Archive for ‘Africa’

13/11/2021

Global Survey Shows Hardly any Support for Net-Zero Pledges with Carbon Offsets

Yet as nations began wrapping up the difficult talks at the UN Climate Change Conference, also known as COP26 in Glasgow, false solutions, such as net-zero offsets and carbon markets ended up on the agenda. Now climate negotiators and youth activists are debating net-zero and what it will mean for years to come.

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13/11/2021

Conflict, Violence, Climate Change Drove Displacement Higher in First Half of 2021

Democratic Republic of Congo. More than 350,000 people displaced by Goma volcano eruption in urgent need of humanitarian assistance

People fleeing the eruption of Mount Nyiragongo volcano in the Democratic Republic of the Congo seek shelter in the town of Sake, May 2021. UNHCR immediately began providing assistance.  © UNHCR/Guerchom Ndebo

The report, for January-June 2021, showed an increase from 82.4 million at end 2020. This resulted largely from internal displacement, with more people fleeing multiple active conflicts around the world, especially in Africa. The report also noted that COVID-19 border restrictions continued to limit access to asylum in many locations.

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13/11/2021

Europe Hits Highest Weekly COVID-19 Cases since Pandemic Began 

12 November 2021 (UN News)* Almost two million cases of COVID-19 were reported in Europe last week, the most in a single week in that region since the pandemic started, according to the World Health Organization (WHO).
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© UNICEF/Ismail Taxta | A healthcare worker prepares a COVID-19 vaccine at a hospital in Mogadishu, Somalia

Almost 27 thousand deaths were reported in the continent last week, more than half of all COVID-19 deaths globally.

Speaking to journalists in Geneva, WHO Director-General Tedros Ghebreyesus explained that the virus is not only surging in countries with lower vaccination rates in Eastern Europe, but also in nations with some of the world’s highest vaccination rates in Western Europe.

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13/11/2021

Diabetes Equates the Rich and the Poor

Human Wrongs Watch

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NAIROBI, Nov 12 2021 (IPS)* – Although for different reasons, diabetes appears to be one of the few cases that put rich and poor societies at equal footing. In either case, diabetes is caused by wrong, dangerous to health nutritional habits.

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Diabetes test, Mauritius. Credit: Nasseem Ackbarally/IPS

In fact, people in industrialised countries tend to consume the so-called “junk food”, while in poor nations diabetes is caused by malnutrition and undernourishment.

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12/11/2021

Why Are Coral Reefs Dying?

Human Wrongs Watch

12 November 2021 (UNEP)* — Beneath the ocean surface, an expansive network of dynamic skeletal-like invertebrates harbours at least 25 per cent of all known marine species. Both hard and soft corals provide the basis for functioning coral reefs, which are some of the planet’s most biologically diverse and valuable ecosystems.

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Unsplash/Francesco Ungaro / 12 Nov 2021

They provide important cultural, economic, recreational and social benefits to hundreds of millions of people. They buffer shorelines against damage from storms and provide a source of medicine. And they are dying.

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12/11/2021

World Food Import Bill to Reach a Record High in 2021

Human Wrongs Watch

FAO’s new Food Outlook report examines drivers of rising prices of food commodities, freight and agricultural inputs

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Food Outlook ©FAO

Rome (FAO)* Global food trade has accelerated and is poised to hit an all-time record in both volume and value terms, according to a new report released on 11 November 2021 by the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO).

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12/11/2021

Antibiotics? Handle with Care

Human Wrongs Watch

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MADRID, Nov 11 2021 (IPS)* – Antibiotics, like other antimicrobials, have become a threat to health rather than healing it. Why? Because their misuse and overuse have created such a strong resistance that they no longer respond to medicines, making infections harder to treat and increasing the risk of disease spread, severe illness and death.

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The main drivers of antimicrobial resistance include the misuse and overuse of antimicrobials; lack of access to clean water, sanitation and hygiene for both humans and animals; poor infection and disease prevention and control in health-care facilities and farms; poor access to quality, affordable medicines, vaccines and diagnostics; lack of awareness and knowledge; and lack of enforcement of legislation. Credit: Bigstock.

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11/11/2021

‘Resolve Intolerable Belarus-Poland Border Migrant Crisis’

Human Wrongs Watch

(UN News)* — The UN Human Rights High Commissioner has urged Belarus and Poland to urgently resolve the burgeoning migrant crisis on their mutual border, where thousands of people have gathered in an attempt to enter the European Union (EU).

UN Photo/Laura Jarriel | United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights Michelle Bachelet (file).

In a statement on Wednesday 10 November 2021, UN rights chief Michelle Bachelet said she was appalled that large numbers of migrants and refugees continue to be left in a desperate situation in near-freezing temperatures.

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11/11/2021

‘West of The Nile and Around The Sudd’

Human Wrongs Watch

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THE HAGUE, The Netherlands, Nov 9 2021 (IPS)* – Tensions and hostilities persisted until early 2019, when the regime of Omar al-Bashir – to a large extent symbolized by oppressing minority groups in the Darfurs, Blue Nile state and South Kordofan – finally ended.

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The author on the road between Dilling and Kadugli, the capital of South Kordofan in February 1999.

Meanwhile, many inhabitants of the Nuba Mountains and other parts of South Kordofan, had escaped to South Sudan, which had become independent in 2011.

There, they found, however, a country with even more interethnic strains and assaults, resulting, in addition to the innumerable internally displaced persons, the flight of 2.3 million citizens to six countries in the region. An area characterized by perpetual political and ethnic tensions which often resulted in border crossings in opposite ways.

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11/11/2021

Conservation or Land Grab? The Financialization of Nature

Human Wrongs Watch

By Ellen Brown | Web of Debt – TRANSCEND Media Service*

Just in time for the UN’s policy push for “30 x 30” – 30% of the earth to be “conserved” by 2030 – a new Wall Street asset class puts up for sale the processes underpinning all life.

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Ellen Brown

A month before the 2021 United Nations Climate Change Conference (known as COP26) kicked off in Scotland, a new asset class was launched by the New York Stock Exchange that will “open up a new feeding ground for predatory Wall Street banks and financial institutions that will allow them to dominate not just the human economy, but the entire natural world.” So writes Whitney Webb in an article titled “Wall Street’s Takeover of Nature Advances with Launch of New Asset Class”:

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