On this day March 17, 2011

United Nations Security Council adopted Resolution 1973 on the situation in Libya, proposed by France, Lebanon, and the United Kingdom.

Ten Security Council members voted in the affirmative (Bosnia and Herzegovina, Colombia, Gabon, Lebanon, Nigeria, Portugal, South Africa, and permanent members France, the United Kingdom, and the United States). Five (Brazil, Germany, and India, and permanent members China and Russia) abstained, with none opposed.

The resolution formed the legal basis for military intervention in the Libyan civil war, demanding “an immediate ceasefire” and authorizing the international community to establish a no-fly zone and to use all means necessary short of foreign occupation to protect civilians.

On 18 March, Muammar Gaddafi’s government announced that they would comply with the resolution and implement a ceasefire. However, it quickly became clear that no ceasefire had in fact been implemented.

Libyan opposition forces in Benghazi cheered and fired guns and fireworks into the air as the resolution was adopted. A few hours before issuing the resolution, Gaddafi warned the opposition with a speech saying, “We are coming tonight, and there will be no mercy”.

Second round of Climate Change negotiations

The 2010 United Nations Climate Change Conference (COP 16) negotiations continued this week in Bonn, Germany. The 4,500 attendees include government delegates from 182 governments, representatives from business and industry, environmental organizations and research institutions. COP 16 which will be held in Cancún, Mexico in November.

Luis Alfonso de Alba, Mexico’s special representative for climate change, told Reuters, “Mexico does not want to raise false expectations but we certainly are ambitious”.

Negotiating under the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC), the next negotiating session will take place in August, followed by a second one-week intersessional meeting in June, before Cancún. The talks were designed to discuss issues that were not resolved at the 2009 United Nations Climate Change Conference (COP 15) in Copenhagen.

Ahmadinejad applies for UN meeting in NYC

The U.S. State Department says Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad has applied to visit the United States as part of an Iranian delegation to a U.N. nuclear conference in New York.

State Department spokesman P.J. Crowley said Wednesday the United States has a responsibility as the host of the U.N. headquarters to accept the Iranian president’s visa request.

The Iranian delegation is due to participate in a conference aimed at reviewing the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, of which Iran is a signatory. The month-long conference begins Monday and has been held every five years since the NPT went into effect in 1970.

Biden expects new UN sanctions against Iran

The vice president of the United States, Joe Biden, said yesterday that he expects the United Nations to implement new sanctions against Iran be early next month.

Image: United States Senate

Biden said that “I believe you will see a sanction regime coming out by the end of this month, beginning of next month”.

Biden said that China, which had previously been opposed to sanctions against Iran, would take part in the latest round. UN diplomats are presently engaged in the process of developing the new sanctions, which will be the fourth resolution against Iran’s nuclear program.

According to Biden, the latest sanctions would mark the first time the world was unified in its opposition to Iran’s nuclear program.

He noted that “[t]veryone from the Israeli prime minister straight through to the British prime minister to the president of Russia, everyone agrees the next step we should take is the UN sanction route.”

Nuclear Security Summit

President Barack Obama open the 47-nation Nuclear Security Summit in Washington.  The president says he wants new commitments to secure weapons-grade plutonium and uranium to prevent nuclear terrorism.

With concerns about the nuclear ambitions of Iran and North Korea a major backdrop to the conference, this is the biggest U.S.-sponsored gathering of world leaders in more than 60 years.

The New START treaty was signed on April 8, 2010 in Prague by U.S. President Obama and Russian President Medvedev and Iran will hold the Tehran International Conference on Disarmament and Non- Proliferation, 2010, announced on April 4, 2010 and to be held April 17–18, 2010.

The Summit is the largest gathering of heads of state called by a United States president since the 1945 United Nations Conference on International Organization. Delegations from forty-six governments plus the United States are attending, thirty-eight of which are represented by heads of state or government.

Pakistan disrupted talks with Taliban

The United Nations’ former top official in Afghanistan has accused Pakistan of impeding negotiations between the Taliban and Western nations.

The official, Kai Eide, said that the arrests of high-ranking Taliban officials by Pakistan had led to the disruption of talks between the Taliban and the United Nations in Dubai. According to Eide, the two parties had conducted “talks about talks,” but they had broken down completely after Pakistan’s arrests.

In an interview with the BBC, he said that “the Pakistanis did not play the role that they should have played.” Pakistan’s actions have prompted some speculation that the country was opposed to a peace deal between Western nations and the Taliban, or wanted to take a greater part in the talks. Pakistan, however, has denied the arrests were intended to disrupt talks between the UN and Taliban.

Somali militants block UN food aid

Al-Shabaab, the Somali opposition group, has said it will stop food operations by the United Nations’ World Food Programme (WFP) in the country, accusing the agency of being politically motivated and disadvantaging local farmers.

Al-Shabaab said that the agency was ruining local farming, as the quantity of the food aid didn’t allow farmers to sell their goods at reasonable prices.

A statement from the group read that “[g]iven the problems caused by the food WFP distributed, the movement of Shabab Al-Mujahideen banned the operations of the agency in Somalia generally starting from today. The contractors working with WFP must avoid collaborating […] anyone working with the agency will be seen serving the interest of WFP.”

200,000 people displaced by violence in Yemen

The United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) has said that 200,000 people in Yemen have been displaced by ongoing violence, and that the growing number of refugees is straining the ability of aid agencies to shelter and care for those forced to flee their homes.

Yemen

The refugee agency reports that thousands of civilians in north Yemen are fleeing to neighboring provinces in a desperate search for safety, shelter and assistance.

The current wave of fighting between the government and the al-Houthi rebel group is entering its sixth month. It added that it is fast running out of space and money to care for them.

“We now estimate that some 200,000 people have been displaced by the conflict in Yemen since 2004, including those displaced by the latest escalation which erupted in early August last year,” said UNHCR spokesman Andrej Mahecic.