(Current Affairs) International Events | February: 2016

International Events

Silk Road Economic Belt will be the focus of SCO

  • The Shanghai Cooperation Organisation (SCO) meeting is set to showcase growing alignment between China and Russia, through closer integration of the Beijingmarshalled Silk Road Economic Belt (SREB) with Moscow driven Eurasian Economic Union (EEAU), steered by a 10- year developmental plan.
  • Chinese Prime Minister Li Keqiang hosted a banquet for the heads of government from the SCO countries on Monday, setting the stage for a daylong session.
  • The meeting, in which Russian Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev, Pakistan Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif and Afghanistan’s Chief Executive Officer (CEO) Abdullah Abdullah are to participate, is expected to focus on top developmental goals for the grouping.
  • The SCO has so far been known for its sharp focus on security concerns. Kazakhstan, is also expected to attract considerable attention during the deliberations. India is being represented by Minister of State for External Affairs V.K. Singh.
  • Analysts point out that SCO is part of the emerging Eurasiacentred Silk Road geopolitical architecture pillared by China and Russia, along with the Central Asian Republics.
  • But the grouping is expanding rapidly towards South Asia, with the inclusion of India and Pakistan as full members remaining only a procedural formality.
  • Nepal has become an observer state, and Iran’s elevation to full membership is also under active consideration.

Natural disasters comes heavy on elderly

  • In India, the safety net, insurance against disaster is parivar — the Hindi word for family but means something more visceral. It encompasses everything from heirlooms to ancestors to actual living relatives who can/will help with emergency response.

  • In Chennai, however, the idea of parivar is transcontinental — it depends on Skype. And many other such fickle things, like electricity, telephone networks, internet connections, battery — all of which failed that day when
    Lt. Col. Venkatesan was drowning.

  • In India’s mega cities natural disasters are a near certain death warrant for the elderly. For the poor, across age groups this is true. But for the upper middle class families — the Chennai floods were a rude awakening.
    At last count, the total number of deaths stood at 540 as per police estimates.

  • With the State government yet to release the death toll, breakup of children and senior citizens the floods claimed, it is necessary to quibble with this number. Experts say the senior citizens are likely to constitute a significant chunk of the total deaths.

  • The floods exposed a fatal flaw in the administration: the complete lack of ward-level data on vulnerable populations, says Meenakshi Balasubramanian of Equals, Centre for Promotion of Social Justice.

  • According the National Health Profile, released by the Health Ministry last year, the elderly in India i.e. the population above 60 years comprise 8.6% of the population (103.8 million) and they are also a vulnerable section. Those above 75 years (20.52 million) are most vulnerable and almost 8% of the elderly population is bedridden or homebound.

  • According to census 2011, 10 per cent of Tamil Nadu’s population is above the age of 60 years — 4,64,122 people to be specific. By conservative estimates, as many as 5% of older individuals are living alone.

Women elected in first ever participation in Saudi Arabia

  • Saudi Arabians voted 17 women into public office in municipal elections in the conservative Islamic kingdom on Saturday, the first to allow female participation
  • The election was the first in which women could vote and run as candidates, a landmark step in a country where women are barred from driving and are legally dependent on a male relative to approve al-most all their major life decisions
  • Under King Abdullah, who died in January and who announced in 2011 that women would be able to vote in this election, steps were taken for women to have a bigger publicrole, sending more of them to university and encouraging female employment.

Pact for climate change agreed in Paris

  • The stage is set for all countries to move to a low carbon pathway with the Paris Agreement on climate change adopting a goal of “well below 2 degrees C” for temperature rise, and instituting a regime of financing of developing economies to help make the transition.
  • Nations are to pursue efforts to aim at the more difficult objective of pegging temperature rise under 1.5 degrees C.
  • Underpinning the Agreement, which is scheduled to go into effect from 2020, is the system of voluntary pledges, or nationally determined contributions made by individual countries to peak their greenhouse gas emissions
    that are warming the atmosphere and changing the climate.
  • The reference in the text for the need to achieve an equalisation between emission of Green House Gases (GHGs) and their removal by ‘sinks’ by the second half of the pre- sent century has been welcomed widely since it turns attention to renewable energy, and away from fossil fuels.
  • The UNFCCC principle of Common But Differentiated Responsibilities ensuring equity is incorporated into the Paris Agreement to provide developing countries a cushion.
  • The Paris Agreement re- quires developed countries to raise finances with $100 billion per year as the floor by 2020, to help developing nations in both mitigation and adaptation activities, while other nations are encouraged to provide funding voluntarily.
  • Pledges by countries with an end date of 2025 or 2030 will need to be updated by 2020, and enhanced action every five years thereafter.

India and Japan improve defence ties

  • Charting a new course, India and Japan announced a series of military and strategic agreements and understandings.
  • The high point of the new strategic and military realignment is Japan’s formal entry into the India-U.S. Malabar bilateral maritime exercises, turning it into a trilateral initiative aimed at ensuring peace, security and freedom of navigation in the Indo-Pacific region.
  • There were also agreement on transfer of defence equipment and technology cooperation and the agreement on security measures for the protection of classified military information.

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