'Unseen' News and Views
The problems of eradicating Ebola in the Democratic Republic of the Congo are not only medical, but also linked “to a variety of political and social factors”, the head of the UN mission in the country told the Security Council on Wednesday [24 July 2019]*
The 2019 Global Multidimensional Poverty Index (MPI) data and publication “Illuminating Inequalities” released on 11 July 2019 shed light on the number of people experiencing poverty at regional, national and subnational levels, and reveal inequalities across countries and among the poor themselves.*
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22 July 2019, Valencia (Spain) – FAO‘s Director-General José Graziano da Silva urged cities around the world today to redouble their efforts to promote healthier and more sustainable urban diets and food systems to tackle the increasing levels of overweight and obesity.*
– International financial institutions (IFIs) have typically imposed wide-ranging policy reforms – called ‘conditionalities’ – in exchange for country governments to secure access to financial assistance.
While IFIs may demand anti-corruption policies, other IFI policy conditionalities, such as the privatization of state-owned enterprises (SOEs), can create new rentier opportunities, undermining government will and capacity to curb corruption.
IMF cure worse than disease?
Statistical analysis of International Monetary Fund (IMF) conditionalities on 141 developing countries from 1982 to 2014 has found that requiring privatization of SOEs has undermined anti-corruption efforts.
The World Intellectual Property Organization, WIPO, named Switzerland as the world’s most innovative country on Wednesday [24 July 2019], during the launch of its latest Global Innovation Index, (GII) in the Indian capital New Delhi.
22 July 2019 — Can young coders help solve the climate crisis? The UN’s Youth Envoy launched a global competition earlier this month, “Reboot The Earth”, in collaboration with the Office of Information & Communications Technology, to try and answer that question, fostering collaboration between the United Nations, academia, civil society, and young people to address the climate emergency.
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Mexico City, Based on new evidence assessing benefits and risks, the WHO recommends the use of the HIV drug dolutegravir (DTG) as the preferred first-line and second-line treatment for all populations, including pregnant women and those of childbearing potential.
Credits: Epa-Efe/Divyakant Solanki (Photo from WHO).
– When the United Nations General Assembly met in 2007 to vote on North Korea’s human rights record, only 10 of the 56 African countries voted with the U.S.-led western coalition.
The overwhelming majority followed China – either by voting against or abstaining from the resolution.
22 July 2019 (Other News)* — When all is said and done, it appears that Thomas Hobbes, the 17th century English philosopher who had a dire vision of man, was not totally wrong.
Roberto Savio
From the frivolous to the serious, in just a week we have had four items of news which would not happen in a normal world.
An English porn beauty with 86,000 followers on social media has put bottles of the water she bathes in on sale at 30 pounds a bottle and has sold several thousand bottles.
A survey in Brazil found out that 7% of citizens believe that the earth is flat (40 percent of American schools teach that the world was created in a week, according to the Bible, so there cannot be ancient civilisations).
Following “with sadness” the Israeli authorities’ destruction of homes in the Palestinian community of Sur Bahir, three top United Nations officials issued a statement on Monday [22 July 2019] underscoring that the move was “not compatible” with Israel’s “obligations under international humanitarian law”.*
HUMAN WRONGS WATCH 