GENEVA, SWITZERLAND – Switzerland moved up three places from its 2010 position to take the top spot in the Global Innovation Index (GII), followed by Sweden and Singapore. The index is designed to encourage public-private dialogue on innovation as a key driver for economic growth. Switzerland was in 7th place in 2009. Its first place rank is due to a combination of factors that rate its enabling environment for innovation as well as its actual performance.
French business school Insead produces the GII in partnership with Alcatel-Lucent, Booz & Company, the Confederation of Indian Industry (CII), and Geneva-based Wipo (World Intellectual Property Organization).
Shumeet Banerji, chief executive officer of Booz & Company says, “The ability to innovate is the great equalizer in the global economy. In the industrial era, nations relied on their natural resources to compete. Today, any country can advance with carefully focused investments in talent and R&D. The performance of some emerging economies in this year’s GII shows what nations can accomplish with a focus on building 21st century economies.”
How the index is computed
The Global Innovation Index, Insead and Wipo say in a joint statement about this year’s winners, “is computed as an average of the scores across inputs pillars (describing the enabling environment for innovation) and output pillars (measuring actual achievements in innovation). Five pillars constitute the Innovation Input Sub-Index: ‘Institutions,’ ‘Human capital and research,’ ‘Infrastructure’, ‘Market sophistication’ and ‘Business sophistication’. The Innovation Output Sub-Index is composed of two pillars: ‘Scientific outputs’ and ‘Creative outputs’. The Innovation Efficiency Index, calculated as the ratio of the two Sub-Indices, examines how economies leverage their enabling environments to stimulate innovation results.”
Strong political environment, weaker in terms of human capital
Switzerland performed well in the index in terms of its political environment, and relatively well for business and market sophistication as well as scientific outputs, but it was weaker on human capital and research, infrastructure and creative outputs.
The index includes a long series of tables, where Switzerland’s performance is uneven, showing its expenditure on education, for example, as lagging, but its research institutes second only to Israel in the world. Israel is the only country that produces more scientific and technical journal articles. Its industry/university collaboration on R&D is second only to that of the US. Switzerland spends more on computer software as a percentage of DGP, than any other country.
Complete Global Innovation Index, downloadable PDF available
GENEVA, SWITZERLAND – Homosexual marriages were made legal in New York Friday 24 June, sparking citywide celebrations. The move comes just days after the United Nations Human Rights Council in Geneva approved a South African resolution covering homosexual rights that was strongly supported by the US.
US Ambassador Eileen Chamberlain Donahoe said in Geneva 17 June “You’ve just witnessed a historic moment at the Human Rights Council and within the UN system with the landmark resolution protecting the human rights of lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender people. This resolution is important because it underscores the most basic human rights principle, that all people are endowed with universal human rights. This resolution reinforced the most simple and yet elegant idea that no person should be targeted for attack or violation because of who they are or who they love.”
©2011 Globe Cartoon / Patrick Chappatte
GENEVA, SWITZERLAND – To say Monday 31 May was a day that went up in smoke for the The World Health Organization (WHO) would be an exaggeration, but media attention for its annual “world no tobacco day” appeared to take second place to cells phones and cancer. Global media instead reacted with an instant buzz of headlines Tuesday to a WHO press release entitled “Radiofrequency electromagnetic fields are possibly carcinogenic”.
A working group that met at the International Agency for Cancer Research (IACR) in Lyon from 24-31 May concluded that cell phones should be given a new cancer-risk classification, saying this is “based on an increased risk for glioma, a malignant type of brain cancer associated with wireless phone use”.
The group noting that with five billion phones in use globally, this is a potential public health risk that warrants more study.
Switzerland has nine million cell phones.
The 31 scientists from 14 countries were meeting to assess potential carcinogenic hazards from this exposure. Dr Jonathan Samet from the University of Southern California in the US, who chaired the group, said in a statement that “the evidence, while still accumulating, is strong enough to support a conclusion and the 2B classification. The conclusion means that there could be some risk, and therefore we need to keep a close watch for a link between cell phones and cancer risk.”
The IACR’s classifications:
| Group 1 | Carcinogenic to humans | 107 agents | |
| Group 2A | Probably carcinogenic to humans | 59 | |
| Group 2B | Possibly carcinogenic to humans | 266 | |
| Group 3 | Not classifiable as to its carcinogenicity to humans | 508 | |
| Group 4 | Probably not carcinogenic to humans | 1 |
The WHO cites growing concern in recent years over possible cell phone and cancer links. It pointed out that the jury is not in yet on links, and that more research needs to be done.
“The evidence was reviewed critically, and overall evaluated as being limited among users of wireless telephones for glioma and acoustic neuroma, and inadequate to draw conclusions for other types of cancers. The evidence from occupational and environmental exposures … was similarly judged inadequate. The working group did not quantitate the risk; however, one study of past cell phone use (up to the year 2004), showed a 40 percent increased risk for gliomas in the highest category of heavy users (reported average: 30 minutes per day over a 10‐year period).”
Four years of Swiss research: no clear health link but cell phones affect sleep patterns
How pure is your cuppa joe? - Cartoon by A. Rosa, ISO
Geneva, Switzerland (GenevaLunch) – The Geneva-based International Organization for Standardization (ISO), has developed a new standard to certify “the purity and quality of soluble coffee powder” and a tool to “detect possible adulterations” in soluble/instant coffee.
It seems that sipping your favorite instant cuppa Joe labeled “100% pure soluble coffee” might leave a bitter taste in your mouth.
Labels, according to the ISO advisory, are sometimes incorrect, downright misleading and in some cases hide nothing but counterfeit products.
The ISO, considered as the world’s largest developer and publisher of International Standards, says the new criteria are based on the “analysis of over 1,000 samples of commercial soluble coffees and their statistically sound evaluation.”
According to the non-governmental organization, the new outline will help certify the purity and quality of soluble coffee powder.
The standard, ISO 24114 is intended for use by third parties to control its purity and quality.
Indigenous people in the Amazons region of four bordering countries in the Americas, benefit from malaria programmes sponsored by the Global Fund - Photo Jared Bloch
Geneva, Switzerland (GenevaLunch) - The Geneva-based Global Fund’s grants for programmes that fight tuberculosis, malaria and HIV-Aids have gotten a US$1 billion boost for the 2011 fiscal year. The announcement was made on 18 April by the Vernier based headquarters.
Michel Kazatchkine, Executive Director, said he was “grateful” to President Barack Obama and to the US Congress for the “vote of confidence in the Global Fund and for [their] unwavering commitment to international health, even when facing strong pressure to contain budget deficits.”
The grant is particularly significant for the Global Fund which had been under heavy public scrutiny since an article published in early January 2011 alledged the organization was “plagued by fraud.”
Media ramp-up of the story resulted in Germany, Ireland and other donor countries suspending funding to the health fund. In the US the story was picked up by conservative groups which called for a halt of donations to the organization.
In 1999, a UN Special Assembly on Aids agreed on the need for a fund to gather and distribute monies to fight three diseases: tuberculosis, malaria and HIV-Aids. In 2002 the Global Fund was thus created as a private-public partnership to disperse billions of dollars to over 600 programmes in 150 countries.
The UN’s world-food price index rose to 231 in January, a 3.4 percent increase over December and a record highest level since the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) began tracking prices. This is the seventh consecutive monthly record-breaking rise, showing a continuing trend that is particularly worrisome for poorer countries that must import much of their food and poor households where a large percentage of the family budget goes to food.
The January increases are due mainly to rising corn and wheat prices worldwide, which nevertheless fall short of a high for cereals in 2008, while meat prices remained stable and rice prices decreased slightlty, a seasonal factor because of harvests in some countries in recent weeks.
US Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke told journalists at a press conference in Washington Thursday 3 February that the increases are due to rapid growth in developing countries and not to the Fed’s currency management policies.
Links to other sites: Al Jazeera, Mail & Guardian, S Africa, MSNBC, Telegraph, UK
Geneva, Switzerland (GenevaLunch) – The conclusion is dry and to the point: “The frequency and severity of risks to global stability have amplified, while the ability of global governance systems to deal with them has not.”
The World Economic Forum’s (WEF) Global Risk 2011 was published 12 January, in time to give world economic and political leaders fodder for discussion before the next WEF meeting in Davos, in canton Graubuenden, Switzerland.
The 2011 meeting takes place 26-30 January.
The new report was published on the same day that Portugal caused initial nervousness that it might be the next eurozone bailout country when it turned to markets to raise euro 1.5 billion at a bond auction. Fears over the euro eased later in the day as the auction proved successful.
The new WEF report describes three key risk areas:
- macro-economic risk: “Macroeconomic imbalances, fiscal crises in the developed economies, massive unfunded social liabilities and weak financial markets form a complex nexus of economic risk. Crisis-induced indebtedness has reduced the capacity to handle further shocks to critically low levels.”
- the illegal economy: the value of illegal trade around the world in 2010 is estimated to have been $1.3 trillion, and the risk of yet more illegal trade keeps countries trapped in a cycle of poverty. “Greater numbers of failed and fragile states, increasing levels of illicit trade, organized crime and corruption form a nexus of criminal risk. A networked world, governance failures and economic disparity create opportunities for illegality to flourish.”
- resource limits to growth, especially for food, water and energy, where there is double-digit growth in demand: “Shortages of core resources will only create more conflict between the social groups, nations and industries that need them.”
The report was published at the same time as the US government’s year-end report on agricultural stocks, which confirmed experts predictions of a drop in world food supplies thanks to major world weather problems, despite near-record crops for grains in the US.
Front entrance to the UN in Geneva, with broken chair sculpture and plaza
Geneva, Switzerland (GenevaLunch) - The United Nations in Geneva has two administrative working languages, English and French, but French, the language of the host city, is increasingly overlooked, says a group of French-speaking journalists, one of whom was named 10 January as observer to the UN and international organizations.
Documents that should be available in both languages sometimes are not, or the French translation is slow to follow the English version. Presentations outside the official UN debates are not always made in both languages and translations are not always available.
The French language journalists association of Switzerland has designated journalist El Hadji Gorgui Wade Ndoye, accredited correspondent for Senegal’s Walf Fadjri news group, to track and analyze the use of French, a decision made during the November world francophony summit in Montreux.
The language problem is encountered often at press briefings, with some journalists speaking English and not French, or vice versa. At a briefing 11 January Maria Neira of the World Health Organization was reporting on children and lead poisoning in Nigeria.
She began in French, was asked by a journalist to speak in English and she hesitated between the two languages when she had a mixed response she asked if she should switch to English. She continued in French, but the opposite situation is more common at international organizations in Geneva, with English used.
Links to other sites: Walf Fadjri (Fr), GenevaInternational
Geneva, Switzerland (GenevaLunch) – A former high-ranking UN official has been named President of the Centre for Humanitarian Dialogue (CHD), an international mediation organization which in 2010 was the victim of a CHF3.8 million fraud.
Jean-Marie Guehenno, 61, a French national who was the Under-Secretary-General for Peacekeeping Operations at the UN for eight years, will take the reins of the Centre’s board.
A Legion d’Honneur officer, Guehenno’s is also affiliated with the School of International and Public Affairs at Columbia University in New York City, and is a non-resident senior Fellow at the Brookings Institution.
The HD Centre announced in August 2010 that it had been the victim of a multi-million franc fraud engineered by its former director of finance and administration. As a result, the Centre’s Executive Director, who had headed the organization since its creation in 1999, stepped down saying he felt “morally responsible” for the financial fiasco.
In 2010, the CHD brokered a historic agreement between the most heavily armed opposition movement in Darfur, the JEM, and the United Nations on the protection of children caught up in the conflict. The Centre is funded by several governments, private foundations and philanthropists.
Asmara All Stars, band behind "Eritrea's Got Soul"
Geneva, Switzerland (GenevaLunch) – Eritrea’s new album, “Eritrea’s Got Soul”, is one of the world’s best holiday gifts, for the power of the unlikely recordings to tell a story from a small African nation.
Three international albums in 50 years for a population of five million people with nine languages who have their own musical heritage but who have known little besides war led to French musician Bruno Blum working with Eritrean authorities to create a band called Asmara All Stars and to convince German company Out Here to produce the 13 tracks.
Government authorities, particularly authoritarian ones, are not often part of a popular new music album. Many of the musicians in the band are civil servants, regularly called on to play for the army, according to Radio France International’s (RFI) David Brown.
Blum insisted that he be given free rein, including bringing in a few musicians who are not civil servants.
Eritrea (photo: Out Here, Germany)
Brown writes that “French blues guitarist, songwriter, producer, music author, painter and cartoonist Bruno Blum was invited in 2006 by the official Eritrean Cultural Affairs Office to create a modern yet traditional sound from a country that has faced a cultural and economic blockade for the past decade.”
Five thousand European-based Eritreans in February 2010 gathered in front of the United Nations in Geneva, with other protesters marching in the US and Australia against what the groups labelled US-led UN sanctions against Eritrea.
The UN Security Council in December 2009 had voted an arms embargo and other sanctions, including a ban on travel by senior Eritrean officials, for destabilizing neighbouring Somalia.
World attention was drawn to Eritrea in June 2010 when a group of boat people from the country were dramatically rescued, with Geneva-based refugee organization UNHCR highly critical “of rescue operations in the region, where Italy, Malta and Libya have disputed who is responsible for picking up boat people in distress,” GenevaLunch reported.
RFI’s Brown recounts the tale of how the 14-member band put together the music and recorded it, despite many odds, from bureaucratic fights to marrying quarreling music styles.
Blum will be known to many English-speaking music fans for his version of Bob Marley’s “War”, featuring Haile Selassie’s original speech and the Wailers.
Eritrea’s history is a long and rich saga linked to its mineral resources, closeness to Egypt during the time of the pharoahs and its 1,600km of Red Sea coastline. It became an Italian colony in 1890, 21 years after the opening of the Suez Canal, then part of Italian East Africa in 1936, along with Ethiopia and Sudan.
It was ruled by the British under a UN mandate from 1941 to 1951, and, shortly after independence as a federation with its larger neighbour Ethiopia, was annexed as a province of the latter in 1952. “Lack of regard for the Eritrean population led to the formation of an independence movement in the early 1960s (1961), which erupted into a 30-year war against successive Ethiopian governments that ended in 1991,” according to Wikipedia. “Following a UN-supervised referendum in Eritrea in which the Eritrean people overwhelmingly voted for independence, Eritrea declared its independence and gained international recognition in 1993.”
The two nations fought again in 1998, a two-year border dispute that remains unresolved since UN forces pulled out, and Eritrea also went to war with Yemen. It has spent much of the past decade trying to feed its population and rebuild the economy, but with an unusually high proportion of workers in the civil service.
The country’s reputation internationally has suffered from a lack of information, with Reporters without Borders saying there is not a single foreign correspondent, and giving it a lower media rating even than North Korea. Travellers, including diplomats, have trouble obtaining permission to travel outside the capital of Asmara.
Eritrea’s single-party government continues in power despite a constitution that calls for a multi-party government.
Links to reviews of “Eritrea’s Got Soul”:
Deanne Sole / Pop Matters, Richie Troughton / The Quietus
Album (sample tracks, for-pay downloads)
Read full review of Eritrea’s Got Soul – Asmara All Stars on Boomkat.com ©
Geneva, Switzerland (GenevaLunch) -European airlines will continue to be the laggards in the airline industry in 2011, Giovanni Bisignani, Iata’s director general and CEO, told journalists at the International Air Transport Association’s annual press day. Profits worldwide for the industry are now expected to end 2010 up $15.1 billion, well above the $8.9 billion forecast in September, but Iata cautions that while the numbers look large, this represents just 1.1 percent of the industry’s revenue for the year.
Iata has also revised upwards its projections for 2011 to a net industry profit of $9.1b, up from the $5.3b forecast in September. Net margins remain weak at 2.7 percent for 2010 and falling to 1.5% percent in 2011, the organization, whose members are the world’s airlines, stated.
Industry remains fragile, “nowhere near covering cost of capital”
Geneva, Switzerland (GenevaLunch) - Two Geneva-based UN organizations, the International Organization for Migration and the UNHCR (High Commissioner for Refugees) say that refugees from Myanmar/Burma have been pouring into Thailand in the wake of Myanmar elections Sunday 7 November. The elections have been widely denounced by other countries as fraudulent, with citizens not having the freedom to vote correctly. Fighting has broken out in some areas.
The IOM says that “the fighting between the Myanmar military and an ethnic minority armed group, the Democratic Karen Buddhist Army (DKBA), following the Myanmar elections on Sunday, resulted in an estimated 12,000 people fleeing into Thailand at the Mae Sot and Three Pagoda Pass border crossing points. In Mae Sot [the IOM Monday] transported some 5,000 people from the Thai side of the Moei River to a safe former military compound designated by the Thai authorities. All the refugees came from the town of Miwaddy on the Myanmar side of the river.”
The Mae Sot refugee camp is designed to hold a maximum of 2,000 people.
The UNHCR says in addition to the Mae Sot area people it worked early this week with some 3,000 refugees in Kanchanaburi province, west of Bangkok, at a school at Three Pagodas Pass.
UNHCR Goodwill Ambassador Angelina Jolie visited Myanmar refugees in Thailand in March 2009 to draw attention to their plight: some have been living in refugee camps for over 20 years. New fighting in Myanmar is straining the existing camps (video link below)
UNHCR provides a first-hand description of the scramble by international organizations, working together Monday, to cope with the sudden influx of refugees in Thailand:
“Refugees started pouring across the border early in the morning on foot and on inner tubes across the Moei River. Some told our staff they felt their lives were at risk after their houses were attacked, while others said they fled the sound of fighting.
“Local people have been pitching in as well, and we have asked that they co-ordinate their efforts with us to make sure that those who are most in need get helped first. One man delivered 1,000 blankets to the new site, which we plan to distribute today to the most vulnerable.”
“Many collected their children from school and fled to Thailand with only the clothes on their back, some even barefoot.
The International Federation of Translators (IFT/FIT) celebrates international translators day 30 September around the theme “Translation Quality for a Variety of Voices“. The IFT points out that translation is one of the oldest professions, and translators need a mastery of the languages they translate into and out of, but also a broad general knowledge and cultural understanding. Often they need a to be competent in specialized subjects, such as the finer points of international trade laws or climate science, and must keep up to date with the latest information technologies.
Yet 96 percent of the world’s languages are spoken by only four percent of the world’s population. Languages die out every day as the last speaker succumbs to old age without having transmitted the knowledge to a new generation.
WHO vaccination campaign. © WHO 2010
Geneva, Switzerland (GenevaLunch) – The fight against Aids and HIV infection world-wide has chalked up some significant successes, including access to treatment for 80 percent of the HIV-positive women in need in 15 countries in 2009, according to a World Health Organization (WHO) report released 28 September.
One million more people started anti-retroviral treatment (ART) in sub-Saharan Africa in 2009, and now 37 percent of the people in need there are receiving treatment. But funding still falls short and the organization fears that government budget cuts will translate into less support in coming years.
“Countries in all parts of the world are demonstrating that universal access is achievable,” said Hiroki Nakatani, WHO Assistant Director-General for HIV/Aids, Tuberculosis, Malaria and Neglected Tropical Diseases. Medecins sans Frontières (MSF), a French medical emergency organization, fears that countries will announce important cuts in funding to the Global Fund to Fight Aids, TB and Malaria (GFATM) at a funds replenishment conference in New York next week.
The Fund’s target of $20 billion over three years is unlikely to be met, according to MSF. One-quarter of worldwide Aids funding goes through GFATM, says MSF.
“We’re on the right track, we’ve shown what works and now we need to do more of it,” said Paul De Lay, deputy executive director, UNAids. “But we’re $10 billion short. At the Global Fund replenishment conference in New York next week countries have a chance to put this right, to make a smart investment and secure the future of the Aids response.”
Links to other sites: Global Fund, UNAids
The only survivor of the massacre that took the lives of ten humanitarian aid workers in Afghanistan has pieced together the last moments of the group working for the Geneva-registered, faith-based organization International Assistance Mission (IAM).
The man has described to investigators how six Americans, two Afghans, one German and a Briton were killed on August 5 in remote northern Afghanistan.
According to his account the victims were executed one by one.
Meanwhile the bodies of four of the six Americans killed have been repatriated back to the US. The two remaining victims will be buried in Afghanistan.
Related story / background story in GenevaLunch News, and Associated Press exclusive.
Tom Little (R), optometrist and team leader with the International Assistance Mission (IAM), watches as an unidentified doctor examines a patient in an Afghan clinic - photograph released by David L. Evans
Geneva, Switzerland (GenevaLunch.com) – The Geneva-registered, faith-based organization International Assistance Mission (IAM), is working with authorities in Afghanistan to shed light on the attack that took the lives of 10 of its members in Badakhshan last week.
The victims, six American doctors including three women, one Briton, a German and two Afghans, had been working in Nuristan province and were returning to Kabul when they were murdered.
The Taliban has claimed responsibility saying the victims were “spies,” were proselytizing and were killed only after they tried to escape. Two Afghans survived the carnage, no word yet on their whereabouts.
The IAM is a Geneva-registered, non-profit Christian organization that does not proselytize, and that was not proselytizing as Taliban has claimed, said IAM Director Dirk Frans in Kabul.
US Secretary of State, Hillary Clinton also dismissed the claim that the workers were spreading Christianity. “The Taliban stopped them on a remote road on their journey from Nuristan, led them into a forest, robbed them, and killed them,” she said.
The view from Caux. Photo Caux Forum
Caux, canton Vaud, Switzerland (GenevaLunch) – The Caux Forum on Human Security brought together three people who each gave their own perspective on the theme of human security in a panel discussion, Saturday 10 July in Caux.
The panellists were Luc Gnacadja, executive secretary of the UN Convention to Combat Desertification, Simonetta Sommaruga, a Swiss member of Switzerland’s upper house, and Rahmojan Gandhi, a professor of Asian studies at the University of Illinois, and biographer of his grandfather, Mahatma Gandhi.
International sports, rugby Sevens, golf
IOC and UN set out list of recommendations
Lausanne, Switzerland (GenevaLunch) - Preparations are moving ahead to introduce rugby Sevens and golf to the Olympics, starting with the 2016 Games. Officials from international rugby and golf bodies met together for the first time, for two days, 26-27 May, with IOC (International Olympics Committee) officials in Lausanne to review how the Games are managed and the role of the national organizing committees.
Wednesday the IOC and the United Nations announced they had drawn up a list of 19 recommendations to increase the impact of sports on development, including the 2000 Millennium Goals. The two international bodies agreed to work to avoid duplication and to encourage national governmentts “to embed sports” in their development programmes.
Links to other sites: International Rugby Board, IOC on UN meetings, Irish rugby
Bern, Switzerland (GenevaLunch) – The Swiss federal government Thursday 20 May approved a package of CHF10 million to increase security around international organizations such as the UN Palais building in Geneva. The host government is responsible, under international law, for securing the outside and approach areas for these buildings, including walls and fences. Bern provided no details about what organizations will have reinforced security.
Security measures have been increasingly stepped up since 2003, following attacks on buildings in Baghdad.
Geneva Marathon and Unicef join forces in 2010
Geneva, Switzerland (GenevaLunch) – The first Geneva Marathon for Unicef has raised CHF25,000 for the United Nations children’s organization, the group announced Tuesday 11 May. The money was raised by donating 5 percent of adults’ registration fees and all of children’s fees.
The marathon was given a fresh lease on life in 2010 through the new long-term partnership and charitable goals, with two new races added to increase the popularity of the event. The city and organizers would like to see the Geneva Marathon become one of the world’s top 15 marathons. This is probably the last year in which the full race involves running the same loop twice, with plans underway for a new 42.195km course.
Good crowd to watch charity race
New aviation MBA programme takes off in Switzerland
Geneva, Switzerland (GenevaLunch) - The latest in a string of newly created MBA programmes in the region has been announced jointly by the International Air Transport Association (Iata) and the University of Geneva (Unige).
The new Executive MBA programme in aviation management, the first in Switzerland, will include coursework in international aviation law, aviation and the environment and airline financing. The programme begins in September 2010.
Professionals from the Iata Training and Development Institute, as well as from the Unige MBA programme will likely be the first to participate.
The announcement comes a day after the University of Lausanne, the HEC and the Tepper Institute in the US announced they were setting up an assets and wealth management MBA, and the AISTS in Lausanane announced two new sports management graduate programmes in conjunction with several universities in the Lake Geneva region.
WHO’s first-ever simultaneous Immunization Week underway
Measles initiative (photo, WHO)
Switzerland, recommendations for measles vaccination: part of the MMR (MOR in French) vaccine against measles, mumps, rubella, with the first dose at age 12 months, second dose at 15-24 months, moved up to 12-15 months for children in daycare centres
Bern / Geneva, Switzerland – Switzerland’s focus for world Immunization Week which began Saturday 24 April is measles eradication. “Do your bit!” (contribuez-y !) is the slogan, to pull in parents who have not vaccinated their children. Measles is often wrongly considered a benign disease of childhood: while complications are rare they can be extremely serious, and there is no real treatment for the disease.
Ninety-five percent of children age two must have received two doses of measles vaccine in order to eliminate the disease from Switzerland. The current rate of coverage is 87 percent having one dose by age 2 and 71 percent having two doses.
Bern points out that there is a solidarity factor: those who cannot be vaccinated for medical reasons, a group that includes newborns and pregnant women, will be protected only by others having had their shots.
Title: Luncheon, The Global Fund
Location: Geneva
Link out: Click here
Description: Prof. Michel Kazatchkine
ch Executive Director – The Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria
Date: 2010-05-06
Title: Round table: The developing law of weapons
Location: Geneva
Link out: Click here
Description: With Steven Haines, Head of the Security and Law Programme, Geneva Centre for Security Policy.
Date: 2010-04-14
Title: Luncheon, Innovation and Intellectual Property: The Changing International Landscape
Location: Geneva
Link out: Click here
Description: Speaker, Francis Gurry, Director-General, World Intellectual Property Organisation (WIPO).
Date: 2010-04-22
Title: Luncheon: Business and sustainability
Location: Geneva
Link out: Click here
Description: Speaker, David James P. Leape, Director General of WWF International.
Date: 2010-04-16
Rough cut diamonds, covered by Kimberley Process. Photo, Wikipedia
Switzerland told to take lead in toughening Kimberly Process rules
Update 22:45 Basel, Switzerland (GenevaLunch) – Rights group Human Rights Watch (HRW) has called on Switzerland to take the lead in tightening diamond trade rules designed to stem the flow of conflict diamonds, often called blood diamonds. HRW has timed its appeal to coincide with the opening of Basel World, Switzerland’s premier watch and jewelry show in Basel. More than 100,000 people are expected to attend the show, which opened 18 March and runs to 25 March.
HRW in June 2009 published a report on the Marange district in Zimbabwe, where diamonds were discovered in 2006. Members of the Zimbabwe government are involved in exploiting local people to work the mines, according to the report. HRW documents a massacre of 200 people in the area in 2008.
Fair trade groups are also focusing on the Zimbabwe situation at BaselWorld: the annual Rapaport Fair Trade Conference has as its topic this year the issue of human rights and the jewelry industry, with a special focus on the situation in Zimbabwe. President Robert Mugabe was reported by Rapoport 5 March to be ready to sell diamonds now that the Kimberly Process has a monitor: the Kimberley Process, currently chaired by Israel, announced 1 March that a monitor for Zimbabwe would visit the area and report on the situation, according to a work plan submitted by the Zimbabwe government. Abbey Chikane, the monitor, was formerly the chief executive officer of South Africa’s State Diamond Trader.
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
Visa goes to Rio
Lausanne, Switzerland (GenevaLunch) - The International Olympic Committee in Lausanne and Visa International have extended Visa’s sponsorship agreement to 2020, the two announced 27 October. Visa was one of the founding members of the worldwide TOP Olympic Games partners programme in 1986. The agreement means that Visa is the only official payment services card accepted by the Olympic Games.
Geneva, Switzerland (GenevaLunch) - Betty E King of New York has been nominated by US President Barack Obama to be the new US ambassador in Geneva, to the United Nations and Other International Organizations, the US Mission in Geneva has announced. Her nomination will need the approval of the US Senate Foreign Affairs Committee (background story on the process, GenevaLunch). The process can take two to three months.
