30 August 2018 (FAO)* – The Middle East and North Africa is the world’s most water-scarce region and the situation is worsening due to the impacts of conflict, climate change and economic downturn.
The water crisis threatens the region’s stability as well as its human development and sustainable growth.
What is the agreement that has been reached and why does it matter?
About 60 per cent of the world’s refugee population lives in around 10 countries, all in the global south. Refugees often live in the poorest parts of these countries.
At the time, misinformation about immigration, sensationalised by tabloids, was rife. In a population still reeling from decades of civil conflict, mistrust of minorities remained close to the surface.
29 August 2018 (IOM)* – “When an acquaintance told me there might be work for me in Austria, I jumped at the opportunity. She told me how good Austria was so I figured I would just get there, find work and settle in. They told me the journey was easy so I decided to give it a go.”
These are the recollections of Sara, one of thousands of Nigerian women who have been fooled by traffickers and sent to Europe, West and Central Africa and the Middle East for domestic labour or sexual exploitation.
DAYLESFORD, Australia, 30 August 2018 –Developing the tradition charted by C. Wright Mills in his 1956 classic The Power Elite, in his latest book, Professor Peter Phillips starts by reviewing the transition from the nation state power elites described by authors such as Mills to a transnational power elite centralized on the control of global capital.
Thus, in his just-released study Giants: The Global Power Elite, Phillips, a professor of political sociology at Sonoma State University in the USA, identifies the world’s top seventeen asset management firms, such as BlackRock and J.P Morgan Chase, each with more than one trillion dollars of investment capital under management, as the ‘Giants’ of world capitalism.
The seventeen firms collectively manage more than $US41.1 trillion in a self-invested network of interlocking capital that spans the globe.
This $41 trillion represents the wealth invested for profit by thousands of millionaires, billionaires and corporations.
As war and the mediation of peace have become increasingly complex, innovative thinking is needed to save and improve the lives of millions, United Nations Secretary-General António Guterres on 29 August 2018 told the Security Council.
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UN Photo/Evan Schneider | UN Secretary-General António Guterres addresses the Security Council meeting on the maintenance of international peace and security, with a focus on mediation and settlement of disputes.
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Speaking alongside the UN chief were the Archbishop of Canterbury, Justin Welby, a member of his High-Level Advisory Board on Mediation, and Mossarat Qadeem, the co-founder of PAIMAN Alumni Trust, a civil society group working to prevent violent extremism in Pakistan.
The United Nations on 29 August 2018 called for urgent action to address the human rights crisis in Nicaragua, where “repression and retaliation against demonstrators continue … as the world looks away.”
Artículo 66 | Protesters in Managua take part in a march to demand an end to violence in Nicaragua. The banner reads “This struggle is non-violent” in Spanish. | Photo from UN News
A new report from the UN human rights office has detailed what it describes as numerous violations carried out by the Nicaraguan Government after mass protests erupted in mid-April over planned social security reforms.
United Nations Secretary-General António Guterres on 29 August 2018 expressed deep concern over the growing risk of a humanitarian catastrophe should a full-scale military operation take place in Syria’s war-battered Idlib province.
UNICEF | A child sitting at a desk in a school that was attacked, in Idlib, Syria. 2016.
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According to a statement issued by his Spokesperson, Guterres said that “any use of chemical weapons is totally unacceptable,” adding that he “urgently appeals to the Government of Syria and all parties to exercise restraint and to prioritize the protection of civilians.”