theglobaljournal.net: Latest activities of group The Talk of Geneva

Toni Morrison and Dick Marty Honored by Geneva University

2011-11-02T11:34:07Z

It was an unlikely duo who faced an audience at the University of Geneva (October 14) to share their thoughts on human rights: celebrated American author and Nobel laureate, Toni Morrison and Swiss renegade politician Dick Marty. Morrison, who received the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1993 becoming the first black woman and African-American writer to receive the prize, and Marty were both there to receive an honorary doctorate from the University of Geneva.

The two very different personalities delighted the university audience with their personal views on human rights. The American author spoke about the problem of women’s rights, especially black women’s rights, in a world that continues to be dominated by men while Marty denounced the continuing human rights violations he has chronicled over the past decade as a member of the Council of Europe.

A New Think Tank for Geneva

2011-09-16T20:32:02Z

The Geneva Creativity Center was officially launched on June 28 with the purpose of provoking unexpected encounters between researchers and industrialists to develop unique projects for the benefit of the local economy.
The Center is designed to respond to industries facing technological challenges and to encourage dialogue between industry and academia, providing opportunities for university researchers to work together on applied research and business projects.
A main goal of the Creativity Center is to end the tendency to compartmentalize research by sharing material
and human resources with the aim of eventually strengthening the region’s economy

African Gay Activist Wins Martin Ennals Humanitarian Award

2011-05-16T08:19:12Z

Kasha Jacqueline Nabagesera of Uganda has been given the Martin Ennals Award for Human Rights Defenders for her courage as a gay activist defending minority rights. Homosexual acts are illegal in Uganda and can be punished by long jail terms. In October 2009, an Anti-Homosexuality bill was introduced to increase the penalties in Uganda for homosexual acts from 14 years to life in prison.

Nabagesera has been harassed and threatened since 2007 and in January one of her colleagues, David Kato, was murdered following the publication of a ‘gay list’ by a Ugandan tabloid which called for their hanging. Nabagesera’s name also appeared on the list. She has since gone from house to house, rather than stay too long in one place.

Jury chairman Hans Thoolen called her “an exceptional woman of rare courage, fighting under death threat for human dignity and the rights of homosexuals and marginalized people in Africa.”

"This is a fitting tribute to the courage of one woman, Kasha Nabagesera, and to all activists working under conditions of extreme threat," said Dipika Nath, a researcher at Human Rights Watch.

The Martin Ennals Award is named after the late British lawyer who became the first head of the human rights organization, Amnesty International. Nabagesera will receive the award at a ceremony in Geneva in late 2011.

Kazakh Diplomat Takes Top Post at UN, Geneva

2011-05-12T13:04:02Z

Kassym-Jomart Tokayev of Kazakhstan took office on May 3rd as the new Director-General of the United Nations Office in Geneva (UNOG) after resigning his position as chairman of the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE).

UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-Moon announced the appointment of Tokayev in March, before elections which returned Kazakh President Nursultan Nazarbayev to office on April 3rd with 95.5% of the vote. The OCSE and other international election monitors criticized the election, saying it failed to meet international democratic standards.

Tokayev has the honor of being the first representative of a former Soviet state to head the OSCE and also the first Asian to head the UN Office in Geneva. Tokayev was cleared for the top post at the OSCE after giving a ‘pledge’ that Kazakhstan would protect the OSCE’s election-monitoring body, whose role Russia had proposed altering.

The oil rich Central Asian state has made it clear that holding such prestigious international posts is important symbolically to show the world that Kazakhstan is joining the world community. Critics however continue to point to contradictions between Kazakhastan’s weak record on free elections and human rights and promises to uphold democratic values.

In an opinion article for the Washington Post in March, President Nazarbayev argued that economic prosperity should come before democracy. “Wihout such strength, as we have seen repeatedly around the world, stability is put at risk and democratic reform can founder,” he said.

Disaster Reconstruction: Seeking a Global Framework

2011-05-12T07:11:59Z

In an increasingly disaster prone world, leaders from the UN, the World Bank, NGOs and countries recently hit by natural disasters agreed on a global road map for how best to rebuild after fires, floods, earthquakes and tsunamis at the end of a three day conference in Geneva in May.

The World Reconstruction Conference was billed as the first large scale global conference on disaster reconstruction. “If recovery is done right,” said Zoubida Allaoua, the World Bank’s director of finance, “it opens real opportunities for sustainable development.”

To counter concerns by some governments that such a framework might infringe on national sovereignty, she said the goal of the conference was to create a model for reconstruction that governments can work into their own agendas, and “show them how to put into place a legal framework that would make more effective use of donor funds in the post recovery stage.”

The conference drew on 45 years worth of disasters in 90 countries in a world where recent disasters in Japan have highlighted how “the speed of urbanization and the threats posed by climate change are making this exercise ever more important,” according to Allaoua.

The 2010 earthquake in Haiti was presented as a poignant example about of how, despite the best intentions of donors, uncoordinated efforts to rebuild after a natural disaster can be costly, chaotic and ineffective. “If you do not have national capacity to lead either because they (leaders) have been eliminated or don’t have the skills,” said Alan March of Australia’s Agency for International Development, “you will have a very slow response even with international players taking a role.

The recent twin disasters in Japan were a wake up call for the conferees. “When even the most well-prepared country, like Japan, finds it so difficult to cope, imagine what poor countries with poor capacities are faced with”, said Allaoua.

Japan’s Ambassador in Geneva, Kenichi Suganuma, said Japan is ready to share its experience and “contribute actively to a future global framework for disaster prevention and that the role of governments from the local to the national level is critical.

At the end of the conference, the UN’s office for disaster reduction (UNISDR) announced that a €100,000 award will be offered every two years for new risk reduction projects that “will contribute to increasing people’s resilience to disasters especially in developing countries”.

Globalize Solidarity

2011-04-30T20:43:55Z

Geneva.

One week after the G20 Finance ministers’ meeting in Paris, Sarkozy’s very ambitious vision for the G20 continues to present a rhetoric leap that intrigues advocates of a reform in global governance.

On January 24th, the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development –sometimes thought of as ‘the OECD of developing countries’– hosted a rather interesting “first” where Cyrille Pierre, France’s Deputy Director for Global Economic Affairs and Development Strategy, spoke on behalf of his country’s presidency of the G20. Indeed, not only was it the first time that the G20 Presidency presented its program in front of the related multilateral institution but this very program is the first to include an agenda for development (as agreed at the Seoul Summit last November).

Once the rationale behind the meeting and the program itself were outlined, experts attending pondered the nine key pillars decided in Seoul (infrastructure, human resource development, growth with resilience and food security), and representatives of non-G20 countries had the opportunity to voice their concerns. Senegal warned against the absence of a substantial role for developing countries and Egypt emphasized the links between growth and social development.

For us global governance geeks, the core of the issue is to find out whether France’s “New world, new ideas” plan for 2011 does indeed push towards “new ideas” in a world that requires a new paradigm of global governance. The answer certainly leans towards a prudent “yes”. Clearly, the vision here is that economic governance–the primary preoccupation of the G20 until now– is moving from (here, Mr Pierre quoted Sarkozy himself) a “G20 of crisis” to a “G20 of construction” that breaks from, instead of returning to, the dominant paradigm.

This rupture is ever present in the development agenda, from the recognition of shifting geopolitical power translated in the weight given to South-South cooperation and the expanding lending position of emerging economies, to the emphasis given to UNCTAD’s role in the development debate. As exemplified by the presentation itself, the proposed agenda aims not only at improving communication and coordination among the different organisms of the multilateral system but also at blurring the dichotomy between insiders and outsiders of the G20. Pierre indeed concluded that “globalized solidarity” must “mirror globalization”: not only acknowledging the systemic risks inherent to the present form of global interconnectedness but pinning them to notions of inclusiveness and popular sovereignty.

In other words, an ambitious but unsurprising agenda, in line with the state interventionism that has characterized Sarkozy’s economic policy since the end of the financial crisis but which is now leading the informal but influential coordination effort that is the G20. Sarkozy the Socialist? Not quite: his move is in line with France’s history and foreign policy tradition. Something between a genuine impulse for change and a political strategy related to the upcoming presidential elections in 2012? That’s more likely.

–Laura Bullon-Cassis

Geneva, laboratory of the XXIst Century

2011-04-12T10:42:06Z

Blaise Lampen, journalist and correspondent to the United Nations for the Swiss agency ATS, has just brought out his latest book. Eight years of a journal, where the writer gives us his personal view of meetings, perceptions and information received over the course of the years. Although published in French, we hope the book will also appear in English. A personal account of this quality is too rare not to be welcomed. Genève, Laboratoire du xxie siècle, by Blaise Lampen, Editions Georg

UN Efficiency

2011-02-19T16:54:15Z

After nearly a year at the head of the American mission in Geneva, US Ambassador to the UN, Betty King, gave a press conference on December 16. An exercise that she admits is not her favorite occupation in Geneva, or anywhere else for that matter. She has not failed in her duty to keep an eye on the numerous prominent topics. And it wouldn’t be fair to her teams to ignore the unprecedented changes taking place in the American presidency since the arrival of President Obama. However, the Ambassador has not said much about one of her favorite subjects, namely the tricky and ongoing issue of intellectual property. On the other hand, she has spoken out about the American authorities’ concern to see a clear improvement in the efficiency of the UN machine. Fewer meetings, more efficiency, fewer addenda and more results. There hasn’t been a wikileak, but nevertheless we can detect a certain impatience - extremely understandable, as it happens.

So let’s salute Ambassador Betty King’s courage, in a world where most people look down at the toes of their shoes as soon as the vocabulary becomes less consensual.

Geneva and Its Global Role

2011-02-19T15:51:01Z

The Mayor of Geneva, Ms Sandrine Salerno, has decided to question her city, and de facto her canton, on its role as a global city in the game of global governance. Returning from Mexico at the end of 2010, she realized that 2011 would be a year marked by the emergence of at least two new actors in global governance, namely, groups of towns or megalopolises, and groups of regions. If the G20 achieves legitimacy from the economic weight of its members, its will to act, and from its necessary responsibility at world level, why shouldn’t other actors such as the major cosmopolises and regions of the world also have a necessary influence on the game? However, be they G20, R20 or C20, they will not supplant the UN which is irreplaceable as a base for legitimate multilateral cooperation. The UN is positive in its support for the G20, says Joseph Deiss in our columns – see the exclusive interview with the current President of the General Assembly of the UN. But it seems that regional or plurilateral groupings have the following wind, in that they can spin rapid development of a given situation by creating a circle of consensus.

For the Mayor of Geneva, the city has a special quality: it is a world capital precisely because of the presence of a large number of heads of international agencies operating under the UN umbrella. Concerned to establish a relationship with the Genevans, be they Swiss nationals or expatriates, and also to facilitate the work of the organizations present in the city, she has decided to set up three public debates to take place on 3, 10 and 17 March 2011 at 18.30 in partnership with the University of Geneva, which hosts the meetings, and with The Global Journal, whose editor-in-chief will act as presenter. These debates will take place, unless otherwise informed, at the Uni Mail, room R080, Geneva. Attendees will include professors and heads of international organizations, discussing three themes linked to Geneva and its role in global governance: peace, human rights and humanitarian action; migration and refugees; trade and sustainable development.

For further details on these debates, the guests and practical information contact: www.unige.ch/public or contact@theglobaljournal.net