Cebo.org is a collegial approach to information sharing between ethics-based
organizations with NGO status at the United Nations. Please contact member parties regarding the
positions of their respective organizations on matters expressed in this online journal.
January 31, 2004
Posted 10:23 AM
by Mary
France, Brazil Relaunch "Lula Fund" to Tax Arms Sales and Fight Poverty:
TOBIN TAX redubbed "Lula Tax" and directed towards Millenium Goals
"Brazil and France relaunched the idea of international taxes on arms sales and financial transactions to revitalize the flagging global drive against hunger and poverty, in a joint declaration made in Geneva.
President Jacques Chirac of France and his Brazilian counterpart, Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva, called on other countries to join a group of experts which would report back by September 2004 on possible new sources of financing to tackle poverty. "
January 30, 2004
Posted 1:52 PM
by Mary
Annan calls for genocide monitor
JANUARY 26, 2004
BBC WORLD NEWS
Annan calls for genocide monitor
UN Secretary General Kofi Annan has called for the creation of a commission to forestall future acts of genocide.
He told a world conference on the issue in Stockholm that the mass killings of the 1990s in countries such as Rwanda could not be allowed to happen again. He said he longed for the day when "confronted with a new Rwanda... the world would respond effectively".
This week's forum is first conference of its kind since the UN's 1948 resolution against genocide.
Mr Annan called for the creation of both a UN commission and a special rapporteur on the prevention of genocide.
January 24, 2004
Posted 9:57 PM
by Mary
www.nytimes.org :"U.N. Official Sees a 'Wal-Mart' in Nuclear Trafficking, by By MARK LANDLER
Published: January 23, 2004
DAVOS, Switzerland, Jan. 23 The head of the United Nations' watchdog agency on atomic weapons said today that the global black market of nuclear-related material and equipment had grown to the point that it amounted to 'a Wal-Mart' for weapons-seeking countries.
Mohamed M. ElBaradei, the director-general of the International Atomic Energy Agency, said he was taken aback during a recent trip to Libya by the scale and complexity of the illicit trafficking through which it obtained material and blueprints for nuclear weapons designs."
January 23, 2004
Posted 6:04 PM
by Mary
www.forbes.com
DAVOS-Annan says 'laws of jungle' threaten world order, Reuters, 01.23.04, 4:48 AM ET
DAVOS, Switzerland, Jan 23 (Reuters) - United Nations Secretary-General Kofi Annan said on Friday the world faced a combination of security threats and economic dangers that put the entire international order in jeopardy.
Annan said terrorism and the global war against it threatened to undermine human rights and split the world along cultural, religious and ethnic lines.
"Business...has a powerful interest in helping to prevent the international security system from sliding back into brute competition based on the laws of the jungle," he told corporate leaders at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland.
"In just a few short years, the prevailing atmosphere has shifted from belief in the near-inevitability of globalisation to deep uncertainty about the very survival of our tenuous global order," Annan said.
Collective security and the role of the world body itself were under serious strain, the U.N. chief added.
Annan appealed directly to heads of the world's leading companies to use their influence with governments to bring about fairer trade and enhance security.
He said business must play a vital part in averting conflicts which were often related to struggles to control natural resources.
"Business efforts to promote transparency and fight corruption can be effective measures in preventing conflict from happening in the first place," he said.
On the economic front, unfair trade -- especially farming subsidies -- was not only destroying the environment but choking off revenues from the countries that most needed them.
Corporations had the power and influence to help break the current impasse in world trade negotiations, Annan said.
"More than anything else, we need a poor-friendly deal on agriculture. No single issue more gravely imperils the multilateral trading system, from which you benefit so much," he said.
"Agricultural subsidies skew market forces. They destroy the environment. And they block poor-country exports from world markets, keeping them from earning revenues that would dwarf any conceivable level of aid and investment flows to those countries."
He added: "For all our sakes, and for the credibility of the system itself, they must be eliminated."
Posted 11:32 AM
by Mary
BBC NEWS | Business | Annan calls for development push:
"He made clear that however justified the focus on security since 11 September 2001 had been for richer countries, they risked abdicating their responsibilities to their poorer neighbours.
The first purpose of the UN, he noted, is to take collective measures to ensure the security and wellbeing of all nations.
'We must show that the UN is capable of fulfilling that purpose, not just for the most privileged members who are understandably preoccupied with terrorism and weapones of mass destruction,' he told his audience in Davos.
'But the UN must also protect millions of our fellow men and women from the more familiar threats of poverty, hunger and deadly diseases.'
Part of the problem, he said, was 'dwindling investment in those parts of the world where it is most needed, and trade talks which have left in place 'egregious biases against developing countries'. "
Poverty, Not Terror, the Real Threat - U.N. Chief:
Inter Press Service.
UNITED NATIONS - The world is so preoccupied with terrorism and weapons of mass destruction that it continues to ignore the real threats facing mankind, U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan warned Wednesday.
The fears that stalk most people, he said, are those of poverty, starvation, unemployment and deadly diseases -- not nuclear, biological or chemical weapons.
''In the daily lives of most people, terrorism and weapons of mass destruction (WMD) are remote and hypothetical threats,'' Annan added.
In an implicit criticism of the unilateral U.S. military attack on Iraq, Annan said the U.N. charter is very clear: member states have the right to defend themselves -- and each other -- if attacked.
''But the first purpose of the United Nations itself, as laid down in Article 1 of the charter, is to take effective collective measures for the prevention and removal of threats to the peace.''
His statement contrasted starkly to sentiments expressed Tuesday by U.S. President George W. Bush. In his annual 'State of the Union' address, Bush said global terrorism was still a major threat to the United States. "
January 20, 2004
Posted 10:02 PM
by Mary
UN Wire: An Independent News Briefing About the UN
Ethics Seen As Key To Development In Latin America
Tuesday, January 20, 2004
By Patricia Kowsmann
U.N. Wire
WASHINGTON — Latin American countries will not achieve sustainable development unless governments, the private sector and citizens understand and apply the concept of ethics in their daily lives and businesses, speakers concluded Friday at Ethics and Development Day, an event organized by the Inter-American Development Bank's Inter-American Initiative on Social Capital, Ethics and Development.
According to the speakers, who included Nobel Prize-winning economist Amartya Sen, former Chilean President Patricio Aylwin and IDB President Enrique Iglesias, problems that continuously affect Latin America, such as poverty, corruption, violence and inequality, result from a lack of ethics.
"Among the reasons that potentially rich countries have so much poverty is the fact that there exists an ethical deficit, and Latin America is currently the most unequal continent on the planet, all of which is regressive for economic and social progress," said Bernardo Kliksberg, general coordinator of IDB's Inter-American Initiative on Social Capital, Ethics and Development, which studies and promotes the integration of ethics, economics and development.
January 9, 2004
Posted 10:05 AM
by Mary
ODS system finally open to NGOS
World Federalist Movement (WFM) is pleased to announce that funds to make the
UN's Official Documents System (ODS. Formerly known as the Optical Disk System) available on the Internet have finally been designated on the UN's 2004 budget by the UN General Assembly Fifth Committee on administrative and budgetary matters. The ODS database contains all UN documents in the six official UN languages. ODS 'universal access' on the Internet will greatly facilitate the ability of NGOs throughout the world to monitor and contribute to the work of the UN.
This success in finally securing civil society access to the ODS is due in no small part to concerted efforts by NGOs to build government allies and work with key member states. In particular, it demonstrates the importance of carrying out UN General Assembly advocacy work during the months of October and November when governments are formulating their positions.
Together with other NGOs, WFM has been actively working on gaining access to
the ODS since 1997. For a history on these efforts, visit the Global Policy
Forum website:
http://www.globalpolicy.org
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"War does not determine who is right--only who is left." - Bertrand Russell
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