UNITED NATIONS, New York, 21 March 2022 (UNFPA)* – In 2021, double disaster struck Haiti when Tropical Storm Grace hit the island nation just two days after it was rocked by a 7.2 magnitude earthquake.
As rain lashed the country’s already damaged infrastructure, midwife Jeffthanie Mathurin remembers contraceptive deliveries getting stuck on the roads – presenting a major challenge for women and girls.
“We noticed this catastrophe increased the risk of more women getting pregnant unintentionally,” she told UNFPA. “The poorest people in the country, such as rural women, face the worst consequences of climate change.”
(UN NEWS)*— Water starts wars, puts out fires, and is key to human survival, but ensuring access for all hinges largely on improving cooperation, according to a new flagship UN report published on Tuesday [21 March 2023].
Launched ahead of the UN 2023 Water Conference, the new edition of the UN World Water Development Report focuses on twin themes of partnerships and cooperation. Published by the UN Education, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO), the report highlights collaborative ways actors can work together to overcome common challenges.
“There is an urgent need to establish strong international mechanisms to prevent the global water crisis from spiralling out of control,” said UNESCO Director-General Audrey Azoulay. “Water is our common future, and it is essential to act together to share it equitably and manage it sustainably.”
MADRID, Mar 21 2023 (IPS)* – Shockingly, the human suicidal war on Nature not only continues unabated but is also set to become even more virulent. Just to start with, please be reminded that groundwater accounts for 99% of all liquid freshwater on Earth, according to the 2022 UN World Water Development Report.
“Drop by drop, this precious lifeblood is being poisoned by pollution and drained by vampiric overuse, with water demand expected to exceed supply by 40% by decade’s end” Credit: Bigstock.
And that groundwater already provides half of the volume of water withdrawn for domestic use by the global population, including the drinking water for the vast majority of the rural population who do not get their water delivered to them via public or private supply systems.
MADRID, Mar 17 2023 (IPS)* – Three-quarters of a century ago, the world adopted the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, emphasising that all human beings are born equal in dignity and rights. The 2023 theme of its 75th anniversary focuses on the urgency of combating racism and racial discrimination.
More: nearly a quarter of a century ago, the world adopted in South Africa the Durban Declaration to combat racism, racial discrimination, xenophobia, distrust, intolerance, and hate, globally.
Since then, these “contagious killers” not only continued unabated but are now more spread than ever in all societies, in particular in those under the dominance of the so-called ‘white supremacy.’
(UN News)* — Life-threatening hunger caused by climate shocks, violent insecurity and disease in the Horn of Africa, have left nearly 130,000 people “looking death in the eyes” and nearly 50 million facing crisis levels of food insecurity, the UN World Health Organization (WHO) said on Friday [].
In an appeal for $178 million to support humanitarian assistance across the seven affected countries in the Greater Horn region, veteran WHO worker Liesbeth Aelbrecht warned that the situation was worse than anything she’d seen in more than two decades in Djibouti, Ethiopia, Kenya, Somalia, South Sudan, Sudan and Uganda.
“These 48 million people do include as many as 129,000 who are facing catastrophe; and catastrophe, that means they are facing starvation and literally looking death in the eyes,” Ms. Aelbrecht told journalists in Geneva. Those most at risk, are living in both South Sudan and Somalia.
(UN News)* — Increasingly sophisticated and high-calibre firearms and ammunition are being trafficked into Haiti, fuelling an ongoing surge of gang violence that has plagued residents for months, according to a new UN assessment released on Thursday [].
The UN Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC) report, Haiti’s criminal markets: mapping trends in firearms and drug trafficking, warns that a recent increase in arms seizures alongside intelligence and law enforcement reporting, suggests trafficking of weapons is on the rise.
‘Volatile situation’
“By providing a rapid assessment of illicit firearms and drug trafficking, this UNODC study seeks to shed light on the trafficking flows enabling gangs in Haiti and fuelling further violence in a volatile and desperate situation to help inform responses and support to the people of Haiti,” said Angela Me, Chief of the UNODC Research and Trend Analysis Branch.
MADRID, Mar 3 2023 (IPS)* – The data is shocking: three-quarters of African Governments have already reduced their agricultural budgets while paying almost double that on arms.
Chronic underinvestment in agriculture is a key cause of the widespread hunger experienced in 2022, according to Oxfam report. Credit: Busani Bafana/IPS.
Africa is home to a quarter of the world’s entire agricultural land. Nevertheless, in the 12 months that African leaders vowed to improve food security in the continent, over 20 million more people have been pushed into “severe hunger.”
1 March 2023 (HUMAN RIGHTS WATCH)* — A devastating new investigation by the New York Times found migrant children across the United States working in dangerous jobs in violation of US child labor laws.There is more to this story. A group of often-overlooked US child workers – those working in agriculture – regularly risk their health and lives in dangerous jobs. But their backbreaking work rarely violates child labor laws because they lack basic protections given to other child workers.
(UN NEWS)* — The number of children worldwide without access to social protection continues to rise, putting them at risk of poverty, hunger and discrimination, the International Labour Organization (ILO) and the UN Children’s Fund (UNICEF) said in a report published on Wednesday [].
Between 2016 and 2020, an additional 50 million boys and girls aged 15 and under missed out on child benefits, driving up the total to 1.46 billion globally.
Increased risk of hardship
Child and family benefit coverage rates either fell or stagnated in every region of the world during this period, according to the report.
For example, Latin America and the Caribbean saw coverage decline significantly, from roughly 51 per cent to 42 per cent, whereas rates remained around 21 per cent in Central and Southern Asia.
MADRID, Mar 1 2023 (IPS)* – Wildlife is indeed far much more than a safari or an ‘exotic’ ornament: as many as four billion people –or an entire half the whole world’s population– rely on wild species for income, food, medicines and wood fuel for cooking.
A million plant and animal species are threatened with extinction, we have lost half of the world’s corals and lose forest areas the size of 27 football fields every minute, finds WWF report. Credit: Stella Paul/IPS
In spite of that, one million species of plants and animals are already facing extinction due to the voracious profit-making, over-exploitative, illegal trade and the relentless depletion of the variety of life on Planet Earth.
HUMAN WRONGS WATCH 