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UN Treaty regulating the multibillion-dollar global arms trade comes into force

  • by: EDITH M. LEDERER

UNITED NATIONS — A landmark treaty regulating the multibillion-dollar global arms trade comes into force on Wednesday, a milestone hailed by the United Nations and campaigners seeking to stop weapons sales to dictators, terrorists and human rights abusers.

Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon said Tuesday the treaty’s speedy entry into force — less than two years after its historic adoption by the U.N. General Assembly — reflects the commitment of states, international organizations and civil society “to stop irresponsible arms transfers.”

The treaty requires countries that ratify it to establish national regulations to control the transfer of conventional arms and components, and to regulate arms brokers. It prohibits the transfer of conventional weapons if they violate arms embargoes or if they promote acts of genocide, crimes against humanity or war crimes, and if they could be used in attacks on civilians or civilian buildings such as schools and …

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Climate conference news from Lima

ADP: Agreement reached on way forward on Lima draft decision   

Lima, 5 Dec. (Meena Raman and Indrajit Bose) — Parties found consensus on the process to advance work on the draft decision text under the Ad hoc Working Group on the Durban Platform for Enhanced Action (ADP) for adoption in Lima. This is after two days of stalemate and two rounds of ‘friends of the chair’ meetings.

On 2 and 3 December, several developing country Parties had objected to the co-chairs’ method of work in advancing work on the draft decision text, which includes matters regarding the 2015 Paris agreement, the intended nationally determined contributions (INDCs) for that agreement, as well as the pre-2020 climate actions. They had asked for text to be reflected on the screen to enable them to begin formal negotiations but to no avail. Owing to lack of consensus, some Parties suggested a ‘friends of the …

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Up coming events

Three main UN conferences of the year : 2015

July :  Financing for Development Third International  Conference- Addis Abeba Ethiopia

September : Post 2015 Agenda and adoption of SDGs

December:  Climate Conference in Paris

The new Proposed dates for the Sustainable Development Goals SDGs Negotiations

At the modalities  meeting today the dates for the SDG negotiations were revisited. This is the new set of proposed dates.

19-21 january 2015

17-20 february

23-27 march

20-24 april

18-22 may

22-25 june

20-24 and 27-31 july…

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Extractives industries: Dirty and thirsty technologies

Nathalie Seguin, Freshwater Action Network-Mexico

The extractive model of economic growth is a huge burden on the planet, and one which Latin America has been a victim of for many years. Capitalist consumption patterns demand huge quantities of energy, forcing governments to race for more energy sources at whatever cost. Planetary “peak oil” has already been reached, and the cheap oil extraction era is declining. Non-conventional methods of hydrocarbon extraction have become more feasible and widely used, due to the high cost of conventional extraction. This has made countries that historically have not been large producers of oil to aspire to become rich through oil. This makes these countries the next target for large exploitative transnational oil companies.

On a global scale there has been a rush to develop non-conventional hydrocarbons – including natural gas shale by hydraulic fracture, better known as “fracking”. But this technique is a very water …