HUMAN WRONGS WATCH

Human Wrongs Watch

If added together, there would be a nation of nearly 700 million people—the third most populated one on Earth after China and India. Its population is made of over 210 million jobless, 215 million children obliged to work; 21 million victims of forced labor, and 228 million working poor youth living on less than the equivalent of US$ 2 per day.

*An unemployed youth. Photo: ILO

These are the key figures that appear in recent reports elaborated by the International Labor Organization (ILO), which also alerts that up to 40 per cent of the jobless worldwide are young people.

There will be nearly 75 million unemployed youth aged 15 to 24 in 2012, an increase of nearly 4 million since 2007. The youth unemployment crisis can be beaten but only if job creation for young people becomes a key priority in policy-making, ILO informs.

“The world is facing a worsening youth employment crisis: young people are three times more likely to be unemployed than adults and over 75 million youth worldwide are looking for work.”

Human Wrongs Watch

Johannesburg, (IRIN*) – Only 13 diseases or infections transmitted from animals to humans like tuberculosis (TB) and Rift Valley fever, are responsible for around 2.4 billion cases of human illness and 2.2 million deaths per year, mostly in low- and middle-income countries.

**Photo: Zofeen Ebrahim/IRIN. Poultry is often kept and sold in unhygienic conditions in south Asian countries like India

In the least developed countries, 20 percent of human sickness and death was due to zoonoses – diseases that had recently jumped species from animals to people – according to a new study by the International Livestock Research Institute (ILRI), based in Nairobi, Kenya, the Institute of Zoology in Britain, and the Hanoi School of Public Health in Vietnam.

The World Health Organization (WHO) has noted that at least 61 percent of all human diseases, and 75 percent of emerging infectious diseases, are zoonotic or caused by a bacterium, virus, fungus or other communicable disease agent picked up from an animal source.

While zoonoses can be transmitted to people by either wild or domesticated animals, and at times domestic animals also crossbreed with those in the wild, most human infections are acquired from the world’s 24 billion livestock, including pigs, poultry, cattle, goats, sheep and camels.

The new study mapped poverty, livestock-keeping, hunger and zoonoses, and found a strong link between them.