'Unseen' News and Views
The Panorama of Food and Nutritional Security 2019, jointly published by a group of UN health agencies, urged countries to take swift action to address the malnutrition issue across the region.
Global treaty critical for saving disappearing plants amid climate change. FAO calls for greater support for plant genepool and the Fund which support millions of farmers around the world
ROME (FAO)* — As a public good that benefits the global community, crop diversity must remain a legacy for generations to come, FAO’s Deputy Director-General for Climate and Natural Resources, Maria Helena Semedo, said today [11 November 2019].
LONDON/NEW YORK/BARCELONA, November 12, 2019 (UNICEF)* — Pneumonia claimed the lives of more than 800,000 children under the age of five last year, or one child every 39 seconds, according to a new analysis.
Most deaths occurred among children under the age of two, and almost 153,000 within the first month of life. [1]
12 November 2019 (UN Environment)* — In July, a 47-year-old woman showed up at the emergency department of her local hospital in Sacramento, California. Her speech was slurred, she couldn’t walk, and she was unable to feel her hands or face. The woman soon fell into a coma, where she remained for several weeks.
Photo by Unsplash
The cause of the woman’s desperate condition, health officials soon discovered, was a skin-lightening ingredient—mercury—that had been illegally mixed into her pot of face cream.
“Mercury poisoning has dangerous and sometimes irreversible effects, and while unborn babies are most vulnerable, anyone can suffer,” said Claudia ten Have, Senior Policy Coordination Officer at the Minamata Convention Secretariat.
DAYLESFORD, Australia, 11 November 2019 – The date 11 November is well known and commemorated in many parts of the world because it marks the Armistice ending World War I – ‘the Great War’ – in 1918.
Robert J. Burrowes,
In the evocative words used by Kurt Vonnegut Jr., an atheist humanist, in his novel Breakfast of Champions, the day is remembered thus:
‘When I was a boy … all the people of all the nations which fought in the First World War were silent during the eleventh minute of the eleventh hour of Armistice Day, which was the eleventh day of the eleventh month. It was at that minute in nineteen-hundred and eighteen, that millions upon millions of human beings stopped butchering one another.
I have talked to old men who were on battlefields at that minute. They have told me in one way or another that the sudden silence was the Voice of God. So we still have among us some men who can remember when God spoke clearly to mankind.’
– Every day 830 women die while giving life. At least 33,000 girls are forced into child marriage with 11,000 girls undergoing female genital mutilation.
Gender equality and women empowerment at the heart of ICPD25. Credit: Joyce Chimbi / IPS
The UN Deputy Secretary-General has called for gender equality, women’s empowerment and women’s rights to be integrated at the heart of global efforts to achieve a sustainable future for all. *
Bolivian President Evo Morales was forced to resign Sunday after two weeks of right-wing violence. | Photo: teleSUR
HUMAN WRONGS WATCH 