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Tag: United Nations

  • Leonardo DiCaprio named UN Messenger of Peace

    Leonardo DiCaprio named UN Messenger of Peace

    MUMBAI: The Hollywood actor, Leonardo DiCaprio, has been appointed as a United Nations Messenger of Peace to raise awareness about climate change.

     

    On the new appointment, United Nations secretary-general Ban Ki-moon said, “DiCaprio is a credible voice in the environmental movement, and has a considerable platform to amplify its message.

     

     “I am pleased he has chosen to add his voice to UN efforts to raise awareness of the urgency and benefits of acting now to combat climate change,” he added.

     

    DiCaprio will also address a UN summit meeting on climate change on 23 September, a day before the UN General Assembly’s annual gathering of world leaders begins. Leaders from the 193 member states of the United Nations are expected to attend the climate session.

     

    “I feel a moral obligation to speak out at this key moment in human history – it is a moment for action. How we respond to the climate crisis in the coming years will likely determine the fate of humanity and our planet,” the actor said in a statement.

     

    The Academy Award-nominated star of The Wolf of Wall Street and The Aviator joins other celebrities, from Audrey Hepburn to Angelina Jolie, who have represented various UN organisations.

     

    In 1998, the actor established the ‘Leonardo DiCaprio Foundation’, whose mission is protecting Earth’s last wild places and building a more harmonious relationship between humanity and the natural world, the United Nations said in the statement.

     

    The organisation has contributed funds toward protecting tigers in Nepal, elephants in the wild, and marine animals, including sharks.

     

    In February, DiCaprio pledged a donation of $3 million to marine conservation and followed with an additional $7 million pledge several months later.

     

    On 21 September, two days before the UN Climate Summit in New York, the Clinton Foundation will honour the actor for his committed environmentalism during a Manhattan gala event featuring Bill Clinton, Hillary Clinton and Chelsea Clinton.

     

    There are currently 11 other messengers of peace and one goodwill ambassador, the United Nations said. Other Hollywood industry notables who have been given the Messenger of Peace title by the UN in recent years include Edward Norton, Michael Douglas, Charlize Theron, George Clooney and Stevie Wonder.

  • Narendra Modi speaks to CNN’s Fareed Zakaria

    Narendra Modi speaks to CNN’s Fareed Zakaria

    MUMBAI: India’s Prime Minister Narendra Modi has been touring Asia over the last few weeks. In a first interview that will introduce him to the world audience, Modi has given an interview to CNN International’s show Fareed Zakaria GPS.

     

    The interview was taped on Saturday 13 September at the Prime Minister’s official residence at 7 Race Course Road in New Delhi and will go on air on 21 September. It will mark Modi’s first global interview after being elected as the Prime Minister of India.    

     

    During the interview, Modi will be discussing a wide range of topics such as India’s economic growth, relations with China and the United States, terrorism and much more.

     

    In India the interview will be first telecast at 4:30 pm on 21 September.  This will be further followed by a repeat on 22 September at 7:30am.

     

    Before being elected as the PM, Modi had created a lot of hype among the media fraternity with his choice of channels to speak to. This included ETV Gujarati, Times Now, India TV, Aaj Tak, CNBC Awaaz, NewsX, News 24 etc.

     

    This will be Modi’s first interview after assuming charge. He has kept the media at arm’s length since May 2014.

  • Ashok Amritraj open to Tamil films

    Ashok Amritraj open to Tamil films

    PANAJI: The Indian Documentary Producers Association is to help Hollywood giant Ashok Amritraj’s Hyde Park-Image Nation to find four Indian filmmakers for a special non-scripted television series featuring filmmakers in West Asia, India and Singapore.

    The United Nations, Hyde Park-Image Nation, and Variety magazine had two months earlier teamed up to produce the series, ‘Chance of a Lifetime’, to be hosted by Amritraj.

    The former tennis ace who is now settled in Los Angeles said: “This unprecedented effort will bring together documentary filmmakers from diverse backgrounds in a filmmaking competition where the contestants must team up to produce one cinematic vision while drawing on their varied cultural perspectives.”

    Amritraj, a retrospective of whose films has been held at the IFFI, said the series will shine a spotlight on a number of United Nations global initiatives. The series will be shown to the UN Secretary General and then taken to Cannes, and later will air on an as-yet-undecided network.

    The topics and tone of the films will reflect the Millennium Development Goals established at the United Nations and will include storylines that highlight issues that are central to the “Every Woman, Every Child” effort.

    The winning team’s documentary will be screened at the United Nations, and they will receive a special recognition from Variety during the 2013 Festival de Cannes.

    “Bringing the Middle East, India and Asia to a global audience has always been a passion of mine, and I’m thrilled to provide this platform for filmmakers of such diverse cultures to have a truly collaborative cinematic experience. The United Nations and Variety have been amazing partners on this project,” said Amritraj.

    In 2009, Amritraj’s Hyde Park Entertainment and Image Nation, the Abu Dhabi production company, partnered on a $250 million financing deal to develop, produce and distribute feature films. They extended their partnership to create a strategic alliance with Singapore’s Media Development Authority. Under this deal, Hyde Park – Image Nation Singapore was launched in 2010 to fund multiple films worth an estimated production value of $75 million.

    Although the entire funding will be by Amritraj’s company, the UN had made available its archival material for these short ten-minute films.

    Meanwhile, Amritraj – who has made 114 films so far in Hollywood – said he had not thought of making any Indian film but was open to good content and screenplays from anywhere. In 1994, he had made the Tamil film ‘Jeans’ starring Aishwarya Rai Bachchan which was also dubbed in Hindi. He said he was open to Tamil films if he gets a good screenplay. He said he had plans of opening an office in Chennai.

    He was happy that India had made huge strides in cine technology and had the latest digital equipment, as this would prevent piracy. He said the United States lost around $5 billion every year because of piracy.

    Answering a question, he said India is fashionable around the world today because it was emerging as a tiger economy.

    He said China was a good market for Hollywood films but Indian films are themselves so strong that there is no place for Hollywood. If India had failed to make a mark overseas, it was because Indians needed to make Indian stories that appeal to western audiences. But as ideas get non-traditional, Indian films will also make a mark in other countries. He said he thought of himself as someone who connects the world – India and Hollywood.

  • United Nations adopts plan of action to improve safety of journalists

    United Nations adopts plan of action to improve safety of journalists

    NEW DELHI: More than 500 professionals have been killed in the course of their duties over the past decade. Many more have been assaulted, abducted, sexually violated, intimidated, harassed, arrested or illegally detained. The vast majority of these crimes did not concern international war correspondents but journalists working in their home countries, often in times of peace, and covering local stories. The instigators for the most part, remain unpunished.

    Concerned with this data, a coordinated inter-agency mechanism is in the process of being established to handle issues connected to the safety of journalists and impunity which will involve monitoring of progress at both national and international levels.

    Safety and impunity are also to be incorporated into United Nations contributions to national strategy, notably development assistance programmes and the possible inclusion of media stake holders in some of the preparatory processes of the UN’s development projects.

    The decision was taken at a meeting of representatives of UN agencies, programmes and funds meeting at UNESCO in Paris which drafted an Action Plan to improve the safety of journalists and combat impunity of crimes against them.

    The Draft Action Plan was prepared at the meeting held on 13 and 14 September under the chairmanship of Information and Broadcasting Ministry Secretary Raghu Menon, who is Chairperson of the Impunity to Programme for the Development of Communication (IPDC).

    UNESCO Director-General Irina Bokova; UN Under-Secretary General for Communications and Public Information Kiyo Akasaka; UN Special Rapporteur on the promotion and protection of the right to freedom of opinion and expression Frank la Rue, and representatives of leading freedom of expression and press freedom organisations also attended the two-day meeting.

    The meeting was endorsed by UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon and High Commissioner for Human Rights Navi Pillay, who addressed the participants at the start of session.

    The Draft also foresees the extension of work already conducted by UNESCO to prevent crimes against media workers. This notably includes assisting countries to develop legislation and mechanisms favourable to freedom of expression and information, and by supporting their efforts to implement existing international rules and principles, especially the 1997 UNESCO General Conference Resolution concerning violence against journalists. This stipulates that there should be no statute of limitations on crimes against freedom of expression.

    To further reinforce prevention, awareness raising campaigns will also be conducted with member states, civil society, non-governmental organisations and concerned bodies about issues of freedom of expression, journalists’ safety and the danger of Impunity to Programme for the Development of Communication (IPDC) at its next session in March 2012 and will then be submitted to the bodies in charge of UN-wide coordination.

    UNESCO is the UN agency mandated to “promote the free flow of ideas by word and image”, with the aim of establishing a coordinated, UN system-wide approach to preventing and combating these crimes.