Global Security Concerns Questions and Answers

Answer: B

The Chechens live in the North Caucasus.

Chechnya is a republic of the Russian Federation on the northern slopes of the Caucasus mountains, between the Black Sea and the Caspian. The Chechens, a mainly Muslim people with their own Nakh language, fought two wars against Russian forces in 1994-96 and 1999-2009, which made the region a standard case study in insurgency and counter-insurgency.

The Kalahari is a desert in southern Africa, the Alps are in western Europe, and Hainan is an island province of southern China, so none of them is home to the Chechens.

Answer: A

The regime toppled in 2001 was the Taliban.

After the attacks of 11 September 2001, the United States and its allies launched Operation Enduring Freedom in October 2001. With the Northern Alliance fighting on the ground, they drove the Taliban, who had governed most of Afghanistan since 1996, out of Kabul in November and out of Kandahar in December.

Al-Qaeda was the terrorist network the Taliban sheltered, not a government. The Northern Alliance was the anti-Taliban coalition that helped overthrow it and then entered the new government. Gulbuddin Hekmatyar (spelt Hekmatyr in the paper) led the Hizb-i-Islami faction and was not in power in 2001.

Answer: B

The ISPS code is for the security of ships and ports.

The International Ship and Port Facility Security Code was adopted by the International Maritime Organization in December 2002 as an amendment to the SOLAS convention, after the attacks of 11 September 2001, and came into force in July 2004. It requires ships and port facilities to assess threats, appoint security officers and keep security plans.

Preventing smuggling is a customs task, and promoting imports and exports is trade policy. The code is not about administering fixed maritime assets either: its whole subject is protection against security threats to ships and ports.

Answer: A

Silent Spring is about the adverse environmental effects of indiscriminate use of pesticides.

Rachel Carson, an American marine biologist, published the book in 1962. She showed how DDT and other synthetic pesticides built up in food chains and killed birds and other wildlife; the title imagines a spring with no birdsong. The book is credited with launching the modern environmental movement and led to the ban of DDT for farm use in the United States in 1972.

Carson died in 1964, so the book could not concern the killing of Osama bin Laden (2011) or social media. It is not about the Second World War either.

Answer: A

The incorrect pair is G-15 Nations - Security Council Members.

The Group of Fifteen is a forum of developing countries from Asia, Africa and Latin America, formed at the Non-Aligned summit at Belgrade in 1989 to promote South-South cooperation. India is a founder member. It has nothing to do with membership of the UN Security Council, which has 15 members of its own, the source of the confusion.

The other pairs are correct: the G-8 was the group of major developed industrial nations, the G-77 is the UN coalition of developing nations, and ASEAN is the Association of South East Asian Nations.

Answer: A

The NGO is Amnesty International.

Amnesty was founded in London in 1961 after the lawyer Peter Benenson's newspaper appeal for 'prisoners of conscience', people jailed for their beliefs who had not used or advocated violence. Campaigning for their release, and against torture and the death penalty, became its core work, and it received the Nobel Peace Prize in 1977.

The Red Cross helps victims of war and disaster and visits detainees, but it works confidentially and does not campaign for prisoners' release. The Human Rights Council is an intergovernmental UN body, not an NGO.

Answer: B

The Millennium Development Goals ended in 2015.

The eight MDGs came out of the UN Millennium Declaration of 2000 and set targets on poverty, hunger, education, gender, child and maternal health, disease and the environment, to be reached by 2015. They were succeeded by the 17 Sustainable Development Goals, adopted in September 2015 for the period to 2030.

2014 is a year too early, and 2016 is the year the SDGs took effect, not the end of the MDGs. 2017 has no link with either.

Answer: B

CTED stands for the Counter-Terrorism Committee Executive Directorate.

The Security Council set up the Counter-Terrorism Committee by Resolution 1373 after the attacks of 11 September 2001, to monitor how states implement their counter-terrorism obligations. In 2004, Resolution 1535 created the Executive Directorate as its expert body, to carry out country assessments and support the Committee's work.

The other expansions each drop or alter a word: the Directorate belongs to the Committee, not to a 'Council of Counter-Terrorism', and there is no separate 'Counter-Terrorism and Executive Directorate'.

Answer: C

The isobath is 2500 meters.

Under Article 76 of the UN Convention on the Law of the Sea, a coastal state's continental shelf may extend beyond 200 nautical miles where the continental margin does. Its outer limit must not exceed either 350 nautical miles from the baselines or 100 nautical miles beyond the 2,500 metre isobath, the line joining points where the water is 2,500 metres deep (Article 76(5)).

The 100, 200 and 1,000 metre depths play no part in this rule. The 200 metre depth was the old test of the shelf under the 1958 Geneva Convention, which is why it can tempt, but UNCLOS replaced it.

Answer: A

The Convention was proposed by India.

In 1996 India put forward a draft Comprehensive Convention on International Terrorism at the United Nations, to give a single legal framework against terrorism in place of the many sectoral conventions on hijacking, hostage-taking and bombings. Negotiations in the General Assembly's Ad Hoc Committee have stalled mainly over the definition of terrorism, especially whether armed struggles for self-determination are excluded.

The United Kingdom, the USA and Austria did not propose it, though India has continued to press all members to adopt it.