Category Archives: Transhuman News

19 January 2015 Stressing that the United Nations is built around the three pillars of peace and security, development and human rights, Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon, today underlined the need to pay attention to their interdependence, during an address to the Security Council.

The founders of the United Nations well understood that if we ignore one pillar, we imperil the other two, said Mr. Ban during todays Security Council debate on inclusive development for the maintenance of international peace and security, which was chaired by Michelle Bachelet, President of Chile, which holds the 15-member bodys presidency for the month.

The post-2015 sustainable development agenda is an important opportunity to reinforce the interdependence of development, peace and security, and human rights, he told the Council debate, which coincides with the opening of the General Assemblys three-day informal stock-taking in the process of intergovernmental negotiations on that future agenda.

The Secretary-General said he was encouraged that during debates so far held about completing the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) by the end of this year, launching a post-2015 sustainability agenda, and reaching an agreement on climate change, Member States had paid considerable attention to peace and security and to human rights.

The General Assembly Open Working Group on Sustainable Development Goals had discussed the importance of inclusive growth and decent work, called for reducing inequality and ensuring universal access to basic services, including health care and education, had explicitly linked peace with social inclusion and access to justice for all, and had called for inclusive, representative decision-making.

In the so called synthesis report he presented to the General Assembly last month The Road to Dignity by 2030: Ending Poverty, Transforming All Lives and Protecting the Planet Mr. Ban underscored the importance of justice to building peaceful and inclusive societies, emphasising the need for strong and responsive institutions.

With the full membership of the United Nations beginning its negotiations later this morning, we now have an important opportunity to broaden the development agenda and highlight the fundamental importance of inclusive societies in building a more peaceful world, he said.

Every country could benefit from sustainable and inclusive development, tackling persistent exclusion and inequality, ensuring that the most vulnerable have access to basic services and can participate in political dialogue, tackling the blatant injustice of discrimination against women and girls, and extending social security provision to the worlds population still lacking a safety net for times of illness or unemployment.

Post-conflict societies in particular need to prioritize social, economic and political inclusion in order to rebuild trust between communities. Womens participation in reconciliation and reconstruction also depended on gender equality and womens empowerment, he said.

The Peacebuilding Commission provides coordinated international support targeted at countries emerging from conflict, continued Mr. Ban. The current review of the UNs peacebuilding architecture should help to make that support more robust and flexible.

See the original post:
UN must boost links among development, security, human rights, Ban tells Security Council

Story highlights Shin Dong-hyuk has changed "key parts of his story," the author of a book about him says Shin's accounts of his time in a North Korean prison camp have been widely reported The publisher says it's working on "an accurate understanding of the facts"

He was one of the most high-profile North Korean defectors, winning several human rights awards and inspiring a documentary as his memoir was translated into 27 languages.

Now the publisher of the book and its author say Shin -- who claims to have been born in and escaped from a North Korean prison camp -- has revealed that parts of the story he told weren't true. Shin may have spent most of his life in North Korea at a different prison camp, rather than the total control zone that formed the title of his biography.

Shin's accounts of his time in the gulag have been widely reported in interviews with media including CNN. He also wrote an opinion piece describing his experiences for CNN Digital.

Blaine Harden, author of the book "Escape from Camp 14," said in a statement on his website over the weekend that Shin had changed "key parts of his story."

"On Friday, Jan. 16, I learned that Shin Dong-hyuk, the North Korean prison camp survivor who is the subject of 'Escape from Camp 14,' had told friends an account of his life that differed substantially from my book," Harden said. "I contacted Shin, pressing him to detail the changes and explain why he had misled me."

Harden declined to provide additional details to CNN, but published a lengthy explanation on his website. A Washington Post story based on information Harden said he had provided to the newspaper said "the most horrific details" of Shin's story "still stand," but some of the times and places of the events in his accounts were wrong.

"From a human rights perspective, he was still brutally tortured, but he moved things around," Harden told the Post, where he worked as a reporter for 28 years.

Shin did not immediately respond to a request from CNN for comment. In a post on his Facebook page, he doesn't go into details about the purported discrepancies, but he includes a link to the Post's story and apologizes to his supporters.

"This particular past of mine that I so badly wanted to cover up can no longer be hidden, nor do I want it to be," he says. "To those who have supported me, trusted me and believed in me all this time, I am so very grateful and at the same time so very sorry to each and every single one of you."

See the rest here:
North Korean defector changes story