'Unseen' News and Views – By Baher Kamal & The Like
We need help illuminating the dark matter in food and charting the intricate interplay between food, ecosystems, climate and health, argue the authors. Credit: Shutterstock.
Invariably, these newly celebrated superfoods are never new; they have long been consumed by non-Western cultures.
For goodness’ sake, negotiate!
For the fifth time since 2008, Russia has proposed to negotiate with the U.S. over security arrangements, this time in proposals made by President Vladimir Putin on June 14, 2024.
Four previous times, the U.S. rejected the offer of negotiations in favor of a neocon strategy to weaken or dismember Russia through war and covert operations.
The U.S. neocon tactics have failed disastrously, devastating Ukraine in the process, and endangering the whole world. After all the warmongering, it’s time for Biden to open negotiations for peace with Russia.
Since the end of the Cold War, the U.S. grand strategy has been to weaken Russia. As early as 1992, then Defense Secretary Richard Cheney opined that following the 1991 demise of the Soviet Union, Russia too should be dismembered.
Nyapuot Riak Dup, a South Soudanese refugee displaced from Omdurman city in Sudan, is one of 440,000 people now living in Alagaya camp in Sudan’s White Nile State. © UNHCR/Samuel Otieno
24 June 2024 (UNHCR)* — Nyapuot Riak Dup recalls the fateful day last April when a piece of shrapnel ripped through her house in Khartoum’s twin city of Omdurman and smashed a hole through the floor near where she was hiding.
(UN News)* — “Conflict, climate chaos and upheaval” have forced more than 120 million people from their homes including 43.5 million who have fled across national borders said the UN Secretary-General in his message for World Refugee Day, marked on Thursday [20 ].
That’s a record number on the move – “fuelling profound human suffering”, António Guterres added, while at the same time honouring their strength and courage.
Drawing attention to the day each 20 June, is also about stepping up efforts to protect and support those forced from their homes “on every stop of their journey.”
(United Nations)* — Refugees need our solidarity now more than ever. Solidarity means keeping our doors open, celebrating their strengths and achievements, and reflecting on the challenges they face.
Solidarity with people forced to flee also means finding solutions to their plight – ending conflicts so they can return home in safety, ensuring they have opportunities to thrive in the communities that have welcomed them, and providing countries with the resources they need to include and support refugees.
Learn more about this year’s observance!
(UN News)* — A conference focused on small arms and light weapons is taking place at a “difficult and dangerous moment for humanity,” according to the UN Chief António Guterres.
Delivering remarks in New York on behalf of the Secretary-General at a meeting aimed at eradicating the illicit trade in small arms, Izumi Nakamitsu, the head of the UN Office of Disarmament Affairs, warned on Tuesday [] that military expenditures continue to rise across the globe.
New conflicts are placing millions of people in the line of fire, and small arms and light weapons play a major role in these conflicts, she said.
– Since 2008, farmland acquisitions have doubled prices worldwide, squeezing family farmers and other poor rural communities. Such land grabs are worsening inequality, poverty, and food insecurity.
Squeezing land and farmers
A new IPES-Food report highlights land grabs (including for ostensibly ‘green’ purposes), the financial means used, and some significant implications.
Jomo Kwame Sundaram
Powerful governments, financiers, speculators, and agribusinesses are opportunistically gaining control of more cultivable land.
The report notes the 2007-08 food price spike and financial crash catalysed more land acquisitions.
Quantitative easing and financialization after the 2008 global financial crisis enabled even more land grabs. Investors, agri-food companies, and even sovereign wealth funds have obtained farmland worldwide.
Agribusinesses and other investors want land to make more profits, urging governments to enable takeovers. Cultivable land is being used for cash crops, natural resource extraction, mining, real property and infrastructure development, and ‘green’ projects, including biofuels.
Rome (IFAD)* -– In celebration of the International Day of Family Remittances (IDFR) on 16 June, the G20’s Global Partnership for Financial Inclusion (GPFI) has on 14 June 2024 unveiled a new report that provides evidence of the transformative impact of digital remittances, as a driver of financial inclusion and poverty reduction worldwide.
© IFAD/Purnima Shrestha
Despite persistent gender gaps, the hard-earned money sent back home by migrant workers remains a vital lifeline for over 800 million people, particularly for women and vulnerable populations.
(United Nations)* — It is projected that by 2030 more than US$ 5 trillion will have been sent home by migrants to low- and middle-income countries (LMICs), with much of this money going directly to rural areas where 80 percent of the world’s poor live, facing food shortages and the impacts of climate change.
(UN News)* — The global fight to tackle female genital mutilation (FGM) is being undermined by the movement of some girls across national borders and beyond to undergo the procedure, the UN human rights office (OHCHR) warned in a new report published on Friday [14 June 2024].
© UNICEF/Mulugeta Ayene | The authorities in Ethiopia stopped the circumcision of a young girl after they were alerted.
Although many States have intensified their efforts towards eradication, the practice continues across the world in part due to “the clandestine nature of cross-border and transnational FGM,” it said.
“Female genital mutilation is part of a continuum of gender-based violence and has no place in a human rights-respecting universe,” said the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, Volker Türk.
HUMAN WRONGS WATCH 