MADRID, Nov 11 2021 (IPS)* – Antibiotics, like other antimicrobials, have become a threat to health rather than healing it. Why? Because their misuse and overuse have created such a strong resistance that they no longer respond to medicines, making infections harder to treat and increasing the risk of disease spread, severe illness and death.
The main drivers of antimicrobial resistance include the misuse and overuse of antimicrobials; lack of access to clean water, sanitation and hygiene for both humans and animals; poor infection and disease prevention and control in health-care facilities and farms; poor access to quality, affordable medicines, vaccines and diagnostics; lack of awareness and knowledge; and lack of enforcement of legislation. Credit: Bigstock.
(UN News)* — Global casualties from anti-personnel landmines were “exceptionally high” last year, with Syrians and Afghans worst-hit, a UN-backed civil society report said on Wednesday 10 November 2021.
ICBL/Gwenn Dubourthoumieu | A 33-year old landmine survivor tries on a new prosthesis at the fitting and rehabilitation centre in Kabalaye, Chad.
According to Landmine Monitor 2021, the number of victims rose by 20 per cent in 2020 compared with the previous 12 months, the result of “increased armed conflict and contamination” of land with improvised mines.
Victims in 50+ countries
In total, more than 7,000 people were killed or injured in 54 countries and areas, while Myanmar was the only State where it was confirmed that the weapons have been used in the last 16 months – as they have been since reporting began in 1999 – the Landmine Monitor said.
Just in time for the UN’s policy push for “30 x 30” – 30% of the earth to be “conserved” by 2030 – a new Wall Street asset class puts up for sale the processes underpinning all life.
Ellen Brown
A month before the 2021 United Nations Climate Change Conference (known as COP26) kicked off in Scotland, a new asset class was launched by the New York Stock Exchange that will “open up a new feeding ground for predatory Wall Street banks and financial institutions that will allow them to dominate not just the human economy, but the entire natural world.” So writes Whitney Webb in an article titled “Wall Street’s Takeover of Nature Advances with Launch of New Asset Class”:
MADRID, Nov 8 2021 (IPS)* – While negotiators from all over the world have been discussing, since 31 October 2021 in Glasgow, every single word, coma and dot in order to reach a final text that is expected to apparently keep everyone happy but really not everybody satisfied, 50% of world’s population will live in coastal areas, exposed to floods, storms and tsunamis by the year 2030.
The pulverised beach in Kalmunai, located in eastern Sri Lanka, was stripped of most of its standing structures by the ferocity of the waves. Credit: Amantha Perera/IPS
UNITED NATIONS, Nov 8 2021 (IPS)* – The United Nations has come under heavy fire for continuing a 20-month-long ban on non-governmental organizations (NGOs)– even though the Secretariat is expected to return to near-normal by November 15 after a pandemic lockdown going back to March 2020.
The high-level segment of the UN General Assembly in late September 2021 was attended by more than 100 world leaders and over a thousand delegates from 193 countries —despite the UN’s pandemic lockdown. But NGOs were banned from the Secretariat building—a 20-month- old ban which still continues. Credit: UN Photo / Mark Garten
Louis Charbonneau, UN Director of Human Rights Watch, told IPS: “The Secretary-General has repeatedly spoken of the vital importance of civil society to the proper functioning of the UN. Now he needs to prove he means it by re-admitting accredited NGOs – the only category of UN passholders still barred from entering UN headquarters.”
(UN News)* — Growing conflict, insecurity, COVID-19, and a failing economy, has rendered some three million Burmese in in need of life-saving humanitarian assistance across Myanmar, the UN Emergency Relief Coordinator said on Monday 8 November 2021.
OCHA/P.Peron | A displaced child in Kachin State, Myanmar.
“The humanitarian situation in Myanmar is deteriorating”, Martin Griffiths said in a statement, adding that “without an end to violence and a peaceful resolution of Myanmar’s crisis, this number will only rise”.
Since a military takeover on 1 February ousted the democratically elected Government, hundreds of thousands of people have been forced to flee their homes due to violent crackdowns across the country.
(UN News)* — Although governments are prioritizing public health measures to protect their people from climate impacts, many lack the funds to take effective action, the World Health Organization (WHO) said in a report issued on Monday [8 November 2021].
(UN News)* — The UN World Food Programme (WFP) warned on Monday [8 November 2021] that the number of people teetering on the edge of famine in 43 countries, has risen to 45 million – up by three million this year – as acute hunger spikes around the world.
American democracy is in crisis. That’s why the US can’t be counted on to act responsibly on the world stage with any consistency.
Senator James Inhofe from Oklahoma uses a snowball to ‘disprove’ global warming, 2015
7 November 2021 (openDemocracy)* — Young Earth creationism, scientists portrayed as part of an anti-Christian conspiracy, environmentalists viewed with extreme suspicion.
Growing up as an evangelical within the world of the US Christian Right, and attending Christian schools, I know first-hand how extreme they are, and how aggressive in their defence of “alternative facts”.
5 November 2021 (UNEP)* — November 6 marks the International Day for Preventing the Exploitation of the Environment in War and Armed Conflict. Curtailing the use of Explosive Weapons in Populated Areas (EWIPA) is a humanitarian priority due to increasing civilian deaths and injuries from armed conflict in urban settings and indirect environmental impacts, which are now recognized as an important dimension of their use.
REUTERS/Ceerwan Aziz / 05 Nov 2021
The environment is an inseparable part of the well-being, health and survival of civilians. EWIPA cause harmful pollution and destruction, which constrains access to the environment civilians live in.
HUMAN WRONGS WATCH 