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Best Blog Entry

The Planning Forum announces a cash prize for the best blog entry during this years MUN. The entry will be chosen by the heads of the four councils , the secretariat and the heads of the press team.The entry can involve issues raised during the councils proceedings to anything randomly related to the MUN..

Councils and their agendas

COUNCILS AND THEIR AGENDAS
The Security Council
The United Nations Security Council (UNSC) is the branch of the United Nations charged with the maintenance of international peace and security. Its powers, outlined in the United Nations Charter, include the establishment of peacekeeping operations, the establishment of international sanctions, and the authorization for military action. The UN's role in international collective security is defined by the UN Charter, which gives the Security Council the power to:
• Investigate any situation threatening international peace; • Recommend procedures for peaceful resolution of a dispute; • Call upon other member nations to completely or partially interrupt economic relations as well as sea, air, postal, and radio communications, or to sever diplomatic relations; • Enforce its decisions militarily, or by any means necessary; Avoid conflict and maintain focus on cooperation. Its powers are exercised through United Nations Security Council Resolutions.
The issues this Council will be dealing with are:
• Non state actors and responsibilities of member nations to effectively deal with such elements on their soil. • Protection of nuclear facilities and other technology that can be used for harm in volatile nations.

The Economic and Social Council
The Economic and Social Council (usually dubbed the ‘ECOSOC’) was established under the UN Charter as the principal organ to coordinate economic, social, and related work of the 14 UN specialized agencies, functional commissions and five regional commissions. The Council also receives reports from 11 UN funds and programs. It serves as the central forum for discussing international economic and social issues, and for formulating policy recommendations addressed to Member States and the United Nations system.
It is responsible for:
• promoting higher standards of living, full employment, and economic and social progress; • identifying solutions to international economic, social and health problems; • facilitating international cultural and educational cooperation; and • Encouraging universal respect for human rights and fundamental freedoms. It has the power to make or initiate studies and reports on these issues. It also has the power to assist the preparations and organization of major international conferences in the economic and social and related fields and to facilitate a coordinated follow-up to these conferences.
The issues this Council will be dealing with are:
• Petro diplomacy and securing the future of world economy.
• Free trade agreement versus protection by governments of member nations.

The Human Rights Council
The Human Rights Council is an inter-governmental body within the UN system made up of 47 States responsible for strengthening the promotion and protection of human rights around the globe. The Council was created by the UN General Assembly on 15 March 2006 with the main purpose of addressing situations of human rights violations and make recommendations on them. One year after holding its first meeting, on 18 June 2007, the Council adopted its “Institution-building package” providing elements to guide it in its future work. Among the elements is the new Universal Periodic Review mechanism which will assess the human rights situations in all 192 UN Member States. Other features include a new Advisory Committee which serves as the Council’s “think tank” providing it with expertise and advice on thematic human rights issues and the revised Complaints Procedure mechanism which allows individuals and organizations to bring complaints about human rights violations to the attention of the Council. The Human Rights Council also continues to work closely with the UN Special Procedures established by the former Commission on Human Rights and assumed by the Council.
The issues this Council will be dealing with are:
• Prisoner exchange as an effective dialogue process to improve relations with reference to Israel and Chechnya.
• State responsibility to protect human rights in conflict zones like Kashmir, Sri lanka and Palastine


The Commission on Crime Prevention and Criminal Justice
The Commission is a subsidiary body of the Economic and Social Council. Its mandated priority areas are:
• international action to combat national and transnational crime, including organized crime, economic crime and money laundering;
• promoting the role of criminal law in protecting the environment;
• crime prevention in urban areas, including juvenile crime and violence; and • Improving the efficiency and fairness of criminal justice administration systems. Aspects of these principal themes are selected for discussion at each annual session. The Commission develops, monitors and reviews the implementation of the United Nations Crime Prevention and Criminal Justice programme and facilitates the coordination of its activities. It provides substantive and organizational direction for the United Nations Congress on Crime Prevention and Criminal Justice. The Commission also acts as the governing body of the United Nations Crime Prevention and Criminal Fund.
The issues the Commission will be dealing with are:
1. Custodial Torture (OR the Question of Validity of Custodial Torture and Permissible Degrees) 2. Prevention of Illegal Traffic of Arms, Narcotics and Organized Crime

Model United Nations

THE PLANNING FORUM
St. Stephen’s College

Stephen’s Model United Nations
12-15 February, 2009
Committees and Agendas

Security Council

1. Non-state actors and responsibilities of member nations to deal effectively with them on their soil.
2. Protection of nuclear facilities and other technology that can be put to harmful use in volatile nations.

Economic and Social Council (ECOSOC)

1. Petro-diplomacy and securing the future of world economy.
2. Free trade agreement versus protection by governments of member nations.


Human Rights Council

1. Prisoner exchange as an effective dialogue process to improve relations with reference to Israel and Chechnya.
2. State responsibility in protecting human rights in conflict zones like Kashmir, Sri Lanka and Palestine.

The Commission on Crime Prevention and Criminal Justice

1. Custodial torture (or questioning the validity of custodial torture and permissible degrees).
2. Prevention of illegal traffic of arms and narcotics and organized crime.
To register for the event, please mail us at: theplanningforum@gmail.com or contact: Suman Rath (+919711967674),
Raghav Ghosh (+919910143443), Nupur Asher (+919711967735) and Achala Upendran (+919873295671)

Trash trash and more trash!

The fact that news channels sensationalize and have a SLIGHT tendency to over exaggerate...i cant emphasise the word slight enough.... is well..... kinda like saying Bush occassionaly has his foot in his mouth.....

with the departure of those oh-so loved K, saas bahu...or whatever u call them-serials.... people, apparently have found themselves with a lot of free time in their hands! ( yeah even i was surprised to find out that people actually watched them.... ritualisticaly..... and not even to laugh at the miraculous births and rebirths of characters, nor at the constant stream of affairs and affairs in affairs or the perpetual bawling of one of the central characters of this circus called _______ *fill in the blanks with an appropriate name*) these people thrilled to bits with their newly found freedom, might turn, albeit with good intentinos of keeping abreast with national events, to our "premiere news channels" only to find a slightly different kind of entertainment there...... some of the most ridiculously inane breaking news captions would greet you when u turn on the "idiot box".... did u SEE the pictures?? all i say is....I rest my case...... sint the one abuot rahul and his food habits just brilliant! :)

on a more serious note though.... the insensensitivity and lack of discretion shown by the media, though at times justified by quoting the rather cliched "Its a dog eat dog world out there", is rather disturbing..... not to go into details but the coverage of the aarushi case and its subsequent dramatisation to the point of competing with those very same soaps that have been so graciously discontinued is...well.... rather invasive and hurtful to say the least...

all the media people reding this blog *yeah right i wish!* would probably have steam coming out of every nook and cranny... but let me appease them.... im not saying that all that they do is rubish! they've done some amazing work and these blemishes should not take away from that..... We the People, Big Fight and the like are good endeavours at helping address the issues affecting society at large..... but at the same time... you have to admit.... some of the things they show truly are... just plain stupid! i think ill stick to friends and seinfeld thank you very much, what say?!

Vote! Vote! Vote!

There were photos of Shaina NC, A.R. Rahman and other celebrities in the paper today urging students to vote. Shaina had even come to the DU campus all the way from Mumbai and egged people to exercize their voting rights. Then there was a tirade about "youth power" and how the votes of the "young" people matter a lot in modern India. (I don't know what's the yardstick for young because in politics even 38 year old Rahul Gandhi is young).

Will you vote? I want to vote, not because I actively support any party, but because I have never voted and want to see how it feels like. I like to think my one vote would make a difference. But does it? Well, that's been highly debated in the glossies especially during these election times. Moreover between the BJP and the Congress, there isn't much difference except that the BJP is overtly sectarian and the Congress is what the BJP likes to call pseudo-secular. Their economic policies are more or less the same. Both oppose the other's policies for the sake of opposition and when elected pursue the same policies.

Some people don't vote because they think voting won't make a difference as politicians will always be corrupt. All they do is talk about how the country is going to the drains and how we need real leaders(like Gandhi and Nehru) to save the country and...The fact is that it is very easy to blame the politicians for all that is seemingly going wrong with the country. How many people who are ready with their armchair analysis after every tragedy or disaster would actually be a politician and work for the development of the country? Most likely nobody.

People who don't vote(because there's nobody to vote for) and won't stand for elections; do such people have the right to criticize the Government or politicians? Yes, it's quite difficult to win elections(especially for the educated middle-class who most likely won't have their caste/religion combination right), but even standing for elections is a step towards changing the political scenario. Unless we become politically aware and active, we don't have the right to criticize politicians. It's we who elected them(even if we didn't vote. Passive voting?). As Jug Suraiya wrote "We can condemn the ugly face of politicians, but we must remember it's the same face that we see in the mirror every morning."

Pirates And the Indian Navy

And so I got his weekly call a little earlier than usual. Like a little kid who had just realized that his christmas present was the latest enviable gizmo gadget, he was excited and jabbered something about witnessing history, pirates and the Gulf of Aden….."You must have read it in the newspaper today!!...and I saw it happen through my own binoculars.."…for a person whom newspaper = comics + crosswords + the occasional light doses of news encapsulated with coloured pictures and snazzy illustrations…and of course the random headline, it all seemed Greek to me….so I did the next best thing and googled it…and boy!!...I have to admit I was a tad surprised. The Indian navy has not always appealed to me as a "knight in shining armour"…what with the constant media depiction of its ageing naval fleet, obsolete equipment and dwindling underwater combat fleet. Statements issued by the Comptroller and Auditor General like: "The Navy is now left with more than 50% of its submarines having completed 75% of their operational life. Some have already outlived their maximum service life."...and the occasional scandal did nothing but help tarnish its image in my mind….HOWEVER!!...thanks to the fact that there was an overwhelming need for blog entries I now have a much MUCH better opinion of our naval defence.The Gulf of Aden figures high in the world economy as it acts as the vital waterway for shipping. Approximately 11 percent of the world's seaborne petroleum passes through it to reach the Suez Canal or regional refineries on the coast…a mentionable fact being that the other route via the Cape of Good Hope is longer and economically not viable….it doesn't take brains to figure out why this region is associated with a lot of piracy!!....from all my childhood experiences I can definitely vouch for the fact that pirate attacks are not as glamorous as portrayed…unlike the pirates, merchant ships have no way of defending themselves from their ammunition laden enemies and thus resort to (what I used to call) " hose pipe" defence. Cadets and officers take shifts to watch potential 'pirate entry points' armed with nothing but a hose pipe. A powerful jet of water is all that prevents the ship from being hijacked!!Getting back to our Indian Navy…it's the worlds fifth largest navy!!..its battle won is seen as a long awaited response to the increasingly bold pirate attacks. This is the first reported encounter between a naval ship and a pirate 'mother ship'. The INS Tabar encounter (if I may call it that) has now encouraged India to send more of its naval ships to patrol the region….a sign of power and achievement….whether or not you may feel positive about our Defence, this is truly a proud moment for each and every Indian…And as for what really happened on the 18th of November, these little smudges of conversation say it all: "We were monitoring the conversation on the VHF between the pirates & the Navy Commander….he gave them a lot of caution & warnings….though they spoke in pidgin, when things started heating up well surprise!!-- the pidgin pirate spoke the queens english!!....now that's no illiterate somali, but someone educated & probably well organised…...the fellows had arms and explosives and made the mistake of taking shots at our navy frigate who in the end boomed on his guns…earlier to this,we had info from a coalition helicopter about the location of the pirate craft on our path & adjusted our course to steer about 5 nautical miles off……. I believe, with one pirate mother ship blown up, they have a setback and this is the 1st time that a pirate craft has been challenged and made to taste their own medicine………..news will travel fast and we hope that with more Naval patrolsthat the scourge may be wiped out!!!"