📰 U.S., Israel quit UNESCO
•The U.S. on Thursday announced its withdrawal from the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO), accusing it of “continuing anti-Israel bias.”
•UNESCO is the first UN agency to have admitted Palestine as a full member in 2011. As required by law, the U.S. has stopped funding UNESCO since then. The U.S. withdrawal will take effect on December 31, 2018. Until then, it will remain a full member.
•Israel has also decided to pull out of UNESCO, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said. “The Prime Minister has instructed the Foreign Ministry to prepare Israel’s withdrawal from the organisation alongside the U.S.,” his office said in a statement.
•Secretary of State Rex Tillerson notified UNESCO Director-General Irina Bokova of the decision. State Department spokesperson Heather Nauert said the U.S. would seek a permanent observer mission to UNESCO.
📰 ‘EU, India are natural partners based on values’
Envoy says summit gave a political impetus to the process for a fair and free trade agreement
•The 14th EU-India summit completed in New Delhi last week has given the two sides a much clearer political strategic direction, says the EU Ambassador to India Tomasz Kozlowski, also dismissing comments by the German Ambassador that it was a failure that EU and India leaders didn’t agree on the resumption of the Free Trade Agreement talks. Excerpts :
The summit last week saw a declaration that India and the EU are natural partners. How do you see this partnership growing?
•We are really natural partners, based on principles of democracy, human rights, tolerance and internal diversity. Our task is always how to translate these principles into clearly identified common interests. And I think that during the EU-India summit [we] agreed to deepen both strategic relations and to go ahead with these common goals with a long-term view on global and regional challenges, and a rule-based international order. We have common responsibilities to secure peace and stability because of the current uncertainties in the global arena. The EU and India are very stable and predictable partners.
In terms of specifics, do they also see common geopolitical threats, as India in its region sees a country like China as a bigger challenge, while for the EU it is Russia?
•The current world is interconnected, and the geographical distance between India and Europe is no longer key. In the past EU-India relations have been blocked by specific bilateral issues like the FTA or the Italian Marines issue, but this time, foreign policy and security issues played an important role in the Summit, with far-reaching statements on naval exercises, space cooperation, etc. which two years ago would have seemed impossible.
The statement on Pakistan-based terror groups is also new. How will EU and India take this cooperation forward from here?
•This time, we have mentioned not only entities but specific names (Lakhvi and Dawood Ibrahim), and we have agreed to consult each other about the listing of terrorists and designating organisations. We are working on establishing direct links between Europol and Indian agencies. It means our security cooperation is becoming more practical, and more operational.
On the Chinese Belt and Road initiative, India had been the only country raising concerns this year. Does EU too have concerns about the BRI now, along with those on the South China Sea?
•We are in favour of connecting Asia to Europe, but at the same time we want to be clear about the principles it should be based on. It is also important to have accessibility of the high seas on the basis of international law. My understanding is there is an absolute commonality of views between India and the European Union on this.
Will the European Union support India’s case for a permanent seat at the UN Security Council as well?
•We are in favour of India playing a more important role in the international arena. We are in favour of the UNSC becoming more efficient and effective.
•You speak of the steps taken at the India-EU summit. Yet days after the summit, German Ambassador Martin Ney said the summit had failed to reach an agreement on resuming free trade talks, and India and the EU have failed to realise their potential. Do you share that disappointment?
•This week the Indian and EU trade ministers have met and in mid-November we will have the next meeting of chief negotiators who have been tasked by the leaders to move the file forward.
•So I refuse to enter into any views that we failed to agree on this issue at the summit.
📰 World Bank cautions against protectionism
Says it could derail fragile recovery of global economy
•After years of disappointing growth, the global economy has begun to accelerate, World Bank President Jim Yong Kim said on Thursday, cautioning that a rise in protectionism and policy uncertainty could derail this fragile recovery.
Weak investment
•Addressing a press conference at the start of annual meetings of the International Monetary Fund and World Bank here, Mr. Kim said that though trade is picking up, investment remains weak.
•“Overall, we are seeing growth rise in most developing and advanced economies — which is why countries need to make critical investments now. This is the time to implement the reforms that are going to insulate against potential downturns in the future,” the World Bank chief told reporters.
•He expressed concern that risks such as rise in protectionism, policy uncertainty or possible financial market turbulence could derail this fragile recovery.
Building resilience
•He said countries need to build resilience against the overlapping challenges the world faces today, including the effects of climate change, natural disasters, conflict, forced displacement, famine and disease.
📰 Saving child brides
Not the reasoning but the implications of the ruling on child marriage are a cause for worry
•By ruling that marriage cannot be a licence to have sex with a minor girl, the Supreme Court has corrected an anomaly in the country’s criminal law. Under the Indian Penal Code, it is an offence to have sex with a girl below 18 years of age, regardless of consent. However, it made an exception if the girl was the man’s wife, provided she was not below 15. In other words, what was statutory rape is treated as permissible within a marriage. By reading down the exception to limit it to girls aged 18 and older, the court has sought to harmonise the various laws in which any person under 18 is a minor. Overall, the judgment is in keeping with the reformist, and indisputably correct, view that early marriage is a serious infringement of child rights. The judges draw extensively on studies that demonstrate child marriage is a social evil that adversely affects the physical and mental health of children, denies them opportunities for education and self-advancement, infringes on their bodily autonomy and deprives them of any role in deciding on many aspects of their lives.
•As a move to strengthen the fight against child marriage and help stricter enforcement of the Prohibition of Child Marriage Act, 2006, the judgment cannot be faulted. But the practical implications of the judgment are worrying. Are all men married to girls between the ages of 15 and 18 to be condemned to face criminal cases as rapists? Given the prevalence of child marriage in this country, it is doubtful whether it is possible — or even desirable — to implement the statutory rape law uniformly in the context of marriages. What, for instance, does this mean for those married under Muslim personal law, which permits girls below 18 to be married? The age of consent under the IPC was raised in 2013 from 16 to 18 to bring it in line with the Protection of Children from Sexual Offences Act, 2012. However, the age above which marriage is an exception to rape was retained at 15, as fixed in 1940. POCSO criminalises even consensual teenage sexual activity and the latest ruling has brought this into the domain of marriage. A teenager could be prosecuted for a sexual offence under POCSO even if he was just a little above 18. In the same way, a teenage husband may now be threatened with prosecution for rape. Significantly, if boys under 18 but over 16 are charged with penetrative sexual assault under POCSO or rape under the IPC, which can be termed ‘heinous offences’, they could face the prospect of being tried as adults, according to the juvenile law as it stands now. Treating all below 18 as children may be good for their care and protection, but whether 18 is the right age for consent in this day and age remains a moot question. The state’s argument that given the widespread prevalence of child marriage it is not possible to remove the exception may be flawed from a formal standpoint, but its concerns about the implications of the verdict must not be underestimated.
📰 Averting disaster
Invest in efforts to adapt to climate change even while reducing disaster risk
•In recent times, Category 5 hurricanes in the Caribbean and in the American mainland; record floods across Bangladesh, India and Nepal; and drought emergencies in 20 countries in Africa have damaged these regions, killed hundreds, and ruined the lives of millions. For those countries that are least developed, the impact of disasters can strip away livelihoods; for developed and middle-income countries, the economic losses from infrastructure alone can be massive; for both, these events reiterate the need to act on a changing climate, the effects of which have been revelatory.
•While 4.2 million people dying prematurely each year from ambient pollution gets relatively little media attention, the effect of heat-trapping greenhouse gases on extreme weather events is coming into sharper focus. It could not be otherwise when the impacts of these weather events are so profound. During the last two years, over 40 million people, mainly in countries which contribute least to global warming, have been forced from their homes by disasters. There is clear consensus: rising temperatures are increasing the amount of water vapour in the atmosphere, leading to more intense rainfall and flooding in some places, and drought in others. Some areas experience both. TOPEX/Poseidon, the first satellite to precisely measure rising sea levels, was launched 25 years ago. Those measurements have observed a global increase of 3.4 millimeters per year since then; that’s a total of 85 millimeters over 25 years. Rising and warming seas are contributing to the intensity of tropical storms worldwide.
Tackle climate change
•While the Paris Agreement has set the world on a long-term path towards a low-carbon future, it is a windy path that reflects pragmatism and realities in each individual country. Thus, while carbon emissions are expected to drop as countries meet their targets, the impacts of climate change may be felt for some time, leaving the world with little choice but to invest, simultaneously, in efforts to adapt to climate change and reduce disaster risk. This will require international cooperation. Restoring the ecological balance between emissions and the natural absorptive capacity of the planet is the long-term goal. It is critical to remember that the long-term reduction of emissions is the most important risk reduction tactic we have, and we must deliver on that ambition. The November UN Climate Conference in Bonn provides an opportunity to not only accelerate emission reductions but to also boost the work of ensuring that the management of climate risk is integrated into disaster risk management as a whole. Poverty, rapid urbanisation, poor land use, ecosystems decline and other risk factors will amplify the impacts of climate change. Today, on International Day for Disaster Reduction, we call for them to be addressed in a holistic way.
•This article has been cut for length. Achim Steiner is Administrator of the UNDP; Patricia Espinosa is Executive Secretary of UN Climate Change; Robert Glasser is the UN Secretary-General’s Special Representative for Disaster Risk Reduction
