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Photo: CTBTO Executive Secretary with Robin Perry and CTBTO GEM members Foreign Minister of Argentina Susana Malcorra, former U.S. Secretary of Defense William Perry, former UN High Representative for Disarmament Affairs and Under-Secretary-General Angela Kane and former UN Under-Secretary-General Jayantha Dhanapala

Relationship Between the CTBTO and OPANAL

By Lassina Zerbo

Lassina Zerbo is the Executive Secretary of Preparatory Commission for the Vienna-based Comprehensive Nuclear-Test-Ban Treaty Organization (CTBTO). Following are excerpts from his statement at the XXV Session of the General Conference of the Agency for the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons in Latin America and the Caribbean (OPANAL) in Mexico City on 14 February 2017.

VIENNA (IDN) - Mexico’s historical role in advancing non-proliferation and disarmament is well recognized, not least through the work of Nobel peace prize laureate Alfonso García Robles in the creation and adoption of the Treaty of Tlatelolco.

Celebrating Tlatelolco – The First Nuclear-Weapon-Free Zone

By Jayantha Dhanapala*

KANDY, Sri Lanka (IDN) - The commemoration of the Fiftieth Anniversary of the signature of the Treaty of Tlatelolco could not have come at a more opportune moment. In the UN General Assembly last year, Mexico and a number of Latin American and Caribbean countries joined with countries from other regions – including my own Sri Lanka – to ensure the adoption of the Resolution “Taking forward multilateral nuclear disarmament negotiations”.

Photo: The ninth Secretary-General of the United Nations, António Guterres. Credit: UN Photo/Eskinder Debebe

The Importance of the UN as a Moral Compass

By Jayantha Dhanapala*

COLOMBO (IDN) - Throughout my life I have had an abiding faith in the United Nations Organization which, three years hence, will celebrate its 75th anniversary. The foundation document of that unique world body – the Charter – is not only the bedrock of international law, but also the most inspiring document that can hold the international community together amidst its diversity and conflict.

Image: Trump reality check. Credit: Medium.com

Trump Presidency Might Herald Reality Check On 'Liberal' Media

By Kalinga Seneviratne

BANGKOK (IDN) - Donald Trump calls the so-called ‘liberal media’ the “bad guys” and since he was elected President two months ago – in fact even before that with the Brexit vote in June 2016 – the “Liberals” in the West have been chest-beating complaining about misleading social media messages to unfairness of the electoral systems as their preferred candidates or platforms are defeated by grassroots voter revolts.

Photo: António Guterres taking the oath of office as UN Secretary-General and delivering remarks to the General Assembly. UN Photo/ Eskinder Debebe

Huge Challenges Ahead For New UN Chief António Guterres

By Sebastian von Einsiedel and Cale Salih*

With the inauguration of Donald Trump as the 45th President of the United States on 20 January 2017, the United Nations is headed toward a new and potentially challenging relationship with its largest funder. This article refers to four areas that may be especially affected by the change of guards in Washington DC – Security Council dynamics; funding; climate change; and human rights – and makes concrete recommendations for the new Secretary-General António Guterres on how he can best protect the UN from "beginners’ mistakes all around" in the new U.S. Administration.

Photo: An optimist and a pessimist, Vladimir Makovsky, 1893. Credit: Wikimedia Commons.

Why We Should Be Optimistic About 2017

Viewpoint by Jonathan Power

LUND, Sweden (IDN-INPS) - What you see depends on where you sit. There are the pessimists who see President-elect Donald Trump who said in his tweet about the need to engage in a new arms race. There are the optimists, sitting on the other side of the room, who believe the kind words uttered by President Vladimir Putin and Trump to each other mean that there well could be a new agreement on reducing their nuclear armories. 2017 will be a lot better than 2016.

When I wrote my history of Amnesty International (“Like Water on Stone”, Penguin, 2002) I was struck both by the staff and activists how positive they were, despite dealing with some of the worst horrors in the world.

Photo: Kaaba at the heart of Mecca. As the night goes on pilgrims visiting the Holy House. Credit: Wikimedia Commons.

Do Not Fear Islam But Fear Itself

Viewpoint by Jonathan Power

LUND, Sweden (IDN-INPS) - An abiding fear for Donald Trump is that the Middle East dictators' successors in power will be militant Islamists who once elected will stop at nothing. At one time in the presidential campaign he threatened to “nuke” them. Even though the secular-minded President Bashar al-Assad appears to be winning the civil war in Syria the Islamists will sit on his tail.

Violent-inclined Islamists point to the Koran and the Hadith to justify their violence. Indeed, there are sentences in both that are close to their interpretation. Even though they may hype up these passages and ignore other more peaceful ones the truth is that Islam does have a tradition of the hard school. Nevertheless, the overwhelming majority of Muslims today don’t subscribe to it.

Photo: An antiwar demonstration in Tokyo, Japan on September 18, 2015. LittleGray T / Flickr

Two US Veterans Find a Growing Antiwar Movement in Japan

By Rory Fanning

The writer is a former US Army Ranger who is now a member of Veterans For Peace (VFP) and an activist. He and Mike Hanes, former US Marine and VFP activist, both recently completed a speaking tour in Japan. Titled 'The Antiwar Tour', this article first appeared in the quarterly magazine Jacobin, and is being published by arrangement with VFP.

CHICAGO (IDN) - A vibrant antiwar movement is blooming in Japan right now. Trade unions, civic groups, and an overwhelming number of young people are galvanizing the country around Article 9 of the Japanese constitution – the article that has kept Japan out of war for the last seventy years.

Image: There is no Planet B. Credit: The Nature Generation.

New Approaches to UN in a Changing International System

Viewpoint by Franz Baumann*

Note: This is a slightly abridged version of Franz Baumann's Keynote Address at the Bonn International Model UN titled 'Transformation in the midst of Crisis: New approaches in a changing International System' on November 30. Bonn, the former capital of West Germany, hosts 19 UN organizations and secretariats in the UN Campus.

NEW YORK (IDN) - There has been a momentous transformation in the past seventy years since the end of WWII and the founding of the United Nations. The UN, to recall, was born out of the second cataclysmic catastrophe of the 20th century.

In the 1920s and 1930s, the opportunity was missed to organize peace: Japan invaded Manchuria, Italy invaded Abyssinia, Germany invaded Czechoslovakia, started WWII and carried out the genocide against the Jews.

Photo: President Pranab Mukherjee credit: Buddhist Channe

Nalanda University's New Chance for a 'True' Revival

Viewpoint by Kooi F Lim*

KUALA LUMPUR (IDN) - The Nalanda University website introduces the institution as the University that is "inspired by and aspires to match the ancient Nalanda which was an undisputed seat of learning for 800 years till the twelfth century, CE".

But not all is well with the reincarnation of this famous ancient university.

On November 23, Nobel laureate Prof Amartya Sen resigned from the governing board. He was the inaugural chairman of the Nalanda Mentor Group (NMG), which governed the establishment of Nalanda University.

Then two days later, George Yeo, a former foreign minister of Singapore who replaced Amartya Sen as the chancellor in July 2015, abruptly resigned. He cited "interference" in the "autonomy" of the university by the Government of India (GOI) as his reason for relinquishing his post.