(UN News)* — As the world exhibits new bonds of solidarity in response to the coronavirus pandemic, it is a matter of “humanitarian and practical urgency to lift unilateral economic sanctions immediately,” to prevent hunger crises in pandemic-hit countries, a UN human rights expert, said on Tuesday [31 March 2020].
WFP/Beyaz | The UN World Food Programme (WFP) and partners are working around the clock to provide food to displaced families in northwest Syria.
The continued imposition of such measures on Syria, Venezuela, Iran, Cuba and Zimbabwe in particular, severely undermines the fundamental right to sufficient and adequate food, Hilal Elver, the UN Special Rapporteur on the Right to Food, stressed.
In what is being called the worst financial crisis since 1929, the US stock market has lost a third of its value in the space of a month, wiping out all of its gains of the last three years. When the Federal Reserve tried to ride to the rescue, it only succeeded in making matters worse. The government then pulled out all the stops. To our staunchly capitalist leaders, socialism is suddenly looking good.
Ellen Brown
The financial crisis began in late February, when the World Health Organization announced that it was time to prepare for a global pandemic.
The Russia-Saudi oil price war added fuel to the flames, causing all three Wall Street indices to fall more than 7 percent on March 9. It was called Black Monday, the worst drop since the Great Recession in 2008; but it would get worse.
(UN News)* — The economic fallout from COVID-19 is likely to get “much worse” before it gets better for some six billion people living in developing economies, the UN said on Monday[30 March 2020], in an appeal for a $2.5 trillion rescue package to boost their resilience to further hardship.
According to new analysis from UNCTAD, the UN trade and development body, commodity-rich exporting countries will face a $2 trillion to $3 trillion drop in investment from overseas in the next two years.
30 March 2020 (UN News)* — Combatting the COVID-19 pandemic must also include stamping out what one independent human rights expert has called the “darker sides” of the disease: verbal and physical attacks against Chinese and other minority communities, and excluding them from access to healthcare.
.
World Bank/Curt Carnemark | A woman wears a medical mask in China. (file photo)
In a recent article I reported existing evidence on the way in which COVID-19 is being used to implement, but also divert attention from, initiatives being taken by the global elite to consolidate and expand its power in significant ways, and perhaps to make the final drive to take total control of global society. See ‘Observing Elites Manipulate Our Fear: COVID-19, Propaganda and Knowledge’.
Robert J. Burrowes,
Moreover, while global attention is focused on COVID-19, attention has been distracted from the many other ongoing crises – particularly including the vast range of threats that constitute an imminent danger to human existence: see ‘Human Extinction Now Imminent and Inevitable? A Report on the State of Planet Earth’ – and no doubt other undesirable initiatives being carried out by the global elite outside our view.
“It is a duty of a society of solidarity in times of crisis to ensure that migrant citizens have access to health and social security,” the Minister of Internal Affairs said.
Portuguese Prime Minister Antonio Costa’s socialist party returned the country to economic growth while reversing austerity policies. | Photo: EFE (Photo fromteleSUR’s article).
29 March 2020 (teleSUR)* — The current socialist government in Portugal decided to grant citizenship rights to all migrants and asylum seekers with pending residency applications from Monday until July 1 at least due to the COVID-19 pandemic, the country’s authorities announced Saturday [28 March 2020].
UNITED NATIONS, Mar 30 2020 (IPS)* – As coronavirus makes its way through different continents, countries, and communities around the world having claimed more than 23,000 lives, experts are ringing alarm bells about the implications of the disease as it hits South Asia, which hosts almost 2 billion of the world’s population.
As the elderly and unwell self-isolate, a network of Syrians provides a vital bridge to the outside world for Swiss in greatest need. | Español | Français | عربي
Amnesty InternationalResponding to the US Environmental Protection Agency’s (EPA) announcement it would indefinitely suspend enforcement of environmental laws due to the COVID-19 pandemic, Richard Pearshouse, Amnesty International’s Head of Crisis and the Environment, said:
.
“The Trump administration is cynically abusing this crisis to achieve its pre-COVID-19 goal of gutting US environmental regulations.
.