Archive for September 24th, 2021

24/09/2021

Food Is a Human Right, Not Just ‘A Commodity to Be Traded’

23 September 2021 (UN News)*Every day, hundreds of millions of people go to bed hungry. Three billion people cannot afford a healthy diet. Two billion are overweight or obese and yet 462 million, are underweight. Nearly a third of all food that is produced, is lost or wasted.

FAO/Luis Tato | Women vendors sell fresh vegetables at a market in Limuru, Kenya.
These are just some of the problems and contradictions laid bare by the UN Secretary-General on Thursday [23 September 2021] at the opening of the landmark UN Food Systems Summit, that is bringing together farmers and fishers, youth, Indigenous Peoples, Heads of State, governments and many more, in an effort to transform the sector and get the world back on track to achieve all 17 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) by 2030.
24/09/2021

In the Grip of Hunger: Only 5% of Afghan Families Have Enough to Eat

WFP racing against clock to provide most vulnerable with life-saving food – but funding is short
Boys with donkeys carrying water jerrycans on arid background
Two droughts in the space of three years have hit Afghanistan hard. Photo: WFP/Arete

(WFP)* — As the harsh Afghan winter looms closer, recent surveys conducted by the World Food Programme (WFP) have revealed that only five percent of families have enough to eat every day, while half reported they had run out of food altogether at least once in the past two weeks.

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24/09/2021

‘Despite Progress, Humanity Remains Unacceptably Close to Nuclear Annihilation’

Opening of Exhibition "Against Nuclear Arms"

From the very start, addressing the existential threat of nuclear weapons has been central to the work of the United Nations.

In 1946, the very first General Assembly resolution sought “the elimination from national armaments of atomic weapons and of all other major weapons adaptable to mass destruction.”

Seventy-six years later, we have yet to achieve that resolution’s goals.

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24/09/2021

International Day for the Total Elimination of Nuclear Weapons | 26 September 2021

Sculpture "Good Defeats Evil"

Sculpture depicting St. George slaying the dragon. The dragon is created from fragments of Soviet SS-20 and United States Pershing nuclear missiles. PHOTO:UN Photo/Milton Grant

24 September 2021 (United Nations)* — Achieving global nuclear disarmament is one of the oldest goals of the United Nations.

It was the subject of the General Assembly’s first resolution in 1946, which established the Atomic Energy Commission (dissolved in 1952), with a mandate to make specific proposals for the control of nuclear energy and the elimination of atomic weapons and all other major weapons adaptable to mass destruction.

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24/09/2021

The UN Food Systems Summit – Food Processing, Consumption, Supply Chain, Loss and Waste

LETHBRIDGE, Canada, Sep 22 2021 (IPS)* – Food processing extends shelf-life and can transforms raw food into attractive, marketable products. It can also prevent contamination. The transformation can involve numerous physical and chemical processes such as mincing, cooking, canning, liquefaction, pickling, macerating, emulsification, irradiation and lyophilization.

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Processed, canned food lines the shelves at a Canadian supermarket. Credit: Trevor Page

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24/09/2021

In the Guise of Converting the Heathens

By Prof Hoosen Vawda – TRANSCEND Media Service*

The Oppression of Indigenous Peoples in the Name of Religion

“Dr. Livingstone, I presume?”[1] are the famous words of a reporter, from the New York Herald, Mr Morton Stanley[2], who was dispatched to the Dark Continent[3]: Africa, to search and locate Dr. David Livingstone, who was gone missing and found him in the city of Ujiji[4]on Lake Tanganyika in 1871[5].

Dr. Livingstone was a physician, journalist, explorer, and an empire builder.  However, first and foremost he was a missionary who embarked upon the Lord’s work to convert the heathens[6] in Africa to Christianity[7], the religion of the coloniser, which was his priority to eradicate the God of the “pagans”[8] in Africa.

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