Archive for October, 2020

10/10/2020

World Food Programme Wins 2020 Nobel Peace Prize, as Hunger Mounts

Human Wrongs Watch

9 October 2020 (UN News)* — The UN World Food Programme (WFP), which provides lifesaving food assistance to millions across the world – often in extremely dangerous and hard-to-access conditions – has been awarded the 2020 Nobel Peace Prize.

UNICEF/Peter Martell | A UN World Food Programme (WFP) helicopter delivers much-needed supplies to people in Udier, South Sudan.
The agency was recognized “for its efforts to combat hunger, for its contribution to bettering conditions for peace in conflict-affected areas and for acting as a driving force to prevent the use of hunger as a weapon of war and conflict”, said Berit Reiss-Andersen, chair of the Norwegian Nobel Committee.
09/10/2020

Can Democracies Survive Social Media?

Balancing freedom of expression with social responsibility

8 October 2020 (Wall Street International)* — Abraham Lincoln is credited with one of the most enduring statements in American history: “You can fool all of the people some of the time and some of the people all of the time, but you cannot fool all of the people all of the time.” Unfortunately, nearly all Americans have been fooled by this. The first person to utter the statement was actually the showman P.T. Barnum.

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09/10/2020

Climate Change: Proof in Numbers

UNEP’s novel ‘World Environment Situation Room’ provides real-time data on PM2.5 levels across the planet, informing scientists, policy-makers and citizens alike.

forest-fire-432870_1920.Ylvers-PixabaySkeeze / Pixabay / 08 Oct 2020

8 October 2020 (UN Environment)* — Last month, as wildfires continued to rage across the American West, Pascal Peduzzi, a climate scientist with the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) in Geneva, followed the situation with air quality in Mammoth Lakes, a town high in California’s Sierra Nevada mountains.

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09/10/2020

Women Are “Under Siege,” Bearing the Bulk of the Care and Economic Burden in Many Societies, While Also Facing “an Alarming Surge of Violence in the Home”

Human Wrongs Watch

(UN News)* — Armed conflict has a disproportionate impact on women and girls – a key reason why women’s “full, equal and meaningful participation” in UN peacekeeping is such a priority, the Secretary-General said on Thursday [8 October 2020].

UNAMID/Mohamad Almahady | Women played a prominent role in the political transition process in Sudan, which resulted in women holding key government leadership positions, including the country’s first-ever woman Foreign Minister and Chief Justice.
09/10/2020

Girls to Know: The Next Generation Is Already Leading the Way

Human Wrongs Watch

Originally published on Medium.com/@UN_Women

A collage of girl activists

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9 October 2020 (UN Women)* — Around the world, girls are driving change. They are activists and advocates on the front lines of movements for social and racial equality. They are calling for urgent climate action and demanding space at decision-making tables in their communities, countries and beyond.

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09/10/2020

‘My Voice, Our Equal Future’

Girls walking together outside Yomelela Primary School, Cape Town South Africa,1 June 2015.

The world is home to more than 1.1 billion girls under age 18, who are poised to become the largest generation of female leaders, entrepreneurs and change-makers the world has ever seen. PHOTO:UN Women/Ryan Brown

9 October 2020 (United Nations)* — Progress for adolescent girls has not kept pace with the realities they face today, and COVID-19 has reinforced many of these gaps.

This year, under the theme, “My Voice, Our Equal Future”, let’s seize the opportunity to be inspired by what adolescent girls see as the change they want, the solutions- big and small- they are leading and demanding across the globe.

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08/10/2020

2020 Nansen Refugee Award Spotlights Child Survivors of Sexual Exploitation

A Colombian woman who spent decades working to heal children and teenage survivors of sexual violence and exploitation on 5 October 2020 accepted the 2020 Nansen Refugee Award at a special ceremony, calling the prize a “recognition of their strength, courage and endurance.” |  Español   |  Français   |  عربي

UNHCR’s Nansen Refugee Award Laureate 2020 hugs a young survivor of sexual exploitation.© UNHCR/Nicolo Filippo Rosso

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08/10/2020

Stillborn Babies: A Neglected, Unspeakable Tragedy

Human Wrongs Watch

(UN News)* — A stillborn baby is delivered every 16 seconds, which translates into nearly two million infants over the course of a year that never took their first breath, according to a new UN report published on Thursday [8 October 2020].

©UNICEF/UNI32026/PirozziUNICEF/UNI32026/Pirozzi | Kadiatu Sama, who has had no prenatal care and whose child was stillborn, is comforted by a woman nurse in the maternity ward of the government hospital in Sierra Leone.
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A Neglected Tragedy: The Global Burden of Stillbirths, released by the UN Children’s Fund (UNICEF), the World Health Organization (WHO), the World Bank and the UN Department of Economic and Social Affairs (DESA), reveals that 84 per cent of these grievous episodes occur in low and lower-middle income countries.
08/10/2020

‘Across the World, Girls as Young as 12 Are Being Forced or Tricked into Marrying Men Who Exploit Them for Sex and Domestic Work’

7 October 2020 (UN News)* — Across the world, girls as young as 12 are being forced or tricked into marrying men who exploit them for sex and domestic work, in what the UN Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC) has called an “under-reported, global form of human trafficking”.
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UNICEF/UN0159775/Nybo | Farmer Nurul Haque stands near his 13-year-old daughter in Bangladesh, saying he may have to pull her from school and marry her off to an older man because he has few financial options left.
07/10/2020

Brazil Is Up in Flames – Here’s Why

Deforestation in the Amazon in August, 2020. © Christian Braga / Greenpeace
New images show widespread destruction of the Amazon. © Christian Braga / Greenpeace

The world is looking in horror for the second straight year as historic blazesravage the world’s largest tropical forest. All the while, instead of fighting the fires, the Brazilian government fans the flames by emboldening those who are setting the fires to expand their agribusiness.

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