Imagine if 2010 hadn't been the Year of Biodiversity

"Biodiversity is life. Biodiversity is Our Life" That is the slogan of the United Nations International Year of Biodiversity, which draws to a close in just over a week. When Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon announced the opening of the Year of Biodiversity, he cautioned:

A failure to protect the world's natural resources is a wake-up call for people everywhere.

The U.N. General Assembly certainly ushered the International Year .of Biodiversity out with a bang-- voting on December 21 to establish the Intergovernmental Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services.
This new Intergovernmental Platform will be modeled on the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, and is intended to be a mechanism for integrating scientific knowledge about biodiversity into policy-making.
The Intergovernmental Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services was established just in time for the International Year of Forests which begins in January 2011, and the International Decade of Biodiversity, also beginning in January 2011. Let us hope it has more success in galvanizing global action targeted at stemming our losses of biodiversity than the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change has had in getting global agreement on actions to stem carbon emissions.
Establishment of the Intergovernmental Platform was a bright spots in a year otherwise riddled with bad news for biodiversity.
Biodiversity loss is rapid and ongoing. Over the last 50 years, humans have changed ecosystems faster and more extensively than in any comparable period of time in human history. We are losing tropical forests, wetlands, coral reefs and grasslands at a rapid clip. Species extinctions are orders of magnitude over expected rates. The causes are clear:
►over-exploitation
►habitat loss
►invasive species
►climate change
Unfortunately, these drivers of biodiversity loss show no signs of abating. As a result, we are losing species at rates three orders of magnitude greater than would otherwise be expected.
The IUCN Red List (prior IntLawGrrls posts here, here, and here) reported that 1/5 of vertebrate species, ranging from 13% of birds to 41% of amphibians, are threatened with extinction. A similar report by the Kew Royal Botanical Gardens suggests that one-fifth of plants are similarly threatened. This is terrifying! As the Millennium Ecosystem Assessment documented, biodiversity is the foundation on which human life depends.

In 2002, the Convention of the Parties to the Convention on Biological Diversity adopted the Strategic Plan for the Convention on Biological Diversity. The Strategic Plan set what's come to be known as the 2010 Biodiversity Target -- a commitment by the 191 parties to the Convention to

achieve by 2010 a significant reduction of the current rate of biodiversity loss at the global, regional and national level as a contribution to poverty alleviation and to the benefit of all life on Earth.

This biodiversity target was subsequently endorsed by the World Summit on Sustainable Development, the United Nations General Assembly at the 2005 World Summit Meeting, and was incorporated into the Millennium Development Goals. These developments marked an official international recognition that biodiversity loss is closely associated with environmental degradation, poverty and ill-health. This prompted the General Assembly to declare 2010 the International Year of Biodiversity.
Unfortunately, the Convention of the Parties acknowledged earlier this year that it had failed to meet the 2010 Target for halting the losses of biodiversity. The European Union similarly missed its targets. The Global Biodiversity Outlook reports deforestation continues at an alarming rate, coral reefs show major declines, and abundance has plummeted for many species. This is not to say there have been no successes.
At the Cancun meeting earlier this month, delegates were cheered that Brazil announced it had reduced tropical rainforest destruction and CO2 emissions to record low levels, and that some species, mostly charismatic macrofauna, have shown signs of recovery. As the IUCN Red List reminds us, the news is not all grim. For the first time, scientists have documented that conservation can really make a difference in stemming biodiversity loss. There is still hope. But, the time for action is now!

Child marriage, abroad & at home

Pending in the U.S. House of Representatives is a bill to combat child marriage around world.
The International Protecting Girls by Preventing Child Marriage Act of 2010 (S. 987) unanimously passed the Senate 11 days ago. The bill finds, inter alia:

Child marriage, also known as 'forced marriage' or 'early marriage', is a harmful traditional practice that deprives girls of their dignity and human rights.

and:

Child marriage as a traditional practice, as well as through coercion or force, is a violation of article 16 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, which states, 'Marriage shall be entered into only with the free and full consent of intending spouses'.

Citing the frequency with which under-18 girls (girls in particular, though elsewhere the bill mentions boys, too) marry, in countries like "Niger, Chad, Mali, Bangladesh, Guinea, the Central African Republic, Mozambique, Burkina Faso, and Nepal," the bill would:
► Authorize the U.S. President to work with "multilateral, nongovernmental, and faith-based organizations" to develop a child-marriage-prevention strategy that includes "education, health, income generation, changing social norms, human rights, and democracy building"; and
► Require that information about the nature and prevalence of child marriage be included in the annual Country Reports published by the U.S. Department of State.
No word on when such legislation might be taken up in the House.
Movement in that direction received a notable boost last week, in a Washington Post op-ed published jointly by Mary Robinson (right), formerly the President of Ireland and the U.N. High Commissioner for Human Rights, and Desmond Tutu, Archbishop Emeritus of Cape Town, South Africa, and winner of the 1984 Nobel Peace Prize. Members of The Elders group established by former the South African President and Nobel Peace Prizewinner, the 2 wrote:

As members of an independent group of leaders who were asked by Nelson Mandela to use our influence to address major causes of human suffering, we have never been involved in supporting a specific piece of legislation before, but we believe that investing in efforts to prevent child marriage is critical to global development and the achievement of the U.N. Millennium Development Goals. We applaud the Senate for passing this forward-looking legislation and urge the House of Representatives to follow suit.

Against the backdrop of these recent legislative efforts, an item discovered in the Library of Congress archives jumped out.
A captivating account of early 20th C. "women's editions" published by the mainstream U.S. press included the Louisville Courier-Journal clipping at left, entitled "Black List of States". Listed was the legal limit "at which fathers, brothers, and husbands have placed the age at which a little girl may consent to her ruin" -- that is, the age at which she could become a child bride in the United States.
In all but 3 states (Colorado, Kansas, and Wyoming), the age was under 18.
The youngest age of legal consent?
7 years, in Delaware.
The date?
1895, just 53 years before adoption of the Universal Declaration to which the pending legislation refers.

On October 24

On this day in ...
... 2005 (5 years ago today), a day that was the 60th anniversary of the entry into force of the U.N. Charter (today is the 65th anniversary), the U.N. General Assembly approved Resolution 60/1, World Summit Outcome. Its nearly 200 paragraphs reaffirmed many aspects of the United Nation's mission, including the U.N. Millennium Development Goals adopted a few years earlier. Paragraph 138 of the World Summit Outcome resolution stated:

Each individual State has the responsibility to protect its populations from genocide, war crimes, ethnic cleansing and crimes against humanity. This responsibility entails the prevention of such crimes, including their incitement, through appropriate and necessary means. We accept that responsibility and will act in accordance with it. The international community should, as appropriate, encourage and help States to exercise this responsibility and support the United Nations in establishing an early warning capability.

As we've posted, the meaning and consequences of this "responsibility to protect" paragraph remain a subject of global debate.

(Prior October 24 posts are here, here, and here.)

Maybe rename it World Hunger Day?

Happy World Food Day.
In his 1964 Nobel Prize Acceptance Speech, the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. challenged the world to confront the problem of hunger. He stated:

I have the audacity to believe that people everywhere can have three meals a day for their bodies, education and culture for the minds and dignity, equality and freedom for their spirits.

(Watch the speech here.)

Almost 50 years later, we are still waiting.

It's not like nobody else noticed that we had a Hunger Problem.

The right to food has been at the heart of international discourse as long as the international community has been discussing human rights:

► Article 25 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights recognized the right to food as a basic human right.

► Article 11(2) of the United Nations Convention on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights recognizes the right to be free from hunger. (The United States is still not a signatory to that convention).

► The 1974 World Food Conference declared that "every man, woman and child had an inalienable right to be free from hunger and malnutrition." It committed the international community to eradicating hunger by 1984. (Report available here.)

► The World Food Summit of 1996 set a goal of halving the number of chronically people by 2015.

► The Millennium Development Goals set a target of halving the proportion of people living with food insecurity by 2015. (Notice how much less ambitious the goals have become over time.)

In 1979, the Food and Agriculture Organization declared its intention to designate October 16th -- the date of its founding in 1945-- to be World Food Day. The reason for World Food Day was to "heighten public awareness of the world food problem and strengthen solidarity in the struggle against hunger, malnutrition and poverty." In 1980, recognizing that "food is a requisite for human survival and well-being and a fundamental human necessity" the U.N. General Assembly, in Resolution 35/70, endorsed observance of World Food Day.

Today marks World Food Day's 30th celebration. The clock ticks ever closer to the 2015 deadline for achieving the Millennium goals and the World Food Summit Goals.

So, how are we doing?

In its report entitled the State of World Food Insecurity 2010, the FAO states that almost 1 billion people are undernourished. That is more, in absolute terms, than were undernourished in 1979, and roughly the same in percentage terms.

How can it be that in all those years, with all those international proclamations, and all that investment we have made, basically no progress?

Or, phrased differently:

We produce more food today than ever before in the history of the world. So, why are more people hungry today than ever before in the history of the world?

Perhaps the problem is that we are thinking about hunger the wrong way.

This year, the Agricola Medal was given posthumosly to Dr. Norman Bourlag, the man commonly credited with starting the Green Revolution. (prior post) Dr. Bourlag was right when he said that

the first essential component of social justice is adequate food for all mankind.

With all due respect to Dr. Bourlag, who devoted his life to eradicating hunger, no amount of new and better technology will solve this problem -- because it is not a food production problem. The problem with Dr. Bourlag's technology-based approach is that today's hunger is a food distribution problem. We already produce enough food to feed all the people on the planet. We just don't use that food to feed the people who are hungry.

Hunger today revolves around the way that global trade is structured. Indeed, since the global food price crisis of 2008, Olivier De Schutter, the United Nations' Special Rapporteur on the right to food, has been cautioning about the need for structural measures to address food price increases. Even though this year's wheat crop is one of the largest ever recorded, food prices are skyrocketing. The Special Rapporteur identifies main culprits responsible for increasing prices in a time of plenty seem to be commodity speculation on international food markets, disinvestment in social protection schemes, and a global governance scheme that hinders the ability of governments to mitigate price shocks.

Perhaps we should rename it World Hunger Day.

(Personal note: About 195 million children are part of that 1 billion who suffer from food insecurity. As I watched my 4 year old eat her dinner after writing this post, all I could think about was the unbearable pain that a parent unable to feed her child must suffer. I made a donation to Doctors Without Borders' Starved for Attention campaign. Please consider doing something similar.)

The Protection of Women's Rights: Power, Equality, and the MDGs

The news on violence against women, women and poverty, maternal mortality, and gender gaps in education can be disheartening. Prospects for the equality and empowerment of women and the protection of their human rights can seem further away than ever. That's why it's necessary to pause occasionally to assess where we've been and to strategize on how to build the necessary political will for future action.
During UN Week, I participated in a conference on “The Protection of Women’s Rights” sponsored by the Italian Cultural Institute of New York.
It was an energizing gathering, reflecting both serious challenges and exciting possibilities ahead in making the phrase “women’s rights are human rights” a reality, not just an inspiring slogan.
The meeting, co-sponsored by the Italian Ministry of Foreign Affairs, the Ministry for Equal Opportunities, the Permanent Mission to the United Nations, and the Consulate General in New York, was also aimed at highlighting the contributions of Italians and Italian-Americans to women’s rights internationally.
Held the same week as the UN Summit on the Millennium Development Goals , a 10 year review of the mixed progress toward ending poverty by 2015, the event brought together a diverse group of participants. The leading diplomats, judges, scholars, advocates, and political leaders there discussed a wide range of issues and empowerment strategies. Rachel N. Mayanja, Special Adviser to the Secretary-General of the UN on Gender Issues (photo, left) was among the distinguished speakers.
As IntLawGrrls Stephanie Farrior and Fiona de Londras discussed here, there has been increasing international focus on the status of women, but further progress remains to be seen. The UN has just launched an Entity for Gender Equality and the Empowerment of Women (UN Women), and appointed former Chilean President Michelle Bachelet to head the new body.
Key Themes
Several themes surfaced in the presentations:
►Women’s Access to Power (political, economic, and social), including Vice-President of the Italian Senate Emma Bonino’s stirring call for women to exercise their own agency on this front)) (photo, right);
►Women’s Access to Justice (including informative talks by Flavia Lattanzi, Judge of the International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia (photo, below left), and Antonio Baldassarre, President Emeritus of the Constitutional Court of Italy);
►Violence Against Women and Traditional Practices (several representatives from sponsors of a High-Level Meeting on the International Campaign for a UN General Assembly Resolution Banning FGM held earlier in the week attended the conference): (See IntLawGrrls posts on FGM here and my entry on “Female Genital Mutilation and Female Genital Cutting” in 2 Encyclopedia of Human Rights 200-213, David P. Forsythe, et al, eds., Oxford University Press (2009) here);
►Transnational Migration and the Global Economy (including talks on the daunting challenges facing women refugees and asylum-seekers by Susan Akram, Clinical Professor of Law, Boston University School of Law, and on the economic, social, and cultural rights of migrant domestic workers by yours truly, IntLawGrrl Hope Lewis);
►The “Locations” of Women’s Rights (including a thought-provoking presentation by Suzanne Goldberg, Clinical Professor of Law and Director, Center for Gender and Sexuality, Columbia University School of Law, on the implications of the varied identities of women and the different positions from which they speak);
►Women and Peace (including a review and critical analysis of developments since the adoption of UN Security Council Resolution 1325 (Women, Peace, and Security) by Sanam Naraghi Anderlini, Research Affiliate, Center for International Studies, Massachusetts Institute of Technology);
►Regional Approaches to Women’s Rights (including encouraging presentations by Inter-American Human Rights Commissioner Dinah Shelton, Manatt/Ahn Professor of International Law, George Washington University School of Law, and on other regional systems by Angela del Vecchio, Director of the Master in L.A.W.S. (Legal Advanced World Studies), Luiss Guido Carli University Professor, Law Faculty, LUISS University, Rome (delivered by transboundary water issues expert Mara Tignino, Ph.D., Senior Researcher, Faculty of Law, University of Geneva, in her absence).
The Full Program
Welcome and Introduction
Riccardo Viale, Director of the Italian Cultural Institute, New York
Mara Carfagna, Minister for Equal Opportunities of Italy
Session I
Chair: Antonio Baldassarre, President emeritus of the Constitutional Court of Italy
Emma Bonino, Vice-president of the Senate of Italy, cofounder of No Peace Without Justice, "A worldwide ban on female genital mutilation: ending a violation of the human rights of women and girls"
Flavia Lattanzi, Judge of the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia, “Women`s rights in international criminal tribunals”
Sanam Naraghi Anderlini, Massachussetts Institute of Technology, “UNSC Resolution No. 1325 on women, peace and
security”
Suzanne Goldberg, Columbia University, “Women’s rights: issues for the next decades”
Susan Akram, Boston University School of Law, “The failure of protection of women and girls under the international refugee regime”
Session II
Chair: Suzanne Goldberg, Columbia University
Antonio Baldassarre, President emeritus of the Constitutional Court of Italy, "Constitution and Gender"
Hope Lewis, Professor of Law, Northeastern University, Boston, "Economic, social and cultural aspects of women's rights protection”
Rachel N. Mayanja, Assistant Secretary-General and Special Adviser to the Secretary-General of the UN on Gender Issues, “Safeguarding women’s rights: the United Nations role – past, present and future”
Dinah Shelton, Inter-American Commission on Human Rights, Manatt/Ahn Professor of International Law, George Washington University,"Protection of women's rights and the interamerican commission on human
rights"
Angela del Vecchio, LUISS University, Rome,"The protection of women in the international regional conventions on human rights” (delivered by Mara Tignino, Senior Researcher, Faculty of Law, University of Geneva)
Federiga Bindi, Italian National School of Public Administration, Rome, “Women leadership training as a way to fill the gender gap”
Concluding Remarks
Franco Frattini, Minister of Foreign Affairs of Italy,
Congratulations and heartfelt thanks to the Italian Cultural Institute, its staff, and interns for hosting such a substantive meeting on the advancement of women and girls.

Battling Maternal Mortality

In anticipation of this week's UN Summit on the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs), several UN entities -- the World Health Organization, UN Children's Fund (UNICEF), UN Population Fund (UNFPA), and the World Bank -- released a study of international trends in maternal mortality between 1990 and 2008. This assessment report, which covers 99.8% of births worldwide, is aimed at achieving the fifth MDG: to reduce the maternal mortality ratio (MMR) by three quarters between 1990 and 2015. While reliable data are hard to collect, particularly in the developing world, the news is modestly positive: The estimated 358,000 maternal deaths in 2008 represent a 34% decline from 1990 levels. While this is not quite the rate of change needed to achieve a 75% drop by 2015, it's certainly a step in the right direction.

The good news? A total of 147 countries experienced a decline in their maternal mortality levels, with enormous drops (from 50 to 75%) in several sub-Saharan African nations. These declines are likely due to improved access to health systems and increased female education. The proportion of deliveries attended by skilled health personnel rose in the developing world, as did the percentage of women receiving prenatal care and the proportion of women using contraception. Notably, East Asia, which experienced the greatest decline in maternal mortality levels, has a contraceptive prevalence rate of 86%, while in sub-Saharan Africa, which faced one of the lowest declines, that rate was only 22%.
The bad news? The developing world suffered an estimated 99% (355,000) of these deaths, with sub-Saharan Africa and South Asia accounting for an estimated 87% (313,000) of global maternal deaths. Just eleven countries from these two regions comprised an estimated 65% of all maternal deaths in 2008, with India accounting for the largest number of deaths (63,000). Of greater concern, 23 countries faced an increase in their MMR over the time period studied. The five countries that fared the worst in terms of increasing maternal mortality rates (Botswana, Lesotho, South Africa, Swaziland, and Zimbabwe) are of course part of the region with the highest HIV rates in the world. In sub-Saharan Africa, 9% of all maternal deaths were due to HIV/AIDS.
The global disparities in maternal mortality are shocking; the MMR in the developing world (290 deaths per 100,000 live births) was over twenty times that of the developed world (14). In four countries -- Afghanistan, Chad, Guinea-Bissau, and Somalia, the MMR was over 1000. In other words, a 15-year old female in sub-Saharan Africa faces a 1 in 31 chance of maternal death over her lifetime, while a girl of the same age in the developed world faces a 1 in 4300 risk. That girl in Afghanistan? A 1 in 11 risk.
Given that many of the causes of maternal deaths in the developing world are relatively easily addressed through basic prenatal and childbirth care (e.g. hemorrhage and hypertension are responsible for more than half of these deaths), it seems that the goal of 75% decline, though ambitious, should be within reach. In recognition of the need for basic improvements in health care for pregnant women, UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon unveiled on Wednesday his $40 billion Global Strategy for Women's and Children's Health. Here's hoping it can make a difference for that young girl in Afghanistan.
(credit for photo above left)

General Assembly proclaims right to water as United States & 40 other countries abstain

The human right to water and sanitation yesterday won the immediate acclaim of the United Nations.
Most nations, that is.
Meeting at its headquarters in New York, the U.N. General Assembly adopted Resolution A/64/L.63/REV.1, by which the Assembly:

1. Declares the right to safe and clean drinking water and sanitation as a human right that is essential for the full enjoyment of life and all human rights;
2. Calls upon States and international organizations to provide financial resources, capacity-building and technology transfer, through international assistance and cooperation, in particular to developing countries, in order to scale up efforts to provide safe, clean, accessible and affordable drinking water and sanitation for all;
3. Welcomes the decision by the Human Rights Council to request that the independent expert on the issue of human rights obligations related to access to safe drinking water and sanitation present an annual report to the General Assembly, and encourages her to continue working on all aspects of her mandate and, in consultation with all relevant United Nations agencies, funds, and programmes, to include in her report to the Assembly, at its sixty-sixth session, the principal challenges related to the realization of the human right to safe and clean drinking water and sanitation and their impact on the achievement of Millennium Development Goals.

France's Secretary of State for Ecology, Chantal Jouanno, judged the decision "historique" -- and many countries' delegates echoed that adjective.
The vote on the resolution was overwhelming: 122-0-41.
The representative of the United States explained its abstention as an objection not to the importance of access to water, an issued on which we've frequently posted. Rather, he said that the United States objected to the Assembly's decision to go forward now rather than to await other U.N. action:

The United States had hoped to negotiate and ultimately join consensus on this text, on a text, that would uphold and support the international process underway at the Human Rights Council. Instead, we have here a resolution that falls far short of enjoying the unanimous support of member States and may even undermine the work underway in Geneva. This resolution describes a right to water and sanitation in a way that is not reflective of existing international law; as there is no “right to water and sanitation” in an international legal sense as described by this resolution.

The United States was joined in abstention by 40 other countries: Armenia, Australia, Austria, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Botswana, Britain, Bulgaria, Canada, Croatia, Cyprus, Czech Republic, Denmark, Estonia, Ethiopia, Greece, Guyana, Iceland, Ireland, Israel, Kazakhstan, Kenya, Latvia, Lesotho, Lithuania, Luxembourg, Malta, Netherlands, New Zealand, Poland, South Korea, Moldova, Romania, Slovakia, Sweden, Trinidad and Tobago, Turkey, Ukraine, Tanzania, and Zambia. And Japan.
Coincidentally, yesterday Japan finished hosting the 9-day official visit by the independent expert cited in ¶ 3 of the Resolution, Catarina de Albuquerque (right), an attorney, law teacher, and Senior Legal Adviser on International Affairs to the Portuguese Secretary of State for Justice. On the whole her observations were favorable, though she expressed concern with regard to certain minority populations. De Albuquerque began her statement by quoting a legend that she'd seen on a Kyoto shrine:

Mizukara Katsudoushite Hokawo Ugokashimuruha Mizu nari.

Translation: "It is the water which proactively moves and influences others."

Minorities in Viet Nam

(It’s IntLawGrrls’ great pleasure to welcome back alumna Gay McDougall, who contributes this guest post)

This month I conducted a 10-day official visit to Viet Nam. My objectives for this, my 10th such country visit, were to hold consultations on minority issues and to examine the human rights situation of Viet Nam’s numerous minority groups. These goals conform with my mandate as the Independent Expert on Minorities for the United Nations: to promote implementation of the U.N. Declaration on the Rights of Persons Belonging to National or Ethnic, Religious and Linguistic Minorities, and to identify challenges, as well as successful practices, in regard to minority issues.

I would first like to thank the Government of Viet Nam for extending an invitation to me and for the high level of importance that it attached to my visit, apparent in the assistance and access provided to me, at both national and provincial levels. My preliminary comments, excerpted in this post, will be followed by a report containing my full findings and recommendations to the U.N. Human Rights Council next March.

I began my visit in Hanoi before travelling to regions of significant minority populations, including the provinces of Dien Bien in the Northern Highlands, Tra Vinh in the Mekong Delta region, and Gia Lai and Kon Tum provinces in the Central Highlands. (map credit) I met with senior Government officials, representatives of non-governmental organizations, community members, academics, and others working in the field of minority issues, social inclusion and promotion of equality and non-discrimination.

Overview

Viet Nam is a country of great diversity. The majority population consists of those who identify themselves as part of the “Kinh” ethnic group. There are 53 other ethnic groups as well, with unique religious, linguistic and cultural characteristics, and identities. Viet Nam recognizes its minority populations as important constituent parts of its nation, and it understands many of the challenges that it faces to ensure that the rights of minorities are respected, protected and promoted in every sphere of life. The establishment of dedicated Governmental bodies with responsibilities for minorities, including the Committee on Ethnic Minority Affairs, is a positive practice that is replicated on provincial and district levels.
Viet Nam has witnessed a remarkable period of economic growth, progress towards the United Nations' Millennium Development Goals, and highly positive results in respect to poverty alleviation and economic development in general. The Government readily acknowledges that despite these achievements, most minority groups remain the poorest of Viet Nam’s poor.

The acknowledgment of the economic and social gaps that exist between the minority communities and the majority population is an important step towards putting in place the measures required to close those gaps.

Government programs over the past several years have established important initiatives to close those gaps through infrastructure projects, social protection programs and developments in the fields of health and education. The government should be commended for these programs and for the improvements that the programs have made in the lives of minorities.

I understand the challenges facing the government in achieving the rights of non-Kinh ethnic communities, particularly those in the most geographically remote areas. I welcome the government’s affirmation of its commitment to tackling those challenges as a matter of high priority. It is critical that:

► The Government ensures that its economic growth is achieved without negatively impacting on the lives of minorities or deepening their poverty; and

► Minorities share fully in the benefits of growth and prosperity, while maintaining their distinct cultures and identities.

Education

Access to quality and appropriate education is a gateway to development and poverty eradication for minorities. It is equally essential for the preservation and promotion of minority cultures, languages and identities. Education helps minorities to take control of their lives and to fulfill their potential as equal stakeholders in the development of the State. (photo credit)

Viet Nam has made significant progress in the provision of school structures to most Communes, in the option of boarding schools for students from remote villages, and in access to secondary schools for minority children. Nonetheless, I am concerned that minorities are achieving poor results in education relative to Kinh students.

One of the problems that has been identified is that minorities lack adequate opportunities to be taught in their own minority languages from the earliest years of education. They struggle with being taught only in Vietnamese.

With the ultimate goal of fluency in Vietnamese, bilingual education helps minority children to make better early progress in education and provides a strong and culturally appropriate foundation for their future schooling. I look forward to the results of a pilot programme of Mother-Tongue-based bilingual education currently being implemented by the Ministry of Education and Training and UNICEF, including in Gia Lai and Tra Vinh, 2 provinces I visited. Studies done worldwide endorse this approach. It is not sufficient that the Mother-Tongue language is taught as a subject. In preschool, and the first 3 years, it should be the language of instruction, which then transitions to be Vietnamese.

Enjoyment of rights
As in many countries with such diversity, numerous challenges exist to ensuring that members of minority groups can fully realize all their economic, social, cultural, civil and political rights and live in conditions of equality. The rights of minorities include:

► Freedom to practice their religions without restriction;

► Freedom of association and expression;

► Right of peaceful assembly;

► Equal right to own and use land; and

► Right to participate fully and effectively in decisionmaking regarding issues that affect them, including economic development projects and resettlement issues.

(photo credit) Concerns relating to these rights have been raised with me in the context of my visit; in turn, I have raised these issues directly with the Government of Viet Nam at national and provincial levels. I will study closely the information that I have gathered and the responses of the Government before commenting on these issues in my final report.

Conclusion
I believe that my visit marks an important step by the Government of Viet Nam to engage with the human rights bodies and mechanisms of the U.N. system. I welcome the Government’s undertaking to extend further invitations to other U.N. human rights experts in the months ahead, and I hope that these will include invitations to a wide range of mandate holders, including those with mandates in the area of civil and political rights.

King made Ambassador to U.N./Geneva

Among the 27 nominees who successfully cleared the Senate confirmation logjam this week was one of particular interest to IntLawGrrls readers:
Three and a half months after President Barack Obama nominated her, Betty E. King (left) was confirmed as Representative of the United States of America to the Office of the United Nations and Other International Organizations in Geneva, with the rank of Ambassador.
In the last 2 administrations, King served as the United States' Representative to the U.N. Economic and Social Council, where she focused on issues relating to human rights, children, development, aging, and population. (photo credit) Additionally, she was the principal U.S. negotiator during development of the U.N. Millennium Development Goals.
Born in the Caribbean island nation of St. Vincent, King holds a bachelor's degree from the University of Windsor, Ontario, Canada, and a master's from the State University of New York at Stony Brook, and also was a National Humanities Fellow at Harvard. Her philanthropic background includes prior leadership service at the Annie E. Casey Foundation, the California Endowment, and the Atlantic Philanthropies. She's also been: Deputy Commissioner of Mental Health, Washington, D.C.; Executive Director, Southwest Society on Aging; Director, Arkansas Department on Aging; and Assistant Professor, University of Arkansas. Her current board service includes Refugees International, the United Nations Association of the United States, Phoenix House, and the Annenberg School of Public Diplomacy.

Food Insecurity and Climate Change

As the world gathers in Copenhagen to “get it done,” and deliver a meaningful climate change agreement, let’s hope the delegates keep in mind the catastrophic effects that unmitigated climate change will have on food insecurity. The 1996 World Food Summit defined food security as "all people at all times hav[ing] both physical and economic access to the basic food they need." Today, according to the United Nations High-level Task Force on the Global Food Security Crisis, one billion people, one out of every six, cannot lay claim to that kind of food security.
Even though we currently produce enough food to feed all the hungry people, rhetoric about the right to food as a basic human right never seems to get to the implementation stage. That is not to disparage the multi-faceted nature of the problem.
Food insecurity results from a host of interconnected political, social and economic factors. For example, in November, the USDA announced that food insecurity 2009 was the highest level since the government began tracking it in 1995. (prior post) The New York Times reports that almost 28 million people in the United States now depend on food stamps. This rise in food insecurity is clearly related to the domestic unemployment rate, and to rising food prices. But, at least they have something of a safety net, in the form of government assistance, food banks, and soup kitchens. In Guatemala, by contrast food insecurity related to low rainfalls has produced a rise in cases of acute malnutrition among children. The news is equally grim around the world.
Reaching the Millennium Development Goal of halving food insecurity by 2015 is already a daunting task. Climate change adds yet another level of complexity, one that is likely to exacerbate the already precarious food situation confronting fully 1/6 of the world’s population. Australia is already facing record drought attributable to climate change as are parts of Africa, while Britian, other parts of Africa, China and parts of the US have faced epic flooding. Unfortunately, as global precipitation patterns change, and as the ocean acidifies, the level of food insecurity attributable to climate change is likely to increase.
This is not a domestic problem, it is not a developing country problem. It is a structural problem built into the world’s carbon economy, and the existing trading and governance system. Maybe Copenhagen will mark the beginning of a new global commitment to confronting these problems once and for all. Food insecurity, and the factors that create it, are not confined by national borders. As the world warms, that will become clearer than ever.

Glimmers of Hope for Ocean Ecosystems

Two years ago, a team led by Boris Worm of Dalhousie University published an article warning that ocean fisheries were on the verge of collapse. At the time, Worm cautioned that “our children may see a world without seafood”and predicted that by 2048 most global fisheries might be in collapse. This past Friday, Worm and his team published a follow-up study that offers some room for hope.
Their new publication, entitled Rebuilding Global Fisheries (subscription required) confirmed that 63% of the world’s fish stocks are in need of rebuilding, meaning they are either overexploited or collapsed. But, the study also pointed to a few fisheries that had taken steps to reign in overexploitation, and suggested that these efforts were working.
It probably comes as no surprise that the fisheries doing the most to confront the problem of overfishing were mostly under the control of developed countries. For example, the United States’ California fisheries and the Northeast Atlantic Shelf come in for praise. However, as these developed nations take steps to rebuild their fisheries by setting lower fishing limits, the overfishing problem seems to be moving elsewhere. Fishing vessels flying flags of convenience have responded to more rigorous fishery management by simply moving to less regulated areas and recreating the cycle of overfishing.
Worst off are the fisheries in developing countries, particularly along the African coast. These fisheries face a two-fold problem: there are not many laws governing overfishing, and state capacity to enforce the laws that do exist is extremely limited.
This creates a crisis for local populations, many of whom depend on fisheries for critical protein supplies. The Food and Agriculture Organization reports that 923 million people were food insecure in 2007, an increase of more than 80 million since 1990. Those most food insecure tend to depend heavily on subsistence fisheries that are being jeopardized by incursions from distant water fishing fleets.
We must not forget that fisheries management is a social justice issue in addition to an environmental and economic issue. “Solving” the problem by shipping it off to the developing world cannot be the answer. It does not make ecological sense, and it certainly does nothing to help move us toward the Millennium Development Goal of halving hunger by 2015.

"One Ocean, One Climate, One Future"

In 2008, the UN General Assembly adopted Resolution 63-111, ¶ 171 of which declared June 8 to be World Ocean Day. Although the Resolution contains a laundry list of marine-related issues, it devotes an entire section to preserving the marine environment. In doing so, the General Assembly was recognizing the connection between "sustainable development and management of the resources and uses of the oceans and seas" and the United Nations Millennium Goals.
The Resolution urges states to act on the concerns raised by the UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change about increasing sea temperature, rising sea level, and ocean acidification, (the projections are for reduction in average global surface ocean pH of between 0.14 and 0.35 units over the 21st century) and the critical role that oceans play in mediating global climate.
The Resolution also draws attention to destruction of coral reefs, ocean dumping, overfishing, and the myriad other environmental threats facing the world's oceans. Finally, the Resolution points out that most of the pollution load of the oceans emanates from land-based activities, calls upon States to implement the Global Programme of Action for the Protection of the Marine Environment from Land-based Activities.
There are numerous international agreements purporting to protect the oceans. The 1982 United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS) creates an international legal framework for all activities in the world's oceans and seas. With regard to the environment, UNCLOS Articles 192 and 194 impose duties "to protect and preserve the marine environment" and to "prevent reduce and control pollution of the marine environment."
Additionally, the International Convention for the Prevention of Pollution from Ships (MARPOL), the Convention on the Prevention of Marine Pollution by Dumping of Wastes and Other Matter (with its 1996 Protocol which bans ocean dumping), the 2004 Ballast Water Convention, the Convention on Trade in Endangered Species, the Convention on Biological Diversity, as well as numerous regional fisheries agreements all seek to channel state action towards protecting rather than harming the marine environment. Confusion and conflicting reports during the search for the wreckage of the Air France flight 447 underscored just how polluted the oceans have become. Debris and an oil slick initially thought to be from the crash turned out to be routine and wholly unrelated pollution. Indeed, a vast swath of the ocean has become the world's largest trash dump, with plastics routinely killing vulnerable marine mammals, turtles and sea birds.
The United States has one of the world's largest coastline, and claims management jurisdiction over the world's largest exclusive economic zone. It is past time to ratify UNCLOS, and to take a leadership role in protecting and preserving the world's oceans as part of a comprehensive plan to preserve the earth and to promote the welfare of its inhabitants. We do indeed have "one ocean, one climate, one future."

Every day a mother's day

It may come as a surprise to learn that maternal mortality is no Dickensian anachronism. Quite the contrary. A Huffington Post op-ed by Donna E. Shalala, President of the University of Miami and former U.S. Secretary of Health and Human Services, and Ann M. Veneman, Executive Director of UNICEF and former U.S. Secretary of Agriculture, states:

Almost as many women die in childbirth today as they did nearly twenty years ago.

And that rate is cause for great concern, particularly "in the resource-poor developing countries." There, Shalala and Veneman write,

►"Every minute a woman ... dies in pregnancy or childbirth," for a total last year of 536,000 such deaths.

►Women "are 300 times more likely to die from complications related to pregnancy and childbirth than women in developed countries."

►Their children suffer, too, as infants of women who die in childbirth "are up to 10 times more likely to die within two years."

The solution ought to come as little surprise:

Yet, when women have access to family planning, antenatal care, skilled nursing and doctors at birth, and emergency obstetric and postpartum care almost all mothers and newborns live through the complications that would otherwise kill them.

To step up efforts to improve health care -- "to reach the United Nations Millennium Development Goals and significantly reduce maternal and infant mortality rates by 2015" -- Shalala (near right) and Veneman (far right) have joined a coalition of NGOs and others in calling for Mothers Day Every Day, "a campaign that raises awareness and advocates for greater U.S. leadership to improve maternal and newborn health globally."

A noteworthy initiative this American Mother's Day.