The United Nations took a significant step towards providing greater protection and rehabilitation for children who are victims of conflicts when Secretary-General Kofi Annan announced the appointment of the first UN Special Representative for Children in Armed Conflict, Mr. Olara A. Otunnu. The appointment was recommended by the General Assembly when it considered a comprehensive report on the subject by Ms. Graça Machel of Mozambique in November last year.
Photo: UN / Eskinder Debebe
Mr. Otunnu told journalists that he would act as a catalyst and focal point for the UN and other humanitarian agencies to ensure "concerted action to correct the abominable situation faced by children during and after armed conflict." He said he was committed to making the protection of children a common agenda for all nations regardless of their political, cultural or religious orientation.
The issue of children in conflict is "too important" to be confined to the councils of the United Nations. "I will seek to broaden this agenda and its ownership to build a wide community of concerned organizations and individuals well beyond the United Nations on this issue," he said.
Mr. Otunnu faces an enormous and challenging task. In the last 10 years, an estimated 2 million children have been killed in armed conflict, some 6 million have been seriously injured or permanently disabled and another 10 million have been psychologically traumatized. In the last two years, more than 250,000 children under the age of 18 have fought as soldiers in 36 conflicts across the world, particularly in Africa. Nearly 30 million children are refugees or internally displaced because of war.
Born in Uganda in September 1950 and now a national of Côte d'Ivoire, Mr. Otunnu, who is a lawyer by training, has been President of the New York-based International Peace Academy since 1990. He has held many other high-level positions, including Minister of Foreign Affairs of Uganda, Permanent Representative of Uganda to the UN and Chairman of the UN Commission on Human Rights. He has also served on the Commission on Global Governance, the Carnegie Commission on Preventing Deadly Conflict and the Club of Rome.
Mr. Otunnu currently serves on the boards of several organizations, including the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, the Council of African Advisers of the World Bank, and the Advisory Committee of the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute.
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Although global military spending has fallen by $500 bn in the 1987-95 period, development aid fell by 14 per cent in real terms in 1992-95, and by another 4.2 per cent in 1996, says The Reality of Aid, 1997-1998 -- An Independent Review of Development Cooperation, recently published by Earthscan. Contributors to the publication include the International Council of Voluntary Agencies (ICVA), EUROSTEP and ActionAid. Development aid "is at its lowest level since statistics began in 1950," amounting to just 0.25 per cent of the gross national product (GNP) of the world's 21 richest countries. In 1969, the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD), set the target of allocating 0.7 per cent of GNP to ODA. This was endorsed by the UN General Assembly in 1970. Last year, only four countries -- Denmark, Norway, Netherlands and Sweden -- reached and exceeded the target.
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The European Parliament has urged the European Union to "use all legal means available" to protect the Lomé Convention from the World Trade Organization (WTO), reports Inter Press Service. The current Convention expires in 2000. It is the fourth in a series of accords between 70 African, Caribbean and Pacific countries (ACP) and the 15 European Union (EU) countries which give aid and preferential access to European markets.
While negotiations on the future of the Convention, first signed in 1975, will start in September 1998, the WTO has recently ruled that preferential access to EU markets for Caribbean bananas contravenes global rules of free trade. The European Commission, which is the secretariat of the EU, has recently acknowledged that such rulings by the WTO are incompatible with the Lomé Convention.
EUROSTEP, the non-governmental organization, in turn points out that the EU, with the United States, "played a central role" in the Uruguay Round of international trade negotiations which led to the creation of the WTO. According to EUROSTEP, international trade rules are "now widely perceived as detrimental to the poorest and least developed countries."
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Mr. Mohamed ElBaradei of Egypt has been appointed as the next Director-General of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) by the Agency's Board of Governors and General Conference. His appointment takes effect in December 1997. Holding a rank of Ambassador in the Egyptian Foreign Service, Mr. ElBaradei is currently Assistant Director-General for External Affairs at the IAEA, where he has held senior positions since 1984.
Secretary-General Kofi Annan has appointed Mr. David Stephen (United Kingdom) as Head of the UN Political Office for Somalia, currently located in Nairobi. At the time of his appointment, Mr. Stephen was Chief Speechwriter for the Secretary-General, and had previously served as Director of the UN Human Rights Verification Mission in Guatemala (MINUGUA).
