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International Decade for a Culture of Peace and Non-Violence for the Children of the World

Sat, 06 Oct 2007 21:22:50 GMT

The International Decade for a Culture of Peace and Non-Violence for the Children of the World was approved by the General Assembly its resolution 53/25 of 10 November 1998.

53/25. International Decade for a Culture of Peace and Non-Violence for the Children of the World, 2001-2010

Sat, 06 Oct 2007 21:21:26 GMT

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United Nations Decade of Education for Sustainable Development

Sat, 06 Oct 2007 21:04:37 GMT

The United Nations Decade of Education for Sustainable Development (2005-2014) was established by General Assembly Resolution 57/254 on 20 December 2002 in response to a recommendation in the section on education in the Plan of Implementation of the World Summit on Sustainable Development ("Johannesburg Plan of Implementation"). and gave the lead responsibility for co-ordinating the response of the United Nations system to the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO)

The Decade of Education for Sustainable Development (DESD) is one of a number of United Nations Decades that have been established by the General Assembly and many of these address areas of global concern that are closely connected with the issue of education and sustainable development, and hence of significant concern to the NGO Committee on Education. Among such Decades currently underway are the International Decade for a Culture of Peace and Non-Violence for the Children of the World (2000-2010), the United Nations Literacy Decade (2003-2012) , the Second International Decade of the World's Indigenous People (2005-2014), and the International Decade for Action, "Water for Life (2005-2015).

For more information on Decade of Education for Sustainable Development, visit UNESCO's web site at http://www.unesco.org/education/desd/

Charter of the United Nations

Sat, 06 Oct 2007 21:00:04 GMT

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Declaration on the Granting of Independence to Colonial Countries and Peoples

Sat, 06 Oct 2007 20:58:58 GMT

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International Covenants on Human Rights

Sat, 06 Oct 2007 20:57:45 GMT

The International Covenants on Human Rights were adopted by the General Assembly in its resolution 2200 (XXI) of 16 December 1966, and comprise the following:

International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights,
International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights and
Optional Protocol to the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights

Optional Protocol to the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights

Sat, 06 Oct 2007 20:55:29 GMT

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International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights

Sat, 06 Oct 2007 20:53:49 GMT

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International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights

Sat, 06 Oct 2007 20:51:59 GMT

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Declaration on a Culture of Peace. Article 3

Sat, 06 Oct 2007 20:41:57 GMT

The fuller development of a culture of peace is integrally linked to:

Promoting peaceful settlement of conflicts, mutual respect and understanding and international cooperation;
Complying with international obligations under the Charter of the United Nations and international law;
Promoting democracy, development and universal respect for and observance of all human rights and fundamental freedoms;
Enabling people at all levels to develop skills of dialogue, negotiation, consensus-building and peaceful resolution of differences;
Strengthening democratic institutions and ensuring full participation in the development process;
Eradicating poverty and illiteracy and reducing inequalities within and among nations;
Promoting sustainable economic and social development;
Eliminating all forms of discrimination against women through their empowerment and equal representation at all levels of decision-making;
Ensuring respect for and promotion and protection of the rights of children;
Ensuring free flow of information at all levels and enhancing access thereto;
Increasing transparency and accountability in governance;
Eliminating all forms of racism, racial discrimination, xenophobia and related intolerance;
Advancing understanding, tolerance and solidarity among all civilizations, peoples and cultures, including towards ethnic, religious and linguistic minorities;
Realizing fully the right of all peoples, including those living under colonial or other forms of alien domination or foreign occupation, to self-determination enshrined in the Charter of the United Nations and embodied in the International Covenants on Human Rights, as well as in the Declaration on the Granting of Independence to Colonial Countries and Peoples contained in General Assembly resolution 1514 (XV) of 14 December 1960.

Declaration on a Culture of Peace

Sat, 06 Oct 2007 19:50:03 GMT

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Declaration on a Culture of Peace. Article 1

Sat, 06 Oct 2007 19:48:12 GMT

A culture of peace is a set of values, attitudes, traditions and modes of behaviour and ways of life based on:

Respect for life, ending of violence and promotion and practice of non-violence through education, dialogue and cooperation;
Full respect for the principles of sovereignty, territorial integrity and political independence of States and non-intervention in matters which are essentially within the domestic jurisdiction of any State, in accordance with the Charter of the United Nations and international law;
Full respect for and promotion of all human rights and fundamental freedoms;
Commitment to peaceful settlement of conflicts;
Efforts to meet the developmental and environmental needs of present and future generations;
Respect for and promotion of the right to development;
Respect for and promotion of equal rights and opportunities for women and men;
Respect for and promotion of the right of everyone to freedom of expression, opinion and information;
Adherence to the principles of freedom, justice, democracy, tolerance, solidarity, cooperation, pluralism, cultural diversity, dialogue and understanding at all levels of society and among nations; and fostered by an enabling national and international environment conducive to peace.

Culture of Peace

Sat, 06 Oct 2007 19:29:49 GMT

The vision of a Culture of Peace

The Peace Caucus

Sat, 06 Oct 2007 19:28:52 GMT

Our mission is to mainstream issues of peace and disarmament by working through the United Nations, the media, and civil society and to present the issues from the conferences and peace and disarmament programmes of the United Nations to the public at large in order to promote peace.

Our purpose is to promote a culture of peace by giving frequent timely and informative programs, by creating and maintaining a website, and by lobbying governmental and non-governmental delegates to assure that the following items are included in the UN conference processes:

Military spending
Military production
Economic conversion
Weapons trafficking
Non-violent conflict resolution
Nuclear weapons and nuclear energy
Landmines
Impact of armed conflict on children
Peace education
Women at the peace table
Conscientious objection
Military and climate change

Recent Tiddlers

Sat, 06 Oct 2007 19:08:20 GMT

The following recently created or updated tiddler uses the syntax <<timeline better:true firstDay:20070915>> to display tiddlers that have been edited since September 15, 2007 - using the Better timeline plugin macro - may give you a little insight both into some of the recently-added contents of the site, as well as into the "underworld" of shadowed tiddlers, cascading styles, menus, features, plugins, formatting, etc. that lie beneath the surface of TiddlyWiki and that contribute to the genius of TiddlyWiki, the software platform that serves as one of the foundations of this web site and of the companion sites of the Climate Change 2.0 initiative. If you would like to look at a complete listing of tiddlers on this site, visit Basic Tiddler Lists.

28 September 2007
iframe template
Emotionalizing Science - Is the IPCC Doing Harm to Science? Der Spiegel

25 September 2007
MarkupPreHead

17 September 2007
A Spiritual Declaration on Climate Change

Protocol on Prohibitions or Restrictions on the Use of Incendiary Weapons

Fri, 05 Oct 2007 19:24:25 GMT

Protocol III of the Convention on Prohibitions or Restrictions on the Use of Certain Conventional Weapons Which May be Deemed to be Excessively Injurious or to Have Indiscriminate Effects

Article 1. Definitions

For the purpose of this Protocol:

"Incendiary weapon" means any weapon or munition which is primarily designed to set fire to objects or to cause burn injury to persons through the action of flame, heat, or a combination thereof, produced by a chemical reaction of a substance delivered on the target.

Incendiary weapons can take the form of, for example, flame throwers, fougasses, shells, rockets, grenades, mines, bombs and other containers of incendiary substances.
Incendiary weapons do not include:

Munitions which may have incidental incendiary effects, such as illuminants, tracers, smoke or signalling systems;

Munitions designed to combine penetration, blast or fragmentation effects with an additional incendiary effect, such as armour-piercing projectiles, fragmentation shells, explosive bombs and similar combined-effects munitions in which the incendiary effect is not specifically designed to cause burn injury to persons, but to be used against military objectives, such as armoured vehicles, aircraft and installations or facilities.

"Concentration of civilians" means any concentration of civilians, be it permanent or temporary, such as in inhabited parts of cities, or inhabited towns or villages, or as in camps or columns of refugees or evacuces, or groups of nomads.
"Military objective" means, so far as objects are concerned, any object which by its nature, location, purpose or use makes an effective contribution to military action and whose total or partial destruction, capture or neutralization, in the circumstances ruling at the time, offers a definite military advantage.
"Civilian objects" are all objects which are not military objectives as defined in paragraph 3.
"Feasible precautions" are those precautions which are practicable or practically possible taking into account all circumstances ruling at the time, including humanitarian and military considerations.

Article 2. Protection of civilians and civilian objects

It is prohibited in all circumstances to make the civilian population as such, individual civilians or civilian objects the object of attack by incendiary weapons.
It is prohibited in all circumstances to make any military objective located within a concentration of civilians the object of attack by air-delivered incendiary weapons.
It is further prohibited to make any military objective located within a concentration of civilians the object of attack by means of incendiary weapons other than air-delivered incendiary weapons, except when such military objective is elcarly separated from the concentration of civilians and all feasible precautions are taken with a view to limiting the incendiary effects to the military objective and to avoiding, and in any event to minimizing, incidental loss of civilian life, injury to civilians and damage to civilian objects.
It is prohibited to make forests or other kinds of plant cover the object of attack by incendiary weapons except when such natural elements are used to cover, conceal or camouflage combatants or other military objectives, or are themselves military objectives.

Resolution 1997/36. International peace and security as an essential condition for the enjoyment of human rights, above all the right to life

Fri, 05 Oct 2007 19:21:34 GMT

Economic and Social Council

Sub-Commission on Prevention of
Discrimination and Protection
of Minorities

Resolution 1997/36

International peace and security as an essential condition for the enjoyment of human rights, above all the right to life

The Sub-Commission on Prevention of Discrimination and Protection of Minorities,

Guided by the Charter of the United Nations, the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, the International Covenants on Human Rights and the Geneva Conventions of 12 August 1949 and the Additional Protocols thereto,

Recalling General Assembly resolutions 42/99 of 7 December 1987 and 43/111 of 8 December 1988 reaffirming that all people have an inherent right to life,

Recalling also its resolution 1992/39 of 28 August 1992 on arms production and trade and human rights violations,

Recalling further its resolution 1996/16 of 29 August 1996, in which it requested the Secretary-General to submit a report on information gathered on the use of nuclear weapons, chemical weapons, fuel-air bombs, napalm, cluster bombs, biological weaponry and weaponry containing depleted uranium and their consequential and cumulative effects and the danger they represent to life, physical security and other human rights,

Concerned at the use of weapons of mass or indiscriminate destruction or of a nature to cause superfluous injury or unnecessary suffering, both against members of the armed forces and against civilian populations, resulting in death, pain, misery and disability,

Concerned also at repeated reports of the long-term consequences of the use of such weapons upon human life and health,

Concerned further that the physical effects on the environment of testing, storage or disposal of or debris from such weapons, either alone or in combination, and abandoned contaminated equipment constitute a serious danger to life and health,

Convinced that the use of or threat of use of weapons of mass or indiscriminate destruction and, in certain circumstances, the production and sale of such weapons are incompatible with international human rights and/or humanitarian law,

Convinced also that the production, sale, use or threat of use of chemical and biological weapons are incompatible with international law, as well as the promotion and maintenance of international peace and security,

Convinced further that the use on civilian populations of napalm and fuel-air bombs violates the Protocol on Prohibition or Restrictions on the Use of Incendiary Weapons (Protocol III) to the 1980 Convention on Prohibitions or Restrictions on the Use of Certain Conventional Weapons,

Believing that the production, sale, use or threat of use of nuclear weapons has serious consequences for the promotion and maintenance of international peace and security,

Believing further that continued efforts must be undertaken to sensitize public opinion to the inhuman and indiscriminate effects of all such weapons and to the need for their complete elimination,

Having considered the report of the Secretary-General (E/CN.4/Sub.2/1997/27) and the many serious questions raised therein,

1. Urges all States to be guided in their national policies by the need to curb the testing, the production and the spread of weapons of mass destruction, or with indiscriminate effect, or of a nature to cause superfluous injury or unnecessary suffering;

2. Decides to authorize Ms. Clemencia Forero Ucros to prepare, without financial implications, a working paper, in the context of human rights and humanitarian norms, assessing the utility, scope and structure of a study on weapons of mass destruction or with indiscriminate effect, or of a nature to cause superfluous injury or unnecessary suffering.

37th meeting
28 August 1997

Climate Change 2.0 - Information Ecology of Climate Change

Fri, 05 Oct 2007 14:27:16 GMT

The Information Ecology of Climate Change is intended to harness the power of the Internet, and particularly of Web 2.0 tools to the challenge of climate change, with a focus on the use of Free and Open Source software and through a focused and systematic expansion of the global Creative Commons.

There is a vast amount of information and documents on the many aspects of climate change freely available online, and while it is relatively easy to find information and specific documents using search engines, it is also very easy to be overwhelmed by the sheer volume - a Google search for "climate change" currently generate approximately 85,000,000 hits, for "global warming" and "sustainable development", the numbers are 70,000,000 and 60,000,000 respectively.

Most of the major documents on climate change are published - and freely available - as pdf files; however, pdf is optimized for printing, not for online accessibility; page breaks make reading a pdf document online a discontinuous process, and the use of hyperlinks in pdf files - when they are included - makes for a very cumbersome navigation process. One of the key initial tasks for Climate Change 2.0 is the translation of these pdf documents into a format optimized for a web-based environment.

When HTML versions of climate change reports are also published, e.g. with copies of the Third Assessment Review of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, the HTML pages are frequently in a fragmented form. The adoption of simple, no-cost, measures such as the creation of dedicated sub-domains for the publication of each report could provide significant benefits by enabling site-specific searches.

Frequently, lengthy reports, e.g. the 659 page Stern Review on the Economics of Climate Change, are published without the inclusion of any bookmarks. Incidentally, the Stern Review, in addressing the economics of climate change gave very scant attention to the role of information technology, and offered no analysis of the economics of information.

Many climate change-related research papers are only available through subscription to professional journals; while individual copies can generally be purchased, typically at the price of $9.00 per article (compared to a zero marginal cost), the number of articles that a serious lay investigator might have a legitimate interest in reading makes for a prohibitive cost for most people; a cooperative initiative among professional societies to waive the charge for papers on climate change,

Yochai Benkler's acclaimed book, The Wealth of Networks: How Social Production Transforms Markets and Freedom offers exceptional insight and examples as to the profound transformation that are taking place, through "peer production" and new forms of collaboration in the accelerating transition to a "networked information economy"; it seems clear that a systematic effort to harness these powerful processes in a broad-based mobilization of creative intelligence to address the global climate change crisis would pay handsome dividends.

The Wealth of Networks also highlights the opportunities for significant contributions to bodies of knowledge that can be made by individuals, often without formal credentials, who are able to develop online centers of excellence through a systematic process of gathering and organizing information from multiple online sources. Given the increasingly narrow specialization in scientific research, the free availability of scientific research on climate change could provide an excellent opportunity for a generalist, with a holistic perspective and a broad general understanding of different scientific fields to make a major contribution to the body of knowledge on climate change.

The example of Oscar - an open source design for an environmentally-sound automobile - offers another example of how the adoption of open source, creative commons approaches to technology offer the possibility of making significant contributions to addressing climate change. In a different vein, the combination of WalMart's recent commitment to address climate change and its extensive use of RFID technology could serve as a demonstration model for the establishment of full-cost accounting in the traditional economic sphere by making visible, and accountable, previously undocumented external costs, including environmental impacts, of economic activity. The Stern Review correctly recognizes the failure of conventional markets to acknowledge external costs as a fundamental market failure that has been a major economic driver in supporting unsustainable energy use and the corresponding increases in the emission of greenhouse gases.

There would be great value in developing and implementing a comprehensive initiative to gather and organize the available information on climate change - and on a broad range of sustainable development issues, and while the cost would not be trivial, the effort could pay great dividends in the challenge of addressing climate change. There is a clear need for the development and utilizations of a climate change taxonomy, and corresponding enhancements to search engine methodology, that could play a valuable role in targeted search for relevant information.

A web-based campaign to make use of social bookmarking sites - e.g. del.icio.us and Blue Dot - as platforms for collaborative gathering and sharing of key online information and resources, together with the progressive development of a structured framework for climate change-related tags offers significant opportunities for rapid and effective dissemination of critical information.

Likewise, the development of a collaborative wiki site, provided it incorporates an accountability and clear commitment to, and monitoring of, guidelines for participation that are unfortunately missing from Wikipedia, could offer an invaluable participatory forum within which a rigorous, comprehensive body of climate change information could be assembled..

TiddlyWikiPerfect offers a very promising platform for managing, organizing and sharing climate change information. TiddlyWikiPerfect is an emerging hybrid information species combining the power of two exceptional software platforms - TiddlyWiki - www.tiddlywiki.com - a brilliant and rapidly-evolving self-contained wiki that serves as a prime example of the "peer production" model described by Yochai Benkler - and DataPerfect, lesser-known companion of the classic WordPerfect for DOS and arguably the most brilliant relational database yet to see the light of day, whose genius was largely obscured by the transition to a Windows platform, but has remained alive, supported by a brilliant and dedicated group of developers - see www.dataperfect.nl - and has now been adapted to an online environment where it is now able to function as a web server.

In a broader context, the radical change in an in increasingly networked information economy - touched on but not fully developed in Yochai Benkler's The Wealth of Networks is the largely unappreciated reality that in a networked knowledge-based universe, a universe in which knowledge is the central basis for wealth and in which the zero-based properties of information become increasingly self-evident and appreciated - i.e. that information has zero mass, zero physical size and takes virtually zero time and cost to travel - accessibility to wealth is no longer constrained the laws of conservation of mass and energy.

Draft General Assembly Resolution: Concerns About Weapons Containing Depleted Uranium

Thu, 04 Oct 2007 22:45:20 GMT

The General Assembly,

Concerned about the widespread existence and use of weapons containing depleted uranium,

Taking into consideration the potential harmful effects of the use of such weapons to human health and the environment,

Recalling the use of such weapons, inter alia, in Kuwait and southern Iraq in 1991, and in Iraq again since March 2003,

Noting that post-conflict assessments conducted by the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) in the Balkans, in collaboration with IAEA and WHO, concluded that more research was needed on how the dust from depleted uranium weapons affects the environment,

Recalling the UN Secretary-General’s speech on the occasion of the International Day for Preventing the Exploitation of the Environment in War and Armed Conflict (Nov 6th 2002), stating that "although international conventions govern nuclear, chemical and biological weapons, new technologies, such as depleted uranium ammunition, threaten the environment",

Referring to resolutions 1996/16 and 1997/36 adopted by the Sub-Commission on Prevention of Discrimination and Protection of Minorities expressing the belief that continued efforts must be undertaken to sensitise public opinion to the inhumane and indiscriminate effects of weapons like those containing depleted uranium and to the need for their complete elimination.

Supports UNEP's request for an independent environmental field study of sites in Iraq targeted with weapons containing depleted uranium.
Urges States, in line with the precautionary principle, to refrain from the operational use of such weapons until it is scientifically established that such use causes no serious immediate or long-term health or environmental effects, and has no indiscriminate effects on civilians.
Invites States and relevant international organizations to study the Draft Convention on the prohibition of the development, production, stockpiling, transfer and use of uranium weapons and on their destruction (see Annex), and to present reports on the issue in the frame of the International Day for Preventing the Exploitation of the Environment in War and Armed Conflict (November 6th ).
Requests the Secretary-General to seek the views of States and relevant international organizations on all aspects of the effects of the use of weapons containing depleted uranium and to submit a report thereon to the General Assembly at its [61st] session.
Decides to include in the provisional agenda of its [one of its next sessions / 61st ] session an item entitled “Concerns about weapons containing depleted uranium".

Annex

Uranium Weapons: Contributing to a Dangerous World. October 2-3, 2007

Thu, 04 Oct 2007 19:40:41 GMT

Organized by the International Coalition to Ban Uranium Weapons
October 2-3, 2007
Church Center for the United Nations
777 United Nations Plaza,
8th Floor, New York NY 10017

Tuesday October 2, 2007

Morning 09:00 - 12:00, Introduction

An introduction to the work of the International Coalition to Ban Uranium Weapons and an overview of the global anti-DU campaign, featuring campaign reports from around the world. There will also be an opportunity to view paintings by Iraqi children exhibited by Maki Sato (JIM-NET). Moderator; Doug Weir

Afternoon 13:30 - 15:00. DU and the Law

The afternoon will begin with a look at the international legal status of DU, beginning with the current state veteran testing laws being introduced in the US. Speakers include; Melissa Sterry (Gulf Veteran), Joan Walker (NO DU Coalition of the Hudson Valley) and Gretel Munroe (ICBUW).
This year Belgium became the first country in the world to ban uranium in all conventional weapons, Ria Verjauw (Belgian Coalition Stop Uranium Weapons) will explain how they did it. Moderator: Tara Thornton.

Evening 15:00 - 17:00. The Contaminated and the Contaminators

This session will begin with a talk by Herbert Reed (Iraq Veteran) on life after exposure to DU; it will then examine the US's past and present uranium weapon manufacturing and testing facilities. Including: Affiant Techsystems (NH), National Lead (Colonie, NY), Lawrence Livermore Labs (CA) and Nuclear Metals/Starmet (MA). Speakers include John La Forge (Nukewatch), Jim West (Citizens Research and Environmental Watch) and Tom Ellis. Moderator; Tara Thornton

Wednesday October 3, 2007

Morning 09:00 - 12:00. Science and DU

The leaders in DU research present their latest findings:
DNA Damage Induced by Uranium Acting as a Heavy Metal, Diane Steams, PhD. Northern Arizona University.
The Health Effects of DU, Rosalie Bertell, PhD.
Depleted Uranium in the Urine of Workers and Nearby Residents of a Plant 25 Years After Air Release, Dr. David Carpenter, MD, Institute for Health & the Environment, University at Albany, SUNY.
DU-Civilian and Military Victims, Dr. Janette Sherman, MD,
Western Michigan University.
Moderators; Dr Katsurri Furteu and Dr Thomas Fasy

Afternoon 13:30 - 16:00. Steps Towards Eliminating DU Weapons

Where does the campaign's future lie? Prof Manfred Mohr (ICBUW) will examine the global political context while a European Parliamentarian will discuss the EU context and introduce plans for a DU-free Europe.
Doug Weir (ICBUW) will launch ICBUW's Road Map for a DU ban while Alyn Ware (Lawyers' Committee on Nuclear Policy) will discuss ICBUW attempts to introduce a new DU resolution to the UN. In recognition of the need to team from other disarmament campaigns, we hope to bring you a representative from Human Rights Watch to assess the lessons from the anti-personnel landmine campaign and the ongoing cluster munitions treaty process. Moderator. Prof Notouo Kazashi

Evening 16:00 - 19:30 Reception

After the closing statements and a round up of the event's key themes (16:00 - 17:30), from 18:00 there will be a cheese and wine reception for delegates, with an exhibition by acclaimed photographer Naomi Toyoda, introduced by Haruko Moritaki (NO DU Hiroshima Project).

Additional information

For additional information on the conference, contact Doug Weir on info@bandepleteduranium.org or +44 (0) 161 2738293
ICBUW, Bridge 5 Mill, 22a Beswick Street
Ancoats. Manchester. UK M4 7HR.

For information visit www.bandepleteduranium.org