Blogging in Burma | Daw Bo Bo Pwint

Try your hand at blogging the family reunion or posting your collection of ironic t-shirts?  Consider this blog–the real thing–for a perspective on life in Burma.  Leave your Lonely Planet in the Study Abroad backpack and delve into one person’s viewpoint from an isolated, less-well-known place:

If ever farce were rooted in tragedy, here’s proof.

Rangoon, June 2009: Erratic downpours of monsoon silence a city that long ago gave itself up to a slow, spectacular creep of mold. Green, blue, yellow, black—the baroque formations bleed down colonial edifices, telling a mute tale of a four-decade-old neglect by successive military rulers whose world runs parallel and entirely without connection from the average inhabitant, unless of course they stand up and riot with mouths a-foam. In 2005, Sen. Gen. Than Shwe et al. uprooted the capital and removed to the searing flatlands in the center of the country. In its wake, former government buildings are a study in abandonment. Window panes are shattered. Lone security guards roam the streets like the mangy strays that slink by bracing for a beating. Barriers pin back sidewalks crammed with vendors, a haunting legacy of the failed demonstrations that punctuate Burma’s fraught recent history when thousands choked the streets calling for democracy. The low-slung buildings everywhere appear not so much choked with tropical vegetation as forcing their way, like Rodin’s stone beings, half-formed, out of the jungle’s midst.

via Daw Bo Bo Pwint.

Draft Global Sex-Education Guidelines Draw U.S. Conservatives’ Objections – NYTimes.com

Social policy is one of the biggest hot button areas at the United Nations, especially for single-issue groups.  Let’s take a step back and look at the larger issues for a minute:

Key Problems:   111 million new cases of sexually transmitted disease among people ages 10 to 24; 10 percent of births are to teenage mothers; and up to 4.4 million women 15 to 19 seek abortions.

Solution:  A report issued by various UN specialized agencies on sex-ed guidelines.

So what’s the issue, then?  Interest groups, also called non-governmental organizations–have some concerns, which in turn have resulted in changes to the documents and other delays:

A draft issued in June has been attacked by conservative and religious groups, mainly in the United States, for recommending discussions of homosexuality, describing sexual abstinence as “only one of a range of choices available to young people” to prevent disease and unwanted pregnancy, and suggesting a discussion of masturbation with children as young as 5.

“If you ever have a situation where kids need to be taught earlier than their adolescence, this is not the way to do it,” said Colin Mason of the Population Research Institute, an anti-abortion organization based in Virginia. “It’s very graphic and encourages practices like masturbation, which conservative Christians and others feel are wrong.”

The diversity of views around the world on these issues renders any universal approach “culturally insensitive,” Mr. Mason said. “We think it’s a kind of one-size-fits-all approach that’s damaging to cultures, religions and to children,” he said.

The barrage of criticism has put Unesco, the United Nations agency charged with advancing education and culture worldwide, on the defensive. The agency has removed the June draft of the guidelines from its Web site, and delayed the release of the final document.

via Draft Global Sex-Education Guidelines Draw U.S. Conservatives’ Objections – NYTimes.com.

Who Do You Call When Nobody Represents You?

The answer is not “Ghostbusters”…

In the International Organization world we note governments, “non-governments” and even some “inter-governmental” bodies, but what to do if you’re not in one of those categories?  (MNC’s would be included through a sideways dotted line.)  Join the Unrepresented Nations and Peoples Organization, of course.

It looks as though these groups miss out being discussed in broad political geography classes–although I’m sure many are included when you go regional or sub-regional.

A private IAEA? New global organization to combat loose nukes

A new organization is being unveiled Monday in Vienna that seeks to bolster security at thousands of nuclear sites around the world in an effort to block atomic theft and terrorism. Its aim is to promote the best security practices, eliminate weak links in the global security chain and, ultimately, keep terrorists from getting the bomb.

No single organization now does that for the world’s expanding maze of nuclear sites — private and public, civilian and military.

“The stakes are very high,” Sam Nunn, a former United States Democratic senator from Georgia and the force behind the new organization, said in an interview. “There’s no doubt that terrorist groups are trying to get this material.”

An atom bomb that could raze Lower Manhattan requires a ball of nuclear fuel no larger than a grapefruit.

The Nuclear Threat Initiative, a private group in Washington led by Mr. Nunn, is setting up the new organization, known as the World Institute for Nuclear Security, or WINS. The institute is starting with $6 million in donations and plans to expand in the next two years to an annual budget of perhaps $8 million and a staff in Vienna of a dozen or so nuclear specialists.

Amis: Essay on terrorism

Incest posting:  I was referencing the religious/cultural dimensions discussed in Martin Amis’ essay on terrorism (including his nice aside on the British perspective), but I think the diplomacy/military continuum is equally relevant here.