(UN News)* — In an open letter to Donald Trump on Tuesday [22 December 2020], an independent UN human rights expert asked the departing United States President to pardon Wikileaks founder Julian Assange.
Unsplash/Ashley Ross | Julian Assange is being held in high security Belmarsh Prison in southeast London (not pictured).
(UN News)* — Despite a sharp fall in global trade in 2020 due to the coronavirus pandemic and lingering trade tensions, Asia and the Pacific is expected to perform relatively less badly than the rest of the world, the United Nations development arm in the region said on Tuesday [22 December 2020].
IMO | A container ship unloads its cargo at a port.
Worldwide trade is expected to fall by 14.5 per cent in 2020 and following that trend, trade in the region could contract by around 1.9 per cent, estimates from the UN Economic and Social Commission for Asia and the Pacific (ESCAP) suggest.
The rest of the world, however, fared worse, and as a result, the region’s share in global merchandise export and import is expected to rise to an all-time high in 2020, to 41.8 per cent and 38.2 per cent respectively, up from 39.9 per cent and 36.9 per cent a year earlier.
NEW YORK, Dec 22 2020 (IPS)* – The year 2020 is ending with the world caught up in an unprecedented human and economic crisis. The pandemic has contaminated 75 million people and killed 1.7 million. With the lockdowns, the global economy has suffered the worst recession in 75 years, causing the loss of income for millions of people. In such a bleak environment, what will the new year bring? Whilst uncertainty is the only certainty, eight points are likely to be key in the year ahead:
Isabel Ortiz
1. A gradual but uneven recovery With the deployment of vaccines and public support, high-income countries will be on the path to recovery from the second half of 2021.
However, middle income and particularly low income countries in Africa, Asia and Latin America will see recovery delayed – unless the UN or China provide them with sufficient COVID19 vaccines and governments escalate public support.
21 December 2020 (Wall Street International)* — Health for all? The conflict between dominant social groups and universal rights is once again exploding loud and clear. It’s blowing up the fictions, the lies and highlighting the mystifications and the harmful consequences of the “world” response of the powerful to Covid-19.
To date, representatives of the populations of more than 90 countries in the world, “low-income” as the powerful define them, are willing to defend the request for the suspension of patents on medicines and vaccines against Covid-19, a request that has already been rejected and which is once again strongly rejected by the most powerful countries in the occidental world.
Workers Still Owed Wages for Months After Informing Government of Abuse
(Beirut) – Qatari authorities have failed to provide redress for hundreds of migrant workers who are suffering from months of unpaid wages at two companies, even though authorities have repeatedly been informed of these abuses, Human Rights Watch on 22 December 2020 said.
21 December 2020 (UN News)* — The United Nations is marking 2021 as the International Year of Fruits and Vegetables, spotlighting their vital role in human nutrition and food security, as well as urging efforts to improve sustainable production and reduce waste.
UNICEF/Giacomo Pirozzi | Fresh fruit and vegetables are set out for cooking in a village in Muzaffargarh district in Pakistan.
As everyone knows, Adam Smith invented the theory that individual self-interest is, and ought to be, the main motivating force of human economic activity, and that this, in effect, serves the wider social interest. He put forward a detailed description of this concept in an immense book, “The Wealth of Nations” (1776).
Adam Smith (1723-1790) had been Professor of Logic at the University of Glasgow, but in 1764 he withdrew from his position at the university to become the tutor of the young Duke of Buccleuch.
In those days a Grand Tour of Europe was considered to be an important part of the education of a young nobleman, and Smith accompanied Buccleuch to the Continent. To while away the occasional dull intervals of the tour, Adam Smith began to write an enormous book on economics which he finally completed twelve years later.
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.
HUMAN WRONGS WATCH 