Archive for ‘Africa’

25/05/2020

First Person: ‘I Am Nothing Without My Culture’

25 May 2020 (UN News)* — Michael Pili Pang, who is based in Honolulu, the capital of the US state of Hawaii is what is known as a kuma hula, or master teacher of the traditional dance. His interest in hula began at the age of seven and he opened his hālau or dance school over thirty years ago. He teaches what he describes as “multi-generational” classes.

He spoke to UN News as part of a photography project by the International Labour Organization ahead of the UN-backed International Arts Education Week which begins on 25 May.

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25/05/2020

Why We Need to Talk about Debt Cancellation for Global South Countries

Climate Emergency Action at Laguna de Aculeo in Chile © Martin Katz / Greenpeace
Climate Emergency Action at Laguna de Aculeo in Chile

Why we need to cancel debt payments…

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25/05/2020

‘At Least 80 Million Children Under One at Risk of Diseases Such as Diphtheria, Measles and Polio as COVID-19 Disrupts Routine Vaccination Efforts’

Human Wrongs Watch

22 May 2020 (WHO)*COVID 19 is disrupting life-saving immunization services around the world, putting millions of children – in rich and poor countries alike – at risk of diseases like diphtheria, measles and polio.

Child vaccination

WHO/S. Volkov

This stark warning comes from the World Health Organization, UNICEF and Gavi, the Vaccine Alliance ahead of the Global Vaccine Summit on 4 June, at which world leaders will come together to help maintain immunization programmes and mitigate the impact of the pandemic in lower-income countries.

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24/05/2020

Man as the Center of the World

Human Wrongs Watch

By Vera Felicidade de Almeida Campos*

24 May 2020 (Wall Street International)*One of the most questioning and innovative results of the Illuminism – eighteenth century – was to place man (the individual) as the center of the world. This antithesis to the absolute – God – represented by its supposed signifiers – the Church, the royalty – opened new perspectives for the human, being later developed in a movement, an ideology, a social and legal legacy: the French Revolution. From then on, the motto “freedom, equality, fraternity” became the fundamental summary that guides the trajectory of the Western man. 

Charles Gabriel Lemonnier, Salon de Madame GeoffrinCharles Gabriel Lemonnier, Salon de Madame Geoffrin | Image from Wall Street International.

Man is then equal to his fellow man, nothing differentiates them: neither appearance nor origin or social position, and this equality reflects itself in the laws and possibilities of life.

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24/05/2020

Fourteen Days in Limbo: What Happens to Returning Migrant Workers During The COVID-19 Crisis

Human Wrongs Watch

By Monica Chiriac | IOM*

Thirty-four children were part of the group returning from Burkina Faso this May 1.

photo_1Photo: IOM/Monica Chiriac

Boubacar, 65, and his two sons, consider themselves to be excellent farmers, but Niger’s adverse weather and persistent droughts make it difficult to have a stable income from the land. In the off season, Nigeriens like Boubacar look for alternatives to make ends meet, and many choose to work in the goldmines in neighboring Burkina Faso.

“In my village, we don’t really know any profession other than agriculture,” says Boubacar.

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24/05/2020

The Elite’s COVID-19 Coup: Fighting for Our Humanity, Our Liberty and Our Future

Human Wrongs Watch

By Robert J. Burrowes*

We are being utterly transformed. And the world is being utterly transformed around us.

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Robert J. Burrowes,

Ostensibly, this is to tackle a simple virus. In reality, it is to achieve an elite design at staggering cost to humanity and to life generally.

If you have not been carefully following what is taking place, let me highlight some recent developments and what we can do about them.

On 26 March 2020, the World Intellectual Property Organisation (WIPO) granted Microsoft a world patent. Titled ‘1. WO2020060606 – Cryptocurrency System Using Body Activity Data’, this patent gives Microsoft (that is, Bill Gates) extraordinary power over our lives.

As Professor Vandana Shiva evocatively explains in her latest article, ‘My Earth Journey in defence of Biodiversity, Life and Freedom over 5 decades’, this development is ‘robbing us of our deep humanity’:

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23/05/2020

An Above-Normal 2020 Atlantic Hurricane Season Is Expected Because of a Number of Climate Factors and Warmer-Than-Average Sea Surface Temperatures

22 May 2020 (WMO)*An above-normal 2020 Atlantic hurricane season is expected because of a number of climate factors and warmer-than-average sea surface temperatures,  according to forecasters with NOAA’s Climate Prediction Center, a division of the National Weather Service.

The outlook predicts a 60% chance of an above-normal season, a 30% chance of a near-normal season, and only a 10% chance of a below-normal season. The Atlantic hurricane season runs from June 1 through November 30.

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23/05/2020

More than 50 Million People Are Displaced within Their Own Country

(The Norwegian Refugee Council)* — Never before have so many people been displaced by conflict and violence as at the end of 2019. At the same time, there has been a sharp increase in the number of people displaced by disasters, compared with the previous year.
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A recent displaced family arrive at Abs Camp, northern Yemen, in March 2019. They are one of thousands of families forced to flee by the ongoing conflict in Yemen. Photo: Mohammed Awadh/NRC

A total of 8.5 million people were forced to flee within their own country by conflict and violence during 2019, according to a new report from the Internal Displacement Monitoring Centre (IDMC).

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23/05/2020

Internal Migration: A Literary/Historical View

Human Wrongs Watch

STOCKHOLM / ROME, May 22 2020 (IPS)* – It is easy to generalize about migration. Populist politicians often portray migrants as strangers and ”our” homeland as a stable entity, rooted in an old agricultural society. When they do so they tend to forget that most of us are in fact migrants who have left that traditional farming community far behind and if it was not we who did so, it was our ancestors.

Another form of generalization is to mirror the general in the personal, something that is done in novels and films. I believe that virtually every country on earth can present moving descriptions of people leaving the countryside for the city.

Reading a novel or watching movie describing this process may help us to realize that behind every migrant, international as well as internal, there is a unique human destiny.

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23/05/2020

Science Points to Causes of COVID-19

Human Wrongs Watch

22 May 2020 (UN Environment)* — Coronaviruses are transmitted between animals and humans. Many are relatively harmless – causing no more than a common cold. Others result in diseases that are new and unfamiliar, like the COVID-19 pandemic, and before that, outbreaks of diseases like Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome or SARS (2002); Avian Influenza or bird flu (2004); H1N1 or Swine  Flu (2009); Middle East Respiratory Syndrome or MERS (2012); Ebola (2014– 2015); Zika virus (2015–2016); and West Nile virus (2019).
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Photo by Unsplash/ Michael Longmire