11.27.13
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Jump in New HIV Cases in Eastern Europe

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Nov. 27, 2013 – New diagnoses of the HIV virus are up nine percent in Eastern Europe, according to figures released by the World Health Organization on Thursday.

Of the 131,000 new cases of HIV reported in the European region in 2012, 102,000 occurred in Eastern Europe, with 76,000 of those cases reported in Russia, accounting for almost 60 percent of new infections, according to the data which was released ahead of World Aids Day on Dec. 1.

About 35 percent of HIV cases in Russia occur among injecting drug users while heterosexual transmission accounts for about 30 percent of cases. The exposure route of the remaining 35 percent is unknown but it is thought that most occur among men who have sex with men.

It was reported last month that a new virulent strain of HIV in Russia was spreading at a rapid rate and accounts for more than 50 percent of new infections.

The Moscow Times reported that Russian schools generally offer little or no sex education, which contributes to the high rate of infection. The paper added that Pavel Astakhov, Russia’s children’s rights advocate, said in September that he opposed teaching teenagers about sexual health in school, saying that Russian literature is “the best sex education there is.”

– Denis Fitzgerald
On Twitter @denisfitz

11.10.13
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Preliminary Evidence Suggests Polio in Syria Came from Pakistan

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Nov 10, 2013 – Foreign fighters appear to be the source of the outbreak of polio in Syria that risks infecting hundreds of thousands of children in the region.

Initial tests indicate that the poliovirus detected in Syria is of Pakistani origin, according to UNICEF and the World Health Organization.

Pakistan is one of only three countries – along with Afghanistan and Nigeria – where the virus remains endemic. The BBC reported in July that the Pakistan Taliban had set up a base inside Syria to join the fight against the Assad regime.

Syria had been polio free for fourteen years prior to the outbreak and the virus had not been detected in neighboring countries in the past decade but so far this year has been found in sewage samples in Egypt, Israel, the West Bank and Gaza.

Polio affects the nervous system and can cause paralysis within hours. It usually affects children under five and is typically spread through contact with contaminated feces.

Children usually require four doses of the polio vaccine before school-age to provide lifelong protection against the virus.

As a result of the conflict, immunization rates have plummeted from 92 percent before the conflict to 67 percent as of 2012, according to UNICEF.

WHO and UNICEF aim to vaccinate 20 million children in Syria and neighboring countries in the coming months to prevent an epidemic.

– Denis Fitzgerald
On Twitter: @denisfitz

photo/UN Photo

10.31.13
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Syria: The War on Development

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Oct. 31, 2013 – Syria’s economy has lost more than $103 billion since March 2011 while 2.3 million jobs have been lost and almost half the country’s school-age children are no longer in formal education.

The country’s conflict, which started after government forces used lethal force on peaceful protesters, has claimed the lives of more than 100,000 people while an estimated 400,000 more people have been maimed or injured. That’s 2 percent of the population that have been killed, injured or maimed.

These are among the dire statistics in a joint report issued by UNDP and UNRWA this week on the devastating impact of the conflict on Syria’s socio-economic development.

Some 3,000 schools are out of service as a result of damage or destruction while others are housing internally displaced people.

The effect on medical services is particularly acute with the ratio of doctors to serve the population falling from one for every 660 people to one for every 4,400 people.

The World Health Organization earlier this week reported that cases of polio have been confirmed, the first such outbreak since 1999 and that vaccination rates have plummeted from 91 percent in 2010 to 68 percent in 2012.

Some 8 million Syrians have fallen into poverty since the crisis began with more than half of those living in extreme poverty.

“As the formal economy has imploded there has been a growth in informality, rent-seeking activities, criminal enterprise and economies of violence that will plague post-conflict economic regulation, reform, equity and development,” the UNDP-UNRWA report says.

The full report is here

– Denis Fitzgerald
On Twitter @denisfitz

Photo/Wikimedia

10.20.13
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Half of Syria’s Chemical Warfare Agents to be destroyed in Norway – Report

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update: Oct 25 – In a statement on its website, Norway’s ministry of foreign affairs says it won’t destroy Syria’s chemical warfare agents: “due to time constraints and external factors, such as capacities, regulatory requirements, Norway is not the most suitable location for the destruction of Syrian chemical warfare agents.”

Oct. 20, 2013 – Up to 500 tons of Syria’s stockpile of sarin gas is set to be destroyed in Norway pending agreement by Oslo.

Norwegian state broadcaster NRK reported on Sunday that an internal UN memo it obtained shows that the five permanent members of the Security Council along with Albania and Belgium have been asked to destroy Syria’s chemical warfare agents.

But Norway, home of the Nobel Foundation that last week bestowed its annual peace prize to the Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons, has been asked to destroy up to half of the estimated 1,000 tons of chemical agents thought to be in Syria’s possession. 

A UN Security Council resolution passed on Sept. 27 set mid-2014 as deadline for destruction of Syria’s entire chemical arsenal.

– Denis Fitzgerald
On Twitter @denisfitz

photo/opcw

10.11.13
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Libya Case Provides Lessons for OPCW Inspectors in Syria

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OPCW Director-General Ahmet Üzümcü speaks to reporters after announcement that the organisation had won the 2013 Nobel Peace Prize (photo/opcw)

Oct 11, 2013 – When Libya joined the Chemical Weapons Convention in January 2004, Muammar Gaddafi declared to the Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW) that the country possessed some 1,400 tonnes of chemical agents and precursor chemicals, more than 3,500 chemical weapons munitions, as well as three production facilities.

Almost ten years later, two of the production facilities have been demolished, the third one converted to produce pharmaceuticals, while the declared munitions have been flattened by bulldozers – but only about half the stockpile of chemical agents and precursor chemicals have been destroyed, according to the OPCW.  

That makes the proposed mid-2014 deadline for the newly minted Nobel Peace Prize winners to verify the destruction of Syria’s chemical arsenal seem ambitious at the very least – the Assad regime is reported to possess about 1,000 tonnes of agents and precursor chemicals.

And something else that the Hague-based organization is sure to keep in mind as it tackles the Syria operation is that Gaddafi lied to the OPCW in 2004 and it was only after his downfall that the new government in Tripoli in November 2011 discovered previously undeclared stockpiles. 

There’s little reason to trust Assad’s declarations at this stage – just days before admitting his regime possessed chemical weapons, he denied that it possessed those same weapons.

But the Chemical Weapons Convention (CWC) includes a mechanism whereby any state party can initiate a challenge inspection if it suspects non-compliance by another member. This is where the UN Security Council comes into play. Resolution 2118, adopted on Sept. 27, states that OPCW inspectors must have “unfettered access to and the right to inspect, in discharging their functions, any and all sites, and by allowing immediate and unfettered access to individuals that the OPCW has grounds to believe to be of importance for the purpose of its mandate.”

Failure to do so calls for a Chapter VII resolution. It would be beyond credibility for Russia or China to veto a resolution that would call on a state party to honor its treaty commitments.

The OPCW has now given Libya until the end of 2016 to complete destruction of its chemical weapons program, after it missed the original April 29, 2012 deadline. CWC members Iraq, Russia and the US have also not yet completed destruction of their chemical arsenal while Angola, Egypt, Israel, Myanmar, North Korea and South Sudan have not joined the treaty.

– Denis Fitzgerald
On Twitter @denisfitz

10.06.13
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Djibouti – The UN’s Forgotten Crisis

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Oct 6, 2013 – Despite hosting a US military base and a French naval base, Djibouti’s humanitarian crisis is largely ignored by the international community.

The UN appealed for $70 million at the beginning of the year to address widespread malnutrition in the drought-stricken country but so far has only received $18 million, making it the most underfunded humanitarian appeal, according to the Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs.

The US, which operates its surveillance and armed drone programs for nearby Yemen and neighboring Somalia out of Djibouti, has contributed a mere $152,000 to the UN appeal, while France, which lost its rule over the country in 1977, has not made any contribution, UN figures show.

Djibouti ranks near the bottom of the Human Development Index and about one-third of the country’s children are malnourished while the practice of female genital mutilation is commonly carried out on girls between the ages of 2 and 5, according to UNICEF. 

– Denis Fitzgerald
On Twitter @denisfitz

Photo: A US Predator drone flying at sunset – Charles McCain/Flickr.

09.27.13
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Dalia Grybauskaite: The Next UN Secretary-General?

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Lithuania President Dalia Grybauskaite addressing the UN General Assembly on Sept. 26, 2013 (UN Photo/Ryan Brown)

Sept. 27, 2013 – It’s still a few years away but already there’s speculation about who will succeed Ban Ki-moon when his second and final term as secretary-general ends in 2016.

Eastern Europe is the only one of the five United Nations regional groups that has never had a secretary-general and there’s a view inside the UN that Eastern Europe’s turn will come at last.

Last year’s General Assembly president, Vuk Jeremic of Serbia, and current UN envoy to Afghanistan, Slovakia’s Jan Kubis, are among the names that have been mooted.

But the UN has also never had a female secretary-general and for an organization that spends a lot of time and resources promoting gender equality, there’s also a lot of talk that it’s past time a woman was at the helm after eight successive male secretaries-general.

Enter Lithuania President Dalia Grybauskaite. A former EU budget commissioner, she was elected as an independent candidate in 2009. Dubbed the Steel Magnolia, she cites Margaret Thatcher and Mahatma Gandhi as her political role models. Lithuania currently holds the presidency of the European Union and is expected to secure a two-year term on the Security Council for 2014-16, during which time the next UN chief will be selected.

In her address to the General Assembly on Thursday, Grybauskaite spoke about how her country, once a recipient of international aid, is now a donor country, and that the 21st century “must be the age of solidarity, equality and sustainable development.” And she began and ended her address speaking about the post-2015 development process, which will be guided by the next secretary-general.

But she also spoke about “those who want to enforce a specific course of development on others, by economic pressure, energy levers or cyber tools, by distorted information, or threats.” No doubt a reference to Russia. And therein lies the major obstacle to her possible selection as the next UN secretary-general: avoiding a Russian veto.

– Denis Fitzgerald
On Twitter @denisfitz

09.23.13
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Day One of UNGA Highlights Global Gender Gap in Politics

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Brazil’s President Dilma Rouseff Addresses 2012 General Assembly (UN Photo/Marco Castro)

Sept. 23, 2013 –  Only six of the 34 presidents, prime ministers and monarchs that will address the United Nations General Assembly on Tuesday are women.

Argentina (Cristina Kirchner), Bangladesh (Sheikh Hasina), Brazil (Dilma Rouseff), Costa Rica (Laura Chinchila), Liberia (Ellen Sirleaf) and Malawi (Joyce Banda) are the countries with female leaders taking the podium on the opening day of the high-level segment.

The less than 20 percent ratio of women to men is pretty much average across the board for female participation in politics with women occupying about 18 percent of parliamentary seats worldwide.

While some European governments, particularly Nordic ones, have up to 40 percent of women members, the continent lags when it comes to female leaders with only Denmark, Germany, Lithuania and Slovenia led by a woman.

Globally, less than 20 governments are headed by a woman. Besides the above, others include Jamaica, South Korea, Thailand and Trinidad & Tobago.

– Denis Fitzgerald
On Twitter @denisfitz

09.18.13
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Bashir Not The Only President Facing ICC Charges Planning UNGA Visit

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Sept. 18, 2013  – Kenya’s President Uhuru Kenyatta, who is facing charges of crimes against humanity at the International Criminal Court, is expected in New York next week to speak at the United Nations General Assembly.

The latest UN list of speakers for the annual General Debate notes that the head of state will speak on behalf of Kenya’s delegation next Wednesday.

Kenyatta was indicted by the Hague court in March 2011 charged with crimes including murder, rape and persecution that occurred in 2007-08 following a disputed election. He denies the charges.

Kenyatta was elected as Kenya’s president in March. President Obama did not visit the country, his ancestral homeland, during his June visit to Africa, traveling instead to Senegal, South Africa and Tanzania. Obama’s decision not to visit was reportedly due to Kenyatta’s election.

Unlike Sudan’s President Omar Al Bashir who has refused to appear at the court and is subject to an arrest warrant, Kenyatta has travelled to the Hague to defend himself.

Calls to Kenya’s UN mission to confirm his attendance were not answered.

– Denis Fitzgerald

photo: creative commons