KAMPALA/KIKUBE/RWAMWANJA, Uganda , Dec 21 2020 (IPS)* – Thirteen-year-old Wita Kasanganjo is a pupil at Maratatu Primary School in the Kyangwali Refugee Settlement based in Uganda’s Hoima district. But last month, when Uganda’s President Yoweri Museveni ordered the re-opening of schools for the first time since the mid-March nationwide closure, Kasanganjo was not part of the returning group of students. The government, in a cautious lifting of coronavirus lockdown restrictions, has allowed only pupils who are part of the final year or candidate classes to return to their schooling.
21 December 2020 (UNEP)* — In 2014, coral reefs around the world turned a pallid white from heat stress. The bleaching began in the Pacific and rapidly spread across the Indian and Atlantic oceans. The so-called Third Global Bleaching Event lasted for 36 months, marking the longest, most pervasive and destructive coral bleaching incident ever recorded.
Though over now, the world’s reefs remain in hot water.
Photo by Sebastian Pena Lambarri / Unsplash / 21 Dec 2020
A new United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) report says worldwide mass bleaching events, like the one that began in 2014, could become the norm in the coming decades.
The report’s updated climate models demonstrate that coral bleaching is happening faster than anticipated and the future health of the world’s reefs is inextricably tied to reducing greenhouse gas emissions.
19 December 2020 (Wall Street International)* — Life and livelihood are tied in the same thread in recent times. There have been various problems and worries about livelihood. Many lives have stopped for Covid-19. This epidemic time explains that life is a struggle for survival. So, we have to struggle and survive. This world is very cruel today. However, many people have been accustomed to and familiar with this cruelty for many years.
(IWGIA)* –– “We cannot ignore the fact that year after year, Indigenous Peoples across the world have warned of the impending path we are on. They have been experiencing the effects of climate change first-hand. Despite constituting a mere 6% of the world’s population, they are protectors of vast territories that contain 80% of our remaining biodiversity. We should be listening to them for solutions for how to keep the global temperature rise within limits,” Stefan Thorsell, IWGIA Climate Advisor, said.
18 December 2020 (ILOSTAT)* — The international migration of women, either together with their family or on their own, is an increasingly important and complex phenomenon but remains insufficiently documented owing to a lack of data. New ILOSTAT data offer some insights on the profile of women looking for work and better opportunities abroad.
In 2017, women accounted for 42 per cent of the 164 million migrant workers around the world. ILOSTAT data show that the share of women in the working-age migrant population increased over the past decade in 24 out of the 63 countries for which time series are available, with particularly significant growth observed in Azerbaijan, Bulgaria, Indonesia and Viet Nam.
19 December 2020 (United Natiions)* — The Sustainable Development Agenda is centred on people & planet, underpinned by human rights and supported by a global partnership determined to lift people out of poverty, hunger and disease. It will, thus, be built on a foundation of global cooperation and solidarity.
(UN News)* — Driven by insecurity, the effects of COVID-19, an on-going economic crisis, and the impact of flooding on livelihoods, three UN agencies called on Friday [18 December 2020] for immediate humanitarian access to eastern South Sudan’s Pibor county, where people are facing catastrophic levels of hunger.
WFP/Marwa Awad | Children eat porridge their mother cooked with the food she received at a World Food Programme (WFP) distribution site in Pibor, South Sudan.
The Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO), UN Children’s Fund (UNICEF), World Food Programme (WFP) and other humanitarian aid organizations, are scaling up their responses to save lives and avert a total collapse of livelihoods in hard-to-reach areas.
HARARE, 17 December 2020 (WFP)* – With millions of Zimbabweans devastated by a year of drought, rising hyperinflation and COVID-19, the United Nations World Food Programme (WFP) today appealed for an additional US$204 million to support over four million of the most food insecure people over the next six months.
A WFP beneficiary divides shares of WFP food assistance at a distribution in Bindura district, Zimbabwe. Photo: WFP/Tatenda Macheka
18 December 2020 — (UN News)* — The United Nations is commemorating International Migrants Day, on Friday [18 December 2020], highlighting their contributions to societies globally, and underlining the need to ensure that they remain central to the recovery from COVID-19.
UN Women/Pornvit Visitoran | Women migrant workers at a ceramics factory in northern Thailand. As part of the labour force, migrant workers support local businesses and also communities back home.
In a message, Secretary-General António Guterres said that in the midst of the global pandemic, societies have come to appreciate their dependence on migrants “who are too often invisible within our communities.”
We are born with power inherent in us. Why cede it to governments (capitalist, socialist, royal, and whatever other brand)? Why forever run after parties, however revolutionary, thinking they will do the right thing when in power… when we know from experience this is usually not the case?
HUMAN WRONGS WATCH 