Via Laura Rozen (be sure to visit her new diggs at Politico after Labor Day) Human Rights Watch COO, "Smart Power" author....and UN Dispatch contributorSuzanne Nossel will become the deputy assistant secretary of state for international organizations. From Laura:
Among Nossel's initial tasks will be helping shepherd U.S. goals at the United Nations General Assembly opening session next month, around which time several Obama administration foreign policy initiatives -- including its Middle East peace plan vision or parameters -- are expected to be announced.
A shortfall of rain in Kenya this year has lead to crop shortages that the World Food Program says has caused a food emergency there. From the UN News Center:
Acute malnutrition rates among children under the age of five are over 20 per cent in some areas, well above the 15 per cent emergency threshold.
"Life has never been easy for the poor in Kenya, but right now conditions are more desperate than they have been for a decade," Mr. Oberle said. "WFP is aiming to help almost 1 in every 10 Kenyans to cope wit this serious crisis but we can't do it without money."
The agency also hopes the influx of funds will allow it to expand its school feeding programme by 100,000 to reach almost 1.2 million children. The Kenyan Government provides schools meals to some 500,000 more young people through its own scheme.
Across the Horn of Africa, WFP is facing funding shortfalls, including over $160 million for Somalia and nearly $100 million for Ethiopia.
Appendicitis is a weird illness. It’s more common in the wealthy world than the developing world, even though it doesn’t seem to be lifestyle based. Poor people in wealthy countries have the same low appendicitis rate. It’s more common now, all over the world, than it was fifty years ago but it isn’t contagious from person to person.
We used to blame the appendix for this. We called it vestigial, and removed it at the drop of a hat. Charles Darwin himself told us it no longer had a purpose.We don’t need it to digest, and you don’t find it in other mammals.
We’ve got new research, though, and it’s not the appendix causing the trouble – it’s our modern lives. The appendix only started getting useless about a hundred years ago. It’s a reservoir for the healthy bacteria we need to recover from revolting intestinal ailments like diarrhea. When we don’t get sick that often, however, the immune system doesn’t have enough to do. Appendicitis is one result; allergies are another.
That’s also why appendicitis rates are lower in the developing world. Without consistent access to clean water, our immune systems – and our appendixes - have work to do. They help us fight off cholera and dysentery instead of getting all wound up and attacking our own bodies.
The global Campaign against cluster bombs has received a major boost with the ratification of the treaty banning the weapons by three additional countries. Croatia deposited its instrument of ratification at the UN headquarters on Monday 17 August followed by its neighbour, Slovenia, on Wednesday 19 August. Subsequently, on 24 August, the UN Office for Legal Affairs sent its official notification that Zambia had deposited its instrument on 12 August, making it the 15th country to do so. Seventeen countries have now ratified this crucial treaty in less than nine months. Thirteen more ratifications are needed to reach 30 and trigger entry into force six months later.
Cluster munitions are troublesome from a moral and legal standpoint because their use results in a percentage of unexploded "bomlets" that can lay dormant long after the war is over. These bomlets become the functional equivalent of landmines and do not discriminate between combatants and non-combatants.
The idea is to relegate cluster munitions to the same illegal and universally shunned status as mustard gas. To that end, in 2008 94 countries met in Oslo to sign the Convention Against Cluster Munitions. Signatories include every Western European, central American and pretty much all commonwealth countries. A large number of Sub-Saharan and west African states are also signatories. The big holdouts are the United States and Russia, and China. In fact, the United States and Russia both used cluster munitions in recent conflicts.
Also, the United Nations Assistance Mission in Afghanistan posts a helpful memo from the Independent Election Commission that spells out the procedures for counting the vote and deciding if there is a run-off. Meanwhile, Kai Eide, the head of UNAMA, is appealing for calm. The situation, it seems, remains quite tense.
The Guardian reports that Iran is granting IAEA nuclear inspectors "significant concessions" days before the UN nuclear watchdog agency is scheduled to release a major report on the Iranian nuclear program. The New York Times adds that this is the second of two recent signs that Iran may be willing to negotiate more fulsomely over its nuclear program. The decision to "retain the foreign minister, Manouchehr Mottaki, and not to move a more conservative ally into that position" may also show a newfound willingness in Tehran to strike a deal, says the Times.
These positive signals come amidst increasing international pressure on Iran. German PM Angela Merkel, for the first time, threw her support behind "energy sanctions" should Iran not deal cooperatively with the international community on the nuclear issue. Obama has also warned Tehran that the window for constructive negotiations is closing.
Looking forward, there are two upcoming meetings in which Iran's nuclear program is due to come under international review. The first is at a United Nations Security Council meeting chaired by President Obama on September 24. Then, later that day the G-20 Summit in Pittsburgh will open. Iran's nuclear status is on the agenda. Bottom line is that this next month will be a key test of the international community's efforts to curtail Iran's nuclear ambitions.
As we mentioned a few weeks back, UNICEF is celebrating the 20th anniversary of the Convention on the Rights of the Child with a number of PSA's. Here is one from Benninese singer-song writer Angélique Kidjo.
In an interesting exchange between two smart foreign policy bloggers, Spencer Ackerman and Matt Armstrong discuss the potential for a whole scale re-shaping of the State Department. Both agree that State is due for a bureaucratic re-modeling (sort of along the lines of how the "Goldwater-Nichols act" changed how the Department of Defense organized itself) but Spencer is skepitcal that this sort happen anytime soon. Says Spencer:
Building institutional capability for rebalancing the civilian and military components to national security is a demand-side problem as much as it is a supply side one. Progressives have to build the constituency for that around the country, and members of Congress have to appropriate money for the State Department and support efforts at non-traditional and expeditionary diplomacy that people like Hillary Clinton and, yes, Condoleezza Rice want. Without that, all the structural overhauls of the State Department in the world won't stop the militarization of foreign policy.
This is an important point, but I think the stars are actually favorably alligned for this sort of effort to occur in the near future. For one, there is wide-spread agreement among foreign policy elites that the State Department needs a serious capacity boost. (Incidentally, to that end, the Secretary of Defense is one of the loudest cheerleaders.) But to get directly to Spencer's point, in Hillary Clinton we have a Secretary of State with a huge and independent base of political support. 18 million people voted for her last year. If the massive "Hillary" constituency can somehow be morphed into an activist constituency for diplomacy, a major overhaul of the State Department may yet be possible.
In many poor countries, the greatest unexploited resource isn’t oil fields or veins of gold; it is the women and girls who aren’t educated and never become a major presence in the formal economy. With education and with help starting businesses, impoverished women can earn money and support their countries as well as their families. They represent perhaps the best hope for fighting global poverty.
Pre-order your copy of Half the Sky: Turning Oppression into Opportunity for Women Worldwide