Twenty-seven key UN agencies have been meeting in the Swiss capital Bern to hammer out a solution to the growing global food crisis. The meeting is expected to produce a plan of emergency and long-term measures to combat the crisis. Inside Story asks how workable such a plan will be and what obstacles it might face.
The United Nations is expected to reveal a so-called battle plan to tackle the growing global food crisis.
The meeting in Switzerland on Monday comes after a warning from the UN’s Special Rapporteur on the Right to Food.
Jean Ziegler says biofuels are a crime against humanity. Al Jazeera asked him to give us his personal view on exactly what’s wrong with the system right now.
On Monday’s “Riz Khan” we speak with the former head the United Nation’s Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO), Federico Mayor, about building a culture of peace in a world of war. A Spanish professor of biochemistry by trade, Mayor soon found himself serving in Spain’s Ministry of Education. From there he eventually went on to lead UNESCO for 12 years, breathing new life into the organization and its mission to ‘build a bastion of peace in the minds of all people.’ We speak to Mayor about how the ideology of peace, how it can be translated into tangible actions and the challenges of the war in Iraq.
We speak to the Former US Ambassador to the United Nations, John Bolton.
One of the Iran’s biggest problems is drugs. According to the United Nations more than 60 per cent of the opium that’s produced in Afghanistan passes through Iran. The country gets millions of dollars of international assistance every year, but says that’s only a fraction of what it needs to fight the drugs trade. Al Jazeera’s Nazanine Moshiri reports.