Showing posts with label UN Reform. Show all posts
Showing posts with label UN Reform. Show all posts
Friday, July 13, 2012
Forbes: Why United Nations Reform can't wait
Click here to read full article on Forbes
It’s no secret that the United Nations hasn’t lived up to its billing as a champion of human rights and democratic values since its establishment in 1945. All too often, the UN system has aided and abetted some of the world’s most odious regimes—and served as a political weapon for those countries against the West. Yet even by these standards, this summer has seen an unprecedented level of rot in the world’s most powerful international forum.
Iran, under mounting pressure from the international community for its persistent nuclear ambitions, was elected to a top post at the UN Arms Trade Treaty conference in Geneva in early July. To add insult to injury, the news came just days after the Islamic Republic was found to be flouting UN restrictions by shipping arms to the regime of Syrian dictator Bashar al-Assad—arms that Assad has subsequently used against his own people.
Click here to read full article on Forbes
Friday, January 27, 2012
USUN's Joe (Torsella) want help on Twitter to identify solutions & savings at the UN
Believe or not even an Ambassador of the country who pays 22.7% of U.N. bills (as in Billions) wants to find solutions for UN - not by asking Ban Ki-moon or his political-reform guru Bob Orr (an American) - but by going on Twitter...
Tuesday, January 3, 2012
Helen Clark welcomes "new broom" at FAO - forgets that after three years at helm of UNDP has failed to clean/reform her own house
HelenClarkUNDP Helen Clark
New broom at #FAO - New #Food and #Agriculture Organisation chief will also prioritise #Africa. gu.com/p/34e25/tw via@guardian
@undpwatchundpwatch
Mentioned in this Tweet
HelenClarkUNDP Helen Clark · FollowI'm Administrator@UNDP and former Prime Minister of#NewZealand, passionate about human#developmentworld-wide.
RosLehtinen Ileana Ros-Lehtinen · UnfollowCongresswoman Ileana Ros-Lehtinen
Tuesday, March 2, 2010
SCENARIOS-US climate change bill options for senators
WASHINGTON, March 1 (Reuters) - A new U.S. climate change bill could make its debut in the Senate soon in what likely would be the last big effort by Democrats to enact major environmental reforms this year.
The House of Representatives narrowly passed a "cap and trade" bill in June to bring down U.S. emissions of carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases blamed for global warming.
But that bill, and a similar one approved by the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee in November, did not gain broad enough support to win passage in the Senate.
As a result, Democratic Senator John Kerry has been trying to come up with a compromise that could pass in this congressional election year. He's been working with Republican Senator Lindsey Graham and Independent Senator Joseph Lieberman.
Here are possible scenarios for how they might force significant reductions in carbon pollution and increase the use of cleaner alternative fuels. If they can attract at least 60 votes, a bill could be on the Senate floor by June:
NO CAP AND TRADE:
Senators have been looking for ways other than cap and trade to increase the price of fossil fuels and thus encourage industry to use cleaner alternative power sources.
The House bill would have imposed a cap and trade program on utilities, oil refineries and large manufacturers. The government would require companies to hold permits for every ton of carbon pollution they emit. Fewer and fewer permits would be available between 2012-2050 and those permits could be traded in a new, regulated financial market. The bill aims to reduce US emissions 17 percent by 2020, from 2005 levels.
Instead, senators are weighing several alternatives listed below. According to environmental groups, one option is to impose one of those carbon-pricing schemes for utilities and a separate fee for the transportation sector, such as an oil industry tax. The third main sector -- manufacturing -- might be spared from new pollution controls for several years.
NARROW CAP AND TRADE:
Senators had been looking at initially using cap and trade just for the utilities, which produces about 40 percent of carbon emissions. Several industry and environmental groups support the cap and trade route, but many senators are loathe to vote for a new trading scheme at a time when poor regulation has been blamed for one of the worst recessions in decades.
SAFE MARKETS:
It's been called "training wheels" for cap and trade. Supporters say "Safe Markets" combines the emissions certainty of cap and trade with the price certainty of a carbon tax. Between 2012-2020, government would impose caps on pollution emissions and companies would have to hold permits to emit carbon dioxide. But a board would set permit prices and decide how many permits to issue each year to maintain the target prices.
"Businesses get the price predictability they need and we still meet emissions goals," said Marty Spitzer of the Center for Clean Air Policy. Under the plan, some emissions trading would be allowed, but in a very narrow price range. In 2020 the system would move to a full-blown cap and trade.
CAP AND DIVIDEND:
Being sold as a much simpler alternative to cap and trade, the proposal by Senators Maria Cantwell, a Democrat, and Susan Collins, a Republican, also aims to pare carbon emissions. But instead of focusing on the plants that spew pollution, it would focus the emissions cap upstream -- on coal and oil companies and importers that would have to hold the pollution permits.
The dividend part is the checks consumers would receive each month to help ease the cost of higher energy prices.
The Edison Electric Institute, representing utilities, hates the idea, claiming it would bring big price increases. It also fears consumers might not make the connection that the dividend check they receive is to help cover higher costs, thus possibly undercutting support for rate increases.
Critics say Midwestern consumers would have to pay higher energy prices because of their reliance on coal, but consumers everywhere would get the same government compensation. Energy prices also could end up being higher than with cap and trade.
CARBON TAX:
Republican Senator Lisa Murkowski is looking at a tax on carbon-intensive fuels and levying it "as far upstream as possible," such as on oil company exploration and production.
But environmental groups have also heard talk of a gasoline tax with the revenues being used to help development of electric vehicles or to replenish highway maintenance funds.
PHASE-IN FOR MANUFACTURERS:
Environmentalists also have said the Kerry-Graham-Lieberman bill could hold off on mandating emissions reductions for factories, including carbon-intensive manufacturers of paper, glass, chemicals and steel.
CLEAN COAL, NUCLEAR POWER AND OIL DRILLING:
To attract support from Republicans and fence-sitting Democrats, the bill is certain to have funds to develop clean coal technologies; additional loan guarantees and tax breaks to help the nuclear power industry expand; and incentives for more domestic energy drilling, including offshore. (Reporting by Richard Cowan; Editing by Cynthia Osterman)
Tuesday, September 29, 2009
Exclusive: Rep. Ros-Lehtinen Demands UN Reform – Where Does the President Stand?
FAMILY SECURITY MATTERSSeptember 28, 2009
The Editors
There has long been an effort – many efforts, in fact – to reform the United Nations, but apparently to no avail. There has been pressure to reform the UN Security Council, to reform global governance at the UN, to reform the UN Human Rights Council, the UN Development Program and the UN Relief and Works Agency and much, much more. To date, nothing has been reformed.
Things are so bad at the UN that, back in July, member states were even unable to reach consensus during a session of the Ad Hoc Committee on the Comprehensive Convention onInternational Terrorism. On what were they trying to agree? The definition of terrorism and “terrorist acts,” “state terrorism” as a form of terrorism, activities of armed forcesof the state during armed conflict, the title of the convention, and the timing of the conference on terrorism.
We kid you not.
An example of such glaring incompetence is the question of the unresolved issues at the UN Human Rights Council. According to Foreign Policy magazine:
The task of reforming the United Nations Human Rights Council is a daunting one. Since the council was set up in 2006 to replace the discredited U.N. Commission on Human Rights, it has achieved little to cheer about. Human rights pariahs such as China, Cuba, Egypt, Russia, and Saudi Arabia have been easily elected to the council and have so far achieved great success in making sure it doesn't do its real job. Israel gets pummeled time and again, while countries like Zimbabwe, Belarus, and Uzbekistan escape serious attention. Even the situation in Sudan has received only a weak and mostly ineffective response. A newly released Freedom House ‘Report Card on the Human Rights Council’ gives the council a passing grade in only one of 11 criteria.
With this litany of failures, it is understandable when critics claim that the council is unsalvageable and that no amount of resources can fix its inherent problems. But these critics overlook the fundamental reason why it has failed to date. The council's primary weakness is not that the world's most repressive societies manage to get themselves elected and then run roughshod over the council's other members, but rather that the majority of the world's democracies let them do it. There are more democracies than dictatorships in the world today; yet curiously, it is the despots who focus their diplomatic energies on the council.
The United States is perhaps the only democracy with the clout needed to move the council in the right direction. At a time when Freedom House has tracked three straight years of global backsliding in fundamental political rights and civil liberties, it is all the more urgent to try to shore up the world's only global body dedicated to protecting and advancing human rights.
In spite of pinning virtually all hopes on “the only democracy with the clout needed,” experts say that the Obama administration, evidently lacking both courage and backbone, is unlikely to push such despotic countries as those who sully the Human Rights Council by their membership on it for much-needed UN reforms in any area or at any council at the United Nations.
Luckily, there are others in Washington who disagree with the apparent Obama strategy and bravely say so out loud. One such leader is U.S. Rep. Ileana Ros-Lehtinen (R-FL), ranking Republican on the House Foreign Affairs Committee, who this past week delivered a special address on the Floor of the House calling for sweeping reform at the United Nations.
The statement by Ros-Lehtinen is as follows:
UN agencies have proven time and again to be corrupt, ineffective, biased, and hijacked by enemies of freedom. Yet, the U.S. continues to send billions to the UN – no strings attached.
The UN Human Rights Council, dominated by human rights abusers like China, Cuba, and Saudi Arabia, recently released a report accusing Israel of ‘war crimes’ and ‘possibly, crimes against humanity’ for defending its citizens against rocket and mortar fire from Islamist militants in Gaza.
The United Nations Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA) still refuses to vet its staff and aid recipients for ties to violent extremist groups.
The UN Development Program (UNDP) is accused of misusing funds in Zimbabwe,Afghanistan, and North Korea, to name a few.
The list goes on and on. It is time to bring real reform to the troubled United Nations, and to put U.S. taxpayer dollars to work for the American people, and not for the UN, where the inmates run the asylum.
It should be noted that Ros-Lehtinen is the author of the United Nations Transparency, Accountability, and Reform Act (H.R. 557), which conditions U.S. contributions to the UN on sweeping, meaningful reform of the UN system. This measure has the support of nearly 100 co-sponsors.
Let your Congressional representatives know what you think about such an important topic. We can guarantee they will want to hear from you.
- Brought to you by the editors and research staff of FamilySecurityMatters.org.
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