Geneva (WHO)* – WHO and UNICEF on 11 April 2018 issued new ten-step guidance to increase support for breastfeeding in health facilities that provide maternity and newborn services. Breastfeeding all babies for the first 2 years would save the lives of more than 820 000 children under age 5 annually.
THAPANGTHONG, Lao People’s Democratic Republic, 10 April 2018 (UNFPA)* – “Just lie still and relax. Breathe slowly,” midwife Khoun Keobouttavong told Out, 30. Out was laying on the floor of her small stilt house in the southern Thapangthong District of the Lao People’s Democratic Republic.
Ms. Keobouttavong pressed a fetal stethoscope into Out’s belly. Out was about six months pregnant.
“The heart is beating well,” she told Out, smiling.
Ms. Keobouttavong is the only midwife covering the district, which includes eight villages and hundreds of residents.
9 April 2018 (openDemocracy)*— Pregnant teenagers face expulsion from school, arrests, even death. The backlash against sex education in Africa is punishing our girls, and must end now.
**Proportional symbol map showing adolescent fertility and poverty in Africa | GraceN.Cartography
A new web platform aimed at migrant workers lists user reviews of recruitment agencies. By helping migrants avoid falling for false promises, the website is an important tool to promote fair recruitment.
GENEVA 11 April 2018 (ILO)* – While millions of workers migrate in search of a better life for themselves and their families, far too many are tricked by false promises made by unscrupulous recruitment agencies, including fake jobs, lower wages and unsafe working conditions.
Some end up trapped in forced labour and other forms of modern slavery.
9 April 2018 – TRANSCEND Media Service – While conflict theories and resolution processes advanced dramatically during the second half of the 20th century, particularly thanks to the important work of several key scholars such as Professor Johan Galtung – see ‘Conflict Transformation by Peaceful Means (the Transcend Method)’ – significant gaps remain in the conflict literature on how to deal with particular conflict configurations. Notably, these include the following four.
Armed groups in Libya are holding thousands of people in detention where they are being submitted to torture and other human rights violations, according to a United Nations report published on 10 April 2018.
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UNHCR/Iason Foounten | In Libya, dozens of migrants sleep alongside one another in a cramped cell in Tripoli’s Tariq al-Sikka detention facility.
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The study, by the UN human rights office, OHCHR, and the UN Support Mission in the country, known as UNSMIL, estimates that some 6,500 people are being held in official prisons while thousands more are in facilities nominally under the authorities or that are directly run by armed groups, some of which are affiliated with the State.
The United Nations migration agency on 10 April 2018 launched a regional action plan to bolster its response to massive population outflows from Venezuela, amid the worsening political and socio-economic situation in the South American country.
UNHCR/Reynesson Damasceno | More than one million Venezuelans have left their country, many, like this family, are seeking shelter at Simon Bolivar Square in Boa Vista, Roraima, northern Brazil.
As the exodus has considerably increased over the last two years, an estimated 1.6 million Venezuelans were abroad in 2017, up from 700,000 in 2015, with 1.3 million in the Americas, according to the International Organization for Migration (IOM).
10 April 2018 — In earthquake-hit Papua New Guinea, United Nations agencies on the ground are warning of a new looming threat: water-borne disease outbreaks, such as that of diarrhoea and measles.
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UNICEF/Bell | A UNICEF health official gives safe drinking water and oral retardation salts to a mother for her one-year-old child suffering from diarrhoea. They are living at temporary shelter along with at least 600 other persons after their homes were destroyed in the Papua New Guinea earthquakes.
10 April 2018 — Amid a resurgence of yellow fever outbreaks, the United Nations together with partners, has begun an ambitious campaign to vaccinate close to one billion people against the deadly disease across 27 high-risk African countries.
UNICEF/Dejongh | Women along with their new-born children wait to see doctors at a local hospital in north-east Côte d’Ivoire. The infants are to be vaccinated against a number of diseases, including Yellow Fever. In addition, families will be provided with mosquito nets, which are an important protection against mosquito-borne diseases.
The United Nations Security Council on 10 April 2018 called for an end to the recurring cycles of violence and instability in Africa’s Great Lakes region, as a senior UN official reported that some armed groups are continuing attacks on civilians in the Democratic Republic of the Congo.
UN Photo/Eskinder Debebe | Said Djinnit, Special Envoy for the Great Lakes Region, briefs the Security Council on the situation in the Great Lakes region.
“The negative forces, including the Allied Democratic Forces, continue to attack and terrify the population, causing suffering and displacement, and fuelling mistrust between the countries of the region,” said the Special Envoy for the Great Lakes, Said Djinnit.
HUMAN WRONGS WATCH 