1. Mother Earth is a sacred, self organized living being. She creates and sustains life.Through her biosphere and her complex ecological processes, she regulates her water systems, her nutrition cycles, and her climate system.Over 4 billion years, using the energy of the sun, the power of photosynthesis by microbes and the green leaf of plants, she brought the temperature of the planet down from 290 C to 13 C, and the concentration of atmospheric CO2 down from 98% to .03%, from around 4,000 to somewhere around 250-270.
Whether – like in Derna – it’s too much water leading to floods, or too little water causing droughts, or polluted water resulting in health risks, addressing the dangers that water poses can save lives.
As climate change intensifies these threats, there is an urgent need for action.
(UN News)* — The consequences of poor chemicals and waste management worldwide are fuelling an “unprecedented global toxic emergency”, independent UN human rights experts have warned, ahead of a major summit next week.
The fifth session of the International Conference on Chemicals Management (ICCM-5), organized by UN environment programme UNEP and hosted by Germany, kicks off in Bonn on Monday.
By approving a new political declaration at UN Headquarters during the high level meeting, Member States also pledged to take concrete action and provide the necessary funding to reach the ambitious goal.
(September 19, 2023) – When the European Commission president arrived on the island of Lampedusa in Italy on September 17, it was an opportunity to reset Europe’s broken approach to migration. Instead, we got a 10-point plan of ineffective and abusive policies, with some wishful thinking.
UNITED NATIONS, Sep 19 2023 (IPS)* – Politically, the United Nations has largely been described as a monumental failure —with little or no progress in resolving some of the world’s past and ongoing military conflicts and civil wars, including Palestine, Western Sahara, Kashmir, and more recently, Ukraine, Yemen, Afghanistan, Syria, Sudan and Myanmar, among others.
Credit: United Nations
Still, to give the devil its due, the UN has made some remarkable progress providing food, shelter and medical care to millions of people caught in military conflicts, including in Ukraine, Sudan, Syria, Libya and Somalia. Has the UN been gradually transformed into a humanitarian aid organization — diplomats without borders?
(UN News)* — In war-torn Sudan, more than 1,200 children under five have died in camps in the space of four months from a combination of measles and malnutrition, UN humanitarians said on Tuesday [].
According to the UN refugee agency (UNCHR) and the World Health Organization (WHO), the children were refugees living in nine camps in Sudan’s White Nile state.
UN refugee chief Filippo Grandi insisted that the world had “the means and the money” to prevent every one of those deaths.
(UN News)* — In Ethiopia, war crimes have continued unabated almost a year after a ceasefire was agreed between the country’s Government and forces from the northern Tigray region, UN-appointed independent rights experts said on Monday [].
The latest report from the International Commission of Human Rights Experts on Ethiopia documents atrocities perpetrated “by all parties to the conflict” since 3 November 2020 – the start date of the armed conflict in Tigray – including mass killings, rape, starvation, destruction of schools and medical facilities, forced displacement and arbitrary detention.
(UN News)* — The number of children missing out on any schooling has increased by six million, bringing the total to 250 million, according to new figures released on Monday [] by the UN Education, Science, and Cultural Organization (UNESCO).
The increase is partly due to the mass exclusion of women and girls from education in Afghanistan but can also be attributed to broader stagnation in education provision worldwide.
The findings undermine UN Sustainable Development Goal 4, which sets the goal of quality education for all by 2030.
(UN News)* — Over 4.5 billion people worldwide lack coverage for essential health services the UN health agency said on Monday [], underscoring the need for stronger political commitment and increased government investment.
Moreover, two billion face severe financial hardships when paying out-of-pocket for necessary medical treatment, according to a joint World Health Organization (WHO)-World Bank report.
Over 4 billion years, using the energy of the sun, the power of photosynthesis by microbes and the green leaf of plants, she brought the temperature of the planet down from 290 C to 13 C, and the concentration of atmospheric CO2 down from 98% to .03%, from around 4,000 to somewhere around 250-270.
HUMAN WRONGS WATCH 