'Unseen' News and Views
UNICEF campaign on Zika response © UNICEF/UNI183007/Quintos
In keeping with the ethos of the United Nations, UNICEF’s mandate was—and still is, to provide aid “without discrimination due to race, creed, nationality, status or political belief.”
It is so that the sole condition made by Maurice Pate upon his appointment as the organisation’s first Executive Director was “that it include all children” from both Allied and “ex-enemy countries.”
DAYLESFORD, Australia, 22 November 2016 – One of the more subtle manifestations of the intimate link between (unconscious) human emotions and behaviour is illustrated by the simple concept of choice and how this is so often reduced to a dichotomy between two bad options. In such circumstances, most people choose whatever they consider to be ‘the lesser evil’.
Robert J. Burrowes
But how often are there only two options, even if they appear ‘good’ and ‘bad’?
Frankly, I cannot think of one circumstance in which my choices are limited to two, however good or bad they appear to be.
Why does this belief in just two options arise?
When we are born, our evolutionary inheritance includes a phenomenally powerful capacity to feel a complex range of emotions.
21 November 2016 – TRANSCEND Media Service – The West, and Western sciences in particular, have a peculiar way of conceptualizing time; derived from two millennia Christianity.
Johan Galtung
Thus, in the civilizations of Hinduism, Buddhism, China and Japan, to mention some, time flows from eternity to eternity.
In the West (and Islam is similar), there is a Beginning (Creation for the religious, Big Bang for the secular), and an Ending, the End Time (Armageddon for the religious, entropy, death, etc. for others).
In others, time flows from past into a possibly different future; in the West, the future is continuous with the past. In the natural sciences, “laws” from the past are automatically valid for the future; reality being as stable as the planetary system, the galaxy; astronomy being the model. The Creation has been finished, once and for all.
– With climate change posing growing threats to smallholder farmers, experts working around the issues of agriculture and food security say it is more critical than ever to implement locally appropriate solutions to help them adapt to changing rainfall patterns.
The arid region of Settat, 200 kms northeast of Marrakech, Morocco. Credit: Fabiola Ortiz/IPS
Most countries consider agriculture a priority when it comes to their plans to limit the rise of global temperatures to less than 2 degrees C. In line with the Paris Climate Change Agreement, 95 percent of all countries included agriculture in their Intended Nationally Determined Contributions (INDCs).
– “No country, irrespective of its size or strength, is immune from the impacts of climate change, and no country can afford to tackle the climate challenge alone.”
A farmer transporting hay to Tera weekly market, Tera, Bajirga, Niger. Credit: FAO
With this warning, the United Nations Secretary-General, Ban Ki-moon, commented on the final conclusions reached at the United Nations Climate Change Conference (COP 22) –which was held in Marrakech, Morocco on Nov. 7-18– to move forward on the implementation of the Paris Agreement that entered into force November 4.
In the Marrakech Action Proclamation, State Parties to the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) affirmed their strong “commitment” to the “full implementation” of the Paris Agreement.
Mary Robinson, the U.N. special envoy on El Niño and Climate. Credit: Fabiola Ortiz/IPS
The first woman President of Ireland (1990-1997) and former UN High Commissioner for Human Rights (1997-2002), Robinson was appointed earlier this year by UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon to the new mandate involving climate change and El Niño.
– Desertification, land degradation, drought, climate change, food insecurity, poverty, loss of biodiversity, forced migration and conflicts, are some of the key challenges facing Africa—a giant continent home to 1,2 billion people living in 54 countries.
Tera, Bajirga, Niger – Women at work for preparing the field for the next rainy season by escaving mid-moon dams to save water. Credit: ©FAO/Giulio Napolitano
And they are huge challenges indeed, in particular affecting Africa’s vulnerable drylands. Just think that the drylands of North Africa, Sahel and Horn of Africa extend over 1.6 billion hectares home to about 500 million people, i.e. slightly less than half of the entire population of the continent.
18 November 2016 – To mark the 2016 edition of World Toilet Day, along with urging action to tackle the oft-neglected global sanitation crisis, the United Nations is also spotlighting the impact of sanitation – or lack of it – on livelihoods and work environments.
Maria and her children stand in front of the place where they go to wash themselves. Photo: UNICEF Angola/2016/Simancas
While the Day is an opportunity to raise awareness about the 2.4 billion people around the world who live without a toilet and the rates of diseases due to inadequate access to sanitation and unsafe water, this year, the theme toliets and jobs focuses on how lack of sanitation impacts peoples’ livelihoods.
The dry Sahelian semidesertic region around Tera, Niger. The proteins, vitamins, and micronutrients consumed in fish captured during the rainy seasons can make a major difference to the lives of these vulnerable rural communities, particularly if the fish can be dried and properly stored to be consumed throughout the year. Credit: FAO
“After the rains failed for a few years, some neighbours claimed our trees were drawing too much water from the ground. We cut them down. Our harvests fell. My mother closed her stall at the local market. That is when my father and I moved from the midlands to the Ruvu Mferejini river valley.”
17 November 2016 – Marking World Philosophy Day, the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) is encouraging people of the world to share their philosophical heritages and “dare to open spaces for free, open and tolerant thinking.”*
Sculpture “The Thinker” by Auguste Rodin. World Philosophy Day takes place every November. Photo: Hans Andersen
“This coincidence is deeply significant, given the link between tolerance and philosophy. Philosophy thrives on the understanding of, respect and consideration for the diversity of opinions, thoughts, and cultures that enrich the way we live in the world,” said UNESCO Director-General Irina Bokova.
HUMAN WRONGS WATCH 