'Unseen' News and Views
6 November 2020 (Human Rights Watch) — The US elections took place amid a recession, record unemployment, and rising poverty. The economy was the top issue for voters in the election; one in two voters said that economic inequality was very important in their decision about who to support in the presidential election. But decisions that affect poverty and inequality are not only taken at the federal level.
The coronavirus pandemic has swept across a world that was already profoundly unequal. The failure to tackle inequality has left the majority of countries far more vulnerable and unprepared for both the health and economic impacts of the disease.
In the Central African Republic, the Covid-19 represents a health crisis which is added to an already alarming humanitarian crisis. One in two people in need of humanitarian assistance, and about 70% of health services are provided by humanitarian organizations. Photo: Aurelie Godet/Oxfam
She lives in a settlement for displaced people outside Kabul, Afghanistan’s capital city. Fifteen people share her makeshift two-room home, including Shayista’s daughter and her children.
UN food agencies warn of rising levels of acute hunger with potential risk of famine in four hotspots – Burkina Faso, northeastern Nigeria, South Sudan and Yemen cause for concern but acute hunger on the rise across the globe.
ROME, 6 November 2020 (FAO)* – The world has been put on a heightened famine alert with a new report by two United Nations agencies that contains a stark warning; four countries contain areas that could soon slip into famine if conditions there undergo “any further deterioration over the coming months”.
6 November 2020 (UN News)* — Globally, millions of children are at a heightened risk of polio and measles – dangerous but preventable diseases – amid disruptions to vital immunization programmes due to the coronavirus pandemic, UN Children’s Fund (UNICEF) and World Health Organization (WHO) have said.
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6 November 2020 (UNEP)* — On the launch of the report, Impacts of Sand and Dust Storms on Oceans: A Scientific Environmental Assessment for Policy Makers, author and University of Oxford lecturer, Nick Middleton discusses how the dust cycle affects and interacts with other global-scale biogeochemical cycles.
– When the United Nations was struggling to cope with a cash crisis back in April 1996, one of the many drastic measures it undertook was to cut down on its staff.
Work and reforms of the UN ‘at risk’, Antonio Guterres warned Member States, amidst ‘record-level’ cash crisis, October 2020. Credit: UN Photo/Rick Bajornas. The UN Secretariat building in New York
So, it took the path of corporate America, and ironically, for a cash-strapped institution, it offered a “golden handshake”—a severance pay of about $80,000 dollars each — to those who would voluntarily leave the near-bankrupt Organization.
(UN News)* — Children face violence and bullying at school all over the world, with one in every three students subject to attacks at least once a month and one in 10, a victim of cyberbullying, the UN said on Thursday [5 November 2020].
The warning from UNESCO, the UN organization for education, science and culture, based on 2019 data, coincides with the first International Day against Violence and Bullying at School – Including Cyberbullying, on 5 November.
Letter to Greta Thunberg: why maintaining a gas-guzzler may cause less harm than buying a new e-vehicle
3 November 2020 (Wall Street International)*
Dear Greta,
You know how manufacturers promote electric vehicles (EVs) because they have “zero-emissions?” I wonder if this is really true.
4 November 2020 (UN News)* — The UN climate change secretariat, UNFCCC, has underlined its commitment to work with stakeholders in the United States and beyond, to accelerate climate action, in line with an historic treaty on limiting global warming and curbing greenhouse gas emissions.
HUMAN WRONGS WATCH 