UPCOMING MEETINGS IN AFRICA: November 2008
African Ministerial Conference on the Financial Crisis: 12 November 2008: Tunis, Tunisia: African Ministers of Finance and Central Bank Governors are meeting  to discuss the global financial crisis and its potential impacts on African economies.  Organized by the African Development Bank (AfDB), the African Union Commission and the United Nations Economic Commission for Africa, the Conference aims to mobilize Africans with a view to seeking an answer to the global financial crisis.
For more information, see:  http://www.afdb.org/portal/page?_pageid=…

African Conference of Ministers in Charge of Environment on Climate Change for post-2012: Algiers, Algiers; 19-20 November 2008: The African Conference of Ministers in Charge of Environment on Climate Change for post 2012 is expected to discuss and adopt outcomes related to: the Bali Action Plan: international Cooperation basis or obligation of the share of commitments; meaning  and scope  of the concepts of ” Comparable efforts” and   “Shared Vision” for developing countries; sectoral approach: impacts and consequences on African countries’  development; and  meaning and scope of the concepts of Measurable, Verifiable and Reportable (M.R.V) for developed and developing countries.
For more information, see: http://www.unep.org/roa

Meeting of the Executive Committee and Technical Advisory Committee of the African Ministers’ Council on Water (AMCOW): 24-28 November 2008, Nairobi, Kenya. The AMCOW Executive Committee (AMCOW-EXCO) and the AMCOW Technical Advisory Committee will meet to consider approaches to carrying forward the Sharm El Sheikh Declaration and Commitments on Water and Sanitation (adopted by the African Union Summit, Egypt, June 2008).
For more information, see:  http://wwww.amcow.org/

Ecological Agriculture: Towards Food Security and Sustainable Rural Development in Africa: 26-28 November 2008, African Union Headquarters, Addis Ababa, Ethiopia. This conference is organized by the African Union, UN Food and Agriculture Organization and Ethiopian Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Development,  in collaboration with the Institute for Sustainable Development, Ethiopia and Third World Network. The conference aims to raise the awareness of policy makers so that they can enhance the capacity of Africa’s smallholder farmers.
For more information, contact: African Union Commission, Box 3243, Addis Ababa, Ethiopia; Tel: 251 (11) 552-5844; Fax 251-11-552-5835; E- mail:  ahono_olembo at yahoo.com

Richard Sherman
Programme Manager, Africa Regional Coverage Project
International Institute for Sustainable Development- Reporting Services
300 E 56th  St Apt 11A New York, NY 10022 USA
US Mobile: 646 379 3250
E-mail:  richards at iisd.org
Web: http://www.iisd.ca/africa
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International Institute for Sustainable Development http://www.iisd.org

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Further from IISD:

Dear AFRICASD-L Subscribers;
The International Institute for Sustainable Development (IISD), in cooperation with the Secretariat for the Convention to Combat Desertification (UNCCD), is pleased to announce the launch of the LAND-L announcement list.

To subscribe to the LAND-L list, please visit http://www.iisd.ca/email/subscribe.htm

This new distribution list, similar to IISD’s other announcement lists CLIMATE-L, FORESTS-L, WATER-L, CHEMICALS-L, MEA-L, OCEANS-L, ENERGY-L and AFRICASD-L, has been launched in conjunction with the new Comprehensive Communication Strategy of the UNCCD

The purpose of LAND-L is to provide a free, moderated, community communications tool, allowing subscribers to post announcements related to desertification, land degradation and drought (DLDD) as well as sustainable land management (SLM) events, policy developments, publications and new initiatives. LAND-L is not a discussion list and is limited to non-commercial, non-political announcements.

After signing up for LAND-L at http://www.iisd.ca/email/subscribe.htm  please check your email folders after subscribing and respond to a confirmation email.

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Langston James “Kimo” Goree VI
Director, IISD Reporting Services
International Institute for Sustainable Development (IISD) — United Nations Office
300 E 56TH ST 11A - New York, NY 10022
Fax: +1 646 219-0955 Mobile phone/SMS: +19172934781
Email:  kimo at iisd.org Skype: kimogoree Blog: http://www.kimogoree.com
Where:  Istanbul Nov 10-13, NY 15-28, Poznan 29-1 Dec, Rome 2-3

From:    messouli at gmail.com
Subject: workshop CC
Date: September 14, 2008

The University of Marrakech and its partners (DMN, CDRT, START, OSS), with the support of the Climate Change and Adaptation in Africa program (CCAA), announce a two day international workshop to be held on 25 and 26 of November 2008 in Marrakech. The title of the conference is ” Climate change in the Maghreb: thresholds and limits to adaptation

The overall objective of this conference is to consider strategies for adapting to climate change, in particular to explore the potential barriers to adaptation that may limit the ability of societies in the Maghreb countries to adapt to climate change and to identify opportunities for overcoming these barriers

Deadline for Submission of Abstracts is 10 October 2008.

to register, please go to this link at your soonest convenience and discover other information on the workshop:
 http://www.ucam.ac.ma/ccam/ccamaccueil.h…

Sunday, Sept. 14, 2008, The Japan Times online.

Regarding The Trips to Libya - “Oily Moves to Compensate” by Gwynne Dyer from London.

Libya was the diplomatic crossroads of the planet last weekend: Condoleezza Rice made the first visit by a U.S. secretary of State in 55 years (to discuss a murky deal involving payments to American victims of terrorist attacks allegedly sponsored by Libya); radical Bolivian President Evo Morales showed up (to beg for money or cheap oil); and Italy’s Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi arrived to promise Libya $5 billion in compensation for the brutalities of Italian colonial rule.

The U.S. Congress was not impressed. Last Monday the Senate Foreign Relations Committee postponed hearings on the confirmation of Gene Cretz as the first U.S. ambassador to Libya since 1972.
What bothered the senators was Libya’s delay in paying a promised $1.8 billion in compensation to the families of 180 Americans who died when Pan Am Flight 103 was brought down by a terrorist bomb over Lockerbie, Scotland, in 1988, and of the American soldiers targeted in a 1986 attack on the West Berlin nightclub La Belle (one killed, scores injured).
Western intelligence services blamed both those attacks on Libya’s leader, Colonel Moammar Gadhafi. U.S. aircraft bombed Libya after the 1986 attack, killing some 30 Libyans including Gadhafi’s adopted daughter. Yet the evidence for Libyan involvement is distinctly shaky, and Libya never officially admitted its responsibility. Instead, Libya finally signed a “humanitarian” deal that gives the American families $1.8 billion, but also includes an unstated amount for the Libyan victims of the American air attacks. How very curious.

Details of the deal have been left vague, and nobody will say where the money for the Libyan victims of U.S. airstrikes is coming from. If it is coming from the U.S. government, that would be an interesting precedent. But everybody knows what is really at play here.

The United States worries about the security of its oil supplies and Libya produces oil, so Washington has been seeking a way to end its quarrel with Colonel Gadhafi for a long time. Gadhafi wanted that too, because the U.N. sanctions imposed at Washington’s request were hurting his regime. But since neither government ever apologizes, it took a while.

Gadhafi’s key move was to dismantle his fantasy “nuclear weapons program” — he never really had more than bits and pieces — in 2003. This let President George W. Bush claim that his “war on terror” was scaring the bad guys into behaving better, so the mood music improved immediately. Even before that, Libya sent a couple of low-level intelligence agents to face an international court over the Lockerbie bombing (one was acquitted, one was convicted, and the Libyan regime was scarcely mentioned).

The final compensation deal was signed last month. Condoleezza Rice was in Libya this month partly to show that Gadhafi was no longer in the doghouse — and partly to ask where the money was. That is bothering the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, too, but they shouldn’t worry. Libyan banks take more than a month to transfer even thousands of dollars abroad, let alone billions.

The history behind Silvio Berlusconi’s deal with Gadhafi is much clearer, and so are the motives behind it. Italy conquered Libya, formerly part of the Ottoman Empire, in 1911, and ruled it until 1943. Tens of thousands of Libyans who resisted were killed, many more had their land confiscated and given to Italian settlers, and the country was run for Italy’s benefit, not that of its own people. Italy owes — but why is it paying now, half a century later?

The answer is partly oil — a quarter of Italy’s oil and a third of its gas come from Libya — but also illegal immigrants. Italy is the destination for a growing stream of economic migrants from Africa who use Libya as a jumping-off place for their trip across the Mediterranean, and Berlusconi needs Gadhafi’s cooperation to stem the flow. So Libya gets $5 billion of Italian money to compensate for all the wrongs of the colonial era (and Italy’s compensation will come later, in apparently unrelated deals).

“It is my duty . . . to express to you in the name of the Italian people our regret and apologies for the deep wounds that we have caused you,” Berlusconi said in Benghazi, bowing symbolically before the son of the hero of the Libyan resistance, Omar Mukhtar.

It’s a generous apology, too: $200 million a year on infrastructure projects for 25 years, and if Berlusconi’s cronies in the Italian construction business get the contracts, what’s the harm in that? But we will probably not see him making a similar apology in Mogadishu or Addis Ababa anytime soon.

Libya got off lightly. Ethiopia, Somalia and Eritrea, Italy’s other African colonies, suffered far more from its rule, and are owed far more in compensation. But they have no oil, they are not close to Italy, and they are not going to get it.

If you calculate the amount owed by other former colonial powers at the same per capita rate as Italy did for Libya — around $1,000 per head of the ex-colony’s current population — then France owes Algeria $30 billion, the U.S. owes the Philippines $75 billion, and Britain owes India $1.1 trillion.

But the victims’ heirs shouldn’t spend their money until they actually have it in their hands, and they shouldn’t hold their breaths while waiting.

From:  rcervigni at worldbank.org
Subject: Climate Change in the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) - New World Bank web site.
Date: June 27, 2008

We are pleased to announce the launch of the World Bank web site on climate change in the Middle East and North Africa region (MENA).

The site contains information on ongoing and planned World Bank activities aimed at helping MENA countries enhance their resilience to Climate Change, and move to a low carbon development path.

The URL for the site is: http://www.worldbank.org/mena/climatecha…

Raffaello Cervigni
Senior Natural Resource Economist
Regional Coordinator, Climate Change
Sustainable Development Sector Department (MNSSD)
Middle East and North Africa Region
The World Bank
Room H 8-225
1818 H Street, N.W.
Washington D.C. 20433 USA
Office: 202 458 8473
Fax: 202 614 1688
Cell Phone: 202 378 4432
E-mail:  rcervigni at worldbank.org

Algeria unimpressed by Sarkozy’s Med union as per http://www.theparliament.com/press-revie…

French prime minister François Fillon has failed to convince Algerian leader Abdelaziz Bouteflika to take part in the inaugural meeting of the union for the Mediterranean during a visit to the country, Le Monde reports.
French president Nicolas Sarkozy will launch his revitalised partnership on 13 July in Paris, but Bouteflika will not attend, at least no until he receives more detailed information about the project he described as “wishy washy”.
Algeria is concerned that Sarkozy’s project will force it to recognise Israel, and Bouteflika is also annoyed that his country will have no particular status within the union: Egypt will be vice president, Morocco will host the secretariat and Tunisia the headquarters of the organisation.

Libyan president Muammar Gadaffi is the only African leader who has so far declined to attend, calling the idea an “affront” to the southern nations.

The Sahara and Sahel Observatory (OSS) and the IPCC Technical Support Unit are jointly organising a regional outreach workshop on the findings of the IPCC Fourth Assessment Report. The workshop, which is aimed at African researchers, will take place on 29-30 April 2008 in Marrakech, Morocco. To be considered for participation, please submit your application no later than 5 April 2008.The objective of the workshop is to disseminate the IPCC Fourth Assessment Report findings to African researchers and scientists, in particular those of the circum-Saharan region.

The various presentations and discussions will cover the following topics:

·   The research needs for Africa.

To apply please visit the OSS website (link provided below) and download the workshop’s flyer. Only successful applicants will be contacted by 10 April 2008.

 http://www.oss-online.org/index.php?opti…

Jihed Ghannem
Communications Officer
The Sahara and Sahel Observatory (OSS)
Boulevard du Leader Yasser Arafat
BP 31, 1080 Tunis, Tunisia
T: +216 71 20 66 33    F: +216 71 20 66 36
Visit our new website at www.oss-online.org

This is an update of our first posting of February 1, 2008, when to fliers by the UN Staff Union were brought to our attention. We attach these two fliers to the end of the article. The flier of January 23, 2008 talks about the bombing in Algiers and demands an outside independent investigation as it was done after the Baghdad bombing of the UN compound there. But the other flier shows total distrust of the UN top brass. The December 17, 2007 flier came about because the killing of two Red Cross workers in Sri Lanka beginning of 2007, and also of aid workers killed in 2006. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon voiced his opposition to the killings, but did he stand up to the Sri-Lanka government when it accused UNICEF Country Representatives that protested the killings. If the UNSG cannot stand up to Sri Lanka and Algeria, why in the world will a UN employee want to serve in a troubled country knowing that he/she is not completely backed by the UN system?

The original article:

The Algerians Insisted That Algerias Lakhdar Brahimi Be The Investigator In The Killing of 17 UN Staff In Algiers. Does The UNSG Not Care For The Safety Of UN Civilian Staff?

Last evening we went to the UN to watch an Academy Award winning documentary - “Into The Arms Of Strangers: Stories Of The Kindertransport.” That was the story of 10,000 children that were sent off by their Jewish parents from Nazi occupied European continent to Britain - this in order to give them the chance to live. Not an easy task for parents and children alike. On the way to the Dag Hammarskjold Auditorium we passed the BESA exhibit that shows Albanian Muslims - Kosovarians - that saved Jews during the war - so humanity can feel that in those days of darkness there were Muslims that felt repulsion to Nazi behavior.

After the movie I happened to talk to a journalist accredited to the UN that told me - you know what? Ban Ki-moon looked high and low and landed upon an Algerian Ex-Minister and perpetual Algerian UN emissary to investigate the recent killing of 17 UN employees in Algeria. If I would not be afraid that someone would accuse me of racism - I would clearly say that this stinks of “WHITEWASHING.” I cannot see why the stomachs of UN civil employees would not turn over with these news.

People of their ilk, were indeed killed like they were in the bombing of the Baghdad UN compound - this because the UN top brass is back-bone-less when it comes to stand up to what it calls a sovereign government - and do not wink when in the process they sacrifice lives of UN employees. You can say that military people have sold their safety when signing up for serving in an army, but civilians did not. The UN Staff Committee, if they have any backbone must now speak up. If they are also run by interested country citizens on the UN quota based system, so good luck when next bomb strikes.

With above information in my head, I discovered at home that things start filtering to the press via the very few outlets of true investigative journalism that still operate at the UN.

After Algiers Bombing, UN to Appoint Algerian Ex-Minister Lakhdar Brahimi to Investigate.

Byline: Matthew Russell Lee of Inner City Press at the UN: News Analysis

UNITED NATIONS, January 31 — “In the wake of the bombing last month that killed UN staff in Algiers, Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon said he would appoint an outside panel to investigate. The Algerian government protested, saying it had not been consulted. Ban and his chief of staff Vijay Nambiar both met with Algerian officials, and Thursday night Algerian diplomats said that the choice to head the UN panel is former Algerian foreign minister Lakhdar Brahimi.”

At the UN, some scoffed at such a choice as an accommodation which would call into question any independence of the panel. Others called it astute politics, given that Brahimi’s previous study of peacekeeping made it likely that he will exonerate the UN system, too.

But UN Development Program Administrator Kemal Dervis, asked by Inner City Press about UNDP’s Marc de Bernis’ role in not having raised the threat assessment level after the April 2007 bomb attack in Algeria, said that the UN had in fact asked the Algerian government to help block off the street in front of the UN building, without any formal response. So this time, in effect there was a UN employee who on location asked for improved security from the Algerians. Obviously, nobody from UN headquarters in New York has moved onto that subject in those days. Mr. Marc de Bernis was killed in the bombing - so now we rely on his widow’s statements.

“Algerian officials have fired back, including at a conference in Tunis on Thursday, when Algeria’s interior minister Yazid Zerhouni spoke, in front of UN Security chief David Veness, of the need for \’respect for the sovereignty of states… without interference in their internal affairs.’ Hours later, other Algerian diplomats named Algerian Brahimi as the UN’s “outside” investigator.”

Now that is what we keep saying all the time - THE UN IS JUST AS GOOD AS THE LOWEST COMMON DENOMINATOR OF ITS SOVEREIGN STATES - and this is lower then low.

Lakhdar Brahimi - is he “a fox guarding the hen house,” as one diplomat put it?
Remembering that Algeria is a member of OAPEC and sells oil and gas to Europe - could he be rather the cat that was put in charge of the sour cream jar?

David Veness, it should be said, was previously with Britain’s Scotland Yard, for which he investigated without success the disappearance of three million dollars from UN custody in Somalia. Now Scotland Yard is providing the veneer of outside investigation to Pervez Musharraf’s inquiry into the murder of his political rival Benazir Bhutto.

Matthew writes that “one wag at the UN Thursday night, at the end of the month of Security Council presidency reception by the Libyan mission, asked and answered a question. What is the difference between Pervez Musharraf and Ban Ki-moon? (A beat.) At least Pervez Musharraf has Scotland Yard.”

So, the UNSG will not even show strength of looking for cover by reaching out to someone like David Veness to look into what hapened in Algiers. That corects us now - THERE WILL NOT BE EVEN A WHITEWASH in the Algiers affair - plain lack of trust in the so called Algerian in-house investigation.

WE HAVE A SUGGESTION - WHY WOULD NOT BAN KI-MOON ASK FOR AN ISRAELI EX-MOSSAD MAN TO VOLUNTEER TO REVIEW THE BRAHIMI CONCLUSIONS. TO BE MORE PRECISE - HE SHOULD ANNOUNCE THIS AS HIS UN INSTITUTIONAL CHOICE WHEN ACCEPTING THE ALGERIAN SOVEREIGN CHOICE OF BRAHIMI. ONLY A DRASTIC MOVE LIKE THIS CAN RETURN A SEMBLANCE OF CREDIBILITY BEFORE THE UN STAFF.

The Commission on Sustainable Development Is It A Moribund UN Body Or Will It Be Revived Because It Is Needed After The Re-Engagement Hoopla That Happens Now At Bali?

Our Website was established in order to help create the awareness that there is no other development possible - not in the developing countries and not in the developed countries - that is not SUSTAINABLE DEVELOPMENT.

We had experience starting from before the Brundtland Commission of 1987, we were engaged at the UN Conference on Environment and Development (UNCED) in Rio de Janeiro, and we wrote the “Promptbook on Sustainable Development for The World Summit on Sustainable Development, Johannesburg 2002. In short we are strong believers that if the UN CSD were not created in 1994, we would have had to create it now.

Why that? Simply, because as it is crystal clear now that the development of tomorrow cannot go on by rules of the development of yesterday - and this was given, right today, full global recognition in Oslo, when the Nobel Peace Prize was awarded to the scientists of the IPCC, and to Al Gore - whatever will come out from the Bali-Poznan-Copenhagen process will be clearly a final global landing on the runway that was built in Rio for Agenda 21. And as we keep saying - this will be a joint Sustainable Development for North and South, East and West. It will be a world were those that have the needed technologies will share them with those that are only trying out for their own National development. This will not be done because of altruism - it will be rather because of self interest that comes from the simple fact that we are all residents of planet earth, and we understand that we have caused the planet to be on a path of destruction that harms the continuation of life as nature or god created.

After UNCED, The UN created a Department for Policy Coordination and Sustainable Development and Secretary-General Boutros Boutros-Gali appointed Mr. Nitin Desai, at the Under-Secretary-General level to head the Department. 1994-1998 Joke Waller-Hunter from the Netherlands was the first Director of the Division for Sustainable Development and the head of the Commission on Sustainable Development - so the Commission itself dates back, for all practical purpose, to 1994 - even though it officially was started in 1992. In May 2007 we witnessed the CSD 15 (that is counting back to 1992!).

In 1997, Secretary-General Kofi, in an effort to reduce the number of UN Under-Secretary-Generals, consolidated three economic and social departments and created UN DESA (UN Department of Economic and Social Affairs) and eventually put Mr. Desai as head of DESA where he was until he was replaced in 2003 with Mr. Jose Antonio Ocampo, the former Finance Minister of Colombia; the new Secretary-General Mr. Ban Ki-moon, brought in, July 2007, Mr. Sha Zukang, the previous China Ambassador in Geneva. In 1998 Ms. JoAnne DiSano, with a background of having worked for the Canadian Government, and then for 11 years with the Australian Government, became the Director of the new Division of Sustainable Development within DESA. She held this position until September of 2007 and since then the position is VACANT, and it looks as if the UN does not care.

Ms. Joke Waller-Hunter, left her position with the CSD in 1998 in order to become the Executive Secretary of the of Bonn based  UN Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) where she remained untill her death in 2006. She was replaced there in 2007, by Mr. Yvo de Boer, appointed by UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon. Mr. Yvo de Boer is also from the Netherlands, where he was Director for International Affairs of the Ministry of Housing, Spatial Planning and Environment. He was in the Past Vice-Chair of the Commision on SD and Vice-Chair of the COP of the UNFCCC. Both, the CSD and the UNFCCC are outcomes of the 1992 UNCED. Ms. Joke Waller-Hunter’s departure from New York may have had something to do with the 1997 UN reorganization that replaced the Department of SD with a Division of SD within DESA. She may have sensed that her presence at UNFCCC will further SD goals easier then  at the new Division of SD - that its creation caused in effect a demotion in her position.

The present vacancy at the nerve-center of the CSD, at a time the CSD is needed indeed, following the latest push at the UNFCCC, on matters of climate change, that causes our renewed interest in the UN CSD and in the UN Division that was established specifically in order to run the CSD. We are afraid that it will be difficult to see progress on the UN level, in matters of climate change, without a functioning office that deals with sustainable development.

Now to be honest, our interest is not just because of curiosity - but rather because of the worry that we understand very well the reasons for the slow demise of the CSD - the factors that got it to start on what may be a path to extinction.

At CSD 9 it was decided that the CSD will discuss specific topics in cycles of two years. So the first cycle was Water for CSD11-CSD12, the second cycle Energy for CSD14-CSD15, the third cycle Land Use for CSD16-CSD17.

So 2006-2007 was the Energy cycle, and as in UN fashion it was supposed to be the turn to have a chair from Asia, it was the Asians that suggested Qatar to chair the energy subject. Now Qatar is a producer of gas rather then oil.

Some said that though sustainable development must help put forward development methods that are less dependent on oil and coal, this for reasons of global warming and climate change, nevertheless, recognizing the role of natural gas as a cleaner fuel and a potential intermediary fuel from an oil and coal economy to an economy that is starting to be based on renewable sources of energy, Qatar could have been acceptable also as a political peace-maker between the interests of conventional industry and the incoming new industry based on renewbles. But to the consternation of those optimists, we could see that behind the representative of Qatar, at the CSD sessions, there was always sitting a representative from Saudi Arabia, and in the end there was no resulting negotiated text for what is probably one of the most important topics of Sustainable Development - Energy.

Above was nothing yet when compared with what happened in the last day of CSD 15. As always, there are elections for the next CSD membership - the membership is held at 53 countries elected according to a regional key - and then there is the election of the “bureau” and the new chair. The turn according to UN habit was that next chair will be from Africa, and as said, the topic for CSD16 in 2008, and for CSD17 in 2009, will be Land Use. The Africans decided to put forward Zimbabwe as their choice and campaigned with the G77 that this is their wish. The UK did not want any part of this, and specially since the land policies of the Mugabe Government have run Zimbabwe agriculture from being a large agricultural exporter to becoming a starving nation, with an economy that was totally destroyed, a monetary situation that shows astronomic inflation rate, and human rights problems that clearly make it ineligible for a UN leadership position, it is this obstinacy that reduced the CSD to plain irrelevancy. We were there that night of Friday May 11, 2007, in room 4 in the UN basement, and watched in disbelief how the distinguished, low-key German Ambassador, head in New York of the EU presidency, with the German Minister of the Environment next to him, simply told the CSD Chair from Qatar that the EU cannot work with this sort of CSD.

If by any way I exaggerate now, 7 months later, please forgive my memory, but see what I, Pincas Jawetz, Inner City Press journalist Matthew Rusell Lee, and the EUobserver from Brussels, wrote about this - the references on the www.SustainabiliTank.info web are:

- EUobserver on the 5/11 Crash of CSD15 (May 14th, 2007)

- A First Analysis: From The Ashes of the CSD, Will We See A Rising Phoenix? A Brundtland II, To be Called - “OUR COMMON GROUND” ? (May 13th, 2007)

- The UN General Assembly Resolution of September 30, 1974 against South Africa was not Premised On Apartheid’s Threat To Security, But On Its Serious Violation Of The Universal Declaration of Human Rights. WHY DOES
SOUTH AFRICA OF 2007 BACK MUGABE’s ZIMBABWE SAYING HE DOES NOT THREATEN INTERNATIONAL PEACE AND SECURITY? (May 13th, 2007)

- 9/11 and 3/11 Have Become Symbols of what Oil Money Can Cause To Those Who Insist On Buying The Oil, Will 5/11 Become The Symbol of Awakening at the UN? This Because Of May 11, 2007 Late Evening Happenings At
The So Called UN Commission On Sustainable Development? (May 12th, 2007)

- At the UN, Zimbabwe Elected 26-21 to Sustainable Development Chair for CSD16, As EU and Others Reject Final Text of The Chairman from Qatar of CSD15. (May 12th, 2007)

I took then the 5/11 date and in ways of exaggeration tried to compare this with 9/11 in New York and 3/11 in Madrid. Was it really an exaggeration? Could we say that the backing Zimbabwe got from States with unresolved problems from colonial days, and oil states that think, completely wrong, that they have anything to gain from derailing the concept of sustainable development, sustainable energy, global warming, climate change…, from efforts to improve the life of billions of people?

Further, the UN recognizes three groups of States with greater needs - these are the Least Developed States (LDCs), the Small Island Independent States (SIDS), and the Landlocked States. These are the States within the UN system that are most in need of help via sustainable development. Why did the UN take them out from being under the Under-Secretary-General who heads DESA, and put them under a separate Under-Secretary-General? Does this not cause waste and decreased efficiency? Would they not be served better within a well functioning unified economic organization that takes, for instance, in account the interests of Island States when it comes to the subject of the effects of global warming/climate change?

Now, I was not going to allow myself to lose my hope for a functioning CSD. The articles I refer to above are actually articles of hope - that is I hope that from the ashes the CSD will rise, as a Phoenix, under the leadership of Brundtland II.

Does this look likely? I submit it is imperative, and by the end of this week, whatever wind will be blowing from Bali, people will see that it does not go without sustainable development. So why do the Africans not get together and try to rein in Mr. Mugabe? Again, just this week, the EU invited all Heads of State of Africa to Lisbon for discussions on trade that were needed in order to help restart the Doha trade round. The Europeans were ready to put aside the dispute with Mugabe, and he was als