RIO DE JANEIRO, Nov 26 2021 (IPS)* – For three weeks, the Brazilian government concealed the fact that deforestation in Brazil’s Amazon rainforest increased by nearly 22 percent last year, accentuating a trend that threatens to derail efforts to curb global warming. | En español
Brazil has a “green future,” announced Environment Minister Joaquim Leite and Vice-President Hamilton Mourão, in a videoconference presentation from Brasilia at the Glasgow climate summit, in an attempt to shore up Brazil’s credibility, damaged by Amazon deforestation. The two officials concealed the fact that deforestation in the Amazon rose by 21.9 percent last year. CREDIT: Marcelo Camargo/Agência Brasil-Fotos Públicas
(UN News)* — The World Health Organization published on Sunday [28 November 2021] an update on the science regarding the new coronavirus variant Omicron which is causing global concern and sparking increasing flight bans on Southern African countries.
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WHO/D. Elombat | Passenger screening at Maya Maya international airport, Brazzaville, Republic of Congo.
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The experts of the UN health agency said researchers in South Africa and around the world are currently conducting studies to better understand the aspects of Omicron, but as of right now, it is not clear whether it is more transmissible compared to other variants, including Delta.
(FAO)*— Fall armyworm is one of the most dangerous plant pests in the world, feeding on more than 80 crops, and affecting plant health in more than 70 countries with many others at high risk of introduction.
27 November 2021 (FAO)* — Olive oil: rich in monounsaturated fats and antioxidants, it is a staple in many kitchens throughout the Mediterranean, and increasingly, around the globe.
Youth at the Grand Médine town hall in Dakar, Senegal. Senegal has a large youth population, half of which is under the age of 18. By 2025, 376,000 youth are expected to enter the job market that offers only 30,000 jobs. And this number will rise to 411,000 in 2030, according to the Wilson Centre. Credit: Samuelle Paul Banga/IPS
ACCRA, Ghana, Nov 25 2021 (IPS)* – The Covid-19 pandemic aggravated Africa’s already severe employment crisis. The solution lies in a long-term political and economic transformation. Continue reading →
(UN News)* — The number of people in need of humanitarian food assistance across northern Ethiopia has spiked as a direct result of ongoing conflict, the United Nations World Food Programme (WFP) said on Friday [26 November 2021].
BULAWAYO, Zimbabwe, Nov 23 2021 (IPS)* – When Bonolo Monthe’s neighbours discarded bucketsful of fallen ripe morula fruit from their backyard, she saw food and fortune going to waste.
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UNEP estimates that 50 percent of post-harvest losses occur in vegetable and fruit crops. However, innovative agro-processors have found a way to process Morula fruit into jams and other products. Credit: Busani Bafana/IPS
Monthe took a tasty interest in the fruit of the morula (Sclerocarya birrea), a hardy indigenous tree that grows naturally across Africa. The morula fruit is rich in vitamins and nutrients, with eight times the vitamin C of oranges. Continue reading →
25 November 2021 (UNHCR)* — One in five refugee or internally displaced women have faced sexual violence. Today, given the prolonged human rights and socio-economic impact of the COVID-19 pandemic, we know this situation has only worsened. | Español | عربي
Moving Animals is a powerful short film about Jo-Anne McArthur’s documentation of the long-distance transport of animals, shot and produced by filmmaker Miguel Endara.
“This is my world. Join me as I climb transport trucks, and stay quietly and diligently with animals as they go to slaughter. Join me in the dusty roads and at my little hotel room editing desk, as Miguel and I discuss animals, animal photojournalism and, ultimately, kindness.”
(UN News)* — Following Israeli closures, restrictions and military operations, the West Bank has suffered two decades of arrested development and poverty, according to a report published on Wednesday 24 November 2021 by the UN trade and development body, UNCTAD.
With an economic toll of an estimated at $57.7 billion, the study estimated the cost to be equivalent to three and a half times the 2019 GDP of the occupied Palestinian territory’.
Moreover, it indicated that the minimum cost of eliminating poverty in the West Bank had increased six times between 1998 and 2007 – from $73 million to $428 million.
(UN News)* — Approximately three billion people, almost 40 per cent of the world’s population, cannot afford a healthy diet and another one billion people would join their ranks should further unpredictable events reduce incomes by one-third, the UN food agency said, launching a new report on Tuesday [23 November 2021].
(UN News)* — For the past five years, poverty, food insecurity, climate shocks and violence have pushed, on average, some 378,000 Central Americans a year into the United States, according to a new report launched on Tuesday [23 November 2021] by the UN food relief agency.
A joint report published by the World Food Programme (WFP), Migration Policy Institute (MPI), and Civic Data Design Lab at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) also showed that a high price was paid in human and economic costs, including an annual $2.2 billion on regular and irregular travel.
This article is part of IPS coverage of the International Day for the Elimination of Violence against Women on Nov. 25, which kicks off 16 days of activism on the issue around the world. | En español
Despite restrictions due to covid, women from various feminist, youth and civil society groups gathered in the central Plaza San Martin in Lima and marched several blocks demanding justice and protesting impunity for violence against women, on Nov. 25, 2020. CREDIT: Mariela Jara/IPS
LIMA, Nov 24 2021 (IPS)* – Despite significant legal advances in Latin American countries to address gender-based violence, it continues to be a serious challenge, especially in a context of social crisis aggravated by the covid-19 pandemic, which hits women especially hard. Continue reading →
MADRID, Nov 23 2021 (IPS)* – Thirty percent of women and girls suffered physical or sexual violence in their lifetime, most frequently by an intimate partner. And more than 70 percent of all sold, bought and enslaved victims of human smuggling and trafficking are women and girls — three out of four of them are sexually exploited.
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These are just some of the brush strokes of a gloomy picture on the still prevailing violence practiced against women and girls, one of the most widespread, persistent and devastating human rights violations, which remains largely unreported due to the impunity, silence, stigma and shame surrounding it.
These are figures drawn from recorded cases. Thus, it is not hard to imagine that the numbers and percentages are much higher.
22 November 2021 (Wall Street International)* – Colonialism is difficult to write about. History is highly political since, always written by the winners while the voices of the losers are smothered.
More than five hundred years after the ‘discovery’ of America by Christopher Columbus and the conquest of the Mexica capital of Tenochtitlan, discussions still continue as to whether the ‘black legend’ of the cruelties committed by the Spaniards is deserved, and whether the Mexicas correctly understood the intentions of Hernan Cortés.
(UN News)* — Small arms trafficking is a “defining factor in undermining peace and security”, the Director of the UN Institute for Disarmament Research (UNIDIR) told the Security Council on Monday [22 November 2021] during a ministerial debate.
UNDP/SEESAC | Small arms and light weapons are collected and sorted for destruction at a facility in Serbia.
Robin Geiss said that that diversion and trafficking of arms “destabilizes communities and exacerbates situations of insecurity, including by committing serious violations of international humanitarian law and human rights law, as well as violence against women and children in various contexts”.
The Council met under the chairmanship of Mexican Foreign Secretary Marcelo Ebrard as one of the signature events of Mexico’s November presidency.
Presenting the findings of a six-month accountability report, Co-chairs Helen Clark, former Prime Minister of New Zealand, and Ellen Johnson Sirleaf, former President of Liberia, warned that “uneven” progress in addressing the COVID-19 pandemic continues to cause illness, deaths and economic losses.
Beirut, Nov 18 2021 (IPS)* – On the streets of Beirut, Hadi Hassoun begs for a few pounds to feed his five children. He has little hope of a job, especially now that the economic crisis in Lebanon has destroyed wealth.
19 November 2021 (UN News)* — With about 2.3 million people already suffering with serious water, food and pasture shortages in Somalia, a rapidly worsening drought could lead to an “extreme situation” by April next year.
UNDP Somalia | Somalia’s drought has left more than two million people facing severe food and water shortages.
The warning comes from the United Nations and the Somali Government. Climate projections show that the country is facing a fourth consecutive failed rainfall season.In a joint statement on Friday [19 November 2021], the organizations said it is imperative to act now to prevent a slide into the kind of drought and even famine conditions experienced in previous years.
DOHA 18 November 2021 (ILO)* — An in-depth analysis of work-related deaths and injuries in Qatar by the International Labour Organization, has shown that 50 workers lost their lives in 2020 and just over 500 were severely injured, with 37,600 suffering mild to moderate injuries. Continue reading →
(UN News)* — “Catastrophic and famine-like conditions” hang over Afghanistan’s farmers and herders, whose needs continue to worsen with the onset of winter, UN humanitarians on 19 November 2021 said.
While humanitarian access has never been better, prices are soaring and needs continue to outpace the resources provided, the Food and Agricultural Organization (FAO) explained.
Global warming causes global swarming. In 2018, Indian Ocean cyclones hit Oman and Yemen, creating conditions for an outbreak of desert locusts.
Swarms grew throughout 2019 and 2020, two of the hottest years on record. Swarms with 80 million insects have swept across Ethiopia, Eritrea and Somalia, and, as of last week, Kenya, consuming enough staple crops that would otherwise feed 35,000 people, every day.
Scientists have linked the growth of locust plagues to climate change. Continue reading →
Making leather is hard and dirty work, but should children in Bangladesh be banned from it?
Tannery work in Dhaka, Bangladesh | Zakir Hossain Chowdhury/ZUMA Wire/Alamy Live News. All rights reserved
15 November 2021 (openDemocracy)* — Leather production is a global, billion-dollar industry and Bangladesh’s second most profitable export sector after ready-made garments. It also has a problem with child labour.
NEW YORK, Nov 17 2021 (IPS)*– Once again, the U.S. faces a test case along racial lines. Will the courts mete out justice in the case of Ahmaud Arbery, a 25-year-old Black man who was shot and killed by three white men while jogging in Georgia?
Anna Shen
The case is one in a long line of prominent trials with similar racial undertones, highlighting the divide in America’s legal system when it comes to race. Recent cases with mixed and highly charged verdicts include: George Floyd, Trayvon Martin, Walter Scott, and Breonna Taylor.
Despite widespread attention — the national movement of Black Lives Matter, widespread protests, and federal laws intended to provide equal access — systemic racism in the legal system is flagrant and persistent. Put simply, it must be eradicated, said a new report by the LexisNexis Rule of Law Foundation.
Nairobi (UNEP)* – Global cities are key to overcoming the climate crisis, biodiversity loss and pollution. A new vision of future cities is detailed in a report released on 18 November 2021 by the UN Environment Programme (UNEP) and the UN Human Settlements Programme (UN-Habitat).
20 November 2021 (UN News)* — Nadya Zafira, an international relations student at Indonesia’s Gadjah Mada University, won a writing competition for her letter to UN chief António Guterres, in which she addressed the inequalities laid bare by the COVID-19 pandemic, and how indigenous communities and youth are marginalized in global conversations on climate crisis.
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Unsplash/Atilla Taskiran | Lombok island, Indonesia.
.“In the past two years, my reality, yours, and many others, has changed dramatically. Not overnight, but rather, over a series of incremental global disruptions that began with the news of an unknown pneumonia outbreak. While all countries face the common threat of a deadly virus, clearly the pandemic has not proven to be “the great equalizer”, as deep-seated inequalities between the Global North and South shape each country’s path of survivability in this era of multidimensional crises, with some winning first, and others lagging behind. Continue reading →
MADRID, Nov 19 2021 (IPS)* – Kailash Satyarthi, an Indian social reformer and co-recipient of the 2014 Nobel Peace Prize, along with Malala Yousafzai, spoke in a recent international forum about the devastating impacts of child labour.
Globally, nine million additional children are at risk of being pushed into child labour by the end of 2022 as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic, which could rise to 46 million without access to critical social protection coverage. Credit: Stella Paul/IPS.
“Nothing is as brutal as the death of a child’s dream,” said Satyarthi, who campaigned against child labour in his homeland. “We should feel the moral responsibility that we have to fulfill the dreams of these children.” Continue reading →
(UN News)* — Young entrepreneurs have been swapping inspiring stories at a UN-partnered youth summit on Thursday [18 November 2021] about how they’ve driven positive change for their communities and the environment – and how everyone can do the same.
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Magali Girardin | Pictured are five of the six young change-makers who were honoured at the 2021 Young Activists Summit held in Geneva.
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Speaking at the Youth Activists Summit in Geneva, six invitees included 22-year-old coral reef restorer, Titouan Bernicot and 15-year-old anti-cyberbullying app inventor, Gitanjali Rao.
Miss Rao, who is from the US and also TIME Magazine’s first Kid Of The Year, told the audience in the Swiss city and online that her new smartphone app, which is called Kindly, was designed to make bullies reconsider sending or revising potentially hurtful messages online.
MADRID, Nov 18 2021 (IPS)* – Did you know that half of the world’s population do not have toilets? And that, globally, at least 2 billion people use a drinking water source contaminated with faeces? And that every day, over 700 children under five years old die from diarrhoea linked to unsafe water, sanitation and poor hygiene?
A Dalit woman stands outside a dry toilet located in an upper caste villager’s home in Mainpuri, in the northern Indian state of Uttar Pradesh. Credit: Shai Venkatraman/IPS
This is the dramatic, hushed reality of 3.6 billion people who don’t have one that works properly.
“Who cares about toilets? The UN raises this question as the starting point of this 2021 Campaign for World Toilet Day, marked every year on 19 November. Continue reading →
18 November 2021 (UN News)* — For over 70 years, the UN Children’s Fund (UNICEF) has had a presence across Afghanistan – even as the Taliban secured power over the summer.
UN News spoke with Samantha Mort, Chief of Communication, Advocacy and Civic Engagement at UNICEF Afghanistan, who assured that all offices remain open and warehouses full..Some 22.8 million people across the country are facing food insecurity, she explained, adding that they cannot access affordable or nutritious food. .
Of the 38 million people living in Afghanistan, some 14 million children are food insecure.
MADRID, Nov 16 2021 (IPS)* – It sounds incredible: while politicians have been cackling about the climate emergency and profiling in empty promises to halt it, they have spent six trillion US dollars from taxpayers’ money to subsidise fossil fuels in just one year: 2020. And they are set to increase the figure to nearly seven trillion by 2025.
An offshore oil rig drilling platform. Globally, fossil fuel subsidies amounted to 5.9 trillion US dollars in 2020, according to an IMF report. Credit: Bigstock
Leaders at the COP26 summit have no intention of tackling the growing environmental impacts caused by their ‘defence’ spending.
Physicians for Social Responsibility
World leaders gathered in Glasgow last week for the COP26 summit in a bid to demonstrate how they are belatedly getting to grips with the climate crisis.
Agreements to protect forests, cut carbon and methane emissions and promote green tech are all being hammered out in front of a watching world.
(UN News)* — Following pandemic-driven school closures, five UN agencies threw their strong support behind an international coalition to improve the nutrition, health and education of school-age children around the world.
In a joint declaration on Tuesday [16 November 2021], the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO), the UN Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO), the UN Children’s Fund (UNICEF), the World Food Programme (WFP) and the World Health Organization (WHO) committed to assisting the School Meals Coalition in which over 60 countries envision a nutritious meal in school for every child in need by 2030.
(UN News)* — Over the past week, mass arrests of people reportedly of Tigrayan origin have continued in the Ethiopian capital of Addis Ababa and elsewhere, the UN rights office said on Tuesday 16 November 2021.
The alert from the Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR) comes as the World Food Programme (WFP) described the aid situation for vulnerable people in Tigray as “hand-to-mouth”.
Citing reports, OHCHR said that at least 1,000 individuals are believed to have been detained by police officers in the last seven days, on suspicion of being linked to the Tigrayan People’s Liberation Front (TPLF).
It is almost impossible to know what kind of data will be gathered by drones all over the world | Image fromWall Street International.
16 November 2021 (Wall Street International)* — Are drones already conquering the world? Hi-tech is exponentially and rapidly changing our lives.
We are observing the rise of AI technology in all sectors of society. A large number of industries, including both the military and commercial sectors, governments and recreational users are all adopting the technology of unmanned aerial vehicles (UAV) — or drones.
The climate emergency we face today is part of several interlocking crises involving our health, our soils, and the biodiversity on the planet. The same line of thinking and actions that are driving climate change is leading to biodiversity loss and extinction of species and has also created the current hunger, malnutrition, and health emergencies. The climate crisis is a symptom of the broader ecological crisis being perpetuated by an extractivist and profit-driven system.
UNITED NATIONS, Nov 15 2021 (IPS)* – The United Nations, which consists of 193 member states, has long been accused of discrimination against staffers who number over 315,000 and spread across 56 UN agencies and entities worldwide.
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But most of these are deeply rooted system-wide. A wide-ranging staff survey, both in New York and Geneva last year, revealed that discrimination was based either on race, religion, gender or nationality. Continue reading →
(UN News)* — As the humanitarian crisis grows in Ethiopia’s conflict-affected north, the UN announced on Monday 15 November 2021 that $40 million in funds have been made available to scale up emergency operations.
The UN’s top emergency relief official, Martin Griffiths, said that millions of people in northern Ethiopia are now “living on a knife-edge, as the humanitarian crisis is growing deeper and wider”.
Drought, a complex and slowly encroaching natural hazard with significant and pervasive socio-economic and environmental impacts, is known to cause more deaths and displace more people than any other natural disaster.
(UNCCD)* — By 2025, 1.8 billion people will experience absolute water scarcity, and 2/3 of the world will be living under water-stressed conditions (1).
The COVID-19 pandemic has revealed and exacerbated the social protection gap between countries with high and low income levels.
GENEVA (ILO)* – Despite the unprecedented worldwide expansion of social protection during the COVID-19 crisis, more than 4 billion people around the world remain entirely unprotected, a new International Labour Organization (ILO) report says.
It finds that the pandemic response was uneven and insufficient, deepening the gap between countries with high and low income levels and failing to afford the much-needed social protection that all human beings deserve.
Exclusive: Details of secretive meeting between the PM and the oil giant among crucial climate documents the Cabinet Office refuses to release.
The Cabinet Office has refused to disclose details of a meeting between Boris Johnson and BP | Daniel Leal-Olivas/AFP/Alamy
11 November 2021 (openDemocracy)* — Details of a meeting between Boris Johnson and oil company BP are to be kept secret, the UK government has said, claiming it would “not be in the public interest” to reveal what was discussed.
The news comes as world leaders meet in Glasgow for the COP26 climate conference, where Johnson is calling for “ambitious commitments”.
GLASGOW, Nov 14 2021 (IPS)* – Developing countries will surely remember the Glasgow climate summit, the most important since 2015, as a fiasco that left them as an afterthought. | En español
Demonstrations demanding ambitious, substantive and equitable measures to address the climate crisis continued throughout the 14-day climate summit in Glasgow, which ended on the night of Saturday Nov. 13 with disappointing results for the global South. CREDIT: Emilio Godoy/IPS
That was the prevailing sentiment among delegates from the developing South during the closing ceremony on the night of Saturday Nov. 13, one day after the scheduled end of the conference. Continue reading →
— We need urgent action to phase-out fossil fuels and cut emissions fast.
Yet as nations began wrapping up the difficult talks at the UN Climate Change Conference, also known as COP26 in Glasgow, false solutions, such as net-zero offsets and carbon markets ended up on the agenda. Now climate negotiators and youth activists are debating net-zero and what it will mean for years to come.
(UNHCR)* — The trend in rising forced displacement continued into 2021 – with global numbers now exceeding 84 million – as more people fled violence, insecurity and the effects of climate change, according to the Mid-Year Trends report on 12 November 2021 released by UNHCR, the UN Refugee Agency. | Español | Français | عربي
The report, for January-June 2021, showed an increase from 82.4 million at end 2020. This resulted largely from internal displacement, with more people fleeing multiple active conflicts around the world, especially in Africa. The report also noted that COVID-19 border restrictions continued to limit access to asylum in many locations.
12 November 2021 (UN News)*— Almost two million cases of COVID-19 were reported in Europe last week, the most in a single week in that region since the pandemic started, according to the World Health Organization (WHO).
Almost 27 thousand deaths were reported in the continent last week, more than half of all COVID-19 deaths globally.
Speaking to journalists in Geneva, WHO Director-General Tedros Ghebreyesus explained that the virus is not only surging in countries with lower vaccination rates in Eastern Europe, but also in nations with some of the world’s highest vaccination rates in Western Europe.
NAIROBI, Nov 12 2021 (IPS)* – Although for different reasons, diabetes appears to be one of the few cases that put rich and poor societies at equal footing. In either case, diabetes is caused by wrong, dangerous to health nutritional habits.
In fact, people in industrialised countries tend to consume the so-called “junk food”, while in poor nations diabetes is caused by malnutrition and undernourishment.
12 November 2021 (UNEP)*— Beneath the ocean surface, an expansive network of dynamic skeletal-like invertebrates harbours at least 25 per cent of all known marine species. Both hard and soft corals provide the basis for functioning coral reefs, which are some of the planet’s most biologically diverse and valuable ecosystems.
Unsplash/Francesco Ungaro / 12 Nov 2021
They provide important cultural, economic, recreational and social benefits to hundreds of millions of people. They buffer shorelines against damage from storms and provide a source of medicine. And they are dying.
Rome (FAO)* – Global food trade has accelerated and is poised to hit an all-time record in both volume and value terms, according to a new report released on 11 November 2021 by the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO).
MADRID, Nov 11 2021 (IPS)* – Antibiotics, like other antimicrobials, have become a threat to health rather than healing it. Why? Because their misuse and overuse have created such a strong resistance that they no longer respond to medicines, making infections harder to treat and increasing the risk of disease spread, severe illness and death.
The main drivers of antimicrobial resistance include the misuse and overuse of antimicrobials; lack of access to clean water, sanitation and hygiene for both humans and animals; poor infection and disease prevention and control in health-care facilities and farms; poor access to quality, affordable medicines, vaccines and diagnostics; lack of awareness and knowledge; and lack of enforcement of legislation. Credit: Bigstock.
(UN News)* — Global casualties from anti-personnel landmines were “exceptionally high” last year, with Syrians and Afghans worst-hit, a UN-backed civil society report said on Wednesday 10 November 2021.
ICBL/Gwenn Dubourthoumieu | A 33-year old landmine survivor tries on a new prosthesis at the fitting and rehabilitation centre in Kabalaye, Chad.
According to Landmine Monitor 2021, the number of victims rose by 20 per cent in 2020 compared with the previous 12 months, the result of “increased armed conflict and contamination” of land with improvised mines.
Victims in 50+ countries
In total, more than 7,000 people were killed or injured in 54 countries and areas, while Myanmar was the only State where it was confirmed that the weapons have been used in the last 16 months – as they have been since reporting began in 1999 – the Landmine Monitor said.
HUMAN WRONGS WATCH 