1 August 2020 (UN News)* — World Breastfeeding Week got underway on Saturday, with the UN urging communities everywhere to “support breastfeeding for a healthier planet”. Health agency (WHO) and the UN Children’s Fund (UNICEF) issued a joint call for governments to protect and promote women’s access to skilled breastfeeding counselling – a critical component of breastfeeding support.
UNICEF/Jan Zammit | A mother and her new born baby at the National Health Center for Mother and Child, Ulaanbaatar, Mongolia. (4 September 2015)
The UN has long advocated the benefits of breastfeeding, which delivers health, nutritional and emotional benefits to both children and mothers. It also helps foster a sustainable food system.
31 July 2020 (UNHCR)* – With COVID-19 increasing needs and vulnerabilities of refugees and internally displaced and stateless people, UNHCR, the UN Refugee Agency, is concerned that the impacts of the pandemic are also heightening their risks to trafficking and exploitation. |Español| Français|عربي
1 August 2020 (UN News)* — Expressing “appreciation for WHO and partners’ COVID-19 pandemic response efforts”, the emergency committee convened by the UN health agency’s chief, made it clear that there is not yet an end in sight to the public health crisis that has so far infected more than 17 million and killed over 650,000 people.
UN Women/Pathumporn Thongking | A healthcare worker checks the temperature of a patient at a hospital in Nonthaburi Province, Thailand.
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The committee convened by Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, Director-General of the World Health Organization, under the International Health Regulations (2005) (IHR), held its fourth meeting on 31 July.
Justice Department Should Heed Bipartisan Calls for Action
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30 July 2020 (Human Rights Watch)* — People of Asian descent in the United States have faced two pandemics in 2020: Covid-19 and its resulting racism and xenophobia.
The reporting center, STOP AAPI HATE, received more than 2,373 self-reported incidents of racism, hate speech, discrimination, and physical attacks against Asians and Asian Americans from March to July 2020.
(Greenpeace International)* — Since its beginning in the 1960s, the North Sea oil industry has earned billions of Euros profit and helped fill the coffers of a number of European governments. At the same time these oil and gas operations have contributed to the climate crisis, marine pollution, and endangered marine life.
31 July 2020 (Wall Street International)* — The US Postal Service is in trouble: according to an article by Prof. Philip F. Rubio, entitled “Save the Postal Service”, published in Atlantic Monthly on April 24, 2020, “The USPS has said that it needs $89 billion in assistance, including $25 billion in grants.”
Republicans realize that they will lose if the 2020 election is fair | Image from Wall Street International.
Republicans realize that they will lose if the 2020 election is fair
Donald Trump’s disastrous handling of the COVID-19 pandemic, combined with the pandemic’s terrible economic effects, have made Republicans unpopular; and this is reflected in recent polls. It seems extremely likely that if large numbers of voters participate in the November election, the Democrats will win.
Trump’s eagerness to ‘bring our boys home’ is leaving the Afghan government with little power to resist the Taliban afterwards.
Goodbye Afghanistan | US Air Force photo by Clay Lancaster. Public domain.
31 July 2020(openDemocracy)* — One of Donald Trump’s main election pledges back in 2016 was to ‘bring our boys home’. Alongside this came criticism of Germany and other NATO states for not paying their way on military spending. He has followed up on both themes this week, by starting to reduce the US presence in Germany, albeit shifting some to Poland and leaving all the mechanisms of a rapid return in place, so that the extent of the ‘back home’ is far from what it appears.
BEIRUT, Jul 31 2020 (IPS)* – The Covid-19 pandemic seems to have spared children from the direct health effects of the virus but the crisis has affected their social and economic rights directly and indirectly beyond what we could have foreseen. And there’s no doubt that children who come from more vulnerable backgrounds will feel the long-term impact of the pandemic and the measures taken to prevent its spread the hardest.
Batara slum in a Dhaka suburb. Credit: Naimul Haq/IPS
Social and economic rights are crucial to ensure the fulfilment of basic rights like sustenance, housing, food, education, health, employment and freedom from discrimination.
31 July 2020 – In Latin America, where much of the region has dealt with years of sluggish growth, the economic crisis brought about by the COVID-19 pandemic is pushing millions more into poverty, says Alicia Bárcena, the head of the UN regional body for Latin America and the Caribbean (ECLAC). (*).
PAHO/Karen González Abril | The Bogotá Ministry of Health have sent a Muisca nurse to Suba, in the north of Bogotá, Colombia, to check on the local indigenous population..
In an extensive interview with the UN communications chief, Melissa Fleming, Ms. Bárcena expressed concern at the disproportionate impact that the pandemic is having on indigenous people in the region, in terms of both the health risks they face; shared her fear that the wisdom and knowledge held by these communities is disappearing; and her dismay at rising inequality and poverty, following a period in which progress has been made on both fronts.
(UN News)* — Although older people are among those at highest risk of COVID-19, the head of the World Health Organization (WHO) has reminded younger generations that they are “not invincible” when it comes to the disease.
UN News/Daniel Dickinson | A park in Brooklyn, New York, has marked out circles in order to enforce social distancing during the COVID-19 pandemic.
Evidence suggests that the spike in cases in some countries is partly due to younger people “letting down their guard during the northern hemisphere summer”, WHO chief Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said on 30 July 2020.
