Category Archives: UN

(Blurred) Visions of a Sustainable UN

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Following up on a side note on WUWT…this is what the UN means by “sustainability”. To be kept in mind as Rio+20 approaches.

VISIONS OF A SUSTAINABLE UN

If you fancy yourself as a photographer and believe in the power of images to change the way we think and feel, then why not try your hand at capturing an image which describes a sustainable UN? [...] All entries must speak to the theme, Visions of a Sustainable UN.

PHOTO COMPETITION WINNERS ANNOUNCED

SUN, 05/06/11

A team from Cyprus have been announced as the winners of 2011 Greening the Blue Photo Competition which has been run in collaboration with the UN Photographic Society to celebrate World Environment Day 2011.

Here’s the winner: “The judges felt the winning entry managed to capture several important elements of how the UN can become a more sustainable organisation” such as recycling itself and the fears it keeps spreading presumably

Recycling the UN

 

Runner-up: “…on a technology that is truly sustainable“, i.e. somebody is dreaming we all get on our bikes really, no matter if it’s the middle of the winter and there’s no baobab trees around

Biking around your baobab

Runner-up: “…bringing your own mug…” right before not flushing the toilet I suspect

Sustainable mugging

Runner-up: “sustainability is a part of UN’s key mandates in many ways: food, youth, and the environment in the developing world” starting from making sure it remains developING forever.

Make sure she never sees a book

In summary, if we all felt like rubbish and pedalled with our own mug to work by tilling the soil somewhere, the UN will have reached its goal by making our lives unsustainable.

Ban Ki-Moon Has Lost The Plot

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What the &^%$ did UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-Moon think he would be doing, by going to Burma only to come back absolutely empty-handed?

The risks were fully known, but Ban Ki-Moon vowed the “right things” and then dedicated a speech in Yangon with the “right words” inside but…is it really the business of the UN Secretary-General to fly around the world begging to visit local dissidents, and then to lament his “disappointment” when not allowed to?

There’s plenty of low-ranking UN diplomats that perfectly able to do just that.

The bloody Burmese junta has made the usual electoral promise (this time for 2010…yeah, right!).

It could all have been so simple:

  1. Ban Ki-Moon lands in Yangon
  2. Ban Ki-Moon asks to see Aung San Suu-Kyi
  3. Ban Ki-Moon is refused to see Aung San Suu-Kyi
  4. Ban Ki-Moon flies away (immediately that is)

One would think even the current UN Secretary-General could devise such a complex plan, couldn’t he?

Perhaps in the post-Cold War world there is something fundamentally wrong in the way UN Secretary-General are chosen.

Banning Cluster Bombs – Dublin, May 19-30 2008

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(letter published on Saturday May 10 in the International Herald Tribune, written by Jakob Kellenberger, Geneva President, International Committee of the Red Cross)

Note how the proposed new Treaty is not to ban cluster munitions outright: it is to prevent the deployment of ineffectual bombs that do not explode during a conflict, and despite having zero military strategic or tactical value, rather hang on waiting to kill or wound unsuspecting, perfectly innocent civilians years and even decades after the war has ended.

More than 100 countries are due to meet in Dublin later this month to negotiate a new international treaty banning cluster munitions that cause unacceptable harm to civilians. They should seize this historic opportunity to prevent these weapons from killing and maiming countless other men, women and children.

The International Committee of the Red Cross has repeatedly witnessed the terrible impact of cluster munitions on civilians in armed conflicts across the globe. Their deadly legacy can continue for generations.

Laos, for example, the world’s worst affected country, is still struggling to deal with the estimated 270 million munitions dropped there in the 1960s and 1970s. Tens of millions failed to explode and go on killing people today.

In more than 20 countries around the world, unexploded cluster munitions have effectively rendered vast areas as hazardous as minefields.

Without urgent concerted international action, the human toll of cluster munitions could become far worse than that of antipersonnel landmines, which are now banned by three-quarters of the world’s countries.

Meanwhile, billions of cluster munitions are currently in the stockpiles of many nations. Many models are aged, inaccurate and unreliable. But unlike antipersonnel landmines, which were in the hands of virtually all armed forces, only about 75 countries currently possess cluster munitions.

The Dublin conference is the culmination of a process that started in Oslo in February 2007 and has been building momentum ever since. Participants should agree to a treaty that prohibits inaccurate and unreliable cluster munitions, provides for their clearance and ensures assistance to victims.

Jakob Kellenberger, Geneva President, International Committee of the Red Cross

Some useful links related to the above: