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Általános : Hogyan tud szembenézni az Unió napjaink kihívásaival és milyen úton halad tovább az integráció? Február 16-án három, az EU jövőjével foglalkozó állásfoglalást fogadott el az Európai Parlament, amelyben az EP-képviselők kifejtik, min változtatnának a jövőben ahhoz, hogy az EU sikeresen kezelje a nehézségeit.

Forrás : © Európai Unió, 2017 - EP

On 27 February 2017, the Council adopted legal acts imposing further restrictive measures against the Democratic People's Republic of Korea (DPRK).  These legal acts transpose the additional restrictive measures imposed by United Nations Security Council resolution (UNSCR) 2321 adopted on 30 November 2016. 

The measures include restrictions on transactions in coal, iron and iron ore from the DPRK, and a ban on imports of copper, nickel, silver, zinc as well as statues from the DPRK. The measures also include a ban on export of new helicopters and vessels to the DPRK, the tightening of existing restrictions in the transport sector as well as in the financial sector, like a prohibition for a DPRK diplomatic mission and for a DPRK diplomat to have more than one bank account in the EU and restrictions on the use of real estate property by the DPRK in the EU. 

The legal acts also provide for member states to take further measures to prevent specialised teaching or training of DPRK nationals in disciplines which would contribute to the DPRK's nuclear or ballistic-missile programmes; as well as to suspend scientific and technical cooperation involving persons or groups officially sponsored by or representing the DPRK except for medical exchanges. 

Like existing sanctions, these restrictive measures are designed in such a way as to avoid adverse humanitarian consequences for the country's civilian population. They therefore include exemptions for livelihood and humanitarian purposes, where appropriate.

The UNSCR also added 11 persons and 10 entities to the list of those subject to asset freeze as well as travel restrictions for persons. This addition was transposed into EU law by a Council decision adopted on 8 December 2016.

EU restrictive measures against North Korea were introduced on 22 December 2006. The existing measures implement all UNSC resolutions adopted in response to the DPRK's nuclear tests and launches using ballistic missile technology and include additional EU autonomous measures. They target North Korea's nuclear weapons and nuclear programmes, other weapon of mass destruction and ballistic missile programmes. The measures include prohibitions on the export and import of arms, goods, services and technology that could contribute to these programmes. 

On 27 February 2017, the Council adopted conclusions on EU priorities at United Nations human rights fora in 2017.

The conclusions reaffirm the EU's strong commitment to the United Nations human rights system. The EU will remain actively engaged at the UN Human Rights Council and the Third Committee of the General Assembly to defend and promote the universality, indivisibility, interdependence and interrelatedness of human rights. The EU will continue to draw the attention of these fora to human rights violations and abuses worldwide, and to the need for accountability and efforts to fight impunity. It will also seek to highlight positive experiences where action was taken to prevent or remedy human rights violations and abuses.

These Council conclusions are adopted on a yearly basis. They set out the main lines of action for the EU at UN human rights fora in the coming months.

How much does the EU spend in your country and on what? How does it compare to other countries? And where does the money come from? Find out by using our multimedia application, which has been updated with the latest figures from the European Commission's annual financial report for 2015.

Source : © European Union, 2017 - EP

General : Is the EU still fit for purpose in its current form? With no shortage of challenges facing us the European Parliament has looked into how the EU can be improved. On 16 February MEPs adopted three reports setting out how they believe the EU needs to be reformed in order to boost its capacity to act, restore people’s trust and make the economy more resilient.

Source : © European Union, 2017 - EP

General : Is the EU still fit for purpose in its current form? With no shortage of challenges facing us the European Parliament has looked into how the EU can be improved. On 16 February MEPs adopted three reports setting out how they believe the EU needs to be reformed in order to boost its capacity to act, restore people’s trust and make the economy more resilient.

Source : © European Union, 2017 - EP

Újabb F-15SA (Saudi Advanced) típusú vadászbombázók indultak útnak Szaúd-Arábiába - írja a thaimilitaryandasianregion.wordpress.com.

February 22, 2017 (JUBA) - The United Nations needs at least $4.4 billion by the end of next month to prevent "a catastrophe" of hunger and famine in South Sudan, Nigeria, Somalia and Yemen, its newly-appointed Secretary-General, Antonio Guterres, said.

António Guterres (UN photo)

More than 20 million people face starvation in the four countries and action is urgently needed now to avert a humanitarian disaster, Guterres said on Wednesday.

"We need $4.4 billion by the end of March to avert a catastrophe," he said.

According to Guterres, the world body has only managed to raise $90m of what it needs.

Three U.N agencies and South Sudan government on Monday declared famine in parts of the country, with an estimated 5 million said to be at the verge of facing starvation.

The UN children's agency UNICEF said almost 1.4 million children acutely malnourished in Nigeria, Somalia, South Sudan and Yemen could die from famine in coming months.

"The situation is dire," stressed Guterres.

"Millions of people are barely surviving in the space between malnutrition and death, vulnerable to diseases and outbreaks, forced to kill their animals for food and eat the grain they saved for next year's seeds," he added.

In South Sudan, tens of thousands of people have been killed and nearly two million displaced in the country's worst ever outbreak of violence since it seceded from Sudan.

(ST)

Malawi’s parliament took a historic step towards ending child marriage last week, when it removed from its Constitution a provision allowing children between the ages of 15 and 18 to marry with parental consent.

Now, the minimum age of marriage under the Constitution is aligned with the Marriage, Divorce and Family Relations Act, a law that sets 18 as the age of marriage. While the Marriage Act was intended to stop child marriage, it could not override the country’s Constitution.

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A 14-year-old girl holds her baby at her sister’s home in a village in Kanduku, in Malawi’s Mwanza district. She married in September 2013, but her husband chased her away. Her 15-year-old sister, in the background, married when she was 12. Both sisters said they married to escape poverty.

© 2014 Human Rights Watch

This change will help girls like Elina V., interviewed by Human Rights Watch for a 2014 report on child marriage in Malawi.

“I faced a lot of problems in marriage. I was young and did not know how to be a wife,” Elina V. said. At 15, Elina was forced by her mother to marry a 24-year-old man when she became pregnant “because it was her only option.” Elina spoke of the problems she faced in her abusive marriage, at a time when she was still a child herself.

Malawi has one of the highest rates of child marriage in the world, where approximately one out of every two girls marry before age 18. It has the ninth highest rate in Africa.

Girls interviewed for our report spoke of the pressure they faced to marry by family members who wanted to receive dowry payments, because they were pregnant, or because they themselves saw marriage as a means of escaping poverty.

Child marriage has detrimental consequences on the ability of women and girls to realize key human rights, including the rights to health, education, and freedom from violence. It puts girls at a greater risk of maternal mortality and other health risks. Many girls who attend school are forced to drop out when they marry. Child marriage also exposes girls and young women to violence, including marital rape, sexual and domestic violence, and emotional abuse.

In removing this legal loophole, Malawi has taken an important step in addressing a major shortfall in the country’s efforts to protect girls against the harms of child marriage. With clear and consistent laws now regulating marriage, girls in Malawi may finally have the protection they’ve desperately needed.

South Africa’s North Gauteng High Court today ruled that the government’s attempt to withdraw from the International Criminal Court (ICC) was unconstitutional and invalid, as the government issued its withdrawal notice without consulting parliament. The court ordered President Jacob Zuma and the Ministries of Justice and Foreign Affairs to revoke the notice of withdrawal.

It’s an important ruling for international justice both in South Africa and beyond.

The judgment will compel South African officials, as they move to comply with the court’s decision, to reflect and reconsider the withdrawal notice. Rather than leave the ICC – a court South Africa played a key role in creating – they should use this opportunity to reaffirm support for it. The ruling will be welcomed by many South Africans who opposed the government’s decision to abandon the ICC, which runs counter to the country’s human rights-oriented foreign policy agenda.

The ICC has the potential to deliver justice to victims of the world’s worst crimes when national courts are unable or unwilling to prosecute. The ICC has its flaws, and its reach to more corners of the world should be expanded. Yet it remains the crucial global court of last resort and for many victims the only chance they have to see perpetrators held to account.

South Africa should follow the lead of Gambia, which recently cancelled its ICC withdrawal notice. Such a move would signal South Africa’s commitment to justice and the rights of victims. It would also restore respect for human rights and international justice to the center of its foreign policy practice.

A miniszterelnök szavai szerint “álomgyilkosság” történt a budapesti olimpiai pályázat ügyében.

Orbán Viktor pénteken a Kossuth Rádió 180 perc című műsorában úgy fogalmazott: azért kellett a pályázat visszavonását javasolni, hogy megmentsék Magyarországot a szégyentől.
A népszavazás egy magyar ügy, de az olimpiát nem Magyarországon kell megnyerni, hanem a Nemzetközi Olimpiai Bizottság előtt. Itthon még a referendumot akár meg is lehet nyerni, de akkor is csak legfeljebb többség lesz, az olimpia elnyeréséhez viszont nemzetközi szinten nem többség, hanem egység kell – fejtette ki a kormányfő, hozzátéve, hogy ezért is nem rendeznek népszavazást Párizsban és Los Angelesben, a 2024-es játékokra pályázó másik két városban.
Megjegyezte, a nyári olimpiák történetében nincs példa arra, hogy olyan város kapta volna meg a rendezés jogát, ahol népszavazás volt.
Szerinte az olimpiarendezésről szóló döntésen a népszavazásos “vitából odaérkező” budapesti olimpiai pályázatot “ronggyá verték volna”, kérdés, hogy kapott volna-e egyetlen voksot is, és ennek a veszélynek, “lejáratódásnak” nem lehetett kitenni az országot.
“Vérzik az ember szíve” – folytatta -, mert sok magyarnak volt ez a régi álma, és most “itt történt egy álomgyilkosság”. “Van egy politikai szervezet, amelyik nem is titkolta el, hogy őt nem az olimpia érdekli igazából, hanem párttá akar alakulni, és be akar lépni a politikai élet színpadára, és ezért nem drágállotta azt sem, hogy álomgyilkossá váljon” – fogalmazott Orbán Viktor.
Az olimpia elleni népszavazáshoz aláírást gyűjtő Momentum Mozgalmat egy új SZDSZ-nek minősítette. “Azt is tudjuk, mi következik, mert ezt is átéltük már: kis lökdösődés az MSZP-vel, aztán MSZP-SZDSZ-koalíció, erre kell felkészülnünk” – mondta.
Arra a kérdésre, hogy szerinte az ő politikai pályafutásában lesz-e Magyarországon olimpia, a miniszterelnök azt felelte: a modern orvostudomány állása szerint az emberi élet határai kitolódnak, tehát “jó esélyem van erre”.

A pályázat célja Szünidei táborok, osztálykirándulások, csapatépítő tréningek megvalósítása, amelyek hozzájárulnak a gyermekek, fiatalok munkahelyi csoportok közösségi élményeihez, lehetővé teszik a szabadidő hasznos, aktív eltöltését, kulturális-, természeti értékeink megismerését, valamint egészséges életmódra nevelnek.

Országos középiskolai dalfeldolgozó pályázat

Deux élections partielles décisives se jouaient jeudi 23 février 2017 au Royaume-Uni dans deux bastions travaillistes. A Stoke-on-Trent, où les électeurs avaient largement voté pour le Brexit et où le nouveau chef du Ukip espérait capitaliser sur ce rejet de l'UE, c'est finalement le candidat du Labour qui l'a emporté et qui maintient sa position de force dans l'un de ses bastions historiques. En revanche, le Parti travailliste a perdu une élection-test similaire à Copeland, dans le nord-ouest, face au candidat conservateur.

ÍGY ÍRUNK MI címmel az Alkotók, Művészek és Művészetpártolók Egyesülete a 2016. évi nagy sikerre való tekintettel ismét meghirdeti versíró versenyét, immáron tizedik alkalommal, kicsiknek és nagyoknak.

Pályázat iskolakertet működtető közösségek számára

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The prime concern is to avert any threat to the Good Friday agreement of 1998 that settled decades of violence in Northern Ireland. Further anxiety surrounds the potential to disrupt more than €50bn in annual trade flows between Ireland and Britain.

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February 23, 2017 (JUBA) - The widow of John Garang, the founder of South Sudan's ruling party (SPLM) has said the peace deal, which was signed in 2015 to end more than three years conflict has collapsed, citing failure to implement the security arrangement.

Rebecca Nyandeng de Mabior (ST File Photo)

“We talk about peace in a vacuum because our leaders are not ready to listen. When Dr.Riek left the country, Taban was put in place of Dr.Riek in less than two or three days and when he was appointed the language changed and was saying Riek should wait for elections”, Rebecca Garang told a briefing of South Sudanese in the Diasporas in the United States.

Rebecca said some of the foreign diplomats in Juba mistakenly supported replacement of the former first vice president Riek Machar with Taban Deng Gai on the ground that the latter would impress president Kiir to implement the agreement because of the perception that the former would cooperate with him than he would do with Machar.

“But how can peace come to South Sudan when security arrangement has collapsed and the person who is signatory to the agreement is not there? It means there is no peace. So I want to tell you there is no agreement being implemented in Juba to tell you the truth," she said, adding that Kiir is implementing reservations, not the accord.

Garang, a former minister for roads and transport, fell out with the Juba government after openly criticising President Kiir's administration and proposing regime change.

The 2015 peace accord, which temporarily ended the ongoing conflict, has not been fully implemented, with the peace monitoring body (JMEC) accusing the warring factions of reneging on what they had committed themselves to during it's signing.

(ST)

February 23, 2017 (KHARTOUM) - Sudanese President Omer al-Bashir, Thursday, has directed his government to provide the necessary support and to facilitate the delivery of humanitarian aid and relief supplies to the needy civilian in the neighbouring South Sudan.

South Sudan, which has been mired in civil war since December 2013, is now Africa's largest refugee crisis and the world's third largest behind Syria and Afghanistan.

Government officials declared that some parts of the war-ravaged country, particularly in the Unity province are suffering famine. At least 100,000 people are facing starvation in parts of the country while 4.9 million of them need urgent humanitarian assistance.

Al-Bashir "directed the concerned authorities to provide support to our brothers in the Republic of South Sudan in coordination with the competent South Sudanese ministries and institutions in order to facilitate and ensure the delivery of humanitarian aid and relief supplies to the needy," said a statement issued by the Foreign Ministry spokesperson Gharib Allah Khidir on Thursday.

the Sudanese president further "ordered to ensure all the necessary facilities for the entry of any humanitarian assistance for South Sudan through the Sudanese territory, both from United Nations organisations and agencies or sisterly and friendly countries".

Khidir said these directives aim to ensure the success of the international humanitarian campaign aimed at alleviating the suffering of the South Sudanese people.

Since 2014, Sudan opened river and road humanitarian corridors enabling UN agencies to use trucks and river barges to deliver humanitarian aid to the northern parts of South Sudan.

Last Tuesday President Salva Kiir pledged to provide aid agencies unimpeded access to the needy population across the country.

(ST)

A távfűtés-szolgáltatás felhasználóit hívták össze a Tiszapart-Alvég Helyi Közösség épületében csütörtökön.