French protesters’ rights have been “disproportionately curtailed” during the wave of recent “gilet jaunes”, or yellow jacket demonstrations across the country over Government economic policies, said a group of independent UN human rights experts on Thursday [14 February 2019].
UN Photo/Jean-Marc Ferre | Michel Forst, UN Special Rapporteur on the situation of human rights defenders, and one of the UN independent experts calling on the French Government to rethink its approach to policing the “gilets jaunes” protest movement.
The demonstrations were sparked nearly three months ago by President Emmanuel Macron’s introduction of fuel taxes, but quickly morphed into a more general revolt against austerity measures, and the political establishment in general, despite a Government climb-down over the tax.
Progress in reducing unemployment globally is not being matched by improvements in the quality of work, says the International Labour Organization’s World Employment and Social Outlook: Trends 2019 report.
GENEVA, 13 February 2019 (ILO)* – Poor quality employment is the main issue for global labour markets, with millions of people forced to accept inadequate working conditions, according to a new report from the International Labour Organization (ILO).
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New data gathered for the World Employment and Social Outlook: Trends 2019 (WESO) show that a majority of the 3.3 billion people employed globally in 2018 had inadequate economic security, material well-being and equality of opportunity.
11 February 2019 — After completing a historic 500km journey from the Kenyan island of Lamu to the Tanzanian island of Zanzibar, the world’s first ever traditional “dhow” sailing boat made entirely from recycled plastic, known as the Flipflopi, has successfully raised awareness of the need to overcome one of the world’s biggest environmental challenges: plastic pollution.
UN Environment | The FlipFlopi dhow, a 9-metre traditional sailing boat made from 10 tonnes of discarded plastic, will be the first boat of its kind to launch a world expedition on 24 January, 2018.
The Flipflopi Project was co-founded by Kenyan tour operator Ben Morison in 2016, and the ground-breaking dhow was built by master craftsmen Ali Skanda, and a team of volunteers using 10,000 tonnes of recycled plastic. The boat gets its name from the 30,000 recycled flip-flops used to decorate its multi-coloured hull.
Each year, food contaminated with bacteria, viruses, parasites, toxins or chemicals cause more than 600 million people to fall ill, and 420,000 to die worldwide, prompting a call from world leaders on Tuesday [12 February 2019]for greater international cooperation to make the food chain safer.*
World Bank/Arne Hoel | Tomato stand in market near Ramallah’s main mosque. | Photo from UN News.
10 February 2019 (Wall Street International)* — I have recently returned from Costa Rica during the period that was supposed to be winter in the Northern Hemisphere. As followers of this column know, I spend half of every year in Costa Rica, where I teach and write. This year’s visit went as usual and I was able to accomplish several writing projects.
Democratic members of Congress wear white for U.S. President Donald Trump’s address to a joint session | Photo from Wall Street International.
(FAO)* — 2018 has already come to a close and we all know we have left some things undone. As you plan your New Year’s resolutions, here are 5 reasons you should add these FAO publications to your reading list!*
1. Because reducing food waste is a good personal resolution
Food loss and waste and the right to adequate food: Every year, one-third of all food produced is lost or wasted across the globe. This is particularly devastating as 821 million people are still going hungry.
This publication makes the connection between food loss and waste and the human right to adequate food. It focuses on the need to develop sustainable global consumption and production systems.
11 January 2019 (UN Environment)* — On a cool and cloudy January day in the Chinese coastal city of Xiamen, tens of thousands of men and women pounded the streets in the first IAAF Gold Label road race of 2019. But this was a competition with a difference — heavy on sustainability, light on single-use plastics and the first international marathon to join UN Environment’s Clean Seas campaign.
10 January 2019 — After escaping from two years of captivity at the hands of Mai Mai rebels in eastern Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC), Bertine Bahige was relieved to end up in a UN refugee agency (UNHCR) camp, in faraway Mozambique.*
.In 2004, he was one of the lucky ones to be resettled in Maryland, United States, where he landed a job taking out the trash at a fast-food restaurant..Eventually, his hard work, intelligence and enduring optimism landed him a university scholarship – way out in the Rocky Mountains..He’d been forcibly taken from his family at 13, and thrown into the horrifying world of being a child soldier, before escaping his captors.
7 January 2019 (UN Environment)* — During the 12th century, people came to Cambodia’s Kulen mountain, a sacred place associated with fertility, to cut huge chunks of stone that would have to be hauled down by elephants.
In recent decades, despite Kulen becoming a protected area, people have come not just to pick the sweet lychee fruits from which the mountain derives its name, but to cut trees to sell for luxury hardwood or charcoal in towns further down.
The illegal logging of Kulen national park has laid bare vast patches of forest.
Critics argue those ideas only risk inflaming Brazil’s violent streets and worsening Brazil’s murder tally, nearly 64,000 people in 2017, a record.
T-shirts of the far-right candidate Jair Bolsonaro on sale in Brasilia, on Oct. 27, 2018. | Photo: Reuters | Phto from teleSUR.
4 January 2019 (teleSUR)* – Brazil President Jair Bolsonaro urged Friday the urgent approval of a bill to protect police officers in the country from being prosecuted over crimes committed while on duty.
The far-right president, elected on a law-and-order platform, warned in a tweet that sky-high violence would only slow if laws were passed to provide police and soldiers freedom from prosecution when on active duty.
HUMAN WRONGS WATCH 