Geneva, Switzerland (GenevaLunch) – The Swiss government will decide next Wednesday how to best withdraw its support for Kofi Annan’s Global Humanitarian Forum (GHF), according to Le Temps newspaper, which says the decision has already been taken. The Wednesday meeting will review whether to pay CHF1 million in debts incurred by the forum or whether to let it sort out its own affairs, says journalist Stéphane Bussard in an article Friday 19 March. Bussard does not cite a source.
Walter Fust, who heads the non-profit foundation created in 2007, told Le Temps Thursday that he was not aware any such decision had been made.
Bluefin tuna (photo, ©2010 WWF/Canon Manu San Felix)
[WWF video] Geneva, Switzerland (GenevaLunch) – The Atlantic bluefin tuna’s last reasonable chance for survival as a species has taken a beating: its defenders have been defeated in a critical vote at a Cites meeting in Doha, Qatar. A clear majority of nations of the Cites pact of countries, which regulates trade in endangered species, voted 18 March against a ban on bluefin tuna fishing.
The Cites head office is based in Geneva.
Gland, Switzerland-based World Wildlife Fund for Nature, which has campaigned for a ban to allow stocks to recover from over-fishing, says 72 countries in Cites voted against the ban, while 43 voted for it and 14 abstained.
Update 12:35 Geneva, Switzerland (GenevaLunch) – The United Nations Environment Programme (Unep) has criticized the impact on wildlife of construction projects for the 2014 Olympic Winter Games in Sochi, Russia. The cumulative impact, in particular, of several projects around the Black Sea resort are not being addressed, says Unep in a new report that was requested by the Russian government. The report follows a late January visit to the site by a Unep team.
It is not too late for the Games to serve as an environmental showcase, however, says Unep, which praises the Russian Railway, Ministry of Natural Resources and the 2014 Sochi Games organizers for being open to discussions.
Coffee at the Hotel Richmond, Geneva
Nyon, Switzerland (GenevaLunch) – Uganda is starting a planting programme for wilt-free coffee strains. Wilt, a fungus, has killed half of the country’s robusta variety coffee plants in 20 years. Uganda is Africa’s second largest coffee producer, after Ethiopia, but the largest producer of robusta, which accounts for 85 percent of its coffee exports. The new disease-free strain was developed by Uganda’s Coffee Research Institute and gardens will be planted with the new strain this year, Uganda-based Emma Joynson-Hicks of Cafe Africa told Bloomberg.
Cafe Africa was started in Nyon in 2006 by John Schluter, a retired Ugandan coffee grower, to reduce poverty in Africa by helping the continent restore its coffee industry to 1975 levels, when it was a major player in the world coffee business.
Robusta is often mixed with Arabica, particularly in France and Italy, to add strength to coffee.
Geneva, Switzerland (GenevaLunch) - Unicef, the UN children’s fund, will have a new executive director 1 May: Anthony Lake, a US citizen, who replaces Anne Veneman, also a US citizen. Lake, 70, is professor of Practice of Diplomacy at Georgetown University in Washington, DC, USA. He has held several top US diplomatic positions, working under Henry Kissinger, President Jimmy Carter and for President Bill Clinton as his national security advisor. He also served as Barack Obama’s foreign policy advisor during his presidential campaign.
He has served on the board of Unicef USA. UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon announced the appointment Tuesday 16 March in New York.
”The head of UNICEF has always been an American, largely because the United States is the largest contributor to the agency, which is active in 190 countries,” according to the New York Times.
Links to other sites: New York Times, People’s Daily, Unicef announcement
Governments asked Ban Ki-moon and IPCC for external review
Geneva, Switzerland (GenevaLunch) – UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon and IPCC (Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change) Chair Rajendra Pachauri have asked the InterAcademy Council (IAC), a group of the world’s leading science academies, to review the scientific procedures of the Geneva-based IPCC. IPCC was created in 1986 but came into the limelight in 2007 when it won the Nobel Peace Prize jointly with former US Vice-president Al Gore for work on climate change. The group has come under pressure since the news surfaced in recent months that its 2007 report on climate change contained scientific errors which were not caught in the approvals and editing process.
The two men asked for the review after IPCC member governments requested it.
In a statement issued as part of a press conference in New York to announce the review, the IPCC and the Ban’s office stated that:
Brazil's tax on ketchup to jump to 38%
Geneva, Switzerland (GenevaLunch) – Brazil is taking up its option, approved by the Geneva-based World Trade Organization, to slap a 30 percent import tax on fruit from the US after what it calls eight years of negotiations and four years of trying to get the US to end its cotton subsidies. The US remains the world’s largest cotton producer, while Brazil is fifth. Brazil handed its list of taxes to the WTO Monday 8 March. Cars will also be taxed and ketchup will be taxed at 38 percent instead of 18 percent.
Links to other sites: AP/Yahoo news, Fruitnet, World Trade Organization
Refugees from Equator province, November 2009, when number reached 100,000 http://www.flickr.com/photos/unhcr/4271338608/ (photo: BB Diallo/UNHCR)
Geneva, Switzerland (GenevaLunch) – Several United Nations offices appealed Tuesday morning 9 March in Geneva for an urgent infusion of aid money to meet the needs of 110,000 refugees in northern Republic of Congo’s Likouala province. Eighty-two percent are women and children who fled fighting in Democratic Republic of Congo’s Equateur Province. UNHCR is asking for $20 million.
The request is part of a broader appeal by UN agencies, who say they have received only $17.3 million of the nearly $59 million the need for refugees from the Equator region in the country in 2010. Partners in the appeal are: the World Food Programme, Unicef, the World Health Organization, Unesco, the UN Development Programme, the UN Food and Agricultural Organization and the UNFPA.
The refugees fled from Equator province in late October 2009 “when Enyele militiamen launched deadly assaults on ethnic Munzayas over fishing and farming rights in the Dongo area,” the UNHCR says.
Eileen Chamberlain Donahoe, US ambassador
Geneva, Switzerland (GenevaLunch) - The US Senate has approved two more nominations by President Barack Obama for ambassador posts in Geneva: Laura Kennedy as Ambassador and Representative to the Conference on Disarmament, and of Eileen Chamberlain Donahoe as the United States Representative to the UN Human Rights Council, with the rank of Ambassador. Betty E King, who heads the US Mission in Geneva, was approved in February by the Senate and presented her credentials to the UN 3 March.
Michael Punke’s nomination as Ambassador to the World Trade Organziation is still pending.
Ed. note: photo of Laura Kennedy not yet available, but we will add it once it is.
Background on Kennedy and Chamberlain Donahoe nominations, GenevaLunch
Link to US Mission, Geneva with biographies of both new ambassadors
He Yafei (photo, Chinese Embassy, Switzerland)
Geneva, Switzerland (GenevaLunch) – China’s new ambassador to the UN and international organizations, He Yafei, presented his credentials to the United Nations Office at Geneva Wednesday 3 May. He is no stranger to Geneva: He Yafei received a degree from the Graduate Institute of International Studies in Geneva in 1987.
He has been, since 2008, the vice-minister for foreign affairs for China and prior to that he was the assistant minister for foreign affairs, from 2006-2008. He has long experience with the United States, as director-general of the department of North American and Oceanian affairs, from 2001 to 2006 and as minister-counsel and minister at the Chinese Embassy in the United States, 1998-2001.
Geneva, Switzerland (GenevaLunch) – Massive mudslides in Uganda, caused by heavy rains in recent days, have taken the lives of more than 50 people, with unverifiable reports coming in that more than 100may have died, with 400 people missing. Searchers are desperately working in heavy rains to free up trapped villages, but there appears little hope of finding more survivors in the rugged mountainous terrain east of the border with Kenya. In Geneva, the UNHCR announced it is organizing an initial stock of tents and plastic sheeting for emergency shelter for 5,000 people. Unicef is also involved in organizing aid.
The emergency in Uganda comes as international aid and humanitarian agencies are still struggling to raise funds and send teams to help in Chile and Haiti after their earthquakes. The International Federation of the Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies is appealing for CHF7 million for aid operations in Chile.
AllAfrica reports that efforts to provide aid to the stricken area in Uganda are hampered by lack of transport and the poor weather.
Links to other sites: AllAfrica, Euronews, NPR, Reuters AlertNet
Excerpt reprinted with permission from Intellectual Property Watch (full article)
WTO TRIPS Council considers workshop On public health amendment
By Kaitlin Mara
The World Trade Organization group on intellectual property rights met 2 March and ended early, discussing a potential workshop on an amendment intended to ease access to cheaper generic medicines in countries without a pharmaceutical manufacturing sector, a new proposal from Bolivia, and three separate longstanding IP [intellectual property] issues with no major changes.
Countries were unable to agree to hold a workshop on the so-called “paragraph 6” agreement, which allow countries to issue a compulsory license on drugs primarily intended for export to developing countries in need of cheaper generic versions and unable to manufacture them themselves.
Instead, the chair of the Trade-Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights (TRIPS) Council said he will hold informal consultations on the issue, though the details of when and how they will be conducted are not yet decided. The United States appears to be the main opponent of holding a workshop, according to several sources. For more background on this issue, see (IPW, WTO/TRIPS, 1 March 2010).
US Ambassador to UN and int'l oganizations in Geneva, Betty E King
Geneva, Switzerland (GenevaLunch) – Betty E King presented her credentials as US ambassador to the UN Wednesday 3 March. She is now officially the Permanent Representative to the United Nations in Geneva., filling a post that has been empty since Warren Tichenor left when Barack Obama became president in January 2009.
Three other Obama appointments to Geneva, besides King await Senate confirmation: Eileen Chamberlain Donahoe as US ambassador to the UN Human Rights Council and Laura Kennedy as US ambassador to the Conference on Disarmament, as well as Michael Punke as ambassador to the World Trade Organization in Geneva.
Update 2 13:10 Geneva, Switzerland (GenevaLunch) - A New York appeals court in the US has rejected an appeal by Cynthia Brzak and Nazr Ishak, who filed a sexual harassment suit against the former UN High Commissioner for Refugees Ruud Lubbers and seven other high UN officials. Their lawyer in Geneva, Edward Flaherty, told Geneva Lunch they will appeal the decision, taking it to the US Supreme Court.
”My clients are disappointed with the Court’s judgment, but it was not unexpected,” Flaherty said in a written statement. “As the retaliation against both of them by officials within both UNHCR and the UN, which retaliation gave rise in part to the original suit, continues unabated through the present date, they have no choice but to seek vindication of their constitutional and other rights before the US Supreme Court. Their aim is to end the impunity exercised by UN officials everywhere who are placed beyond the reach of national laws by the UN’s outdated immunity, both in their own case, and on behalf of the many UN staff who have suffered and continue to suffer illegal and/or criminal acts in the workplace, as they have.”
Lubbers was named High Commissioner in 2001 but retired in 2005 under the shadow of the scandal. The appeals court ruled that Lubbers and the others, as United Nations diplomats, have immunity, in line with a US district court decision in 2007 that UN diplomats are immune under the 1946 Convention on Privileges and Immunities of the United Nations.
The case was heard in the US because Brzak is a US citizen and the incident that provoked the case, accusations that Lubbers improperly touched her during a 2003 meeting, took place in New York. The UNHCR is based in Geneva, where both Brzak and Ishak still work.
US delegation at the Cartagena Summit - Photo Courtesy APMBC
Geneva, Switzerland (GenevaLunch) – Dozens of members of ICBL, the Nobel Peace Prize-winning International Campaign to Ban Landmines, visited US embassies and missions around the world Monday 1 March to encourage the US government to sign the Mine Ban Treaty. The treaty became international law in March 1999, just 15 months after it was adopted, the shortest time ever for an international treaty.
The US participated as an observer at the Cartagena Summit on a Mine-Free World, in December 2009 in Colombia. It was the first time the US joined an official treaty meeting and, at the time, the US said it would review its position on the treaty.
The US has not used antipersonnel mines since 1991 and it stopped exporting them the following year. Production stopped in 1997. But it is the world’s largest individual contributor to mine action and victim assistance programmes, and, argues ICBL, it should match its financial commitment with a political commitment to end the threat of the use of landmines.
Francisco Santos Calderon, vice-president of Colombia
Geneva, Switzerland (GenevaLunch) - The Human Rights Council has begun its 13th session in Geneva. A high-level meeting took place 1 March with the participation of the vice-presidents of Colombia and Spain, and the vice-prime ministers of Belgium and Equatorial Guinea, among other representatives.
Geneva, Switzerland (GenevaLunch) – Solutions are within reach, but they are becoming increasingly urgent for the problem of what to do with the growing number of cell phones, televisions, computers and other electronic devices and their waste. A report issued this week by Unep, the United Nations environmental body, draws a gloomy picture, but it says there is hope if action is taken quickly.
”Many developing countries face the spectre of hazardous e-waste mountains with serious consequences for the environment and public health,” according to “”Recycling – from E-Waste to Resources,” published 21 February 2010.
”One person’s waste can be another’s raw material,” says Konrad Osterwalder, of UNU (United Nations University). “The challenge of dealing with e-waste represents an important step in the transition to a green economy. This report outlines smart new technologies and mechanisms which, combined with national and international policies, can transform waste into assets, creating new businesses with decent green jobs.”
The report used data from what Unep calls 11 representative developing countries to estimate current and future e-waste generation: old and dilapidated desk and laptop computers, printers, mobile phones, pagers, digital photo and music devices, refrigerators, toys and televisions.
Rapidly changing winter weather, Swiss Alps
Geneva, Switzerland (GenevaLunch) – “And now the mountain weather forecast for the next two minutes!” Such extremely short-term weather forecasting might be a thing of the future, but scientists are gathering and studying data in Vancouver, Canada to help them reach that point. The 2010 Olympic Winter Games in Canada are hosting one group of experts whose specialty is not a sport, but very short term weather forecasts, called “nowcasting”, which make predictions up to six hours before an event.
A team of scientists from nine countries assembled by the Geneva-based World Meteorological Organization and Environment Canada is conducting a weather research and development project called the Science and Nowcasting of Olympic Weather for Vancouver 2010, aka Snow-V10.
Nowcasting has already been used for Olympic Games, but in summer, at the Sydney 2000 Games and the Beijing 2008 Games. The prediction of winter weather in mountains is more difficult because conditions change rapidly with time and altitude.
Geneva, Switzerland (GenevaLunch) - UNHCR (UN High Commissioner for Refugees) is taking the unusual step of providing an internal loan to cover the operational needs of one of its programmes, in Yemen. “Faced with an acute funding shortfall for its Yemen operation, UNHCR has approved an internal loan amounting to US$ 4.7 million in order to continue programmes for hundreds of thousands of internally displaced people (IDPs) in this country until mid-year,” the organization said Wednesday 24 February.
UNHCR says that to date it has received less than 10 percent of the funds needed for its work in the region: registering and monitoring the situation of 250,000 IDPs and addressing their humanitarian needs. The north of Yemen has been the scene of seven months of conflict between the government and Al Houti movement. IDPs are waiting to see if a ceasefire holds, the Geneva-based group reports, but roads and villages are littered with landmines, making return unsafe.
Geneva, Switzerland (GenevaLunch) – Criticism rained down from Western governments on Iran during its periodic review by the UN Human Rights Council in Geneva Monday morning 15 February. The review session was opened by Mohamad Jabad Larijani, responsible for human rights in Iran, but his country’s human rights record was immediately attacked by the United States and other Western governments.
Michael Posner, US assistant secretary for state with responsibility for human rights told the meeting that “the United States strongly condemns the recent violent and unjust suppression of innocent Iranian citizens, which has resulted in detentions, injuries and deaths.
Betty E King, named US ambassador to the UN and international organizations in Geneva
Updated 15 February (photo added) Geneva, Switzerland (GenevaLunch) - The US Mission in Geneva announced late Friday that Betty E King was confirmed 11 February as the new US ambassador to the UN and international organizations. King was nominated to the post in late October 2009 and the confirmation came in a voice vote in the US Senate. Details about when she will take up the post are not yet available. King led an unofficial delegation to the preparatory meetings for the Durban Review Conference in 2009, in addition to the items listed by the US Mission as part of her biography.
Background, GenevaLunch
Homeless Haitians, post-earthquake, have set up tents on a golf course (photo: ©2010 Marco Dormino/UN)
Geneva, Switzerland (GenevaLunch) – The World Meteorological Organization (WMO) in Geneva Tuesday 9 February made an urgent plea for another kind of aid for Haiti: weather services. The organization points out that “the rainy season with flood risk is due in early April and the hurricane season begins in early June. In order to prevent potential disasters related to natural hazards, which the country is prone to, the capacity of Haiti to produce and disseminate weather information and warnings needs to be developed without delay.”
More than 90 percent of the disasters in Haiti “are linked to frequently occurring meteorological, hydrological and climate-related hazards,” says the WMO.
The country’s meteorological services have operated only partially since the 12 January earthquake, so other WMO member countries have been providing weather information.
Bluefin tuna: A dying school © 2009 Brian J Skerry, National Geographic Stock, WWF
Geneva, Switzerland (GenevaLunch) – A complete ban on the trade and commercialization of the North Atlantic and Mediterranean bluefin tuna is to be discussed by the 175 member countries of Cites that meet in Doha in March, according to a statement by the group Friday 5 February. Cites is the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora.
Monaco proposed last 14 October that the bluefin tuna be added to Annex 1 of the Cites most endangered species list, effectively ending its legal exploitation.
Geneva, Switzerland (GenevaLunch) – Nearly 200,000 Iraqis who live outside their country as displaced persons, but in the region, could have help from the UNHCR (UN High Commissioner for Refugees) to vote in upcoming elections. The Geneva-based organization has told the Iraqi Election Commission (IHEC), in response to a demand it made, that the UNHCR “stands ready to facilitate the participation of Iraqi refugees living in the countries neighbouring Iraq.”
The UNHCR will work with the government to provide demographic data on the registered Iraqis, inform them of their rights for the elections, and provide logistical support. The organization calls the 7 March elections “a major opportunity to consolidate national reconciliation.”
Geneva, Switzerland (GenevaLunch) - Rajendra Pachauri, chairman of the Geneva-based IPCC (Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change), appears unready to bow to pressure to step down, if comments made to the BBC Friday 5 February are any indication.
”‘There is one mistake that occurred unfortunately, and we have clearly accepted that; we have expressed regret that it took place,’” the BBC quotes him as saying. “‘But there’s a huge volume of science over there – I mean, the IPCC’s fourth assessment report is a massive piece of work – and I think all of what we have said over there is totally valid.’”
Pachauri is in Delhi, India, for an IPCC sustainability conference.
Researchers and others in the climate change field are calling on Pachauri to accept personal responsibility for a significant error that was part of a recent IPCC report on climate change, which stated incorrectly that Himalayan glaciers would melt by 2035.
