Category: Pacific

With over 68,000 kilometres of track and serving over a mind-boggling eight billion passengers a year, Indian Railways is vast and amongst the most complicated and involved transport systems in the world. And, perhaps not surprisingly, moving hundreds of thousands of passengers each day across tens of thousands of kilometres of network requires enormous amounts of energy, energy which in… Read More

The Women’s Empowerment Principles (WEPs), established by UN Women and the UN Global Compact, offer guidance to businesses, regardless of their size or sector.   According to UN Women, Thailand has done “comparatively well” in terms of women occupying senior business roles. Across the country, 24 percent of chief executive officers (CEOs) and managing directors are women, compared to an… Read More

Ambassador Craig Hawke delivered his speech in person, inside the General Assembly Hall in New York, noting that to defeat the coronavirus, “we will need to be our collective best”, back the World Health Organization and work together to distribute an effective vaccine, “on an equitable basis”. New Zealand has been lauded for its COVID-19 response with one of the… Read More

Speaking at the UN Assembly’s annual debate, via a pre-recorded video message, Minister U Kyaw Tint Swe invited the Government of Bangladesh to “show its genuine political will to cooperate, by strictly adhering to the terms of the signed agreements.”  “Should Bangladesh commit itself to the bilateral process it will find Myanmar a willing partner. Pressure tactics will be futile.… Read More

Balakrishnan Rajagopal, UN Special Rapporteur on adequate housing, also said that none of those affected, appeared to have been consulted or heard by the Court beforehand, and that the judges had initially ruled that no one should be allowed to seek to overturn the eviction order.  “This amounts to a full-fledged denial of justice for the low income people living… Read More

Bangladesh is hosting more than one million Rohingya, a mainly Muslim minority community who are stateless, most of whom fled following a wave of violence in Myanmar’s Rakhine state in 2017.  “More than three years have elapsed. Regrettably, not a single Rohingya could be repatriated. The problem was created by Myanmar, and its solution must be found in Myanmar. I… Read More

The international community must ask if the UN is still relevant 75 years after its founding, said Mr. Modi, noting that despite the Organization’s achievements, including the avoidance of a Third World War, there have since been many conflicts, and today’s challenges are vastly different from those of the past. The Indian leader went on to question whether the Organization… Read More

Addressing the Assembly’s annual high-level debate via a pre-recorded video, Prime Minister Prayut Chan-o-cha called on the leaders to “remain steadfast and not be shaken by nationalist sentiments or anti-globalization tendencies.”  The global crisis, he said, should motivate us to “unite as one”, since it has been proven that no nation can face the challenges alone.  “Such is the future… Read More

“As we embark on the Decade of Action to implement the 2030 Agenda , the current crisis has pushed us to the brink of losing the gains made in achieving the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs),” Prime Minister K.P. Sharma Oli told world leaders, via a pre-recorded video message.  Landlocked, least developed and small nations – which are more… Read More

“As we face the current crisis, and guided by the principle of human security, I think it is essential to set the goal of ‘leaving no one’s health behind’ as we work towards achieving universal health coverage,” he said in a pre-recorded speech to the UN General Assembly on Friday.   Based on this shared goal, Mr. Suga said Japan… Read More