International Affairs February 2020

CURRENT AFFAIRS
Maldives rejoins Commonwealth

Issue
The Maldives has re-joined the Commonwealth, more than three years
after it quit the association amid mounting criticism of its human rights
record then.

Background
In 2016, the Maldives pulled out of the Commonwealth terming “unjust” the
grouping’s decision to penalise the country over former President
Mohamed Nasheed’s controversial ouster in 2012.

Details
After President Ibrahim Mohamed Solih won the 2018 presidential
elections, promising to restore democracy, he wrote to the
Commonwealth, requesting to re-join the bloc.
The Government of India congratulated the Government of Maldives on its
readmission to the Commonwealth of Nations as its 54th member.
New Delhi-Male ties have witnessed a significant shift following the poll
defeat of former President Yameen, perceived to be a friend of China.

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Commonwealth group
The Commonwealth of Nations, generally known simply as the
Commonwealth, is a political association of 54 member states, nearly all
of them former territories of the British Empire.
The chief institutions of the organisation are the Commonwealth
Secretariat, which focuses on intergovernmental aspects, and the
Commonwealth Foundation, which focuses on non-governmental relations
between member states.
It was originally created as the British Commonwealth of Nations through
the Balfour Declaration at the 1926 Imperial Conference, and formalised
by the United Kingdom through the Statute of Westminster in 1931.
The current Commonwealth of Nations was formally constituted by the
London Declaration in 1949, which modernised the community and
established the member states as "free and equal".

Notes

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International Affairs February 2020
CURRENT AFFAIRS
Bhutan ends free entry for Indian tourists

Issue
The government of Bhutan has decided to levy a daily ₹1,200 ($17) fee for
regional tourists from India, the Maldives and Bangladesh, beginning July
2020.

Background
The fee, called a Sustainable Development Fee (SDF), is meant to help the
government deal with burgeoning numbers in tourist traffic, which it is
seeking to regulate through a new tourism policy.

Details
The decision was passed by the National Assembly as a ‘Tourism Levy and
Exemption Bill of Bhutan’, 2020. The SDF is considerably lower than the
$65 charged to other foreign tourists, who are also charged a compulsory
flat “cover charge” of $250 per day.
Indians mainly travel to the more developed western region of Bhutan. In a
move to promote tourism in Bhutan’s eastern region as well, the
government has decided to drop SDF charges for tourists visiting 11 of 20
total districts that fall in the east from Trongsa to Trashigang.
Regional tour operators, especially from West Bengal have expressed
concerns that the SDF will have dampening effect on numbers, and impact
the heavy rush during the October.

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India’s hesitation also comes as the new SDF, while a seemingly small
amount compared to the fees charged to other nationalities, could be seen
as a way of making Indian tourists feel unwelcome.
In the past year, Bhutanese newspapers have often complained about
Indian tourists who don’t pay heed to local customs and picnickers who
litter the country’s pristine environment.
In 2018, of the 2,74,000 tourists visiting Bhutan, the council estimated that
about 2,00,000 were from the region, of which about 1,80,000 were from
India.

Notes

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International Affairs
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WHO renames Coronavirus as COVID-19

Issue
The UN health Organisation, WHO, has announced that "COVID-19" will be
the official name of the deadly virus from China.

Background
The "co" stands for "corona", "vi" for "virus" and "d" for "disease", while "19"
was for the year, as the outbreak was first identified on December 31.

Details
The name has been chosen to avoid references to a specific geographical
location, animal species or group of people in line with international
recommendations for naming aimed at preventing stigmatisation.
WHO had earlier given the virus the temporary name of "2019-nCoV acute
respiratory disease" and China's National Health Commission was
temporarily calling it "novel coronavirus pneumonia" or NCP.
Under a set of guidelines issued in 2015, WHO advises against using place
names such as Ebola and Zika, where those diseases were first identified
and which are now inevitably linked to them in the public mind.
More general names such as "Middle East Respiratory Syndrome" or
"Spanish flu" are also now avoided as they can stigmatise entire regions or
ethnic groups.
WHO also notes that using animal species in the name can create
confusion, such as in 2009 when H1N1 was popularly referred to as "swine
flu". This had a major impact on the pork industry even though the disease
was being spread by people rather than pigs.

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World Health Organisation (WHO)

The World Health Organization (WHO) is a specialised agency of the United
Nations that is concerned with various matters related to health . It was
established on 7 April 1948, and is headquartered in Geneva, Switzerland.
The WHO is a member of the United Nations Development Group.
Its current priorities include communicable diseases, in particular HIV/
AIDS, Ebola, malaria and tuberculosis; the mitigation of the effects of non-
communicable diseases such as sexual and reproductive health,
development, and aging; nutrition, food security and healthy eating;
occupational health; substance abuse; and driving the development of
reporting, publications, and networking.
The WHO is responsible for the World Health Report, the worldwide World
Health Survey, and World Health Day.

Notes

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Naming a disease by WHO

Issue
The World Health Organization officially announced COVID-19 as the name
for the disease caused by the novel coronavirus. This comes more than 40
days after WHO was alerted by China about a cluster of pneumonia-like
cases seen in the city of Wuhan in Hubei province.

Background
The WHO had to come up the name in line with the 2015 guidelines between
the global agency, the World Organisation for Animal Health and the Food
and Agriculture Organization.

Details
The Coronavirus Study Group of the International Committee on Taxonomy
of Viruses, which had assessed the novelty of the human pathogen, has
named the virus as “Severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2”, or
“SARS-CoV-2”.
The Coronavirus Study Group is responsible for developing the official
classification of viruses and taxa naming of the Coronaviridae family.

Importance of naming
The urgency to assign a name to the disease is to prevent the use of other
names that can be “inaccurate or stigmatising”. People outside the
scientific community tend to call a new disease by common names.

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But once the name gets “established in common usage through the Internet
and social media, they are difficult to change, even if an inappropriate
name is being used.
Therefore, it is important that whoever first reports on a newly identified
human disease uses an appropriate name that is scientifically sound and
socially acceptable.
Method of naming
The WHO identified the best practices to name new human diseases in
consultation and collaboration with the World Organisation for Animal
Health (OIE) and the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United
Nations (FAO).
The main aim behind this exercise was to “minimise unnecessary negative
impact of disease names on trade, travel, tourism or animal welfare, and
avoid causing offence to any cultural, social, national, regional,
professional or ethnic groups”.
The name of a new disease should consist of a combination of terms. These
terms consist of a generic descriptive term based on clinical symptoms
(respiratory), physiological processes (diarrhoea), and anatomical or
pathological references (cardic).
It can refer to specific descriptive terms such as those who are afflicted
(infant, juvenile, and maternal), seasonality (summer, winter) and severity
(mild, severe).
The name can also include other factual elements such as the environment
(ocean, river), causal pathogen (coronavirus) and the year the new disease
is first detected with or without mentioning the month.
The WHO has also listed out the terms that should be avoided while naming
a new diseasse. This includes, geographic locations, people’s names,
species of animal or food, references to culture, population, industry or
occupation, and terms that incite undue fear.
A couple of diseases carry the name of the person who first identified the
disease. Chagas disease is named after the Brazilian physician Carlos
Chagas, who discovered the disease in 1909.
Some diseases carry the name of animals, bird flu (H5N1) and swine flu
(H1N1). The 2009 H1N1 pandemic was commonly referred to as swine flu.
It is important to note that the 2009 pandemic virus was not completely
derived from swine.
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Digital identification stopped by Netherlands’ court

Issue
A court in the Netherlands recently stopped a digital identification scheme
for reasons of exclusion. This has a context for similar artificial
intelligence systems worldwide.

Background
The Dutch Ministry of Social Affairs developed SyRI in 2014 to weed out
those who are most likely to commit fraud and receive government
benefits.

Details
A Dutch district court ruled against an identification mechanism called
SyRI (System Risk Indicator), because of data privacy and human rights
concerns.
While the Hague district court found using new technology to control fraud
was acceptable, it held SyRI was too invasive and violative of the privacy
guarantees given by European Human Rights Law as well as the EU’s
General Data Protection Regulation.
Legislation passed by Dutch Parliament allowed government agencies to
share 17 categories of data about welfare recipients such as taxes, land
registries, employment records, and vehicle registrations with a private
company.
The selective rollout was conducted in low-income and immigrant
neighborhoods, which have a higher number of beneficiaries.

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International Affairs February 2020
CURRENT AFFAIRS
Elevated risk scores were sent to relevant government arms, which stores
these on government databases for a maximum of two years. The
government, in that time period, could open an investigation on the
targeted person.
The Dutch government defended the programme in court, saying it
prevented abuse and acted as only a starting point for further
investigation instead of a final determination.
The government also refused to disclose all information about how the
system makes its decisions, stating that it would allow gaming of the
system.

What does the ruling indicate?

Similar to the Supreme Court’s Aadhaar judgment setting limits on the ID’s
usage, the Hague Court attempted to balance social interest with personal
privacy.
The ruling is also an example of how a data protection regulation can be
used against government surveillance.
This decision sets a strong legal precedent for other courts to follow. This
is one of the first times a court anywhere has stopped the use of digital
technologies and abundant digital information by welfare authorities on
human rights grounds.
Notes

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USTR list and India

Issue
The office of the United States Trade Representatives (USTR) has updated
its list of developing and least-developed countries, removing India from
the list of countries that are designated as developing.

Background
Countries under this list are eligible for preferential treatment when it
comes to CVD investigations. Other countries that were removed from the
list include Thailand, Vietnam, Brazil, Indonesia and Malaysia.

Details
USTR list of developing and least-developed countries
In the Uruguay Round Agreements Act (URAA), the US Congress had
amended the CVD law in order to confirm US obligations under the World
Trade Organisation (WTO) Agreement on Subsidies and Countervailing
Measures (SCM).
Under this SCM agreement, countries that had not yet reached the status
of a developed country were entitled to special treatment for purposes of
countervailing measures.
This meant that imports from the member countries included in the list by
USTR were subject to different thresholds for determining if countervailing
subsidies are “de minimis” (too trivial or minor to merit consideration) and
whether import volumes are negligible.
USTR is also required to publish this list of designations and update it if
necessary in the Federal Register.

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Implications on India
The lists USTR had prepared as per the 1998 rule helped it to determine if
they were eligible for preferential treatment against CVD investigations or
not.
The USTR has revised the lists in the 1998 rule and removed the rule itself
terming it “obsolete”. Further, for the purposes of the de minimis threshold,
there will be no distinction between developing and least-developed
countries, since both such countries will be subject to the same threshold.
Until February 10, 2020, India was on the USTR’s list of developing
countries, making it eligible for preferential treatment against CVD
investigations and de minimis thresholds. It will no longer get this benefit.

Notes

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Polity & Governance
CURRENT AFFAIRS February 2020

India rejects UN’s offer to mediate in Kashmir issue

Issue
The government has rejected the latest offer by U.N. Secretary-General
Antonio Guterres to mediate between India and Pakistan on the Kashmir
issue, saying that it would only discuss the matter bilaterally.

Background
The U.N. Secretary-General has offered several times to mediate on the
issue, and had repeated the offer last September after India-Pakistan
tensions flared over the government’s decision to amend Article 370 and
impose restrictions in Jammu and Kashmir.

Details
While the government’s rejection of the offer is also routine, it may also be
meant as a reminder to U.S. President Donald Trump, who has made
several offers of mediation in the past, and will arrive in India in a week’s
time.
India said that, Jammu and Kashmir has been, is and will continue to be an
integral part of it. The issue that needs to be addressed is that of vacation
of the territories illegally and forcibly occupied by Pakistan.

The United Nations

The United Nations (UN) is an intergovernmental organization that aims to
maintain international peace and security, develop friendly relations
among nations, achieve international cooperation, and be a center for
harmonizing the actions of nations.

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It is the largest, most familiar, most internationally represented and most
powerful intergovernmental organization in the world. The UN is
headquartered on international territory in New York City; other main
offices are in Geneva, Nairobi, Vienna and The Hague.
The UN has six principal organs: the General Assembly; the Security
Council; the Economic and Social Council (ECOSOC); the Trusteeship
Council; the International Court of Justice; and the UN Secretariat.
The UN System includes a multitude of specialized agencies, such as the
World Bank Group, the World Health Organization, the World Food
Programme, UNESCO, and UNICEF.

Notes

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USA’s Blue Dot network

Issue
During Trump’s visit, India and the US will discuss the Blue Dot network, a
new proposal to cover infrastructure and development projects across the
region and other countries.

Background
The BDN was formally announced on 4th November, 2019 at the Indo-
Pacific Business Forum in Bangkok, Thailand. It will be led by the US along
with Japan and Australia.

Details
The Blue Dot network is a multi-stakeholder initiative to bring together
governments, the private sector and civil society to promote high-quality,
trusted standards for global infrastructure development.
The proposal, which is part of the US’s Indo-Pacific strategy, is aimed at
countering Chinese President Xi Jinping’s ambitious One Belt One Road
initiative.
The initiative will evaluate projects on various parameters, including level
of public consultation, transparency in funding, debt traps and basic
environment norms.
Projects that meet the norms will get a “blue dot”, which will enable them to
attract private funding and not have to depend on state-funding alone.
Blue Dot will be about supporting alternatives to predatory lending by
facilitating foreign investment in projects that come under this network.

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Under BRI, China’s government and state-owned enterprises finance

international projects by providing logistical support, from concrete and
steel to workers and cash. This approach, however, has been labelled by
some experts as “debt-trap diplomacy”.
The new Blue Dot Network is seen as part of the USA's strategy of trying to
persuade developing countries in Asia-Pacific not rely on Chinese funds for
infrastructure.

Belt and Road Initiative (BRI)

BRI is an ambitious project that focuses on connectivity and cooperation
among multiple countries spread across the continents of Asia, Africa, and
Europe.
The stated objectives are to construct a unified large market and make full
use of both international and domestic markets, through cultural exchange
and integration, to enhance mutual understanding and trust of member
nations, ending up in an innovative pattern with capital inflows, talent pool,
and technology database.
The initial focus has been infrastructure investment, education,
construction materials, railway and highway, automobile, real estate,
power grid, and iron and steel.

Notes

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India invited for US-Taliban talks in Qatar

Issue
India has been invited to witness the ceremony to seal the peace deal
between the U.S. and Taliban in Qatari capital Doha.

Background
The deal would allow for the withdrawal of US forces from Afghanistan.
The US has lost over 2,400 soldiers in Afghanistan since late 2001.

Details
India has reiterated that a peace negotiation should be Afghan owned,
Afghan led and Afghan controlled, and participation from the Afghan
government in the ceremony will indicate that the U.S.-Taliban deal will
ultimately take an inclusive turn.
This issue is already part of the draft peace agreement and Kabul is
expected to deal with this soon after the U.S.-Taliban deal is signed.
It is understood that the same six-member delegation will represent the
Government of President Ghani in the ceremony and begin the intra-Afghan
negotiation thereafter.
It will be for the first time India will officially attend an event involving the
Taliban. India has been a key stakeholder in the peace and reconciliation
process in Afghanistan.
Major powers such as the US, Russia and Iran have been reaching out to
the Taliban as part of efforts to push the stalled Afghan peace process.

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India has also been maintaining that care should be taken to ensure that
any such process does not lead to any "ungoverned spaces" where
terrorists and their proxies can relocate.

Notes

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