IDN InDepthNews

By Martin Khor* Recent government actions by Indonesia and India to issue compulsory licenses are extending the trend in Asia to increase access to cheaper medicines to treat serious ailments, especially HIV/AIDS, cancer and hepatitis B. The supply of generic…

By Shastri Ramachandaran* As skeletons keep tumbling out of the cupboard of a government besieged by corruption charges, an agitated people may well despair that battling corruption in India’s officialdom is a Sisyphean task. Far from gaining in momentum, the…

By Jamshed Baruah Since the then Indian Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru called for a “standstill agreement” on nuclear testing on April 2, 1954, 183 out of 196 states around the world have signed the Comprehensive Nuclear Test-Ban Treaty (CTBT) that…

By ANND* The Arab region has been witnessing a period of change and quest for new societal relations between the citizen and the state, based on respect of fundamental freedoms, rights, dignity, and rule of law. Along the multiplicity of…

By Ramesh Jaura The Geneva UN Conference on Disarmament (CD) has been turned into a talking shop because of the vested interests of a few mighty states without whose consent no genuine nuclear disarmament, not to speak of abolition of…

By Mel Frykberg * Following the Libyan revolution, in which women played a crucial part, and the participation of large numbers of female citizens in the July 2012 elections, Libyan women are now looking forward to a partnership and full…

The UN Conference on Sustainable Development, known as Rio+20 to commemorate the 20th anniversary of the 1992 Earth Summit with expressions of deep disappointment from broad sections of members of the media and the environmental NGOs, who saw little new commitments to action in the final text that was adopted by the heads of states and governments and their senior officials.

Luc Gnacadja has rock-solid reason to be upbeat: some 100 heads of state agreed at the Rio+20 – to strive for “a land-degradation neutral world”, characterised by zero growth in desertification.
In doing so they were responding to the UNCCD’s clarion call in a “policy brief” for ‘A Sustainable Development Goal for Rio+20: Zero Net Land Degradation’.

Short of passionately pleading for a profound change in the military-oriented mind-sets of decision-makers, SIPRI Director has called for a “far greater focus on less militarized solutions” to the global security challenges ahead, and for “an innovative integration of preventive diplomacy, pre-emptive and early-warning technologies, and cooperative transnational partnerships.”

The EU continues to be unable to solve its crises. The risk of a default of Greece on repayment of its debt in the next 3 months, or of the country leaving the Euro has increased considerably

Hopes that the situation would calm down after the second rescues package for Greece in March 2012, combined with a non-payment of part of the debt to banks have proved illusory