'Unseen' News and Views
14 March 2025 (UNCTAD)* — Governments are grappling with soaring debt costs that are squeezing public finances and stalling development.
Default image copyright and description © Shutterstock/sntes |Women trudge miles to fetch safe drinking water in Baidoa, Somalia. Public debt burdens can undermine countries’ ability to invest in essential services and infrastructure.
(UN News)* — The rapid spread of the highly infectious avian flu virus H5N1 has reached an “unprecedented” scale, wiping out hundreds of millions of birds worldwide and increasingly spilling over into mammals, the UN Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) warned on Monday .
New FAO study notes a nearly 40 percent price surge in 2024 due to supply-side disruptions, primarily from unfavourable weather
.jpg?sfvrsn=caa8700a_4 "Adverse climatic conditions drive coffee prices to highest level in years")
Smallholder farmers account for 80 percent of global coffee production. ©FAO/Santiago Billy
Rome (FAO)* – World coffee prices reached a multi-year high in 2024 – increasing 38.8 percent on the previous year’s average – mostly driven by inclement weather affecting key producing countries, the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO) on 14 March 2025 said.
– In these turbulent and sad times, it is hard to keep quiet about abuses and violations of human rights taking place around the world; in eastern DR Congo, South Sudan, Ukraine, and Gaza.
Among the most egregious examples of incomprehensible stances on such abuses is the behaviour displayed by the Trump Administration, not least the President’s behaviour against the lawfully elected president of Ukraine.
Trump’s doubts about the validity of a nation’s desperate struggle against the forces of a dictatorial regime, which destroys their country and aims at taking over its richest territory.
The European Commission’s proposal for a new “Returns Regulation” for undocumented migrants, announced March 11, is both cruel and unrealistic.
It would mean longer detention, harsher treatment, and fewer rights for people, without any meaningful promise of more repatriations.
(UN News)* — Online attacks against women are getting worse, according to the UN, causing lasting damage that can spill over into real world violence. Leading activists from Spain and Latin America met at UN Headquarters on Wednesday [] to rally women and share strategies on fighting back.
“We were already overstretched, under resourced and literally under attack, with last year being the deadliest year on record to be a humanitarian worker. But it is far tougher for the 300 million plus people who we serve,” he said.
(UN News)* — The UN’s top relief official warned on Wednesday [that the global humanitarian system has reached breaking point, with funding cuts forcing life-or-death decisions over which aid programmes to sustain and which to shut down.
– NATO geopolitical strategy has now joined the ‘coalition’ of Western geoeconomic forces accelerating planetary heating, now led again by re-elected US President Donald Trump.
Jomo Kwame Sundaram
Industrial Revolution
Economic development is typically associated with the spread of industrialisation over the last two centuries.
The Industrial Revolution involved greater energy use to increase productive capacities significantly.
Burning biomass and fossil fuels greatly expanded mechanical energy generation. The age of industry in the last two centuries has thus involved more hydrocarbon combustion to increase output.
Uneven development has also transformed population geography.
HUMAN WRONGS WATCH 