WTO secures package of trade outcomes
17/6/2022: The 12th Ministerial Conference of the World Trade Organization has secured multilateral agreement on a series of difficult issues. The “Geneva Package” contains decisions on fisheries subsidies, food safety and agriculture, and a waiver of certain requirements concerning compulsory licensing for COVID-19 vaccines.
Source: World Trade Organization
WTO under pressure to reform at overdue Geneva summit
12/6/2022: The World Trade Organization faces a deep internal crisis, as its first summit in years gets under way. Key agenda issues such as patent protection on COVID-19 vaccines and fishing subsidies remain unresolved.
Source: DW
Is the UN effective only in humanitarian relief?
6/6/2022: The UN is struggling to contain the spread of violent conflicts across the world. But its declining role in geo-politics has been compensated by its increasingly significant performance as a massive humanitarian relief organization.
Source: Inter Press Service
Stockholm+50 calls for urgent environmental transformation
3/6/2022: The Stockholm+50 meeting has renewed international commitments to address global environmental concerns. The meeting celebrated the landmark 1972 UN Conference on the Human Environment which led to multilateral actions to protect the planet.
Source: UN Environment Programme
Fifty years of the UN Environment Programme
1/6/2022: The UN Environment Programme is about to celebrate its 50th anniversary. Notable successes include protecting the ozone layer through the Montreal Protocol and establishing the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change.
Source: China Dialogue
Davos 2022 was a missed opportunity over globalisation
1/6/2022: The world's poorest countries are bearing the brunt of globalisation’s failures - food and energy price inflation, and an intellectual property regime that left billions without Covid-19 vaccines. The recent meeting of the World Economic Forum, the traditional champion of globalisation, failed to engage in soul-searching about how and why things have gone so wrong.
Source: The Guardian
China, Russia veto more UN sanctions on North Korea
27/5/2022: The veto by China and Russia on a US-led sanctions response to renewed ballistic missile launches has split the UN Security Council for the first time since it started punishing Pyongyang in 2006. The UN General Assembly will now discuss North Korea under a new rule effective whenever a veto is cast in the Security Council.
Source: CNA
World stumbling into a new era of risk
23/5/2022: World leaders are failing to prepare for a new era of complex and often unpredictable risks to peace as profound environmental and security crises converge. A new report by the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute argues that cooperation is essential for managing the environmental and security crises, along with the risks they create.
Source: Stockholm International Peace Research Institute
Rescuing global goals is world’s highest common priority
17/5/2022: UN Secretary-General António Guterres has warned that the repercussions of the COVID pandemic and the Ukraine war have put the drive towards the Sustainable Development Goals into reverse. He said that the developing world has been left to fend for itself “in a global financial system that favours the richest and punishes the poorest”.
Source: UN News
The time to support the global South is now
13/5/2022: No region of the world benefits from the rules-based multilateral order as much as the European Union. The abstentions of some developing and emerging countries in the vote on the Ukraine resolution in the UN General Assembly in early March was a warning signal that continuing a strong global engagement is essential for Europe.
Source: Inter Press Service