MADRID, Jun 2 2023 (IPS)* – There is a tangled trafficking web that has been woven across the Sahel, which spans almost 6.000 kilometres from the Atlantic Ocean to the Red Sea, and is home to more than 300 million people in 10 countries: Burkina Faso, Cameroon, Chad, The Gambia, Guinea, Mali, Mauritania, Niger, Nigeria, and Senegal.
Fake or substandard antimalarial medicines kill as many as 267,000 sub-Saharan Africans every year. Credit: Mercedes Sayagues/IPS
This is how several international specialised bodies, mainly the United Nations, depict the aggravated situation in this already highly fragile African region, which the UN describes as a region in crisis, as those living there are prey to “chronic insecurity, climate shocks, conflict, coups, and the rise of criminal and terrorist networks.”
Port-au-Prince/Santiago de Chile, 29 May 2023 (FAO)* – According to the latest Integrated Food Security Phase Classification (IPC) analysis (March 2023), 4.9 million people in Haiti – nearly half of the country’s population – are experiencing high levels of acute food insecurity. This figure represents an increase of 200 000 people in just five months.
And of the total number of people affected, 1.8 million are in Emergency (IPC Phase 4) – up from the analyses in the last three years.
This means that households face large food consumption gaps resulting in high acute malnutrition and excess mortality, or are forced to adopt negative coping mechanisms to cover food needs, such as selling their productive assets or consuming seeds instead of planting them, increasing their vulnerability.
(UN NEWS)* — The UN in Bangladesh on Thursday []condemned a second cut in food rations for Rohingya refugees who are sheltering in the country, after a funding shortfall of $56 million compelled the World Food Programme (WFP) to enforce the cuts.
IOM/Mashrif Abdullah Al | Rohingya refugees in Bangladesh are expected to receive less food aid following funding shortages.
The cuts will reduce the value of rations provided to Rohingya refugees to $8 per month, or 27 cents per day.
At the beginning of the year, refugees were receiving a ration of $12 per person per month, which was just enough to meet daily needs, but on 1 March, that was cut to $10 – due to lack of funding support.
(UN NEWS)* — Racism is a global problem, and every country must take a stance against it, General Assembly President Csaba Kőrösi said on , addressing the latest meeting of a UN platform to improve the safety and quality of life of people of African descent worldwide.
UN Photo/Loey Felipe | A member of the Batoto Yetu dance company performs during the opening of the Second Session of the Permanent Forum on People of African Descent.
“Racism and xenophobia continue to spoil our communities, like scars that spoil the fabric of society. The hatred and violence they engender persist, demanding our collective efforts to eradicate racial violence in all its forms,” he told the second session of the Permanent Forum on People of African Descent.
Mr. Kőrösi said overcoming this requires recognizing our shared humanity, as the “unacknowledged legacies” of slavery and segregation persist today through oppressive and racially violent prison systems, inequalities in access to healthcare, and exclusion from the workforce.
HUMAN WRONGS WATCH 