Dear CPNN readers and reporters,
Three major conferences of the United Nations related to the culture of peace were scheduled to take place last month.
The World Conference on International Telecommunication received the attention of hundreds of news articles that stated that the United States, Europe and their allies refused to accept the results of the conference. The media give the impression that their refusal was to avert a "takeover" of the Internet by the International Telecommunication Union which is an agency of the United Nations system. However, according to the article in CPNN by Professor Milton Mueller of the Internet Governance Project, this was a false alarm. In fact, the management of the Internet is securely in the hands of a number of private organizations that are indirectly controlled by the richest countries, as described in the CPNN discussion, Who controls the Internet? Professor Mueller concludes that "Internet freedom requires the construction of effective new, open transnational governance institutions and globally applicable legal principles that regulate and limit the power of states and private sector actors to abuse users." According to Mary Robinson, former UN Commissioner for Human Rights, this freedom is a fundamental human right. It has been severely tested in the case of Wikleaks, as described in the recent message of Julian Assange.
The UN Climate Change Conference last month was considered a failure by the major ecology organizations of the civil society, as, for example, in the CPNN article from Greenpeace.
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This climate conference was the second such failure in 2012. The first, in Rio, was the subject of the July 1 bulletin of CPNN. Meanwhile, the environmental crisis of global warming continues to worsen as described in the recent report from the World Bank.
A third UN conference, to establish a nuclear-free zone in the Middle East, never took place because of opposition by Israel and the United States. Instead, a conference of disarmament NGO's took place and demanded that the UN conference should be convened.
The preceding continues the theme of the October 1 bulletin on the United Nations and the Culture of Peace. Another article this month continues the theme of the November 1 bulletin on youth. The youth who took part in the Budapest training a few months ago have made an excellent video entitled "Do you speak human rights?" which is highly recommended to CPNN readers. And the African Union has held its second conference on media for the culture of peace which continues the mobilization of African journalists mentioned in the August 1 bulletin concerning the culture of peace in Africa.
