'Unseen' News and Views
– Even as COVID-19 brought Africa’s already fragile health care and economic systems to the brink, wealthy states colluded with corporate giants to dupe people with empty slogans and false promises of a fair recovery from the ongoing health pandemic, a newly released report by Amnesty International finds.
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(UN News)* — Now entering its third year, the COVID-19 pandemic has continued to hold back some 405 million school children wordlwide from a full return to the classroom, according to a new report released on Wednesday [29 March 2022] by the UN Children’s Fund (UNICEF).
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– The spectre of ‘stagflation’ threatens the world once again. This time, the risk is the direct consequence of political provocations and war, and not simply due to inexorable economic forces.
Stagflation?
Stagflation is a composite word implying inflation with stagnation. Stagnation refers to weak, ‘near zero’ growth, inevitably worsening unemployment. Inflation refers to price increases – not high prices, as often implied.
Anis Chowdhury
The term ‘stagflation’ was supposedly first used in 1965 by Iain Macleod, then UK Conservative Party economic spokesperson.
He later became Chancellor of the Exchequer, or finance minister, in 1970 for little over a month, the shortest tenure in modern times.
(UN News)* — The United Nations Deputy Secretary-General on Monday [28 March 2022 ] called on countries in Asia and the Pacific to speed up the shift from fossil fuels to new, low-carbon development models, in a just and inclusive way.
Standing in front of his makeshift home in a camp for internally displaced people (IDP) in southern Somalia’s Luuq district, Ahmad Hassan Yarrow looks out towards what remains of the Juba River and shakes his head forlornly.
“Of all the droughts I have experienced in my 70 years, I have not seen anything as severe as this,” he says as he contemplates the scenery before him.
(UN News)* — Many of Libya’s migrant detention centres remain places of terrible and systematic abuse, that may amount to crimes against humanity, top rights investigators said on Monday [28 March 2022].
On the sidelines of the Human Rights Council in Geneva, head of the Fact-Finding Mission on Libya, Mohamed Auajjar, told journalists that investigators had uncovered further evidence of serious rights violations, which they first made public last October.
(UN News)* — A deepening crackdown on civil society in Libya, has prompted the concern of the UN human rights office, which noted on Friday [25 March 2022] that arbitrary arrests and a campaign of social media vilification are having “a seriously chilling effect on human rights defenders, humanitarian workers, and other civil society actors.”
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While millions have been hurt by surging gas prices, a new report from a government watchdog group shows 25 of the world’s biggest fossil fuel corporations in 2021 collectively pulled in $205 billion in profits. Now, fossil fuel giants are trying to “cash in on inflation and the crisis in Ukraine,” said one critic.
15 Mar 2022 – While millions of working people have been hurt by surging gas prices, a new analysis out today shows that 25 of the world’s biggest fossil fuel corporations collectively pulled in an “eye-popping” $205 billion in profits last year — and Big Oil is exploiting Russia’s war on Ukraine to charge even more at the pump in 2022 and advance its financial interests.
KONSO, Ethiopia, March 2022 (UNFPA)* – “I was discharged from the health facility after the stillbirth of my baby without any medication or treatment. I have been bleeding ever since,” said Asnaketch, sitting in her tent at Haylota IDP (internally displaced persons) site in Konso, a zone in Southern Nations, Nationalities, and Peoples’ Region (SNNPR).
Asnaketch, 25, had already lost her first baby after ethnic conflict broke out in their village, Gerchi, in Konso zone. “The whole village was burnt to the ground. When the clashes erupted, we had to move here,” says Asnaketch, in visible pain. “I lost my first son due to a complication when we were fleeing.”
HUMAN WRONGS WATCH 