That's the free number that Afghans can call for information about their upcoming elections. Set up by the UN team in the country, the number has become one of the most popular in Afghanistan:
The UN Assistance Mission in Afghanistan (UNAMA) said today that some 25,000 Afghans call the Independent Election Commission (IEC) every week to get information on the 20 August presidential and provincial council elections.
Providing details on voter registration, polling place, and the election date, the hotline is one of those small, subtle ways that technology can further the UN's -- and Afghans' -- goals. The fact that operators sometimes receive threats from callers claiming to be part of the Taliban may make their job more dangerous, but it also underscores how important this service is to the growth of Afghan democracy.
(image from flickr user rybolov under a Creative Commons license)
The small archipelago nation, Palau, is stepping up to take 17 ethnic chinese Uighurs from prison in Guantanamo. In fact, the United States Supreme Court ordered these detainees released months ago, but until now the Obama administration could not find a country willing to receive them.
Why Palau? Well, it is one of the staunchest American allies in the world. At the United Nations there is sort of a running joke that the United States is never fully isolated: it can always count on Palau for support. And, indeed, when you look at some of the more contentious votes at the General Assembly you'll often find the United States, Palau and the Marshall Islands on one side of and most of the rest of the world on the other. Palau's UN ambassador is even an American.
And of course, Palau was a member of the coalition of the willing.
A day after representatives from more than 35 countries and international organizations met in Rome to discuss piracy off the coast of the Somalia, the UN today reports the astonishing figure that over 100,000 Somalis have been displaced in the last month. Even by the standards of Somalia's recent turmoil, this is a shockingly high rate -- the highest, in fact, in "many, many years." Amidst this gross displacement, all sides of the conflict have committed egregious human rights violations, with an appalling frequency of rape, impressment of child soldiers, and reckless shelling of civilians.
Compared with the widespread travesties faced by these thousands of Somalis, the international community's focus on piracy, whatever its impact on the global economy, seems almost an affront to human dignity. Yet there are signs that leaders in Rome yesterday understand the connection between Somalia's humanitarian crisis and the headline-grabbing antics of pirates. From Italian Foreign Minister Franco Frattini:
The minister said that piracy is linked to phenomena like the "criminality and infiltration of extreme elements easily recruited also by Al-Qaeda".
"Piracy is only the tip of the iceberg," Frattini said. "We are convinced that piracy is related to the political and socioeconomic crisis on land, not on the sea.
He said piracy and terrorism, illegal immigration, human trafficking are " a threat not only to Somalia but to the entire international community".
How they choose to address this larger problem is, of course, the big question. Pirate courts and an enhanced Somali coast guard are nice steps, but the iceberg is much, much bigger.
The House Appropriations Committee released budget allocations (the 302Bs) to each subcommittee today for the FY10 budget. The number for State-Foreign Ops, $48.8 billion, is disappointing, nearly $5 billion less than what the President requested and certainly not enough to fulfill his committments to Foreign Aid and the Foreign Service.
On top of that, CQ is erroneously reporting that the subcommittee is "set to receive significant increases above the current fiscal year's spending levels." That simply isn't true. They failed to calculate the significant amount included in two supplemental spending bills (we've been repeatedly told not to expect the same in the future), which brings this year's spending to roughly $50 billion and means the current allocation represents a significant contraction in diplomatic spending right at the moment when it is needed most.
If the $48.8 billion still seems high to you, you would be wise to keep in mind that it represents a only 1.4% of the total budget and just 7% of the total 'national security budget.' The Department of Defense was allocated $508 billion, $20 billion more than last year (an increase equal to 40 percent of the entire State-Foreign Ops allocation).
The S-G will be traveling to the rapidly melting Arctic at the end of August. As a locale to symbolize the imperative of addressing climate change, he couldn't have chosen better. Glaciers are melting at an astonishing rate (for glaciers, that is), and much of what once reasonably could have been considered part of Santa Claus' land route from the North Pole will soon require reindeer that have learned to swim. (More seriously, the global warming of the Arctic does threaten to disrupt important ecosystems, not to mention cause the rise in sea levels that small island nations the world over are so rightly concerned about.)
The trip underscores the enthusiasm with which Ban honestly seems to have taken up the mantle as the UN chief who galvanized the fight against climate change, which he has called the crisis the "defining challenge of our time." Ban will now be the first UN Secretary-General to have traveled to both of the Earth's poles. Two years ago, he became the first S-G to visit the Antarctic (so really, he's just showing off his toughness in the cold here). He did learn to dress warm on that last trip though.
Matt Yglesias points out that, at a Carnegie Endowment for International Peace event yesterday, the Foreign Minister of Indonesia essentially said that if the United States walks through the door of ratifying the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty, his country will follow.
This is a shrewd political maneuver, particularly because a statement at a venue halfway across the world likely won't generate as much attention at home than would one made in Jakarta. Such a commitment would also require a greater lift on the part of the United States, which actually possesses nuclear weapons, than of Indonesia, which does not. Indonesia does, however, have the potential to research and possibly test nuclear material, so it would unquestionably be in U.S. interests to make sure another country did not start along the road of nuclear progression.
For all the reasons Matt lays out -- that ratifying CTBT is relatively low-hanging fruit, a short-term good gesture that would advance the goal of non-proliferation -- convincing the eight other countries who would need to ratify CTBT for it to take effect should be an Obama Administration priority (Vice President Biden is reportedly leading the effort to shepherd the treaty through the Senate). Ratifying this ourselves should be a diplomatic and policy no-brainer, so much more clearly so if Indonesia is ready to follow by example. Granted, China and Russia (let alone Iran and North Korea), also CTBT non-ratifiers, probably wouldn't exactly fall like dominoes from this diplomatic reciprocity, but it would at least remove the hypocrisy from the U.S. stance.
Plus, a move by Indonesia would give commentators another positive development in a Muslim country (the world's largest, in fact) to ascribe to the "Obama Effect" of the Cairo speech.
(image of Indonesian Foreign Minister Hassan Wirajuda, under a Creative Commons license)
If all goes well, by 2050, the European Union might make those target emissions reductions currently bandied about -- 40%, 60%, even 80% -- seem modest. With the right decision making and investment strategy, Europe might be able to go totally green by then.
Governments must stop authorising the building of traditional generators such as coal-fired power plants, accelerate the phasing out of nuclear power, and instead support investment in efficient use of renewable sources, the experts say.
Investment in renewables is, as I mentioned the other day, growing worldwide. There's no reason a completely green economy in the near future shouldn't be a reasonable goal for European policymakers. You know all those newly elected French Greens will be pushing for it...
(image from flickr user woodleywonderworks under a Creative Commons license)
Good news from the country's Human Sciences Research Council:
South Africa's HIV epidemic has levelled off at an infection rate of 10.9% for those aged two or older, according to a new study.
The survey also suggests the rate of infection in children and teenagers could be falling.
This could be partly attributed to increased use of condoms, it says.
There may be "light at the end of the tunnel," in the words of South Africa's Health Minister, but it's still an uphill climb; there are more HIV-positive people in South Africa -- 5.5 million -- than anywhere else in the world. Still, increased condom usage is a good sign, one that the country's leadership -- having shifted from Thabo Mbeki, whose infamous denial and inaction deeply exacerbated the problem, to Jacob Zuma, who, still, disturbingly once claimed that a shower after sex decreased the risk of HIV infection -- will have to actively push.
Is it getting harder for well-meaning NGOs to gain accreditation at the United Nations? The recent rejection of the Washington D.C. based NGO that monitors human rights issues at the United Nations suggests that this may be so.
Gaining NGO accreditation to the United Nations is a long process in which organizations must prove that their work compliments the aims of the United Nations and is in the spirit of the UN Charter. The decision to grant an NGO accreditation is ultimately that of the United Nations Economic and Social Council, ECOSOC, which is composed of 54 member states. ECOSOC in turn, delegates the vetting of NGO applications to the 19 member states that form the NGO Accreditation Committee.
It is in front of the NGOs Committee that well meaning NGOs face their biggest hurdle. "Authoritarian governments on the panel devote energy and mobilize to blocking human rights ngos," says Dokhi Fassihian, the executive director of the Democracy Coalition Project, a Washington, D.C.-based NGO that saw its application rejected by the NGO committee last week. " They put pressure on swing states."