The United Nations World Health Organization (WHO) on 9 March 2018 launched new guidelines on the role that tobacco product regulations can play in saving lives by reducing the demand for tobacco and tobacco products – estimated to kill over seven million people annually.
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World Bank/Aisha Faquir | A sign posted at a health facility in rural Nepal announces no smoking. | Source: UN News Centre.
The new guide together with an accompanying publication will help governments “do much more” to implement regulations and address the exploitation of tobacco product regulations, highlighted the UN health agency.
9 March 2018 — Three Nigerian women will spotlight themes such as human trafficking, suicide bombing, and sexism and sexual harassment at the United Nations, showing the strength of women as agents of change in African societies often dominated by men.
OCHA / Yasmina Guerda | Teenage girls at a displacement camp in Gwoca LGA, Borno State, Nigeria.
“We have to see ourselves as part of the solution, not just as women reserved for sex or for the kitchen,” author and Queen Blessing Itua told UN News ahead of a special event planned for this Sunday 11 March 2018 in the UN General Assembly Hall.
9 March 2018 — A senior United Nations official has stressed the need to ensure survivors of conflict-related sexual violence in Iraq are fully protected and that perpetrators are brought to justice.
Office of the Special Representative of the Secretary-General on Sexual Violence in Conflict. Pramila Patten, Special Representative of the Secretary-General on Sexual Violence in Conflict, speaking to women and girls in Darfur, in February 2018.
Berlin, 9 March 2018 (IOM)*– Since IOM, the UN Migration Agency, began collecting data through the Missing Migrants Project in 2014, it has recorded the deaths of 1,234 women, more than half of whom died while attempting to cross the Mediterranean.
This figure represents less than five percent of the total number of migrant deaths recorded during this period by the Project, which is based at IOM’s Data Analysis Centre in Berlin.
Only 31 percent of the incidents recorded by Missing Migrants Project have any information on the sex of those who died or went missing.
“A US-Russia Strategic Dialogue is more urgent following President Putin’s public address on March 1st when he referred to several new nuclear weapons Russia is reportedly developing, including a cruise missile and a nuclear underwater drone,” a letter signed by US Senators Edward J. Markey (D-MA), Jeff Merkley (D-OR), Dianne Feinstein (D-CA), and Bernie Sanders (I-VT) reads.
The letter, addressed to US Secretary of State Rex Tillerson, was published on Thursday [8 March 2018]. The senators stressed that while the countries have many “significant” disagreements, including alleged Russian meddling in the 2016 US elections and the “annexation” of Crimea, Moscow and Washington need to come to the negotiation table.
It was the year of Three Popes, the battle between a dove and a hawk in the US, protests against the Shah of Iran and a fateful error by the UK Labour prime minister. The events of 40 years ago have had a lasting global impact.
**Photo: Israeli prime minister Menachem Begin and Egyptian president Anwar Sadat with U.S. president Jimmy Carter at Camp David in September 1978. | Author: Unknown| Source: US govt. archives |”This file has been identified as being free of known restrictions under copyright law, including all related and neighboring rights.”
On January 1 1978, the world appeared to be a relatively stable place. What could broadly be described as moderate governments held sway in the West.
Global economic conditions were improving following the 1973 oil price shock.
Two United Nations humanitarian agencies are jointly seeking $80 million to provide food assistance to refugees in Ethiopia, which hosts the second largest number of those in Africa.
UNHCR/S. Momodu | A Sudanese refugee with her child on one of the buses that moved volunteers from the flood-prone Leitchuor and Nip Nip refugee camps in western Ethiopia.
In a news release issued on 8 March 2018, the World Food Programme (WFP) and the Office of the UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) said that food ration was cut by 20 per cent last year to below the 2,100 kilocalories per day required to sustain an average person.
The agencies are warning of deeper cuts from April unless new funding is received in March.
8 March 2018 (FAO)* –– Agriculture plays a pivotal role in the lives of most Kenyans with close to 70 percent of the population – mainly women – relying on it. Yet Kenya’s agricultural potential has been low with productivity reported to be on a gradual decline, affecting families, particularly in the rural areas.
8 March 2018 (FAO)* — Women and children, especially pregnant women and children 0-2 years of age, are among the groups most vulnerable to food insecurity and chronic malnutrition. This is no different in Mozambique where, according to the FAO Technical Secretariat for Food Security and Nutrition 35% of the population is food insecure and 43% of children under 5 are chronically malnourished.
The drumbeat for women’s rights and empowerment reached a crescendo on 8 March 2018 as the United Nations celebrated International Women’s Day with a number of powerful events, where global activists joined top UN officials calling for the recent momentum generated by grassroots movements against discrimination and harassment to tip the scales towards lasting change.
UN Women Twitter | Actor and activist Danai Gurira (left); Phumzile Mlambo-Ngcuka, Executive Director of UN Women; and actor and activist Reese Witherspoon (right) take part in the celebration of International Women’s Day at the UN Headquarters.
HUMAN WRONGS WATCH 