A group of United Nations human rights experts on 21 October 2016 expressed serious concerns about systemic anti-Black racism in the criminal justice system in Canada.
Photo: UNODC
“There is clear evidence that racial profiling is endemic in the strategies and practices used by law enforcement,” said Ricardo Sunga, who currently heads the UN Working Group of Experts on People of African Descent, in a news release issued following its official visit to the country.
“Arbitrary use of ‘carding’ or street checks disproportionately affects people of African descent,” he added.
NEW DELHI/BONN, Oct 18 2016 (IPS) – One of the critical challenges facing the world today is that emerging migration patterns are increasingly rooted in the depletion of natural resources.
A man stands in the middle of parched paddy land in the northern Kilinochchi District, Sri Lanka. Credit: Amantha Perera/IPS
Entire populations are being disempowered and uprooted as the land that they rely on for their survival and for their future no longer provides sustenance.
In my opinion, Donald Trump would be so extremely disastrous as a US President that it is our duty to follow Noam Chomsky’s advice. He said “Hold your nose and vote for Hillary”. I think that US voters following any other course would be betraying both their own country and the world.
John Scales Avery
I completely understand why young people and progressives are disgusted with Hillary Clinton.
Her worst and most dangerous characteristic is her known involvement in U.S. wars, and her support for the present provocation of Russia, which might easily escalate into a catastrophic thermonuclear war.
In addition, one can criticize her close ties with Wall Street and the Israel Lobby, and her failure to propose cuts in the obscenely bloated Pentagon budget.
DAYLESFORD, Australia, 13 October 2016, 2016As the evidence mounts that we are fast approaching the final point-of-no-return beyond which it will be impossible to take sufficient effective action to prevent climate catastrophe – see ‘The World Passes 400 PPM Threshold. Permanently‘ – the evidence of ineffective official responses climbs too.
Even worse, we continue to be given response options that, even when they are well meaning, are naïve and inadequate whether they are suggested by individuals – see, for example, ‘Committing Geocide: Climate Change and Corporate Capture‘ – or major environment organizations such as Greenpeace, 350.org and Friends of the Earth.
Moreover, given the myriad indications of progressive environmental breakdown in domains unrelated to the climate catastrophe, one must be terrified and delusional to suggest or even believe that anything less than a comprehensive strategy, which goes well beyond anything governments and corporations will ever endorse, gives us any chance of averting the sixth mass extinction event in planetary history. A mass extinction that will include us.
ROME, Oct 13 2016 (IPS) – Now that world attention is focused on the fast growing process of urbanisation, with 2 in 3 people estimated to be living in towns and cities by the year 2030, an old “equation” jumps rapidly to mind: each time a small farmer migrates to an urban area, equals to one food producer less, and one food consumer more.
Such an equation especially impacts on developing countries, where small farmers produce between 60 and 80 per cent of all food.
It also affects the living conditions in urban centres, with negative repercussions on the policies aimed at achieving the sustainability of world’s cities, which is scheduled to be top on the agenda of HABITAT III conference in Quito, Ecuador on October 17-20.
In Malawi, where half of girls are married before age 18, UN Women played a key role in lobbying for a new law that raises the legal age to wed, while raising awareness and working with traditional leaders to annul marriages.
There are 1.1 billion girls today, a powerful constituency for shaping a sustainable world that’s better for everyone. They are brimming with talent and creativity. But their dreams and potential are often thwarted by discrimination, violence and lack of equal opportunities. There are glaring gaps in data and knowledge about the specific needs and challenges that girls face.
Photo: UN Women Programme ‘Women in Politics’/Dorin Goian
“My girl is not for sale”: Escaping child marriage in Moldova
A Roma family challenges cultural norms by refusing a reparatory marriage. In their community, school drop-out rate is a stagerring record 58 per cent, mainly driven by child/early marriages, unplanned pregnancies and childcare responsibilities.
Ahead of the International Day of the Girl Child on 11 October, the United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF) released a report warning that the worldwide disparity between unpaid household chores assumed by girls aged five through 14 as compared to their male counterparts, amounts to 40 per cent more time – or 160 million more hours a day.
A young girl carries her sibling on her back and firewood on the head. Girls always bear the burden of doing most of the house chores. Photo: UNICEF/Stephen Wandera
Drawing attention to the melting of the Arctic ice cap, United Nations Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon on 8 October 2016 underlined the urgency of implementing the Paris Agreement on climate change and the need to help developing countries in their efforts to combat climate change.
Rabi Island, Fiji. Rising sea levels and more extreme weather events pose an imminent threat to low-lying atoll islands across the Pacific. Photo: OCHA/Danielle Parry
“The Arctic supports key pillars of the climate system regionally and globally. The fate of the Arctic is tied to the fate of Miami, Mumbai, Shanghai and coastal cities across the world — and so much else of course,” said Ban in an address to the Arctic Circle Assembly in Iceland’s capital, Reykjavik.
HUMAN WRONGS WATCH 