'Unseen' News and Views
World Food Programme partnerships officer Krystyna Kovalenko offers a glimpse of the south of the country, where thousands of people are starving
(WFP)* — The ‘Grand Sud’ in Madagascar looks like something out of a sci-fi film — totally dry, inhabitable and deserted. The land has suffered from several years of consecutive drought. But locals say that this year has been worse than any other.
Geneva, 11 May 2021 (WMO)* — The COVID-19 pandemic has exacerbated impacts of extreme weather and climate change in vulnerable countries but also highlighted the need to build resilience against a multitude of hazards through better early warnings and risk information.
This is one of the key messages of the 2020 Annual Report of the Climate Risk and Early Warning Systems Initiative (CREWS), a unique climate action programme that helps saves lives, livelihoods and assets in the world’s most vulnerable countries.
(UN News)* — The UN agriculture chief on 10 May 2021 warned that severe underfunding of Africa’s agri-food sector has boosted food insecurity and was hampering the future development of countries across the continent.
Image from Greenpeace International.
The deep sea mining industry is planning to send monster machines to plunder the seabed and extract polymetallic nodules – potato-sized lumps of rocks loaded with metals and minerals. Deep sea mining isn’t happening yet, but the kinds of metals this industry is targeting are used in phones, laptops and batteries.
And bird watching seems to be becoming more popular. Starting in April 2020, eBird began to see a notable increase in contributions of bird observations. April 2020 eBird checklist submissions increased by 41 per cent compared to April 2019.
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.
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).
“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.
HUMAN WRONGS WATCH 