African States present. He saw the worst and what should become the best – but was told that the African’s were disappointed that UNSG Kofi Annan did not attend the NEPAD meeting. President Obasanjo of Nigeria wanted to know why does Africa attract so little investments, despite a high rate of return? Dr. Han was not politically affraid to comment on this question.

May 19-20, 2002 – The Independence Ceremonies of East Timor.

May 31, 2002 – The World Cup of soccer is co-hosted by Japan and the ROC. It is a first for cooperation and for Asia.

July 1, 2002 – The Rome statute of the International Criminal Court to deal with genocide and war crimes takes effect.

August 26, 2007 – the start of the Johannesburg Summit on Sustainable Development (Environment and Development Summit) – that is 10 years since the 1992 UNCED in Rio de Janeiro.

two photos taken by Pincas Jawetz at the book-signing event, at the bookstore in the UN basement – October 2007.

The UnderSecretary-General for Information and Communication, Mr. Akasaka, announcing the previously unannounced drop-in of UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moom at the book-signing event with Dr. Han Seung-soo.

Looking at the book is UN Spokesperson, Michelle Montas, from Haiti, and watching is the Korean member of the Spokesperson’s office.