(Greenpeace International)* — Climate breakdown. Plastic pollution. Overfishing. The oceans are facing more threats than ever – and yet, there’s a new baddie in town. A secretive industry is ramping up that would put even more pressure on our oceans: deep sea mining.
The deep sea mining industry is planning to send monster machines to plunder the seabed and extract polymetallic nodules – potato-sized lumps of rocks loaded with metals and minerals. Deep sea mining isn’t happening yet, but the kinds of metals this industry is targeting are used in phones, laptops and batteries.
8 May 2021 (Wall Street International)*— This paper is not going to be academic or conceptual, but a long article. I thought that my best contribution would be to give a testimony I have lived through of the triple process of decolonisation, the Non-Aligned Movement and the Group of 77, in which I actively participated.
Dumbarton Oaks in Washington, D.C., was the location of the conference in 1944 | Image from Wall Street International.
I believe that I am one of the few survivors left from the Bandung Conference (1955) and that communicating my experience of the process of the creation and development of the Third World, its vision and values, may be the most useful thing I can do.
LONDON, UK (UNHCR)* – For more than seven decades, Benjamin has lacked something that most people take for granted: a nationality.
Born in Namibia, then part of South Africa, he did not acquire nationality at birth because at the time neither of his parents had citizenship or permanent residency in the country.
9 May 2021 (UN News)* — Misrah, an undocumented migrant worker, and her family, left their home in Ethiopia hoping for a better life. Instead, her three children are now dead, drowned during a perilous sea crossing across the Gulf of Aden, when the overloaded boat smuggling them into the country capsized.
“I have lost everything,” says Misrah, as she struggles to recount the most traumatic of events, witnessing the deaths of her three children.
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The 27-year-old Ethiopian woman, her husband and children – Aziza, five; Rachar, three; and Ikram, two – and at least 55 other migrants and refugees were aboard a boat controlled by smugglers crossing the Gulf of Aden from Yemen to the Horn of Africa via Djibouti, on 12 April.
7 May 2021 (UNEP)* — Since the start of the pandemic a growing number of people have turned to nature – including visible and audible nature in urban settings in the form of birds and birdsong – to soothe the angst brought about by COVID-19.
And bird watching seems to be becoming more popular. Starting in April 2020, eBird began to see a notable increase in contributions of bird observations. April 2020 eBird checklist submissions increased by 41 per cent compared to April 2019.
Thousands of boots on the ground have been replaced by multiple deployments of smart bombs that stay under the radar of public debate
Fewer boots are on the ground compared with Iraq in 2007 | Mike Pryor, US Army (Copyright-free)
8 May 2021 (openDemocracy)* — In the black and white TV schedule of the late 1950s and early 1960s, the Western drama series reigned supreme. One of the most popular was ‘Have Gun, Will Travel’, starring Richard Boone as a mercenary in the late 1800s.
ROME (FAO)* – International food commodity prices rose for the 11th consecutive month in April, with sugar leading the increase and cereals resuming their upward trend, the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO) on 6 May 2021 reported.
Loading sugarcane in Nigeria.
The FAO Food Price Index averaged 120.9 points in April, 1.7 percent higher than March and 30.8 percent higher than its level in the same month last year.
Washington DC, 6 May 2021 (UNEP)* – A Global Methane Assessment released today by the Climate and Clean Air Coalition (CCAC) and the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) shows that human-caused methane emissions can be reduced by up to 45 per cent this decade.
Such reductions would avoid nearly 0.3°C of global warming by 2045 and would be consistent with keeping the Paris Climate Agreement’s goal to limit global temperature rise to 1.5 degrees Celsius (1.5˚C) within reach.
The Competition aims to recognize fair and balanced media reports that contribute to the elimination of public misperception, xenophobia and discrimination against migrant workers and highlight the positive contributions they make.
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6 May 2021 (ILO)* — This year, specific media coverage of the impact of COVID-19 on labour migration and fair recruitment, including contributions of migrant care workers, will be viewed favourably, as well as stories about migrant domestic workers to mark celebrate the 10 year anniversary of the ILO Domestic Workers Convention, 2011 (No. 189).
I would like to announce the publication of a book which discusses the things that I have experienced during my 67 years of work in the peace movement.
The book may be freely downloaded and circulated from the following link:
Seven years ago, Holger Terp, the founder and web editor of the Danish Peace Academy, invited me to write something about my 60 years of work in the peace movement.
A recognised stateless person in the UK sits on a park bench in east London. © UNHCR/Katie Barlow
HUMAN WRONGS WATCH 