Living Modified Organisms, At Your Nearest Store
Over the last two decades, there has been rapid advancement in the development and application of modern biotechnology -- a technology that involves taking genetic material from one organism and inserting it into another to give it a desired characteristic. This new technology is complex and arouses much debate.
A Decade of Fighting for our Lives
A group of South African activists founded the Treatment Action Campaign (TAC) on 10 December 1998, International Human Rights Day. It was no accident that TAC was formed exactly fifty years after the adoption of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. The backbone of TAC is its use of advocacy to fight for the realisation of the right to health, which is enshrined both in international treaties and in the South African Constitution.
Surviving on Pennies: We Must Help the World's Most Deprived
Seven years ago, the international community made a commitment to halve the proportion of people living in extreme poverty and hunger between 1990 and 2015. Now at the halfway point between its declaration and the target deadline to achieve the Millennium Development Goals, it is obvious the world has made significant progress.
In Haiti... The World From Her Mother's Side
As the earthquake shook the house around her, ten-year-old Dessica ran outside and into a field behind her small street. Did you run out alone? I asked. Yes, she says. You didn't wait for your mother or your sisters or brothers? No, she says. I just ran.
Bringing Star Power to Earth
The international community is threatened by a global energy crisis, climate, and ecosystem changes due to global warming, as well as water and food contamination. The whole world faces tremendous challenges in closing the gap between projected energy demand and the supply of sustainable, carbon-free, affordable energy. Today, about 80 per cent of the world's total primary energy demand is met by fossil fuel which emits significant quantities of carbon dioxide (a greenhouse gas) into the atmosphere.
Trading an End to Poverty: Bridging the MDG Implementation Gaps Through Trade
We live in an age of wonders. From nano-surgery to space stations, networking sites to solar cells, Internet start-ups to smart capital, the world is a more connected, attractive and safe place than was dreamed possible, even fifty years ago.
The Role of The Secretary-General: A Personal History
Ban Ki-moon has taken the most impossible job in the world, as Trygve Lie famously said about the role of the Secretary-General. The Charter of the United Nations included the Secretariat among its principal organs, most certainly to grant some political prerogatives to the Secretary-General.
The Conference on Disarmament: Injecting Political Will
The Conference on Disarmament (CD)* has met in vain for years. After the successful negotiation of the Limited Test Ban Treaty in 1963, the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty in 1970 and, more recently, the Chemical Weapons Convention in 1992, the forum increasingly stagnated. The last time the Conference agreed to negotiate was in 1996 -- this time for the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty, which was adopted by the United Nations General Assembly but has yet to enter into force.
Racial Discrimination and Miscegenation: The Experience in Brazil
In 1888, Brazil, with a mostly black and mixed race or mulatto population, was the last country in the Western Hemisphere to abolish slavery. During more than 300 years of slavery in the Americas, it was the largest importer of African slaves, bringing in seven times as many African slaves to the country, compared to the United States.
Small Islands, Rising Seas
The threat posed by rising sea levels has been the centrepiece of climate change negotiations, the main issue emphasized by Small Island Developing States, also known as the SIDS. The poorer countries flanked by large bodies of water -- who have contributed the least to global warming, including rapid sea-level rise -- now find themselves at the precarious mercy of the historical polluters.
The Tears of a Brave Mother
He went to school. That's why he died. If he wouldn't have studied so many years he'd still be alive, helping me around and raising his children, says Eudochia Motco, his mother. She is eighty-three years old and in about four hours her youngest son, Filaret, a UN staff from Romania, is going to be buried. He was killed when the UN compound in Mazar-i-Sharif was attacked on 1 April 2011.
Bailing Out Humankind From Its Social Insensitivity
A host of world leaders met at UN Headquarters in New York on 12 and 13 November 2008 for an inter-religious and inter-cultural dialogue on a Culture of ̽»¨¾«Ñ¡, at the initiative of King Abdullah bin Abdul-Aziz Al Saud of Saudi Arabia.
Mobile Communication and Socio-Economic Development: A Latin American Perspective
The impact of information and communication technologies (ICTs) is not limited to the sector in which they are produced, but rather spreads to all sectors of production and consumption. This is also valid for mobile telephony. In addition, its influence increases as network effects do; that is, when the number of people using the service rises.
Newborns in Sub-Saharan Africa: How to Save These Fragile Lives
Every day in Africa, 2,400 babies are stillborn and another 3,100 newborns die within their first four weeks of life. Half of African women and their babies do not receive skilled care during childbirth and even fewer receive effective post-natal care.
When Things Fall Apart
Liberia shows the way to deal with gender-based violence by establishing special courts and laws to try rapists and through empowering women and girls.