'Unseen' News and Views – By Baher Kamal & The Like
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.
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.
The US Withdrawal, Drops in Foreign Aid, and Health Care for Women and Girls
Zarmina, 25, holds her 15-day-old daughter, Bushra, in October 2020. She has lived in Shahrak-e-Sabz camp for two years after her family was driven out of Ghor province by fighting between government forces and the Taliban. © 2020 Lynzy Billing
(UN News)* — The United Nations independent human rights expert on Myanmar on Friday [7 May 2021] called on countries that have not yet done so, to impose arms embargo on the country urgently, to stop the “massacre” of citizens across the country.
Tom Andrews, UN Special Rapporteur on the human rights situation in the southeast Asian nation, underscored in a statement, the need to stop the flow of weapons and so called dual-use weapons technology into the hands of forces under the command of the military junta, describing it as “literally a matter of life and death.”
Afghanistan is a geopolitical game changer for the West
6 May 2021 (Wall Street International)*
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).
A new freely downloadable book
John Scales Avery
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:
https://eacpe.org/67-years-in-the-peace-movement/
Holger Terp’s invitation
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.
“Almost 10 million Bangladeshi migrants work across the world. A UNICEF report states that, approximately 400 women and children in Bangladesh are victims of trafficking every month. According to a report, approximately 3,000,000 Bangladeshi children and women have been trafficked out of the country in the last 10 years. A Pakistan based organization, Lawyers for Human Rights and Legal Aid’s report shows nearly 200,000 Bangladeshi women and girls were sold in Pakistan. The statistics highlight how grave the human trafficking situation is in Bangladesh…”
Dr. Rashida Khanam
Human trafficking is a violation of human rights, an unethical and heinous crime against humanity. “The trade of human beings, a modern form of slavery . . . violates the God-given dignity . . .”.1 Pope Francis.
Conflict, economic shocks – including due to COVID-19, extreme weather – pushed at least 155 million people into acute food insecurity in 2020
Brussels/Rome (FAO)* – The number of people facing acute food insecurity and needing urgent life and livelihood-saving assistance has hit a five-year high in 2020 in countries beset by food crises, an annual report launched today [5 May 2021] by the Global Network Against Food Crises (GNAFC) – an international alliance of the UN, the EU, governmental and non-governmental agencies working to tackle food crises together – has found.
