'Unseen' News and Views – By Baher Kamal & The Like
25 November 2020 (UN News)* — Approximately once every minute and 40 seconds, a child or young person under the age of 20 was infected with HIV last year, the UN Children’s Fund (UNICEF) has reported, calling on governments to “protect, sustain and accelerate” efforts to combat childhood HIV.
Covid-19 Pandemic Devastates Mining Communities, Increases Rights Risks
An artisanal miner holds an uncut diamond in her hand in South Africa, October 22, 2019. © 2019 Sumaya Hisham/ReutersMany of the blazes, which come at the tail end of a devastating fire season, are believed to have been set by farmers eager to clear land and sate the booming global demand for beef and soybeans.
A new United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) report, jointly produced with the International Resource Panel, says that type of unbridled international trade is having a damaging effect not only on rainforests but the entire planet.
– The World Bank has been leading other multilateral development banks (MDBs) and international financial institutions to press developing country governments to ‘de-risk’ infrastructure and other private, especially foreign investments.
Jomo Kwame Sundaram
They promote public-private partnerships (PPPs) supposedly to mobilize more private finance to achieve the Sustainable Development Goals.
PPP advocacy has been stepped up after developing countries’ pleas for better international tax cooperation were blocked at the third United Nations’ Financing for Development conference (FfD3) in Addis Ababa in mid-2015.
Official support for infrastructure PPPs seems stronger than ever. The Bank’s Global Infrastructure Facility (GIF) was set up to coordinate MDBs, private investors and governments promoting PPPs. Meanwhile, the G20 has been trying to modify the mandates of national and international development banks to enable them to initiate infrastructure PPPs with the private sector.
(UN News)* — The Desert Locust crisis which struck the greater Horn of Africa region earlier this year threatening food supplies for millions, could re-escalate as recent strong winds carried mature swarmlets from southern Somalia into eastern and northeastern Kenya, the UN Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) said on Tuesday [24 November 2020].
A gravity-fed, gated irrigation system pulls water from Sebwe River at Mubuku, Uganda ©FAO/Eva Pek
