15/12/2020
The year is drawing to a close, memorable for its unrelenting spotlight on coronavirus. Reflecting on the past 12 months, imagine what you would do if you were in a position of great power and influence. Two scenarios are offered, each with different underlying goals.

Marilyn Langlois
The Global Power Elite scenario is geared toward protecting the right of the super-rich to continue amassing ever more riches, and the One Earth Family scenario is aimed at ensuring every human being can live in dignity and harmony with the earth. I’ll start this exercise; then it’s your turn.
Global Power Elite Scenario
The Global Power Elite[i] described by Peter Phillips include many of the world’s wealthiest and well-connected people in high finance, mega-corporations, information technology, intelligence agencies, public relations, media, academia and politics, in other words, the 0.01%.
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15/12/2020
Migrants earn nearly 13 per cent less than national workers, an ILO study shows. In some countries, the gap is as much as 42 per cent.
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14/12/2020
“Vaccinating the world against COVID-19 will be one of the largest mass undertakings in human history, and we will need to move as quickly as the vaccines can be produced,” says Henrietta Fore, UNICEF Executive Director.

A health worker fills a syringe with vaccine at a Rohingya refugee camp in Cox’s Bazar, Bangladesh. Credit: UNICEF/Patrick Brown.
UNITED NATIONS, Dec 11 2020 (IPS)* – There is a longstanding belief that virtually everything in this world is stacked up against the poor and the downtrodden. The Covid-19 vaccine is no exception because some of world’s richest nations, including the US, Canada and UK, seem to have cornered most of the supplies — whilst marginalizing the world’s poorer nations.
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14/12/2020
13 December 2020 (UN News)* — The Handmaid’s Tale, a critically acclaimed television series which has won 38 Emmy awards, may be about a fictional “alternative reality”, but the show’s creators have gone to great lengths to ensure that references to themes such as climate change, human rights abuses, and refugees, are as real and accurate as possible, by collaborating closely with UN experts.
George Kraychyk | In the fictional country of Gilead, an environmental disaster has caused infertility amongst women.
The TV version of The Handmaid’s Tale is based on the classic 1985 book of the same name by acclaimed author Margaret Atwood, about a dystopian USA, renamed Gilead, ruled by a brutal theocracy in which people, particularly women, have been stripped of their rights.
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14/12/2020
10 December 2020 (WMO)* — Climate change continues to disrupt the Arctic, with the second-highest air temperatures and second-lowest summer sea ice driving a cascade of impacts, including the loss of snow and extraordinary wildfires in northern Russia in 2020.
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14/12/2020
A child and her pet in Shangri-La, Yunan Province, China. Shangri-La is unique for its Tibetan culture and alpine landscapes including sacred snow-capped mountains and spectacular gorges. PHOTO:©Sujan Sarkar / Mountain Partnership.
11 December 2020 (United Nations)* — Mountains are home to 15% of the world´s population and host about half of the world’s biodiversity hotspots. They provide freshwater for everyday life to half of humanity. Their conservation is a key factor for sustainable development and is part of Goal 15 of the SDGs.
Unfortunately, mountains are under threat from climate change and overexploitation. As the global climate continues to warm, mountain people — some of the world’s poorest — face even greater struggles to survive.
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14/12/2020
11 December 2020 (UNEP)* — The United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP), its Wild for Life campaign, and its Vanishing Treasures programme, invite you on an amazing virtual journey which takes you across four mountain regions to visit and learn about some of the iconic endangered species that roam these wild spaces.
Photo: UNEP / 11 Dec 2020
Awe-inspiring videos and fun quizzes help you learn about conservation efforts to maintain the delicate balance between animals and plants in the Tien Shan mountains in northern China; the Virunga mountains in the Democratic Republic of Congo, Rwanda, and Uganda; the “third pole” Hindu Kush Himalaya mountain region in south-central Asia; and Europe’s last great wilderness, the seven-country-straddling Carpathian Mountains.
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14/12/2020
International Mountain Day 2020 highlights need to protect ecosystems and improve livelihoods
Farmer Goma Panthi Khatri in village of Narapani, Nepal.
ROME, 11 December 2020 (FAO)* — Mountains host about half of the global biodiversity hotspots and are home to a growing number of the world’s hungriest people, according to a new study launched by the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO) and partners to mark International Mountain Day 2020.
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14/12/2020
(UN News)* — UN experts called on the Security Council on 3 December 2020, along with the international community at large, to put an end to the “surreal and absurd dimension” of human rights violations engulfing war-torn Yemen, where abuses continue unchecked.
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© UNICEF/Areej Alghabri | An eighteen-month -baby, who has lost an eye due to disease, is treated at a hospital in Sana’a, Yemen.
“We are running out of time…approximately 16 million people cannot put food on their table. This is a disaster, this is a ticking time-bomb and the world needs to act now,” WFP spokesperson Tomson Phiri told journalists at a scheduled press conference in Geneva.
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11/12/2020
9 December 2020 (UN News)* — Prominent journalists and champions of press freedom from across the world are examining ways to overcome increasing challenges facing the media during a two-day online conference organized jointly by the UN’s cultural and educational agency, UNESCO, and the Netherlands.
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UNAMA/Fardin Waezi | A mural on a blast wall in downtown Kabul commemorates journalists killed in Afghanistan in 2016.
The World Press Freedom Conference 2020, which began on Wednesday [9 December 2020], features interactive panels and discussions covering issues such as investigating the killings of journalists, online violence against women journalists, and the media’s response to the COVID-19 pandemic.
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