Here are some of the recent Editorials I wrote for The Gulf Today. (Posted for my records).
UAE, a humanitarian
role
model for world
It is a
matter of pride for every citizen and resident of the United Arab Emirates that
the country is now the largest donor offering $5.2 billion aid, making it the
number one humanitarian capital worldwide.
The UAE
made a record leap in the history of foreign aid from its 19th position in
2012. It increased the aid rate to 1.5 per cent of GDP, the highest in the
34-member Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development.
Among the
first ones to share the good news was His Highness Sheikh Mohammed Bin Rashid
Al Maktoum, Vice-President and Prime Minister of the UAE and Ruler of Dubai,
who posted his response on social networking websites, by tweeting, “According
to the OECD, the UAE’s aids exceeded $5bn in 2013, making it the number one
humanitarian capital worldwide. The culture of giving is deeply rooted in our
society, and it has been always nurtured by UAE leaders since the inception of
the UAE.”
The UAE
has been actively supporting many countries with generous aid packages. It was
the first to sign a $ 4.9 billion framework agreement with the Arab Republic of
Egypt to support its development programme and aimed at improving the living
conditions, lives and human development of the Egyptian people through a number
of projects.
In
response to the United Nations plan to address the Syrian crisis, the UAE
allocated Dhs220 million, of which Dhs183 million were allocated for UN plan
inside Syria and Dhs37 million allocated for the UN regional plan for Syria in
Jordan.
Touched
by the UAE leadership’s generous outlook, David Ignatius, a writer and
political and strategic analyst who writes for the “Washington Post” newspaper recently
mentioned that the wise leadership of the UAE represents a humanitarian
role-model for the world.
The late
Sheikh Zayed Bin Sultan Al Nahyan, founder of the UAE, had made his views on
the subject very clear when he declared: “We believe that the benefit of the
fortune granted to us by God should spread to cover our brothers and friends.”
Sheikh
Zayed's successor, His Highness Sheikh Khalifa Bin Zayed Al Nahyan, has
continued on the same path based on his conviction that: “Humanitarian
diplomacy is one of the main pillars of our foreign policy, and our country
will continue to support international efforts to respond to disasters and
answer the call for relief.”
Israel’s arm-twisting
tactics will not work
Israel just
refuses to learn lessons. At a time when the US-backed peace process was
gaining momentum and the Palestinians tried their best to make it a success,
Israel scuttled the efforts by refusing to carry out the fourth and final promised prisoner release last month.
It is not just that. Israel continued to make new attempts
to expand settlements in occupied east Jerusalem.
Left with no alternative, the Palestinians responded by signing letters of
accession to join 15 international conventions. The treaties include the Vienna
Convention on diplomatic relations, the convention on the rights of the child,
the convention against torture and an anti-corruption accord.Now, in a major boost to the diplomatic
drive by Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas, the Palestinian Authority has also signed
up formally to the Geneva Conventions, which set down the rules of warfare and
humanitarian operations in conflict zones. This was registered formally by
Switzerland on Thursday making it “a historic day for the Palestinian
people," as Abbas put it.
The Palestine Liberation Organisation first asked
to join the Geneva Conventions on June 21, 1989. At the time, the Swiss Foreign
Ministry said it was not in a position to decide on the bid "due to the
uncertainty within the international community as to the existence or
non-existence of a State of Palestine." The UN General Assembly passed a
motion on Nov.29, 2012, upgrading Palestine to a "non-member observer
state" of the global body.
Unable to
digest the latest diplomatic victory for Palestinians, Israel is resorting to
arm-twisting tactics by imposing a series of sanctions on the Palestinians —
halting high-level contacts and blocking the transfer of advanced mobile-phone
equipment to the Gaza Strip.
Israel
also imposed economic sanctions against the Palestinians by declaring that it
would deduct debt payments from tax transfers which the Palestinian Authority
routinely receives, and limit the self-rule government's bank deposits. The
revenues which Israel collects on goods bound for the Palestinian market amount
to about $100 million a month and accounts for about two thirds of the
Palestinian budget.
What
Israel repeatedly forgets is that such actions could be counter-productive.
Palestinian official Yasser Abed Rabbo has said it right and straight:
"These sanctions will not scare Palestinians and they're evidence to the
world that Israel is a racist occupation state that has resorted to the weapon
of collective punishment in addition to other practices including settlements
and their expansion and the denial of Palestinians’ most basic rights as a
people.”
Dubai continues
to dazzle tourists
From the timeless
tranquillity of the desert to the lively bustle of the souk, Dubai offers a
kaleidoscope of attractions for visitors from around the world and it is little
wonder that the Emirate has figured in the world's top 25 destinations of the
TripAdvisor's sixth annual Traveler's Choice awards.
Dubai is a unique destination
that is both a dynamic business centre and a tourist paradise, offering
shopping, fine dining and quality hotels. According to CNN, The Traveler's
Choice awards sliced and diced its users' reviews and ratings over 12 months
into lists of its most highly recommended global and regional destinations.
Hence the selection is apt and adds to the highly credible image of Dubai.
It is not just the regular
tourists, but even the corporate sector in different countries is taking note
of Dubai’s varied attractions. His Highness Sheikh Mohammed Bin Rashid Al
Maktoum, Vice-President, Prime Minister of the UAE and Ruler of Dubai,
posted on his Twitter page this week that a Chinese company rewarded 16,000 of
its employees with a vacation in the United Arab Emirates. The company is
chartering 77 flights and has booked 40 hotels and over 400 tourist guides.
In what is considered to be
one of the biggest vacations organised by a company for its staff in history
and the biggest group tourists to visit Dubai, the staff from the Nu Skin
company have started arriving. The company is transferring its staff in seven
batches, 2,000 tourists each. The trip costs millions of dollars. The company
has booked 39,514 rooms in 40 hotels and 409 tourist guides. The tour also
includes cultural sites in Sharjah.
Dubai’s hotels enjoyed a busy
first nine months of last year, welcoming over 7.9 million visitors between
January and September 2013, a 9.8 per cent year-on-year increase. During the
first nine months of the year, guest numbers across all hotel establishments
(hotels and hotel apartments) reached 7,941,118, a 9.8 per cent increase
year-on-year.
Last year, Dubai won the bid
to host Expo 2020, a six-month global exhibition that is expected to attract 25
million visitors. Expo-related infrastructure development and operations will
cost around Dhs32.39 billion.
Under Dubai’s 2020 vision,
the number of visitors in the emirate is projected to double from 10 million in
2012 to 20 million by 2020. In order to accommodate the visitors, the number of
hotels in Dubai is expected to double. No wonder, Dubai has turned out to be a
dream destination for tourists.
Global warming
a ticking bomb
The UN Intergovernmental
Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) has presented a rather grim picture of global
warming, warning that it poses a threat to the health, economic prospects, and
food and water sources of billions of people. The report has cautioned that no
one will be left untouched, the poor will suffer most and that the effects of
warming are felt everywhere, fuelling potential food shortages, natural
disasters and raising the risk of wars.
The
report is the second in a four-part IPCC series meant to guide governments that
have promised to agree a pact in 2015 to slow climate change. The first, in
September, raised to least 95 per cent the probability that most global warming
is man-made, from 90 per cent in 2007. The panel's credibility faces scrutiny
after one of its reports, in 2007, exaggerated the melt of Himalayan glaciers,
but experts say the error does not undermine key findings.
Negotiators are seeking to
sign a new, global pact in Paris next year, to take effect in 2020. The aim is
to contain warming to 2.0 degrees Celsius (3.6 degrees Fahrenheit) over
pre-Industrial Revolution levels, though even this level would require adaptive
measures for a changed climate.
As per
the report, countries like India and China will not only have to face more
extreme weather events but also experience severe stress on drinking water and
food-grains by middle of this century. It has predicted that both India and
China will have to see negative impacts on aggregate wheat yields, impacting
the overall food security in the continent.
Glaciers
are considered among the most sensitive indicators of climate change. As
temperatures warm, glaciers retreat unless snow precipitation increases to make
up for the additional melt; the converse is also true. Glaciers worldwide have
been found to be shrinking significantly, with strong glacier retreats in the
1940s, stable or growing conditions during the 1920s and 1970s, and again
retreating from the mid-1980s to present.
There are already more
weather-related mega-disasters such as heatwaves and storm surges occurring
under climate change. The number of natural disasters between 2000 and 2009 was
three times higher than in the 1980s. There is strong, credible evidence that climate is changing and
that these changes are in large part caused by human activities. There
are opportunities to respond to the risks within a timeframe. The governments
should take responsibility and act or the future generations will not judge
them kindly.
It’s time ballots
replaced bullets
The
merciless attack by a gunman on two international female
journalists working for the Associated Press, which left one dead and the other
wounded, has underscored the perilous conditions under which members of the
media and other professionals perform their duties in Afghanistan.
Photographer
Anja Niedringhaus and reporter Kathy Gannon were shot in the Khost province.
Niedringhaus died, while Gannon sustained injuries. The
two journalists have spent years in Afghanistan covering the conflict and the
people and were merely performing their duty. The attack is outrageous
and can only be seen as a huge loss for Afghanistan itself as the two were effectively
highlighting various issues and developments in the country.
Kabul has been rocked by a string of high-profile attacks in the
run-up to Saturday's election, which will see the first democratic handover of
power in Afghanistan's turbulent history.
Anja is
the second Western journalist killed during the election campaign, after
Swedish journalist Nils Horner was shot dead in Kabul on March 11. Horner, a veteran of Swedish national radio, was killed
while researching a story about a January attack on a restaurant that killed 21
people, including 13 foreigners.
AFP's senior Afghan reporter Sardar Ahmad, his wife and two of his
three children were killed on March 20 when gunmen smuggled pistols into
Kabul's Serena hotel and shot dead nine people, including four foreigners.
Afghan security officials have vowed not to let militants derail
the election process. More than 400,000 personnel including police, army and
intelligence services have been deployed to ensure security around the country.
Nevertheless, question marks about safety and security remain as the killing of
the innocent journalists has proved.
It is not
that all is lost for Afghanistan. One of the drivers for the current economic
recovery is the return of over 5 million expatriates, who brought with them
fresh energy and entrepreneurship as well as funds to start up businesses. For
the first time since the 1970s, Afghans have involved themselves in
construction and major projects are underway in several cities.
While such positive developments ring in hope, militant attacks
and killing of innocent people imply an opposite story.
A repeat of the bloodshed and fraud that marred the 2009 election
would damage claims by international donors that intervention in Afghanistan
has made progress in establishing a functioning state system. Whoever wins the
race to succeed Afghan
President Hamid
Karzai faces a testing time especially in
regards to stability and security.
‘Cold War’ rhetoric
heats up Ukraine crisis
There seems to be no let-up in the violent clashes
sweeping eastern Ukraine over the past few days and the crisis will only deepen
unless intensive efforts are made by all sides to defuse the situation.
Russia has publicly stated that it would be forced to act
if Kiev were to use force against demonstrators in the east.
The situation has reached such a point that Ukraine's
interim president Oleksandr Turchynov invited the United Nations to join his
army's "anti-terrorist operation" against pro-Kremlin militants who
have seized buildings in the ex-Soviet state's Russified east. Such a joint
operation would allow what he called "professionals and observers" to
ensure all actions taken were lawful and legitimate.
UN monitors on the ground have cited armed civilians on
both sides, as well as militiamen armed with AK-47's and sniper rifles among
the well-armed and organised groups that consistently reinforced barricades
along roads in the cities where the uprisings had occurred.
Media reports indicate that large numbers of Russian
troops have been deployed along the border with Ukraine, especially in
Slavyansk where a police station was seized. Protesters in the city demanded a
referendum on autonomy similar to the poll in Crimea last month, in which
voters opted to secede from Ukraine.
The reactions have been on expected lines. British Foreign
Secretary William Hague argues that the well-coordinated actions of armed
pro-Russian groups in eastern Ukraine during the previous 48 hours left no real
doubt that this is something planned and brought about by Russia.
European Union (EU) foreign ministers are deploring what
they say is more Russian interference in Ukraine, but are hoping an end to the
crisis can still be peacefully negotiated. While they may add more names to a
list of Russian officials whose assets in EU member nations have been frozen, a
dramatic ratcheting of the trade bloc's sanctions against Russia is unlikely.
UN Secretary General Ban Ki-Moon echoed the sentiments of
the international community when he declared: “The problems over Ukraine are
reverberating far beyond this region. They are causing divisions in the
international community at a time when we need countries to unite to tackle
global problems.
All sides involved should resist yielding to provocations,
exercise maximum restraint and adhere to international law. There is little
doubt that if immediate action is not initiated to resolve the crisis, not only
would Ukraine and Russia bear the brunt, European nations and the wider
international community would be affected as well.
