Monitor Compliance with Women’s Anti-Discrimination Treaty
The 23-member UN Committee on the Elimination of Discrimination Against Women is considering reports from 15 countries this week. (Austria, Azerbaijan, Colombia, Greece, India, Kazakhstan, Maldives, Namibia, Netherlands, Nicaragua, Peru, Poland, Suriname, Tajikistan and Vietnam). Under the Chairperson, Dubravka Simonovic of Croatia, they are working together at the United Nations Headquarters in New York for three weeks to examine, analyze and make comments on women’s discrimination issues as presented to them in the country’s reports on the implementation of provisions of the Convention on the Elimination of all Forms of Discrimination against Women (CEDAW). I read some of the reports and find a great deal of useful information concerning progress in how countries undertake to combat discrimination against women. Tajikistan sets up tougher measures and penalties in dealing with violence against women and creates special social services rehabilitation center for the victims of violence. There is some advancements in India in their efforts to amend religious-based personal laws to reduce gender inequality. Kazakhstan reports progress in women’s representation in local representative bodies, in parliament and in the government. Namibia outlaws discrimination on the basis of sex in most aspects of employment and taxation. Where as in Vietnam, the National Assembly passed the law on Gender Equality with a strategy for women’s advancement to 2010. I am looking forward to reading members concluding comments at the end of the session on 2 February. The Chairperson will send it to the UN General Assembly and then post it on the Committee’s website for general readership.
Filed under Gender Issues, United Nations | Comment (0)Greenland’s Ice Melting at Fast Rate
Why should we care when Greenland gets warmer? We should. Because when glaciers turn to water as a result of global warming, sea levels rise. Greenland has 630,000 cubic miles of ice and when it melted, seawater will rise by 23 feet, scientists warned. That means many islands in the Pacific and Atlantic Oceans will be under water before long. Climate change is a threat to Pacific Ocean mangroves, national parks, and ancient heritage sites. For many years, small island developing countries have asked the United Nations to take tough measures in dealing with our common problem of global warming. Civil society, Non-governmental organizations and individuals around the world are taking action to plant more trees, under the Plant for the Planet: Billion Tree Campaign. Community action has been taken to use new and renewable source of energy. It is time that governments of industrialized countries take serious action to reduce green house gas emission into the atmosphere.
Filed under Environment, Science | Comment (0)Deputy Secretary-General of the UN
Mr. Ban Ki-moon did what he promised. He appointed a woman as Deputy Secretary -General, Dr. Asha-Rose Migiro, Minister of Foreign Affairs and International Cooperation of the United Republic of Tanzania. The Deputy Secretary-General post was created by the General Assembly in 1997 as part of the UN reform. The two previous Deputies Secretary-General were Ms. Louise Frechette of Canada and Mr. Mark Malloch Brown of the United Kingdom. Dr. Migiro’s main job is to act for the Secretary-General at the United Nations Headquarters in the absence of the Secretary-General and to assist him in managing the operations of the Secretariat. Her challenging work will be to strengthen the United Nations as a leading centre for international development policy and development assistance. As the highest ranking woman in the Secretariat, it is my hope that she will also take an active interest in bringing about gender equality in all aspects of the work of the United Nations Secretariat.
Filed under Gender Issues, United Nations, World Affairs | Comment (1)Massive As A Billion Suns
This is an exciting time for those of us who are interested in the existence of “Black Holes” in the universe. For over a decade, we have been wondering whether Einstein’s theory of the existence of objects in the universe so dense that even the light could not escape them, and Hawking’s theory of massive of dead stars running out of fuel collapsing under its own gravity into a black hole, are not just science fictions. Scientists and researchers are now in the process of identifying the hundreds of millions of existing black holes to measure its mass and the speed at which it spins. Marc Kaufman, the Washington Post science writer, in his excellent article, Scientists Shining Light Into Black Holes wrote that spinning and the gravitational force it reflects could be so great that black holes drag surrounding space, stars and gases into them. The spin was estimated to be as fast as 950 times a second, creating powerful magnetic fields. The NASA graphic gave wonderful image of how such a field from a supermassive black holes – with a mass of perhaps a billion suns – can send a jet of particles at almost the speed of light far beyond the center of a galaxy. Cosmologist and astronomers also believe that there are many different kinds of black holes, and that it is likely that most galaxies have a black hole at the center. Fabulous Getty images from European Space agency of supermassive black holes in the core of a galaxy named MCG-6-30-15, as seen through X-ray Multi-mirror Mission satellite, shows to us how energy is being extracted from a black hole. With new scientific instruments, scientists can test the Black Hole theories and let us know how they behave in accumulating matter and in the formation of new galaxies.
Filed under Science | Comment (0)Welcome To New Leaders at the UN
Ban Ki-moon, former Republic of Korea Foreign Minister, began his new days of 2007 as the 8th Secretary General of the United Nations by meeting with UN staff and appointing key new senior members of his team. It is encouraging to learn from the news that he has practiced gender equality by appointing a man, Vijay Nambiar from India as Chief of Staff, and a woman, Michele Montas of Haiti as Spokesperson for the Secretary-General. I hope that he will continue to do this good deed in trying to do “gender balancing” for all his new appointments aiming really to achieve “gender equality” in the top achelons of the Secretariat of the United Nations, as it is his duty in the implementation of the United Nations Charter, in particular, the Article 8, that there shall be no sex discrimination in the staff appointments. Ban Ki-moon also promised that he would appoint a woman as Deputy Secretary-General. I hope that this important appointment goes beyond a mere symbolism to give “an appearance of gender equality” and gives her significant jobs to do that will have a global impact — contributing to world peace and sustainable development– and not just a job of helping him in the traditional “female” role of housekeeping and management of the Secretariat.
Filed under Gender Issues, United Nations, World Affairs | Comment (0)