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A webinar dedicated to the role of media in countering terrorism and extremism, was conducted on 21 and 22 September 2020. Twenty journalists from the Republic of Karakalpakstan and the Ferghana region participated in the event. It was organized within the framework of co-operation between the OSCE Project Co-ordinator in Uzbekistan and the Center for Retraining Journalists of Uzbekistan.

This event was part of a series of webinars, which started in July 2020, for journalists from Uzbekistan’s Andijan, Samarkand and Surkhandarya regions. The series aims to equip regional journalists with the necessary skills to inform the public about the threat of terrorism, consider gender-based aspects while reporting on the topic and work in partnership with civil society groups. Subjects covered during this webinar included leading journalistic investigations, the use of new multimedia technologies in reporting, and journalists’ safety.

“The OSCE makes a comprehensive contribution to international efforts to combat terrorism, promote the practice of co-operation and co-ordination-based approaches to countering terrorism at all levels, and fosters public-private partnerships,” said Richard Wheeler, Project Officer at the OSCE Project Co-ordinator in Uzbekistan. "Mass media has the unique potential to counter the spread of ideas related to VERLT among youth".

Mivel az augusztus 9-én tartott fehéroroszországi elnökválasztás nem volt sem szabad, sem tisztességes, Aljakszandr Lukasenka fehérorosz elnök új mandátumnak nincs demokratikus legitimitása – jelentette ki Josep Borrell, az unió kül- és biztonságpolitikai főképviselője az Európai Unió nevében kiadott nyilatkozatában.

A főképviselő kiemelte, az Európai Unió nem ismeri el a választások “meghamisított” eredményét. Lukasenka szerdai beiktatása tovább mélyíti az országban kialakult politikai válságot, és ellentmond a fehérorosz lakosság jelentős részének akaratának, amelyet a választások óta számos, sokak részvételével zajló, békés megmozduláson fejeztek ki.

Szavai szerint lenyűgöző és megható a fehérorosz nép bátorsága, hogy a hatóságok brutális fellépése ellenére továbbra is békésen állnak ki demokratikus és az alapvető jogaik mellett. Az Európai Unió a megmozdulások résztvevői mellett áll, és támogatja, hogy nemzetközi megfigyelők részvételével zajló új, szabad és hiteles választások révén fejezzék ki akaratukat.

Az unió álláspontja egyértelmű: a fehéroroszoknak joguk van arra, hogy új, átlátható és hiteles választásokon szabadon voksoljanak – emelte ki. A főképviselő arra szólította fel a helyi hatóságokat, hogy haladéktalanul hagyjak fel az erőszak alkalmazásával, és feltétel nélkül engedjék szabadon az összes őrizetbe vett tüntetőt, és a politikai foglyokat. Az EU továbbra is meg van győződve arról, hogy átfogó nemzeti szintű párbeszéd, és új demokratikus választások megtartása az egyetlen lehetőség az országban kialakult súlyos politikai válságára.

A jelenlegi helyzet ismeretében az Európai Unió felülvizsgálja Fehéroroszországgal fenntartott kapcsolatait – tette hozzá Borrell.

Lukasenka fehérorosz elnök szeptember 23-án tette le hivatali esküjét az államfői rezidencián, a Függetlenség Palotájában. Az augusztus 9-i elnökválasztás tüntetéshullámot váltott ki Fehéroroszországban, mert a tiltakozók szerint Lukasenka fehérorosz elnök csalással győzött.

The post EU: Lukasenka új mandátumának nincs demokratikus legitimitása appeared first on .

Un détachement de l’Armée Nationale Populaire (ANP), en collaboration avec les Garde-frontières, a saisi mercredi dernier une importante quantité de kif traité à In Guezzam, rapporte un communiqué du MDN. Selon le communiqué du Ministère de la Défense Nationale (MDN), « un détachement de l’ANP, en collaboration avec les Garde-frontières, a procédé à la saisie d’une […]

L’article In Guezzam : Saisie d’une importante quantité de kif traité  est apparu en premier sur .

EFBW and UNESDA are calling for a wide deployment of well-designed deposit return systems to meet the collection and rPET targets of the EU Single Use Plastics Directive. Read here the 6 fundamental design criteria they believe will improve DRS efficiency.  Perhaps you could use this illustration below?

The G7 practices forms of external accountability to answer for its behavior to the outside world and internal accountability to lead the implementation of what it has decided. To follow up on its development related commitments, it has set up a permanent framework to produce annual public reports on how G7 national administrations have worked together to implement them.
Reports under this framework draw from implementation experience but G7 Leaders never use them to make decisions on how to carry implementation forward or design new commitments. This is because the G7 process is generally discontinuous and its accountability process is currently not targeted at facilitating feedback from implementation experience to policy making. The learning potential inherent in internal accountability is not fully used. As a result, the G7 is less effective than it could be in implementing its commitments under changing circumstances. In addition, G7 commitments and methodology do not always make it easy for outside stakeholders to check G7 words against its behavior, even though this is important for external accountability. This makes it harder to have a rational debate about G7 legitimacy.
This paper suggests ways to improve G7 accountability practice so that it systematically produces learning effects and better supports G7 legitimacy. The G7 can capture learning effects by underpinning every commitment with an explicit notion of how they want to achieve what and making sure that this notion gets tested regularly against implementation experience. Closing this feedback loop could be a job for G7 portfolio ministers who can make decisions on further implementation based on the experience set out in an accountability report. Better designed commitments and improved follow up would also support G7 legitimacy, because this would make it easier for external stakeholders to check G7 action against its words.

The G7 practices forms of external accountability to answer for its behavior to the outside world and internal accountability to lead the implementation of what it has decided. To follow up on its development related commitments, it has set up a permanent framework to produce annual public reports on how G7 national administrations have worked together to implement them.
Reports under this framework draw from implementation experience but G7 Leaders never use them to make decisions on how to carry implementation forward or design new commitments. This is because the G7 process is generally discontinuous and its accountability process is currently not targeted at facilitating feedback from implementation experience to policy making. The learning potential inherent in internal accountability is not fully used. As a result, the G7 is less effective than it could be in implementing its commitments under changing circumstances. In addition, G7 commitments and methodology do not always make it easy for outside stakeholders to check G7 words against its behavior, even though this is important for external accountability. This makes it harder to have a rational debate about G7 legitimacy.
This paper suggests ways to improve G7 accountability practice so that it systematically produces learning effects and better supports G7 legitimacy. The G7 can capture learning effects by underpinning every commitment with an explicit notion of how they want to achieve what and making sure that this notion gets tested regularly against implementation experience. Closing this feedback loop could be a job for G7 portfolio ministers who can make decisions on further implementation based on the experience set out in an accountability report. Better designed commitments and improved follow up would also support G7 legitimacy, because this would make it easier for external stakeholders to check G7 action against its words.

The G7 practices forms of external accountability to answer for its behavior to the outside world and internal accountability to lead the implementation of what it has decided. To follow up on its development related commitments, it has set up a permanent framework to produce annual public reports on how G7 national administrations have worked together to implement them.
Reports under this framework draw from implementation experience but G7 Leaders never use them to make decisions on how to carry implementation forward or design new commitments. This is because the G7 process is generally discontinuous and its accountability process is currently not targeted at facilitating feedback from implementation experience to policy making. The learning potential inherent in internal accountability is not fully used. As a result, the G7 is less effective than it could be in implementing its commitments under changing circumstances. In addition, G7 commitments and methodology do not always make it easy for outside stakeholders to check G7 words against its behavior, even though this is important for external accountability. This makes it harder to have a rational debate about G7 legitimacy.
This paper suggests ways to improve G7 accountability practice so that it systematically produces learning effects and better supports G7 legitimacy. The G7 can capture learning effects by underpinning every commitment with an explicit notion of how they want to achieve what and making sure that this notion gets tested regularly against implementation experience. Closing this feedback loop could be a job for G7 portfolio ministers who can make decisions on further implementation based on the experience set out in an accountability report. Better designed commitments and improved follow up would also support G7 legitimacy, because this would make it easier for external stakeholders to check G7 action against its words.

Bladi - Les enquêteurs mauritaniens cherchent à savoir si l’ancien président Mohamed Ould Abdel Aziz a des avoirs au Maroc, aux Émirats...

Committee and political groups’ meetings - Brussels

Source : © European Union, 2020 - EP

The Delegation of the European Union to Bosnia and Herzegovina (BiH) and EU Special Representative in BiH, the US Embassy in BiH and the OSCE Mission to BiH welcome yesterday’s long-awaited adoption of the Revised National War Crimes Processing Strategy by the BiH Council of Ministers. The adoption of the Revised Strategy is an important step in delivering justice for all victims of war crimes and reducing the impunity gap, as well as a key requirement outlined in the European Commission Opinion on BiH’s EU membership application.

By seeking common ground for the greater good, BiH politicians have shown they can make vital steps forward to deliver on citizens’ expectations of a more just society firmly on course for EU membership.

Twenty-five years since the end of the conflict in BiH, hundreds of war crimes cases are still pending. The adoption of the Revised Strategy will help accelerate the processing of war crimes cases, by providing more precise criteria on the distribution of cases to the appropriate level. We will continue to support all prosecutors’ offices in BiH in their efforts to ensure their efficient processing.

In keeping with the Revised Strategy, the Prosecutor’s Office of BiH should focus exclusively on the most complex cases, including genocide and crimes against humanity allegations, and those with command responsibility for such crimes. All less complex cases should be transferred to entity and district level prosecutor’s offices to be processed as soon as possible.  We call on the Prosecutor’s Office of BiH to proceed with this urgently, and in light of the findings of the recently published Korner Report. Additionally, the High Judicial and Prosecutorial Council of BiH must, without delay, introduce an effective accountability mechanism for judges and prosecutors who fail to implement related strategic goals and measures. We will closely monitor these processes in the coming months.

It is also crucial that all authorities in BiH ensure that the judiciary processes war crime cases independently, impartially, professionally, and transparently. This process must be free from politicization and with full respect for final and binding judicial decisions and acknowledgement of facts that have already been established by domestic and international courts, in particular the verdicts of the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia (ICTY).

We will closely monitor the implementation of the Revised Strategy and remain available to assist the justice sector in its efforts to deliver justice to victims.

CUSR - Du 19 au 20 septembre 2020, une délégation, représentant de la société civile Nouakchottoise (Collectif Urgence Solidarité de la ville...

Adrar-Info - Mourassiloun a appris, de sources bien informées ,que la police de la criminalité économique a dépêché des missions pour...

IvoireSoir.net - Devant l’ONU, le 24 septembre 2020, Mahamadou Issoufou, a annoncé qu’il ne sera pas candidat à la présidentielle pour un...

Le Président cubain, Miguel Diaz Canel Bermudez, et le Président sud-africain, Cyril Ramaphosa, ont appelé, devant l’Assemblée générale des Nations Unies, à la fin de l’occupation illégale du Sahara Occidental et de la Palestine. Lors de la 75ᵉ Assemblée générale de l’Organisation des Nations Unies (ONU), qui s’est tenue mardi dernier, le Président cubain, Miguel […]

L’article ONU : Cuba et l’Afrique du Sud appellent à la fin de l’occupation du Sahara Occidental et de la Palestine est apparu en premier sur .

The Association of European Journalists has complained to Commission President Ursula von der Leyen that the EU executive uses the English language “out of proportion” in its official communication, which gives an unfair advantage to the anglophone press.

By Jens Martens
BONN, Sep 25 2020 (IPS)

Governments have responded to the COVID-19 pandemic with unprecedented intensity. They have taken far-reaching regulatory measures to contain the pandemic and mobilized financial resources on an enormous scale.

They have thus demonstrated that they are capable of action and need not leave the driver’s seat to the markets and the private sector if the political will is there.

In countless statements most governments have also affirmed that a return to business-as-usual after the crisis is not an option. Instead, the UN call to “build back better” has become a leitmotif of the multilateral responses to the COVID-19 crisis.

But does “building back” really lead to the urgently needed systemic change?

In the first phase, many COVID-19 emergency programmes contained certain social components that aimed to provide (more or less targeted) support for families in need, prevent unemployment and keep small businesses and companies financially afloat.

But aside from the fact that even these altogether huge amounts of money could not prevent the global rise in unemployment, poverty, and corporate bankruptcies, the temporary measures produced at best a flash in the pan effect that will quickly evaporate when the support ends.

The social catastrophe then comes only with a delay. Environmental considerations, on the other hand, played hardly any role in the first phase of COVID-19 responses. Most economic relief packages have been ecologically blind and ignored the structural causes and the interdependencies of the multiple crises.

It is therefore all the more important that now, in the second phase of policy responses, longer-term stimulus packages not only support economic recovery, but also promote necessary structural change, such as strengthened public social security systems, improved remuneration and rights of workers in the care economy, and the transition to circular economies, which seek to decouple growth from consumption of finite resources.

If used in the right way, such policies could offer the chance to become engines of the urgently needed socio-ecological transformation proclaimed in the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development.

In response to the COVID-19 crisis, the World Economic Forum calls for “The Great Reset” to enable “stakeholder capitalism.” But pushing the reset button just restarts the game, without changing the rules of the game – or even the game itself.

The reset button clears the memory and reboots the (old) system, a system that has proven that it could not prevent the current crises, but rather has caused them.

Our Spotlight on Sustainable Development Report 2020 offers as an alternative an “8 R”-agenda for systemic change.

The eight sections do not provide a comprehensive reform programme. Rather, they illustrate in a nutshell eight issue areas where not only policy and governance reforms but also changes in the underlying narrative are long overdue:

1. Re-value the importance of care in societies: The pandemic has revitalized the idea that essential jobs exist. Care-giving jobs are at the top of that list, even though historically they have been hardly recognized, socially devalued and badly paid, with little or no benefits or protection.

A recognition of the essentiality of care should foster a process of transformation in the way in which it is socially addressed.

Democratically expanding horizons of equal care arrangements, allocating public resources to building care infrastructure and recognizing and strengthening community care arrangements are essential elements in any process of building a different way out of the current global crisis.

2. Re-empower public services: Around the world, frontline public service workers continue to receive praise and support for their vital role in responding to the COVID-19 crisis. Yet, these underfunded public services and brutal working conditions are not inevitable. They are the result of decades of deliberate erosion of our public services through budget cuts, privatization and understaffing.

We must make sure these services are well financed. We need a better global tax system to ensure corporations and the very wealthy pay their fair share and do not use their economic power to exercise undue influence over public policy. The remarkable wave of re-municipalization in more than 2,400 cities in 58 countries shows how possible – and popular – it is to bring services back into public control.

3. Re-balance global and local value chains: The COVID-19 pandemic exposed once again the vulnerabilities generated by commodity dependence and overreliance on global value chains. They reflect the dominant model of a global division of labour which disregards the massive externalities related to resource exploitation, environmental degradation, displacement of communities, and the violation of human rights and labour rights.

The current crisis offers the opportunity to rethink and remodel these unbalanced export-driven development strategies, shift the centre of gravity away from the global economy and take bold public policy and investment decisions to strengthen domestic circular economies.

Three cornerstones of the necessary economic transformation are the strengthening of sustainable local food systems, enhanced regional (or subregional) cooperation to overcome the constraints of limited domestic demand, and systemic reforms in international trade and investment regimes to widen the national policy space for transformation.

4. Reinforce the shift towards climate justice: Against the backdrop of increasing climate change impacts that inordinately affect the poor, especially in the global South, and a potential deepening of the development gap and global inequality as a result of these and other crises, a more just and equitable approach to addressing climate change has to be undertaken.

In particular, countries of the global North should start phasing out and shifting subsidies and investments away from fossil fuel exploration, extraction and production immediately and commit to transition rapidly to a 100 percent use of clean and renewable energy by 2030. They should scale up the provision of climate financing to at least US$ 100 billion by the end of 2020 and increase that rapidly between 2020 and 2030.

5. Re-distribute economic power and resources: The relief and recovery packages being put in place by governments and international institutions are a critical means for tackling the structural inequalities exposed and perpetuated by COVID-19. In designing and implementing these packages, governments have the chance to start disrupting the status quo and breaking up the concentration of corporate and elite power at the root of these inequalities.

However, most governments are currently failing to take this opportunity. Redistribution is absolutely crucial for a just recovery from COVID-19, for realizing human rights for all, and for achieving the SDGs. But on its own, redistribution is not enough – we also have to think about how we create wealth, resources and power in the first place. Crucial “pre-distributive” policy areas in this regard include labour and wage policies and financial and corporate regulation.

6. Re-regulate global finance: The coronavirus crisis and resulting economic lockdown have made clear that fundamental steps need to be taken in financial regulation and reform of the international financial architecture. At least to some extent, they have also created new political impetus for such steps. One essential element would be a sovereign debt workout mechanism.

This requires an institution that makes independent and binding decisions on sovereign debt restructurings based on objective criteria and is able to enforce it in an impartial manner. To address the problems of tax dodging facilitated by financial secrecy jurisdictions and an unfair global tax system, an intergovernmental tax body – with universal membership and a strong mandate– should be created under the auspices of the United Nations.

7. Re-invent multilateral solidarity: Mobilizing support for international cooperation and for the UN must start with bending the arc of governance back again – from viewing people as shareholders – to stakeholders – to rights holders. There are many global standards and benchmarks that could be developed to measure this progression. These should be at the forefront of pursuing substantive, rights-based multilateralism and distinguishing it from multilateralism in name only. The UN should be the standard bearer at the global level, not a neutral convenor of public and private engagement.

This requires predictable and sustainable public resources, currently undermined by tax evasion and illicit financial flows and detoured to servicing undeserved debt burdens. The necessary but not sufficient condition for multilateral solidarity, the fuel to change direction, is a new funding compact at national level and to finance an impartial, value-based and effective UN system.

8. Re-define the measures of development and progress: SDG target 17.19 of the 2030 Agenda urged the international community “to develop measurements of progress on sustainable development that complement GDP”. COVID-19 shows that this is not a statistical subtlety but a matter of life and death.

The example of the Global Health Security Index (GHSI), an analytical tool intended to identify gaps in epidemic and pandemic preparedness, shows that largely ignoring the social and environmental determinants of health and concentrating instead on the infrastructure, advanced technologies and liberalized regulatory frameworks, can lead to misinterpretations and misguided policy conclusions.

The still dominant development paradigm’s main message is that countries need to get richer, not more sustainable, and that to climb the ladder and become “developed” they should follow the advice—and example– of their richer peers. This mindset must be overcome once and for all.

The Spotlight Report is published by the Arab NGO Network for Development (ANND), the Center for Economic and Social Rights (CESR), Development Alternatives with Women for a New Era (DAWN), Global Policy Forum (GPF), Public Services International (PSI), Social Watch, Society for International Development (SID), and Third World Network (TWN), supported by the Friedrich Ebert Stiftung.

Spotlight on Sustainable Development 2020
Shifting policies for systemic change – Lessons from the global COVID-19 crisis
Global Civil Society Report on the 2030 Agenda and the SDGs
Beirut/Bonn/Ferney-Voltaire/Montevideo/New York/Penang/Rome/Suva, September 2020
www.2030spotlight.org

 

Follow @IPSNewsUNBureau
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The post Pushing the Reset Button will not Change the Game appeared first on Inter Press Service.

Excerpt:

Key messages of the Spotlight on Sustainable Development Report 2020 as September 25 is the 5th anniversary of the adoption of the 2030 Agenda and the SDGs.

 
Jens Martens is Director, Global Policy Forum, Bonn

The post Pushing the Reset Button will not Change the Game appeared first on Inter Press Service.

Pour la première fois, la Commission européenne a présenté une proposition visant à réglementer toutes les monnaies numériques au sein de l'Union européenne. Celles-ci devront notamment offrir des garanties en fonction de leur niveau de risque. Un article d’Euroefe.

Vasárnap, szeptember 27-én, az idegenforgalmi világnap alkalmából ingyenesen lesz látogatható a rimaszombati Gömör-Kishonti Múzeum.