UNITED NATIONS, Jul 21 2025 (IPS)* –Electric vehicles contribute to an ongoing environmental and humanitarian crisis in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC).
Mining operations cause deforestation, pollution, food insecurity and exploitative labor practices.
A young girl washes her hands in a puddle near a UN Organization Stabilization Mission in the DRC. Photo Credit: UN Photo/Sylvain Liechti
Advertisers paint electric vehicles as an environmentally friendly option to help save the planet. In the West, American states like California and New York incentivize citizens to go green and help their cities by ditching gas-powered vehicles.
UNFPA, the United Nations sexual and reproductive health agency, has learned that the United States Government will deny future funding to the organization, cutting essential support for millions of people living in humanitarian crises and for midwives preventing mothers from dying in childbirth.
The amendment states that no US funds may be made available to any organization that supports or participates in the management of a programme of coercive abortion or involuntary sterilization.
Multiple evaluations by the US Government itself and others have found no evidence that UNFPA engages in coercive abortion or involuntary sterilization in China.
The US had become one of UNFPA’s most critical partners, providing $180 million in funding on average a year.
The workers we don’t pay or see are grandmothers, mothers, daughters — the women who take care of children, look after ill family members and give dignity to the elderly.
To do this vital care work, they give up formal employment with pay cheques.
“Our system is designed as if women didn’t do care work, and that forces us to choose between raising children or working,”said Meredith Cortés Bravo, a founder of a grassroots organization in Chile that supports these women.
(UN News)* — Major cuts to aid budgets have already left people fleeing wars in Sudan and beyond without the assistance and protection they need, the UN refugee agency, UNHCR, said on .
Globally, $1.4 billion of the agency’s programmes are being shuttered or put on hold, UNHCR said in a new report.
“We can’t stop water, you can’t stop sanitation, but we’re having to take decisions when it comes, for example, to shelter,” said UNHCR Director of External Relations Dominique Hyde.
HUMAN WRONGS WATCH 