27/09/2014
The Office of the UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) has registered over 950,000 Syrian refugees in Lebanon – now constituting 25 per cent of the total population.
Lina has not heard from her husband since he was detained in Syria two years ago. Now a refugee in Lebanon, she lives in a tented settlement with her seven children. Photo: UNHCR/A.McConnell
One year after its inaugural meeting, the International Support Group for Lebanon continues to channel the global community’s concern for the stability of the Middle Eastern country, particularly as crises continue to engulf the region, Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon on 26 September 2014 said.*
Last September, Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon launched the Support Group to help the country tackle its multiple challenges, including hosting such a large number of refugees.
“Lebanon hosts the highest ratio per capita of refugees in the world,” Ban stated, adding that even though mechanisms have been put into place to ensure the efficient provision of assistance, the country received “far less assistance than it needs.”
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27/09/2014
Rome/New York — Global peace and sustainable development cannot be achieved without ending hunger, FAO Director-General José Graziano da Silva on 25 September 2014, told participants at a high-level UN meeting in New York.
Food being prepared on plates for lunch in Nhan My, Viet Nam | Photo from FAO
“Food security might not always be our first concern, but it should be,” said the FAO chief highlighting the link between hunger and conflicts.*
He was speaking at “Delivering Zero Hunger – Demonstrating Impact” a UN General Assembly side event, co-hosted by the governments of the Netherlands, Ireland and Mexico, FAO, the International Fund for Agricultural Development (IFAD), and the UN World Food Programme (WFP).
“While world hunger figures have declined, there are still 805 million people who are chronically undernourished,” Graziano da Silva said, citing figures from the recently released UN State of Food Insecurity in the World (SOFI 2014) report.
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27/09/2014
While the damage caused by past nuclear testing cannot be reversed, the international community can work toward a better future where nuclear testing and proliferation are banned outright, Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon on 26 September 2014 said.
An atmospheric nuclear test conducted by the United States at Enewetak Atoll, Marshall Islands, on 1 November 1952. Photo: US Government | Re-posted from UN News Centre.
In remarks delivered to the Seventh Ministerial Meeting of the Comprehensive Nuclear-Test-Ban Treaty (CTBT), Ban pressed all those countries that have yet to ratify the treaty to do so as it would protect the world from the harmful effects of fallout and the possibility of nuclear warfare.
“This treaty bans all nuclear tests, constrains the development and proliferation of nuclear weapons, and contributes to progress on nuclear disarmament,” Ban told the delegates, adding that it would also help protect the environment against the “harmful radioactive by-products of nuclear tests.”
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26/09/2014
The full economic, environmental and social costs of food waste amount to approximately 2.6 trillion US dollars annually, according to UN Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO).
Each year, 30 percent of global food production is lost after harvest or wasted in shops, households and catering services. This represents 750 billion USD in terms of producer or farm gate prices, going up to almost a trillion US dollars of trade value of food every year – half the GDP of Italy! *
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26/09/2014
The future of global food security hinges on the better management and sustainable development of the planet’s oceans and fisheries, a top United Nations official on 25 September 2014 stressed, adding that the world could not wait any longer to act on saving Earth’s marine environments.
Healthy oceans have a central role to play in solving one of the biggest problems of the 21st century – how to feed 9 billion people by 2050. Photo: FAO
Speaking at an event on the side-lines of the General Assembly in New York, Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) Director-General José Graziano da Silva urged faster action in implementing sustainable practices to protect the world’s “blue economy.”*
“We have the know-how, we have the opportunity,” emphasized Graziano da Silva. “Now is the time to act.”
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26/09/2014
Less than two years after its adoption by the United Nations General Assembly, the Arms Trade Treaty has now received the 50 ratifications needed to trigger its entry into force, the world body announced on 25 September 2014.
UN Photo/Paulo Filgueiras
The threshold of 50 ratifications was reached earlier today at a joint ceremony held as part of the 2014 Treaty Event – an annual undertaking on the margins of the Assembly’s high-level debate that seeks to promote wider participation in the multilateral treaty framework.
Eight States – Argentina, Bahamas, Bosnia and Herzegovina, the Czech Republic, Portugal, Saint Lucia, Senegal and Uruguay – deposited their instruments of ratification today, while Georgia and Namibia signed the Treaty.
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25/09/2014
Coal, like oil, represents the organic remains of ancient photosynthesis. Oil is primarily the residue of marine algae trapped in ocean sediment, whereas coal originated from land plants buried under soil. During photosynthesis, plants reduce atmospheric carbon-dioxide (CO2) to produce glucose, the basis of all complex organic molecules in plants and animals.
In most cases, when organisms die, bacteria oxidize the carbon molecules back to CO2. In exceptional cases, in low-oxygen environments, the molecules remain preserved as hydrocarbons with the solar energy locked inside. When we burn coal, oil, or gas, we release ancient solar energy. We get warm, cook food, make steel, and race automobiles, with ancient sunlight.
However, when we burn coal and oil, we also release the carbon back into the atmosphere. And there, as we now know, lies the rub.
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25/09/2014
As evidence of the increase in greenhouse gasses mounts, children – the most vulnerable and largest population affected by climate change – continue to be ignored in high level climate negotiations. In response, top climate change thinkers have joined forces to analyze a range of dilemmas and challenges for children thrown up by the unabated warming of the world.*
@UNICEF – Cover for home page.
The Challenges of Climate Change: Children on the front line, a new publication produced by the UNICEF Office of Research – Innocenti, seeks to broaden and deepen understanding of child rights dimensions in the climate change discourse.
“As the effects of climate change become more visible and extreme, they are likely to affect adversely the lives of children and adolescents all over the world,” said Anthony Lake, Executive Director of UNICEF in the report’s Foreword. “Over 99 per cent of deaths already attributable to climate-related changes occur in developing countries – and children make up over 80 per cent of those deaths.”
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25/09/2014
Human Wrongs Watch
By Pepe Escobar*, 23 September 2014, Russia Today — US Secretary of State Kerry brokered a deal in Afghanistan, installing a ‘coalition’ government, but couldn’t come up with a credible coalition to bomb IS in Syria. So the Pentagon will do it alone to the applause of its Gulf ‘petrodollar allies.’
**Photo © taken by and copyright by Jeff Dean – during a trip on the en:Lake Express high-speed ferry from Michigan to Milwaukee | Source: Originally from en.wikipedia; description page is/was here. | Author: Original uploader was Jeff dean at en.wikipedia
This is a short tale of two coalitions.
Let’s start with Afghanistan. The charade in Kabul goes by the name of “power-sharing agreement.”
You got an election problem? Call John Kerry. That’s right; this “agreement” was brokered by none other than the US Secretary of State, who shoved the embarrassing issue of a tainted democratic election under an Afghan carpet.
It came to the point that a UN representative, Jan Kubish, virtually ordered the Afghan electoral commission not to release vote numbers.
And this is while the UN itself had been monitoring an audit and a recount of approximately 8 million votes.
The predictable “senior US officials” spun that the vote result was “transparent.” But still, no numbers.
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24/09/2014
To mark the first International Day for the Total Elimination of Nuclear Weapons, ICAN will organise Nuclear Abolition Day on 26 September 2014. The day was established by the United Nations General Assembly last year to enhance ‘public awareness and education about the threat posed to humanity by nuclear weapons and the necessity for their total elimination’, and takes place only two months before the Vienna Conference on the Humanitarian Impact of Nuclear Weapons.*
Photo from ICAN
“This UN day is an important initiative, and the International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons (ICAN) will join forces with the UN, civil society, and governments to highlight the humanitarian impact of nuclear weapons and the need for a ban treaty by organizing a global day of action.”
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HUMAN WRONGS WATCH 