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United Nations

A Guide To Lima Climate Talks

December 7, 2014 Elizabeth Douglass, www.insideclimatenews.org , ,
The big-money crowd, which includes global corporations, the World Bank, the International Monetary Fund and other international financial institutions, will be influential because they hold sway over many economies and the global flow of cash. That makes them key players in financing the global energy transition and in funneling aid to poor countries that need help adapting to climate change. The World Resources Institute, Friends of the Earth, Oxfam and many other major environmental and social justice groups are important non-institutionalized voices and some are deeply involved in trying to shape a balanced and workable treaty. A growing contingent of investment groups, foundations and major corporations, all of them with substantial funds at their disposal, is pushing for unequivocal action on climate change and making the argument that climate action is an opportunity not economic punishment.

Will International Criminal Court Finally Hold US Accountable?

December 6, 2014 David Bosco, www.foreignpolicy.com , , , ,
The International Criminal Court in The Hague is tiptoeing closer to a confrontation with the United States. The key issue is U.S. detention practices, and the alleged use of torture, in Afghanistan. A report just released by the office of the court’s prosecutor, Fatou Bensouda, for the first time explicitly names U.S. forces as potential culprits. The back story of the International Criminal Court’s (ICC’s) inquiry into possible crimes in Afghanistan extends more than a decade. Afghanistan joined the ICC in early 2003, less than a year after the court opened its doors. That move gave the international prosecutor potentially broad jurisdiction over crimes committed by all combatants on Afghan soil.

Human Rights Assessment Of Unconventional Gas

November 24, 2014 Extreme Energy Initiative, www.extremeenergy.org , , , , ,
A report submitted to the UN Human Rights Council (HRC) in 2011 argues that the environmental damage caused by hydraulic fracturing for natural gas poses ‘a new threat to human rights’. This report concurs and calls attention to the most directly applicable rights, both substantive and procedural, implicated by fracking operations, including the rights to life and security of person, to water and health, to respect for home and private life and to public participation in the decision making processes concerning environmental matters, as well as the human rights dimensions of climate change and the rights of future generations.

Israel Denies Entry To UN Inquiry Into Alleged War Crimes

November 14, 2014 Itamar Eichner, www.ynetnews.com , , , ,
Israel denied entry on Wednesday evening to members of a UN commission appointed by the Human Rights Council to investigate possible war crimes committed during Operation Protective Edge. Members of the committee, often referred to by the name of the lead investigator, Prof. William Schabas, had arrived in Amman before asking permission to enter Israel. Jerusalem refused their request and the decision led to an announcement that Israel would not cooperate with the commission. The Schabas commission was appointed by the UN Human Rights Council in Geneva to investigate alleged war crimes committed by Israel and Hamas during the heated confrontation last summer.

Michael Brown’s Family Brings Message Of Police Violence To Geneva

November 12, 2014 Deirdre Fulton, www.commondreams.org , ,
The family of Michael Brown, the unarmed black teenager shot and killed by a white police officer this summer, and grassroots organizers from Ferguson, Missouri are in Geneva, Switzerland this week to testify before the United Nations Committee Against Torture, press for justice in Ferguson and other disenfranchised communities, and "to unite governments around the world against the human rights violations that result from racial profiling and police violence." The #FergusonToGeneva contingent—comprising Michael Brown, Sr., Michael's mother Lesley McSpadden, human rights advocates, and representatives from the Missouri-based organizations HandsUpUnited, Organization for Black Struggle, and Missourians Organizing for Reform and Empowerment—will also present to the UN a report (pdf)released last month, condemning the Ferguson police department for Brown's killing as well as militarized law enforcement response to subsequent demonstrations.

Pay Rent Or Drink Water: Detroit Crisis Escalates

November 5, 2014 Ben Ptashnik, www.truth-out.org , , ,
Despite mass protests, the emergency management water shutoffs in Detroit have resumed, even as UN experts publish a press release calling the water disconnects "contrary to human rights" and activists decry them as "genocide." The corporate-led humanitarian crisis in Detroit is escalating, forcing local activists to appeal for international intervention. "The indignity suffered by people whose water was disconnected is unacceptable" according to Ms. Catarina de Albuquerque, the special United Nations rapporteur on human right to water and sanitation, in a press release October 20. The "unprecedented scale" of water shutoffs is targeting the "most vulnerable and poorest" of the city's population, including tens of thousands of African Americans, said Leilani Farha, UN special rapporteur on the right to adequate housing.

Venezuela At The UN, Washington At Bay

October 23, 2014 Greg Grandin, www.venezuelanalysis.com , ,
Last week, 181 member states of the United Nations voted yea in Venezuela’s favor, allowing Caracas to take one of the two non-permanent seats on the Security Council reserved for Latin America. Tongues clucked and fingers wagged. In the run-up to the vote, editorial boards, columnists and members of congress urged Washington to whip together the sixty-five nations needed to block Venezuela’s two-year term. But in the end, Samantha Power, the US ambassador to the UN, could only secure only eleven opposing votes.

UN: Upholding Human Rights Means Urgent Climate Action

October 20, 2014 Andrea Germanos, www.commondreams.org , , ,
Climate change poses a global threat to human rights, underscoring the need for worldwide action to rein in runaway greenhouse gas emissions, a group of United Nations independent experts has stressed. The Special Rapporteurs, independent experts and working group members issued their warning in an open letter (pdf) dated Friday and sent to governments involved in the upcoming UN climate negotiations. "The need for urgency in addressing this topic is underscored by the approaching deadlines for the climate negotiations to reach a concrete solution," they write. "We urge the State Parties to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change to recognize the adverse effects of climate change on the enjoyment of human rights, and to adopt urgent and ambitious mitigation and adaptation measures to prevent further harm. We call on the State Parties to include language in the 2015 climate agreement that provides that the Parties shall, in all climate change related actions, respect, protect, promote, and fulfill human rights for all."

The Next Stage Of Israel’s Blockade

October 18, 2014 Ali Abunimah, www.electronicintifada.net , ,
Details given in a confidential briefing this week confirm that the UN has agreed to become the chief enforcer of Israel’s ongoing siege of Gaza. Under the guise of reconstruction, the UN will be monitoring and gathering private information about Palestinian households to be passed onto Israel, which will have a veto over which families get aid to rebuild their homes. This was presented as part of an effort to try to entrench and legitimize the Israeli-backed Ramallah-based Palestinian Authority of Mahmoud Abbas in Gaza. Under the arrangements, Israel will be given even more intrusive control over the lives of Palestinians in Gaza, who will be subjected to onerous ongoing monitoring as they try to rebuild their houses, communities and lives following Israel’s summer massacre.

Green Shock Doctrine: Decade Of False Climate Solutions

October 9, 2014 Dennis Trainor, Jr., www.acronymtv.wordpress.com , ,
Anne Petermann is the Executive Director of Global Justice Ecology Project. She is also the Coordinator of the Campaign to STOP GE Trees; the North American Focal Point for the Global Forest Coalition; and a member of the Board of Directors of the Will Miller Social Justice Lecture Series. She has been involved in movements for forest protection and Indigenous rights since 1991, and the international and national climate justice movements since 2004. She co-founded the Eastern North American Resource Center of the Native Forest Network in 1993, and the STOP GE Trees Campaign in 2004. She also participated in the founding of the Durban Group for Climate Justice in 2004 and Climate Justice Now! in 2007 at the Bali UN Climate Conference. In 2008, Global Justice Ecology Project spearheaded the founding of the North American Mobilization for Climate Justice.

UN Coming To Detroit To Investigate Human Rights Violations

October 7, 2014 Staff, www.PopularResistance.org , , , ,
United Nations human rights investigators are coming to Detroit on a fact-finding mission to learn more about the shutting off of water and other likely human rights violations. The Special Rapporteur on Human Right to Safe Drinking Water and Sanitation; and the Special Rapporteur on Adequate Housing will listen to witnesses describing the situation in Detroit. International and locally known panelists will hear testimony at this town-hall from Michigan residents regarding water, sanitation, and housing issues offered by victims of this crisis.

Alternative To UN, ‘People’s General Assembly’ Meets In NY

September 30, 2014 Vernie Yocogan-Diano, www.bulatlat.com , , , ,
As world leaders gathered in New York for the UN General Assembly on September 24, an alternative People’s General Assembly was organized outside that provided a more accurate picture of the state of the world. “When governments come together, they generally create rules to increase consumption at all costs and guarantee profit to corporations and the rich. These rules have required the loss of lands and livelihoods, slavery-like employment, militarisation and a climate that threatens the very survival of human beings” said the People’s General Secretary Vernie Yocogan-Diano, an indigenous woman from the Cordillera Women’s Education Action Research Center in the Cordillera Region, Philippines.

‘What’s Possible’: The U.N. Climate Summit Opening Film

September 29, 2014 TakePart Staff, www.takepart.com , ,
Presented to world leaders at the 2014 United Nations Climate Summit in New York, this short inspirational film shows that climate change is solvable. We have the technology to harness nature sustainably for a clean, prosperous energy future, but only if we act now. Narrated by Morgan Freeman, What's Possible calls on the people of the world to insist leaders get on the path of a livable climate and future for humankind. What's Possible was created by director Louie Schwartzberg, writer Scott Z. Burns, Moving Art Studio, and Lyn Davis Lear and the Lear Family Foundation. It features the creative gifts of Freeman and composer Hans Zimmer.

Can A Treaty To Regulate Arms Trade Become Law?

September 29, 2014 Joel Jaeger, www.ipsnews.com , , ,
With state support moving at an unprecedented pace, the Arms Trade Treaty will enter into force on Dec. 24, 2014, only 18 months after it was opened for signature. Eight states – Argentina, the Bahamas, Bosnia and Herzegovina, the Czech Republic, Saint Lucia, Portugal, Senegal and Uruguay – ratified the Arms Trade Treaty (ATT) at a special event at the United Nations this past Thursday, Sep. 25, pushing the number of states parties up to 53. As per article 22 of the treaty, the ATT comes into force as a part of international law 90 days after the 50th instrument of ratification is deposited.

Solidarity Movement To End UN Occupation Of Haiti

September 25, 2014 Ajamu Nangwaya, www.blackagendareport.com , ,
We are no longer living in the 19th century with the specter of Haiti’s successful struggle for its freedom haunting the consciousness of slave masters across the Americas. Yet the military occupation of this country since 2004 by way of the United Nations Stabilization Mission in Haiti (MINUSTAH) is sending a clear message that the Haitians’ tentative step toward exercising control over the destiny in the 1990s and the early years of the new century is still “a source of alarm and terror” to imperial overlords such a Canada, France, and the United States. The MINUSTAH occupation army has a combined force of 7,408 soldiers and police personnel as of July 31, 2014. This armed entity has served as the muscle behind the schemes of the local elite and foreign interests in preventing the disenfranchised urban and rural laboring classes from seeking to capture the levers of national political, economic, and social power.
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