MADRID, May 18 2022 (IPS)* – While the attention of mostly Western media and politicians is quasi exclusively hoarded up by the proxy war in Ukraine and its consequences on the energy sector, the world’s big oil business continues to burn Planet Earth with its underreported though highly polluting, wasteful practice of gas flaring.
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Global gas flaring increased to 144 billion cubic metres (bcm) in 2021 from 142 bcm in 2020. It is estimated that each cubic metre of associated gas flared results in about 2.8 kilograms of CO2-equivalent emissions. Credit: public domain
This is anything but a minor issue: in fact, as much as 144 billion cubic metres of gas was flared at upstream oil and gas facilities in just one year-2021. Such an amount caused the emission of 400 tons of carbon dioxide (CO2) equivalent, according to the World Bank.
A world renowned journalist Shireen AbuAqleh was intentionally murdered by an Israeli sniper in Jenin. Millions of tears were shed for her including ours at the Palestine Institute for Biodiversity and Sustainability (palestinenature.org). We planted ten trees in her honor. The constellation of events and circumstances and her background actually were so amazing that it provided a huge dose of sadness but also a big ray of hope for us.
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Jenin, where she was murdered, is a center of heroic resistance to occupation (resistance not supported by any government, international or even Palestinian).
She was a journalist and wearing protective blue journalist vest and helmet. Thus she mobilized the media. She was beloved by every Palestinian home for her coverage of their daily miseries inflected by foreign occupiers for decades.
Children working on tobacco farms in Chipangali District in Eastern Province of Zambia. Credit: Brenda Chitindi
“Most major tobacco producing countries use child labour in tobacco growing. Almost no cigarette can be guaranteed to be free from child labour.” – British Medical Journal, 2015.
HONG KONG / LOME, May 17 2022 (IPS)* – Despite World Day Against Child Labour launched in 2002 by the International Labour Organization (ILO), little has changed over the past two decades for the millions of children who remain trapped. Continue reading →
(UN News)* — Severe malnutrition, also known as severe wasting, is one of the top threats to child survival, yet perhaps one of the least known or understood, according to a report issued on Tuesday [17 May 2022] by the UN Children’s Fund (UNICEF).
(UN News)* — The news that more than 100,000 people in Mexico are now officially registered as “disappeared” is a tragedy, UN rights chief Michelle Bachelet said on Tuesday [17 May 2022], in a call for action to tackle the country’s longstanding problem.
A national database has listed all those who’ve been reported missing in the country since 1964, and the tally continues to climb, amid ongoing drug gang violence and a lack of effective investigations.
To date, only 35 of the disappearances recorded since then have led to the conviction of the perpetrators, a “staggering rate of impunity”, said the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights.
(UN News)* — Syrian families living in refugee camps in Iraq are facing new and alarming levels of food insecurity, according to figures released by the World Food Programme (WFP) and UN refugee agency, UNHCR, on Tuesday [17 May 2022].
UNICEF/Khuzaie | A three-year-old boy sits on a box of winter clothing that his family has received from a distribution at Kawergosk Syrian Refugee Camp in Erbil Governorate in the Kurdistan region of Iraq.
Money is running out to help families with basic day to day items, while amidst harsh economic conditions, refugees from the decade long conflict across Syria are often “drowning” in debt, they have no way or repaying, according to a news release from the UN agencies.
Iraq hosts nearly 260,000 Syrian refugees, the vast majority of whom are based in the Kurdistan Region.
SYDNEY and KUALA LUMPUR, May 17 2022 (IPS)* – Central bank policies have often worsened economic crises instead of resolving them. By raising interest rates in response to inflation, they often exacerbate, rather than mitigate business cycles and inflation.
Hence, decisionmakers must consider more appropriate policy tools. Rejecting ‘one size fits all’ formulas, including simply raising interest rates, anti-inflationary measures should be designed as appropriate. Instead of squelching demand by raising interest rates, supply could be enhanced.
Thus, Milton Friedman – whom many central bankers still worship – blamed the 1930s’ Great Depression on the US Fed. Instead of providing liquidity support to businesses struggling with short-term cash-flow problems, it squeezed credit, crushing economic activity.
The strong call for urgent action at the conference taking place in Durban, aims to combat an uptick in the numbers of children being forced into work. Latest figures indicate that 160 million children – almost one in ten worldwide – are still being affected.
Furthermore, numbers are on the rise, with the pandemic threating to reverse years of progress, as child labour becomes a bigger scourge in particular among the vulnerable five to 11-year-old age group.
“I have been talking to leaders of rich countries to address the problem of post-pandemic economic meltdown. We have to work for social protection for marginalised people in low-income countries and focus on children, education, health, and protection.That is not a big investment compared to what we are going to lose – a whole generation.” – Nobel Laureate Kailash Satyarthi
Nobel Laureate Kailash Satyarthi addresses the 5th Global Conference on the Elimination of Child Labour. Despite setbacks, he is optimistic that child labour can be abolished. Credit: Cecilia Russell/IPS
Durban, May 16 2022 (IPS)* – A mere 35 billion US dollars per annum – equivalent to 10 days of military spending – would ensure all children in all countries benefit from social protection, Nobel Laureate Kailash Satyarthi told the 5th Global Conference on the Elimination of Child Labour. Continue reading →
While elite control over human societies started to gather pace with the Neolithic revolution 12,000 years ago, it was rapidly accelerated with the dawn of human civilization 7,000 years later.
Robert J. Burrowes
Since that time, ‘ordinary’ human beings like you and me have fought an unending sequence of battles to defend ourselves against these ongoing efforts by elites to kill or control us and capture the bulk of Earth’s resources for their own use.
We have had to fight off elites in a vast range of contexts: Pharaohs and Emperors politically, the Popes and other Vatican officials religiously, the City of London Corporation and other financial elites economically, monarchs and political elites nationally, and now a Global Elite that exercises enormous control technologically, economically, politically, militarily and otherwise over the entire world. For a fuller explanation of this point, see ‘Why Activists Fail’.
CARACAS, May 12 2022 (IPS)* – The voracious search for gold in southern Venezuela, practiced by thousands of illegal miners under the protection of various armed groups, represents the greatest threat today to the lives of indigenous peoples, their habitat and their cultures, according to their organizations and human rights defenders. | En español
(UN News)* — Investigations must be held into the actions of the Israeli security forces, UN High Commissioner for Human Rights Michelle Bachelet said on Saturday [14 May 2022], calling for accountability and an end to impunity.
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Maisa Abu Ghazaleh | The funeral of Shirin Abu Akleh in Jerusalem
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Her appeal comes in the wake of the killing of Al Jazeera correspondent Shireen Abu Akleh, who was fatally shot on Wednesday while covering an Israeli raid in Jenin, West Bank.
The veteran Palestinian-American journalist was buried in East Jerusalem on Friday and huge crowds turned out for her funeral.
The High Commissioner issued a statement saying she was following “with deep distress” the events in the occupied West Bank, including East Jerusalem.
MADRID, May 13 2022 (IPS)* – Please do not say you were not aware that the world produces enough food to feed all human beings on Earth, while nearly double the combined European Union’s population go to bed hungry… every single night.
Every year, 570 million tons of food are wasted at the household level people. Global food waste accounts for 8–10% of greenhouse gas emissions. Credit: Claudia Ciobanu/IPS
South Africa and other countries that have abstained from voting against Russia at the United Nations General Assembly in response to the war in Ukraine face intense international criticism. In South Africa, the domestic criticism has been extraordinarily shrill, and often clearly racialized.
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It is frequently assumed that abstention means that South Africa is in support of the Russian invasion, and this is either due to corrupt relations between Russian and South African elites, or nostalgia for support given to the anti-apartheid struggle by the Soviet Union, or both. Continue reading →
Nairobi, May 13 2022 (IPS)* – Children washing clothes in rivers, begging on the streets, hawking, walking for kilometres in search of water and firewood, their tiny hands competing with older, experienced hands to pick coffee or tea, or as child soldiers are familiar sights in Africa and Asia.
A child beneficiary holding a drawing portraying domestic violence, at the Centre for Youth Empowerment and Civic Education, Lilongwe, Malawi which partnered with the ILO/IPEC to support the national action plan aimed at combating child labour. Credit: Marcel Crozet/ILO
(UN NEWS)* — Humanity is “at a crossroads” when it comes to managing drought and accelerating ways of slowing it down must happen “urgently, using every tool we can”, said the head of the UN Convention to Combat Desertification (UNCCD) on Thursday [12 May 2022], calling for a global commitment to support drought preparedness and resilience.
Through its newly published Drought in Numbers report, released in Abidjan, Côte d’Ivoire, during the 15th Conference of Parties (COP15), UNCCD’s compendium of drought-related information and data is helping inform negotiations for the final outcomes of the conference when it closes on 20 May.
(UN News)* — The top UN official in the Middle East has urged Israel to halt all settlement activity following the latest approval given to new construction in the Occupied Palestinian Territory, announced on Thursday [12 May 2022].
UN News | The Palestinian Flag in the West Bank city of Ramallah.
“I condemn today’s decision by Israeli authorities to advance plans for over 4,000 housing units in settlements in the occupied West Bank,” Tor Wennesland, UN Special Coordinator for the Middle East Peace Process, said in a statement.
Israel’s Higher Planning Council, which approved the move, also retroactively legalized two outposts: Mitzpeh Dani and Givat Oz VeGaon, according to media reports.
Pope Francis has suggested to Italian daily Corriere Della Sera that the “barking of NATO at the door of Russia” provoked the military operation in Ukraine and alluded that countries should not supply Ukraine with more arms. Specifically, the Pope said that Russia has “an anger that I don’t know whether it was provoked but was perhaps facilitated” by NATO’s unrelenting expansion towards the Eurasian Giant.
– This year didn’t start well. In January, off the coast of Thailand, thousands of litres of oil leaked into the sea from an underwater pipeline courtesy of Chevron’s subsidiary. The resulting spill blackened waters and beaches, killing local wildlife and threatening the livelihoods of communities reliant on the sea.
MADRID, May 11 2022 (IPS)* – It is as simple –and as horrifying– as that: both human health and the health of Planet Earth depend on plants. However, plants that make up 80% of the food and 98% of the oxygen, are under growing dangerous threats.
Protecting plant health can help end hunger, reduce poverty, protect biodiversity and the environment, and boost economic development. Credit: Saleem Shaikh/IPS
As dangerous as the fact that up to 40% of food crops are lost due to plant pests and diseases every single year, according to the world top food and agriculture organisation.
Millions of people worldwide are aware that their lives, and their children’s lives, are being threatened by lockdowns, vaccine mandates and loss of free speech.
And there is a growing awareness that these immediate and obvious threats are merely parts of a complex overall plan to implement a technocratic system of world governance that can be described as a neo-feudal system that seeks to increase and consolidate the power and wealth of the world’s billionaire individuals and families by destroying any possibility of autonomous individual behaviour.
The intention of these psychopathic elitists is that we ‘the people’ become literal extensions of their will, through technological invasion of all aspects of our lives which will lead to the total loss of our capacity to feel, think and act for ourselves. Continue reading →
Accra, May 10 2022 (IPS)* – “It feels like yesterday when I was deceived by one man who claimed to be a travelling agent. He promised me a work opportunity and a good salary,” says 25-year-old Cissy, as she prefers to be called. “As a young lady coming from an average family who really needed help, I fell for his lies.”
Caught in a web of deceit, a human trafficking survivor from Ghana tells her story. Credit: Getty Images
Cissy says although she was a bit sceptical about the offer and afraid of her destination country, the so-called travel agent convinced her that she had nothing to worry about. Continue reading →
We have a serious debt problem, but solutions such as the World Economic Forum’s “Great Reset” are not the future we want. It’s time to think outside the box for some new solutions.
Ellen Brown
In ancient Mesopotamia, it was called a Jubilee. When debts at interest grew too high to be repaid, the slate was wiped clean. Debts were forgiven, the debtors’ prisons were opened, and the serfs returned to work their plots of land.
This could be done because the king was the representative of the gods who were said to own the land, and thus was the creditor to whom the debts were owed. The same policy was advocated in the Book of Leviticus, though it is unclear to what extent this biblical Jubilee was implemented.
That sort of across-the-board debt forgiveness can’t be done today because most of the creditors are private lenders. Banks, landlords and pension fund investors would go bankrupt if their contractual rights to repayment were simply wiped out. But we do have a serious debt problem, and it is largely structural.
Governments have delegated the power to create money to private banks, which create most of the circulating money supply as debt at interest.
WASHINGTON DC, May 11 2022 (IPS)* – Sri Lanka is in the throes of an unprecedented economic crisis. Faced with a shortage of foreign exchange and defaulting on its foreign debt repayment, the country is unable to pay for its food, fuel, medicine, and other basic necessities.
World Bank, Washington DC. | The multilateral Asian Development Bank and the World Bank owns 13% and 9% of Sri Lanka’s foreign debt, respectively.
(UN News)* — Alcohol is increasingly being marketed across borders, with young people and heavy drinkers particularly targeted, the World Health Organization (WHO) said in a new report on Tuesday [10 May 2022] that calls for more effective regulation.
The study outlines how the digital revolution in marketing and promotion is being used to advertise alcohol across national borders, and in many cases regardless of social, economic, or cultural environments.
Senator Bernie Sanders (Independent, Vermont) describes himself as a democratic socialist. When asked to explain in more detail what he means by this, he says that he believes that the United States would benefit from having a social system more like those found in the Scandinavian countries.
The Danish Political and Social System
John Scales Avery
I have lived and worked in Denmark for the last half century, teaching at the University of Copenhagen until my retirement, and I am married to a Danish wife.
This gives me some knowledge of the way that the social system works in Denmark, and I will try to describe it for you.
Denmark has a market economy, with private corporations, but it also has cooperatives, owned by the users. The main thing that distinguishes Denmark from a country like the United States is the very high and steeply progressive rate of taxation. Because rich people are taxed so extremely heavily, it is difficult for anyone to become very rich.
10 May 2022 (FAO)* — They are in the lotion that keeps our skin smooth or the herbal tea we sip on Sunday afternoons. They are waiting to be drizzled on salads or tucked into the daily food supplements we take. Wild plants are scattered throughout our everyday existence offering us with food, oxygen and medicine.
(UN News)* — The 15th session of the Conference of Parties (COP15) to the United Nations Convention to Combat Desertification (UNCCD), kicked-off on Monday [9 May 2022], in the Ivorian “economic” capital.
UNDP Lao PDR/Tock Soulasen Phomm | Often, vulnerable communities are situated in areas of poor or marginal soils, which increases the pressure for expansion of agricultural lands.
Against the backdrop of a UNCCD warning that up to 40 per cent of all ice-free land has already degraded, threatening dire consequences for climate, biodiversity, and livelihoods, world leaders are meeting in Abidjan under the theme of “Land, Life. Legacy: From scarcity to prosperity”.
“We are faced with a crucial choice,” Deputy Secretary-General Amina Mohammed told the participants.
Geneva, 9 May 2022 (WMO)* – There is a 50:50 chance of the annual average global temperature temporarily reaching 1.5 °C above the pre-industrial level for at least one of the next five years – and the likelihood is increasing with time, according to a new climate update issued by the World Meteorological Organization (WMO).
People require humanitarian assistance, livelihood support, jobs, and long-term investment to help solve the crisis.
WFP/Arete/Andrew Quilty
KABUL, (WFP)* – 19.7 million people, almost half of Afghanistan’s population, are facing acute hunger according to the latest Integrated Food Security Phase Classification (IPC) analysis conducted in January and February 2022 by Food Security and Agriculture Cluster partners, including the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO), the United Nations World Food Programme (WFP) and many NGOs.
With few ways to earn income on the border, many young men turn to the dangerous but well-paid work of people smuggling.
Graffiti on the US-Mexico border wall | Mike Hardiman/Alamy Stock Photo. All rights reserved
Advisory: this story contains depictions of violence.
5 May 2022 (openDemocracy)* — I have worked doing a lot of things. I’ve installed internet cables and electricity. Done construction work and sold clothing downtown. One time I even helped tear down a hill with one of those huge machines that you use to make holes.
CAIRO, (WFP)* – The war in Ukraine has dealt a fresh hammer blow to Syria’s ability to feed itself just as the country struggles to deal with levels of hunger that are up by half since 2019, the United Nations World Food Programme (WFP) said today on the eve of the annual donor pledging conference held in Brussels.
With years of conflict, a severe economic downturn, and food prices rising relentlessly since 2020, the Ukraine crisis is exacerbating what was already an alarming food security scenario in Syria.
In March, food prices increased by 24 percent in just one month, following an 800 percent increase in the last two years. This has brought food prices to their highest level since 2013.
“Saying that the situation in Syria is alarming is a huge understatement. The heart-breaking reality for millions of Syrian families is that they don’t know where their next meal is coming from,” said WFP Executive Director David Beasley.
(IWGIA – International Work Group for Indigenous Affairs)* — Organized crime pressures communities to grow poppy and marijuana. The strategy of “combating drug trafficking” militarizes territories and dispossesses Indigenous peoples of their natural resources.
MADRID, May 6 2022 (IPS)* – The world’s leading health and children specialised organisations have once again sounded the alarm bell about what they classify as “shocking, insidious, exploitative, aggressive, misleading and pervasive” marketing tricks used by the baby formula milk business with the sole aim of increasing, even more, their already high profits.
The global formula milk industry, valued at some 55 billion US dollars, is targeting new mothers with personalised social media content that is often not recognisable as advertising. Photo by Lucy Wolski on Unsplash
Rome(FAO)* – The number of people facing acute food insecurity and requiring urgent life-saving food assistance and livelihood support continues to grow at an alarming rate.
This makes it more urgent than ever to tackle the root causes of food crises rather than just responding after they occur.
The UN will be commemorating World Press Freedom Day on May 3. The following article is part of a series of IPS features and opinion pieces focused on media freedom globally.
Credit: United Nations
LONDON, Apr 28 2022 (IPS)* – Women journalists around the world are experiencing an exponential increase in misogynistic online abuse, which poses a grave risk to women’s media participation in the digital age.
This is a grievous form of censorship that seeks to silence women, stifle free expression, and close down critical journalism by undermining their ability to engage freely in public debate, report on issues, and address discrimination.
(New York) – Indian authorities are increasingly targeting journalists and online critics for their criticism of government policies and practices, including by prosecuting them under counterterrorism and sedition laws, ten human rights organizations said on 3 May 2022 on World Press Freedom Day.
(Stockholm) Total global military expenditure increased by 0.7 per cent in real terms in 2021, to reach $2113 billion. The five largest spenders in 2021 were the United States, China, India, the United Kingdom and Russia, together accounting for 62 per cent of expenditure, according to new data on global military spending published on 25 April 2022 by the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI).
(UN News)* — Journalists and media workers are facing “increasing politicization” of their work and threats to their freedom to simply do their jobs, that are “growing by the day”, said the UN chief, marking World Press Freedom Day on Tuesday [3 May 2022].
Unsplash/Jovaughn Stephens | A video journalist covers a news event.
The day shines a spotlight on the essential work they do, bringing those in power to account, with transparency, “often at great person risk”, said Secretary-General António Guterres, in a video message.
(UN News)* — With extreme heat gripping large parts of India and Pakistan, the two countries are working to roll out life-saving health action plans to combat the heatwave, the World Meteorological Organization (WMO) said on Friday [29 April 2022].
The extreme heat is impacting hundreds of millions of people in one of the most densely populated parts of the world, threatening to damage whole ecosystems.
(UN News)* — More than 3,000 people died or went missing while attempting to cross the Mediterranean and the Atlantic last year, hoping to reach Europe, the UN refugee agency, UNHCR, said on Friday [29 April 2022], appealing for $163.5 million to assist and protect thousands of refugees and asylum seekers.
Of the 2021 total, 1,924 people were reported to have died or gone missing on the Central and Western Mediterranean routes, while an additional 1,153 perished or went missing on the Northwest African maritime route to the Canary Islands, according to UNHCR’s newly published report: Protection, saving lives, & solutions for refugees in dangerous Journeys.
(UN News)* — The UN’s Humanitarian Country Team in Yemen on Saturday [30 April 2022] released its Response Plan (HRP) for this year, seeking nearly $4.3 billion to reverse a steady deterioration across the country, the grinding war there continues, despite a current pause in fighting.
The plan targets 17.3 million out of the staggering 23.4 million people in need of lifesaving humanitarian assistance and protection services across the war-ravaged Arab nation, as the first nationwide truce in six years, coinciding with the Muslim holy month of Ramadan, continues to broadly hold.
The UN-led truce between the Saudi-led coalition forces supporting the internationally recognized Government, and Houthi rebels (formally known as Ansar Allah) who hold much of the country including the capital, Sa’ana, began on 2 April, and is due to continue through May.
MADRID, Apr 29 2022 (IPS)* – Every now and then, experts remind that the Indigenous Peoples are the best (and last?) custodians of the essential web of life: biodiversity.
Brazilian Indigenous people during one of their regular protests in Rio de Janeiro demanding the demarcation of their lands and to be taken into account in environmental and climate measures. Credit: Mario Osava / IPS
There are more than 370 million self-identified peoples in some 70 countries around the world. In Latin America alone there are over 400 groups, each with a distinct language and culture, though the biggest concentration is in Asia and the Pacific– with an estimated 70 per cent.
And their traditional lands guard over 80% of the planet’s biodiversity. Continue reading →
MADRID, Apr 27 2022 (IPS)* – In case you were not aware, please know that humanity used to cultivate more than 6.000 plant species for food, but now instead fewer than 200 of these species make major contributions to food production. Out of these, only 9% account for 66% of total crop production.
If forest loss continues at the current rate, it will be impossible to keep warming below two degrees Celsius as pledged in the Paris Agreement. Credit: José Garth Medina/IPS
Also that 33% of the world’s fish stocks are overfished.
And that 26% of the nearly 8.000 local breeds of livestock that are still in existence are now at risk of extinction.
(UN News)* — Eleven mainly European countries have now reported salmonella food poisoning, linked to popular “Kinder” chocolate products produced in Belgium, the UN World Health Organization (WHO) said on Wednesday [27 April 2022].
Unsplash/Tetiana Bykovets | An outbreak of salmonella has been linked to chocolate produced in Belgium.
.The World Health Organization said on Wednesday that there have been more than 150 suspected cases of salmonellosis – from Belgium to the US – after United Kingdom regulators flagged a cluster of Salmonella (S.) Typhimurium cases a month ago, leading to a global recall..Children under 10 have been most affected – comprising some 89 per cent of cases – and available data indicates that nine patients were hospitalised. There have been no fatalities.“The risk of spread in the WHO European region and globally is assessed as moderate until information is available on the full recall of the products,” the UN agency said in a statement.
Refugees and asylum seekers are often used as a political football. I want Westerners to hear their voices directly.
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The UK has announced proposals to resettle asylum seekers in Rwanda | Daniel Chesterton/ PHC Images/ Alamy
21 April 2022 (openDemocracy)* — There are reports of mass graves. There is clear evidence of crimes against humanity. Yet since 2017, more than 90,000 men, women and children have been forced back to Libya – a country run by militias, without a functioning government.
Geneva, 26 April 2022 (UNEP)* – 50 billion tons: enough to build a wall 27 metres wide and 27 metres high around planet Earth. This is the volume of sand and gravel used each year, making it the second most used resource worldwide after water.
Given our dependency on it, sand must be recognised as a strategic resource and its extraction and use needs to be rethought, finds a new report by the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP).
BEIRUT, Lebanon, Apr 27 2022 (IPS)* – Lebanon is perpetually at a crossroads, one where local, regional, and international interests seem to play against each other—all the more so today with the war in Ukraine.
In Lebanon, the impact of the Beirut port blasts, a rapidly weakening local currency and the effects of COVID-19 have sent more people into poverty. Nine out of 10 Syrian refugee families in Lebanon are now living in extreme poverty. Credit: World Food Programme (WFP)
Now, tiny Lebanon, all too familiar with the ripple effects of global conflicts, has been almost completely cut off from its staple food— wheat — which was almost entirely supplied by Russia and Ukraine before the conflict. Continue reading →
(UN News)* — Although the war in Syria may not be making headlines lately, the international community must remain focused on achieving a comprehensive political solution to the conflict, UN Envoy for the country, Geir Pedersen, said on Tuesday [26 April 2022] in his latest briefing to the Security Council in New York.
Recalling that Syria is “a hot conflict, not a frozen one”, he listed some of the threats resulting from the war, including an uptick in airstrikes, intensified clashes in the northeast, “regular incidents between or involving international actors”, as well as terrorism.
“My message today is simple: focus on Syria”, said Mr. Pedersen, speaking from Geneva.
HUMAN WRONGS WATCH 