English for Diplomacy: marzo 2013

venerdì 15 marzo 2013

Geoffrey Robertson

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kROj5QM0i2Y

mercoledì 13 marzo 2013

Africa

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XhGRkK6hguM

Achieving the Millennium Goals

Achieving the Millennium Development Goals and going beyond them – Recent comment 2012 and the Situation in Africa

The goals were set for 2015 in the United Nations Millennium Declaration (2000) and took as a baseline the data for 1990.
http://www.unmillenniumproject.org/goals/gti.htm#goal1
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Millennium_Development_Goals#Goal_1:_Eradicate_extreme_poverty_and_hunger
http://econ.worldbank.org/WBSITE/EXTERNAL/EXTDEC/0,,menuPK:476823~pagePK:64165236~piPK:64165141~theSitePK:469372,00.html
http://www.bizjournals.com/prnewswire/press_releases/2012/03/06/DC64970
http://www.fao.org/fileadmin/templates/wsfs/docs/expert_paper/How_to_Feed_the_World_in_2050.pdf
http://www.eoi.es/blogs/lauraambros/2012/01/17/millenium-development-goals-for-sub-saharan-africa/
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-17270014
http://www.who.int/mediacentre/news/releases/2012/drinking_water_20120306/en/
http://www.guardian.co.uk/global-development/poverty-matters/2011/dec/02/africa-significant-progress-mdgs
“The report said huge regional disparities existed. Almost half of the 2 billion people who have gained access to drinking water since 1990 live in China or India. Meanwhile, many countries in Africa are not on track to meet the target by 2015, with some countries actually falling back to pre-1990 rates of coverage. More than 40% of all people globally who lack access to drinking water live in sub-Saharan Africa.”
Quote from:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/global-development/2012/mar/06/water-millennium-development-goals
also:
“Millennium Development Goals progress reports overestimate access to safe water
New research suggests that official reports overestimate progress towards the United Nations Millennium Development Goal (MDG) target for access to safe drinking water. The researchers show that the current methods oversimplify the measure by not accounting for water quality; the key measure of safety. In four of the five developing countries studied, the reduction in reported progress would be substantial. It is likely that MDG safe-water progress in other developing countries is similarly overstated …”
For full article see:
http://bristol.ac.uk/news/2012/8287.html
Some experts argue that global progress in trying to achieve the poverty reduction MDG is the result of economic growth, particularly in China (lifting huge numbers out of poverty), rather than the result of international cooperation and aid programs. Progress globally is difficult to measure and very uneven.
Some experts argue that Africa is unlikely to meet its 2015 MDGs due to the global recession and population growth. Progress is obviously relative to the scale of the challenge and many people are unaware of the extent of the problem in Africa:
sub-Saharan Africa, where 47 percent of the population lived in extreme poverty in 2008 compared with 51% in 1981. This improvement seems to have disappeared as a result of the recession with the 2010 rate at 50.9% according to
http://blogs.wsj.com/economics/2012/02/29/worlds-extreme-poverty-cut-in-half-since-1990/
This improvement seems to have disappeared as a result of the recession with the 2010 rate at 50.9% according to
http://www.worldhunger.org/articles/Learn/world%20hunger%20facts%202002.htm (figures from World Bank)
In this situation any progress is good news but eradicating extreme poverty would seem to be a very long term goal for Africa.
http://india.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/03/04/extreme-poverty-drops-worldwide/
http://africajournalismtheworld.com/2012/03/01/africa-fails-to-meet-world-bank-poverty-goal/
http://www.endpoverty2015.org/en/node/587
http://blogs.worldbank.org/africacan/africa-and-the-millennium-development-goals
http://www.mdg-review.org/index.php/news/1-latest-news/254-mdg-summit-cape-town-2012

venerdì 8 marzo 2013

Military Intervention for Humanitarian Purposes

In any discussion about using military force as part of an attempt at humanitarian intervention in order to prevent genocide and human rights abuses, there are a series of issues to be examined. First, there is the question of legitimacy. Is there a clear mandate from the UN Security Council? If there is not, should countries act without it if there is widespread support in the UN General Assembly? Then there is the question of effectiveness. Do such missions usually achieve their basic goal of bringing peace and stability and ending the violence, or do they lead to more violence? Is the mission welcomed by the local people involved? (Compare for example: Somalia, Afghanistan and Libya) Moreover, would the funds used for the mission be better spent elsewhere as direct aid on a more concrete problem? (e.g. on providing food, water, medicine and shelter to an area not requiring a military presence). There is another important consideration that is often raised. Many experts argue that since the foundation of the UN humanitarian intervention has always been 'politicized'. What exactly the international community should do in response to the situation in Syria, for example, cannot be debated 'neutrally', simply as a humanitarian crisis. Each member state of the UNSC and the UNGA will inevitably bring to the discussion its own economic and strategic interests, and its own cultural or ideological perspective. In international relations this is the normal context in which a diplomatic discussion of a question like that of Syria takes place.