GS II Topic: Important aspects of governance, transparency and accountability, e-governance- applications, models, successes, limitations, and potential; citizens charters, transparency & accountability and institutional and other measures.
New technology to check illegal mining.
The government has launched the Mining Surveillance System (MSS). MSS is a satellite-based monitoring system which aims to establish a regime of responsive mineral administration, through public participation, by curbing instances of illegal mining activity through automatic remote sensing detection technology.
Developed by-
Ministry of Mines, through Indian Bureau of Mines (IBM), has developed the MSS, in coordination with Bhaskaracharya Institute for Space Applications and Geo-informatics (BISAG), Gandhinagar and Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology (MEITY).
Significance of MSS:
Developed under the Digital India Programme, MSS is one of the first such surveillance systems developed in the world using space technology. The current system of monitoring of illegal mining activity is based on local complaints and unconfirmed information. There is no robust mechanism to monitor the action taken on such complaints.
How it operates?
In the MSS the maps of the mining leases have been geo-referenced. The geo-referenced mining leases are superimposed on the latest satellite remote sensing scenes obtained from CARTOSAT & USGS.
- The system checks a region of 500 meters around the existing mining lease boundary to search for any unusual activity which is likely to be illegal mining. Any discrepancy if found is flagged-off as a trigger.
- Automatic software leveraging image processing technology will generate automatic triggers of unauthorized activities. These triggers will be studied at a Remote Sensing Control Centre of IBM and then transmitted to the district level mining officials for field verification. A check for illegality in operation in conducted and reported back using a mobile app.
- A user-friendly mobile app has been created which can be used by these officials to submit compliance reports of their inspections. The mobile app also aims to establish a participative monitoring system where the citizens also can use this app and report unusual mining activity.
GS II topic- Issues relating to development and management of Social Sector/Services relating to Health, Education, Human Resources.
The Global TB Report 2016
- The country has 27 per cent of the global burden of incident tuberculosis and 34 per cent of global TB deaths.
- For the year 2015, the updated estimate of is 2.8 million cases. India diagnosed and notified 1.7 million incident TB patients in 2015, leaving approximately 1.1 million presumptive patients whose fate was unknown.
- Worryingly, the 2015 estimate of the number of TB deaths is 4,78,000 — making TB one of the leading causes of death in India.
- Further, of the estimated 79,000 cases of multidrug resistant (MDR) TB, about 31,000 were diagnosed and the majority put on treatment.
There is strong political commitment at the moment to tackle TB head-on and achieve the 90-90-90 targets by 2035 (90 per cent reductions in incidence, mortality and catastrophic health expenditures due to TB). In order to do this, our policies must be driven by data and evidence, as well as be responsive to patient needs and expectations. Unlike polio, we do not have an effective vaccine to prevent TB, so our strategy must be based on finding all cases, treating them appropriately, reducing risk factors and preventing further transmission. For this, we need better and more efficient diagnostics, shorter treatment courses, a better vaccine (BCG protects only young children from severe forms of TB) and better preventive strategies.
Hope with research
- There is hope on all these fronts. The Indian Council of Medical Research (ICMR) and Department of Biotechnology (DBT) have a joint programme to evaluate indigenous TB diagnostics and have evaluated a couple of very promising products which could potentially replace imported tests.
- Two new drugs for TB (Bedaquiline and Delamanid) were introduced globally in 2013 and can now be tested in combination trials to see if shorter and more effective treatment regimens can be created.
- Indian scientists working in laboratories of the Council of Scientific & Industrial Research (CSIR), the DBT and the Indian Institute of Science as well as some new start-up companies have identified several targets and compounds, which need further work (pre-clinical, toxicology and clinical trials), to see if a new drug for TB can be developed.
- A modified, recombinant BCG vaccine developed by German scientists and to be manufactured at the Serum Institute of India, will soon be tested at many centres in India to try and reduce recurrences of TB in treated patients.
Focus on nutrition
- Of the many risk factors for TB, the one that we need to pay most attention to is under nutrition. Malnutrition (low body weight) is responsible for 50 per cent of TB in India and also leads to higher death rate, because of the low capacity of the body to mount an immune response.
- Reports from tribal areas of our country show that the average body weight of men and women with TB is 30-35 kg!
- Prevalence rates of TB are directly correlated with socio-economic status, with people in the lowest economic quintile having 3-4 times the rate of TB than those in the highest.
Researchers, academics, government and private sector doctors, corporate sector and industry, non-governmental organisations, TB programme staff, treated TB patients, students and all citizens can contribute to this effort. We have a window of opportunity now — TB can be history by 2050 if we try.
GS II Topic: Bilateral, regional and global groupings and agreements involving India and/or affecting India’s interests.
Kigali makes history with HFC freeze
More than 190 countries in Kigali, adopted an amendment to the 1989 Montreal Protocol to eliminate planet-warming HFC gases (not ozone depleting), thus delivering the second major international agreement in less than a year to fight climate change. Complete elimination of HFCs by the year 2050 is estimated to prevent about 0.5 degree celsius rise in global temperatures by the end of this century. .
- The announcement came at Kigali where 197 countries that are party to the Montreal Protocolwere trying to negotiate a deal to substantially reduce the use of HFCs by 2030.
- The amendment to the legally-binding Montreal Protocol will ensure that the rich and industrialised countries bring down their HFC production and consumption by at least 85 per cent compared to their annual average values in the period 2011-2013.
- Developing countries will follow with a freeze of HFCs consumption levels in 2024, with some countries freezing consumption in 2028. By the late 2040s, all countries are expected to consume no more than 15-20% of their respective baselines. Overall, the agreement is expected to reduce HFC use by 85% by 2045.
- As per the agreement, China, which is the largest producer of HFCs in the world, will reduce HFC use by 80% by 2045 over the 2020-22 baseline. India will reduce the use of HFCs by 85% over the 2024-26 baseline.
- The countries negotiating at Kigali also agreed to provide adequate financing for HFCs reduction—which runs in billions of dollars globally.
- The amendment will enter into force on 1 January, 2019, provided that at least 20 instruments of ratification, acceptance or approval of the Amendment have been deposited by states or regional economic integration organisations that are parties to the Montreal Protocol on substances that Deplete the Ozone Layer.
GS II Topic: Bilateral, regional and global groupings and agreements involving India and/or affecting India’s interests.
BRICS meet declaration pledges to fight terror
The 8th BRICS summit has ended with the adoption of the Goa Declaration.
The theme for the summit was “Building Responsive, Inclusive and Collective Solutions”.
- The Declaration urged the dismantling of terror bases and said nations should adopt a comprehensive approach that includes tackling radicalisation, recruitment, cutting off terror funding systems and address terrorism on the internet and social media. The declaration mention ISIS, Al Qaeda and Jubhat ul Nusra.
- The declaration calls for a “holistic approach” and says all counter-terrorism measures should “uphold international law and respect human rights”.
- The declaration also emphasized the need for adaptation of Comprehensive Convention on International Terrorism (CCIT) in the UN General Assembly and the urgent need to reform the United Nations, including UN Security Council, to increase representation of developing countries.
- It also expressed its confidence in resolving international problems that require collective efforts for peaceful settlement of disputes through political and diplomatic means.
- The declaration also condemned unilateral military interventions and economic sanctions in violation of international law and universally recognised norms of international relations.
- Concerns about the situation in the Middle East and North Africa were also expressed. BRICS countries have expressed their support for finding ways to the settlement of the crises in accordance with international law and in conformity with the principles of independence, territorial integrity and sovereignty of the countries of the region.
India and Russia have signed a deal on S-400 missile systems
- It would be a game-changer in countering airborne threats.
- It is one of the most advanced long-range defence systems in the world.
- It can tackle all airborne targets at a range of up to 400 km. The system has 8 launchers, a control centre, a powerful radar and 16 missiles that are available for reload.
- The system is capable of firing three types of missiles, hence creating a layered defence for any country that owns it.
- The S-400 would help check short and medium range ballistic missile threats.
- India is the second purchaser of this system after China, which had struck a deal with Russia for S-400 last year.
Kamov:
- India and Russia have signed a deal to jointly produce 200 Kamov Ka-226T helicopters, at the India Russia Summit in Goa. The helicopters are believed to boost the capabilities of the armed forces.
- Kamov 226T will replace the ageing Cheetah and Chetak choppers.
- Kamov is a small, twin engine Russian utility helicopter. It is manufactured by Russian Helicopters.
- This light multipurpose helicopter has a maximum takeoff weight of 3.6 tons. It can carry up to one ton payload. It has a maximum speed 220 Km/hr.
- The machine has excellent maneuverability and handling, easy maintenance.
GS II Topic: Effect of policies and politics of developed and developing countries on India’s interests, Indian diaspora.
Ship Submersible Ballistic Nuclear (SSBN)
India has quietly completed its nuclear triad by inducting the indigenously built strategic nuclear submarine INS Arihant into service.
- With this India joins the select group of countries which have a nuclear triad (The UK, USA, France, Russia and China possesses as of now), i.e. capable of delivering nuclear weapons by aircraft, ballistic missiles and submarine launched missiles.
- Arihant is capable of carrying nuclear tipped ballistic missiles, the class referred to as Ship Submersible Ballistic Nuclear (SSBN). SSBNs are designed to prowl the deep ocean waters carrying nuclear weapons and provide a nation with an assured second strike capability — the capability to strike back after being hit by nuclear weapons first.
- The vessel weighing 6000 tonnes is powered by a 83 MW pressurised light water nuclear reactor.
- It will be armed with the K-15 Sagarika missiles with a range of 750 km and eventually with the much longer range K-4 missiles being developed by the Defence Research and Development Organisation
GS II Topic: Government policies and interventions for development in various sectors and issues arising out of their design and implementation.
Law Commission suggests changes in govt. draft Bill on child abduction
The 21st Law Commission in its first report has recommended a series of changes in the draft Civil Aspects of International Child Abduction Bill-2016, proposed by the Women and Child Development Ministry.
Recommendations made by the commission:
- One-year jail term for wrongful retention or removal of a child from the custody of a parent. The offenders may include one of the parents or family, relatives and others.
- Three months punishment for wilful misrepresentation or concealment of fact as regards the location or information about the child or for voluntarily preventing the safe return of the child.
Proposed Bill:
In June, 2016, the Ministry of Women and Child Development (MWCD) uploaded on its website a proposal to enact a draft of the Civil Aspects of International Child Abduction Bill, 2016. This was considered as it was imperative to have an enabling legislation in India before accession to the Hague Convention.
- The proposed Bill considered the removal to or the retention of a child in India to be wrongful if it is in breach of rights of custody attributed to a person, an institution, or any other body, either jointly or alone, at a place where the child was habitually resident immediately before the removal or retention.
Election Commission of India to Organize ‘International Conference on “Voter Education for Inclusive, Informed and Ethical Participation”
The first ever Global Conference on Voter Education titled “Voter Education for Inclusive, Informed and Ethical Participation” is being organized by the Election Commission of India in association with UNDP from 19th to 21st October, 2016 at New Delhi. The main purpose of the conference is to learn from the experiences of EMBs, government and non-government by way of sharing the best practices, policies and initiatives of voter education.
THE CONFERENCE
The ECI envisages a number of initiatives towards achieving international synergy in Voter Education and awareness. In this regard, the following components, during the Conference, shall be of significance:
- GLOBAL PLATFORM: The Conference shall provide the first ever global platform for the sharing of best practices in voter education. The participants consist of a varied conglomeration of nations ranging from relatively young democracies to nations spreading across all continents of the world. This diverse variety of knowledge and experience would enable to bring out ‘best of the best’ global practices in the Conference.
- OVERSEAS INDIAN SURVEY CUM COMPETITOIN: With the Conference, the ECI also launches the NRI survey cum competition. It aims to not only gather useful data through the survey but also attract and engage NRIs about their voting eligibility and rights. This will also help guide the Commission in formulating further voting initiatives especially designed for the Overseas Indian population.
- The VoICE.NET: The Conference will see the launch of the ambitious project of VoICE.NET. It is a Global Knowledge Network on voter education with membership from participating EMBs and Organisation working in the field of elections and democracy – VoICE.NET. This network will provide an innovative wide platform to share knowledge resources, interact on discussion board, sharing platform for events and practices in member countries and also extend its knowledge and resource support to stakeholders e.g. CSOs, Departments and other organisations associated with elections besides Academic Institutions.
- THE EXHIBITION: An exhibition showcasingVoter Education tools and materials from India and across the world consisting of informational material, model polling station, provision of live voting on EVM, photos, videos, 3D models, interactive games developed by ECI shall be on show.The substantial quantum of Voter Education material developed by ECI, the voter education guides/brochures, the compilation of Human Stories and other literature including the praiseworthy Braille brochures on voting education shall also be on display.
- THE RESOLUTION:The Conference will also aim to achieve a Resolution to strengthen Inclusive, Informed and Ethical electoral participation among member countries with the help of Voter Education and outreach.
Recent Posts
The United Nations has shaped so much of global co-operation and regulation that we wouldn’t recognise our world today without the UN’s pervasive role in it. So many small details of our lives – such as postage and copyright laws – are subject to international co-operation nurtured by the UN.
In its 75th year, however, the UN is in a difficult moment as the world faces climate crisis, a global pandemic, great power competition, trade wars, economic depression and a wider breakdown in international co-operation.
Still, the UN has faced tough times before – over many decades during the Cold War, the Security Council was crippled by deep tensions between the US and the Soviet Union. The UN is not as sidelined or divided today as it was then. However, as the relationship between China and the US sours, the achievements of global co-operation are being eroded.
The way in which people speak about the UN often implies a level of coherence and bureaucratic independence that the UN rarely possesses. A failure of the UN is normally better understood as a failure of international co-operation.
We see this recently in the UN’s inability to deal with crises from the ethnic cleansing of the Rohingya Muslims in Myanmar, to civil conflict in Syria, and the failure of the Security Council to adopt a COVID-19 resolution calling for ceasefires in conflict zones and a co-operative international response to the pandemic.
The UN administration is not primarily to blame for these failures; rather, the problem is the great powers – in the case of COVID-19, China and the US – refusing to co-operate.
Where states fail to agree, the UN is powerless to act.
Marking the 75th anniversary of the official formation of the UN, when 50 founding nations signed the UN Charter on June 26, 1945, we look at some of its key triumphs and resounding failures.
Five successes
1. Peacekeeping
The United Nations was created with the goal of being a collective security organisation. The UN Charter establishes that the use of force is only lawful either in self-defence or if authorised by the UN Security Council. The Security Council’s five permanent members, being China, US, UK, Russia and France, can veto any such resolution.
The UN’s consistent role in seeking to manage conflict is one of its greatest successes.
A key component of this role is peacekeeping. The UN under its second secretary-general, the Swedish statesman Dag Hammarskjöld – who was posthumously awarded the Nobel Peace prize after he died in a suspicious plane crash – created the concept of peacekeeping. Hammarskjöld was responding to the 1956 Suez Crisis, in which the US opposed the invasion of Egypt by its allies Israel, France and the UK.
UN peacekeeping missions involve the use of impartial and armed UN forces, drawn from member states, to stabilise fragile situations. “The essence of peacekeeping is the use of soldiers as a catalyst for peace rather than as the instruments of war,” said then UN Secretary-General Javier Pérez de Cuéllar, when the forces won the 1988 Nobel Peace Prize following missions in conflict zones in the Middle East, Africa, Asia, Central America and Europe.
However, peacekeeping also counts among the UN’s major failures.
2. Law of the Sea
Negotiated between 1973 and 1982, the UN Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS) set up the current international law of the seas. It defines states’ rights and creates concepts such as exclusive economic zones, as well as procedures for the settling of disputes, new arrangements for governing deep sea bed mining, and importantly, new provisions for the protection of marine resources and ocean conservation.
Mostly, countries have abided by the convention. There are various disputes that China has over the East and South China Seas which present a conflict between power and law, in that although UNCLOS creates mechanisms for resolving disputes, a powerful state isn’t necessarily going to submit to those mechanisms.
Secondly, on the conservation front, although UNCLOS is a huge step forward, it has failed to adequately protect oceans that are outside any state’s control. Ocean ecosystems have been dramatically transformed through overfishing. This is an ecological catastrophe that UNCLOS has slowed, but failed to address comprehensively.
3. Decolonisation
The idea of racial equality and of a people’s right to self-determination was discussed in the wake of World War I and rejected. After World War II, however, those principles were endorsed within the UN system, and the Trusteeship Council, which monitored the process of decolonisation, was one of the initial bodies of the UN.
Although many national independence movements only won liberation through bloody conflicts, the UN has overseen a process of decolonisation that has transformed international politics. In 1945, around one third of the world’s population lived under colonial rule. Today, there are less than 2 million people living in colonies.
When it comes to the world’s First Nations, however, the UN generally has done little to address their concerns, aside from the non-binding UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples of 2007.
4. Human rights
The Human Rights Declaration of 1948 for the first time set out fundamental human rights to be universally protected, recognising that the “inherent dignity and of the equal and inalienable rights of all members of the human family is the foundation of freedom, justice and peace in the world”.
Since 1948, 10 human rights treaties have been adopted – including conventions on the rights of children and migrant workers, and against torture and discrimination based on gender and race – each monitored by its own committee of independent experts.
The language of human rights has created a new framework for thinking about the relationship between the individual, the state and the international system. Although some people would prefer that political movements focus on ‘liberation’ rather than ‘rights’, the idea of human rights has made the individual person a focus of national and international attention.
5. Free trade
Depending on your politics, you might view the World Trade Organisation as a huge success, or a huge failure.
The WTO creates a near-binding system of international trade law with a clear and efficient dispute resolution process.
The majority Australian consensus is that the WTO is a success because it has been good for Australian famers especially, through its winding back of subsidies and tariffs.
However, the WTO enabled an era of globalisation which is now politically controversial.
Recently, the US has sought to disrupt the system. In addition to the trade war with China, the Trump Administration has also refused to appoint tribunal members to the WTO’s Appellate Body, so it has crippled the dispute resolution process. Of course, the Trump Administration is not the first to take issue with China’s trade strategies, which include subsidises for ‘State Owned Enterprises’ and demands that foreign firms transfer intellectual property in exchange for market access.
The existence of the UN has created a forum where nations can discuss new problems, and climate change is one of them. The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) was set up in 1988 to assess climate science and provide policymakers with assessments and options. In 1992, the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change created a permanent forum for negotiations.
However, despite an international scientific body in the IPCC, and 165 signatory nations to the climate treaty, global greenhouse gas emissions have continued to increase.
Under the Paris Agreement, even if every country meets its greenhouse gas emission targets we are still on track for ‘dangerous warming’. Yet, no major country is even on track to meet its targets; while emissions will probably decline this year as a result of COVID-19, atmospheric concentrations of greenhouse gases will still increase.
This illustrates a core conundrum of the UN in that it opens the possibility of global cooperation, but is unable to constrain states from pursuing their narrowly conceived self-interests. Deep co-operation remains challenging.
Five failures of the UN
1. Peacekeeping
During the Bosnian War, Dutch peacekeeping forces stationed in the town of Srebrenica, declared a ‘safe area’ by the UN in 1993, failed in 1995 to stop the massacre of more than 8000 Muslim men and boys by Bosnian Serb forces. This is one of the most widely discussed examples of the failures of international peacekeeping operations.
On the massacre’s 10th anniversary, then UN Secretary General Kofi Annan wrote that the UN had “made serious errors of judgement, rooted in a philosophy of impartiality”, contributing to a mass murder that would “haunt our history forever”.
If you look at some of the other infamous failures of peacekeeping missions – in places such as Rwanda, Somalia and Angola – it is the limited powers given to peacekeeping operations that have resulted in those failures.
2. The invasion of Iraq
The invasion of Iraq by the US in 2003, which was unlawful and without Security Council authorisation, reflects the fact that the UN is has very limited capacity to constrain the actions of great powers.
The Security Council designers created the veto power so that any of the five permanent members could reject a Council resolution, so in that way it is programmed to fail when a great power really wants to do something that the international community generally condemns.
In the case of the Iraq invasion, the US didn’t veto a resolution, but rather sought authorisation that it did not get. The UN, if you go by the idea of collective security, should have responded by defending Iraq against this unlawful use of force.
The invasion proved a humanitarian disaster with the loss of more than 400,000 lives, and many believe that it led to the emergence of the terrorist Islamic State.
3. Refugee crises
The UN brokered the 1951 Refugee Convention to address the plight of people displaced in Europe due to World War II; years later, the 1967 Protocol removed time and geographical restrictions so that the Convention can now apply universally (although many countries in Asia have refused to sign it, owing in part to its Eurocentric origins).
Despite these treaties, and the work of the UN High Commission for Refugees, there is somewhere between 30 and 40 million refugees, many of them, such as many Palestinians, living for decades outside their homelands. This is in addition to more than 40 million people displaced within their own countries.
While for a long time refugee numbers were reducing, in recent years, particularly driven by the Syrian conflict, there have been increases in the number of people being displaced.
During the COVID-19 crisis, boatloads of Rohingya refugees were turned away by port after port. This tragedy has echoes of pre-World War II when ships of Jewish refugees fleeing Nazi Germany were refused entry by multiple countries.
And as a catastrophe of a different kind looms, there is no international framework in place for responding to people who will be displaced by rising seas and other effects of climate change.
4. Conflicts without end
Across the world, there is a shopping list of unresolved civil conflicts and disputed territories.
Palestine and Kashmir are two of the longest-running failures of the UN to resolve disputed lands. More recent, ongoing conflicts include the civil wars in Syria and Yemen.
The common denominator of unresolved conflicts is either division among the great powers, or a lack of international interest due to the geopolitical stakes not being sufficiently high. For instance, the inaction during the Rwandan civil war in the 1990s was not due to a division among great powers, but rather a lack of political will to engage.
In Syria, by contrast, Russia and the US have opposing interests and back opposing sides: Russia backs the government of the Syrian dictator Bashar al-Assad, whereas the US does not.
5. Acting like it’s 1945
The UN is increasingly out of step with the reality of geopolitics today.
The permanent members of the Security Council reflect the division of power internationally at the end of World War II. The continuing exclusion of Germany, Japan, and rising powers such as India and Indonesia, reflects the failure to reflect the changing balance of power.
Also, bodies such as the IMF and the World Bank, which are part of the UN system, continue to be dominated by the West. In response, China has created potential rival institutions such as the Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank.
Western domination of UN institutions undermines their credibility. However, a more fundamental problem is that institutions designed in 1945 are a poor fit with the systemic global challenges – of which climate change is foremost – that we face today.