'Unseen' News and Views
Geneva/ Port-au-Prince, 18 June 2024 (IOM)* – Nearly 580,000 people are internally displaced across Haiti, a 60 per cent increase since March, according to the latest data from the International Organization for Migration (IOM) in the country.
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(UN News)* — A conference focused on small arms and light weapons is taking place at a “difficult and dangerous moment for humanity,” according to the UN Chief António Guterres.
Delivering remarks in New York on behalf of the Secretary-General at a meeting aimed at eradicating the illicit trade in small arms, Izumi Nakamitsu, the head of the UN Office of Disarmament Affairs, warned on Tuesday [] that military expenditures continue to rise across the globe.
New conflicts are placing millions of people in the line of fire, and small arms and light weapons play a major role in these conflicts, she said.
17 June 2024 — In 2023, the nine nuclear-armed states spent a combined total of $91,393,404,739 on their arsenals – equivalent to $2,898 a second. ICAN’s latest report “Surge: 2023 Global nuclear weapons spending” shows $10.7 billion more was spent on nuclear weapons in 2023 than in 2022.
– Since 2008, farmland acquisitions have doubled prices worldwide, squeezing family farmers and other poor rural communities. Such land grabs are worsening inequality, poverty, and food insecurity.
Squeezing land and farmers
A new IPES-Food report highlights land grabs (including for ostensibly ‘green’ purposes), the financial means used, and some significant implications.
Jomo Kwame Sundaram
Powerful governments, financiers, speculators, and agribusinesses are opportunistically gaining control of more cultivable land.
The report notes the 2007-08 food price spike and financial crash catalysed more land acquisitions.
Quantitative easing and financialization after the 2008 global financial crisis enabled even more land grabs. Investors, agri-food companies, and even sovereign wealth funds have obtained farmland worldwide.
Agribusinesses and other investors want land to make more profits, urging governments to enable takeovers. Cultivable land is being used for cash crops, natural resource extraction, mining, real property and infrastructure development, and ‘green’ projects, including biofuels.
Rome (IFAD)* -– In celebration of the International Day of Family Remittances (IDFR) on 16 June, the G20’s Global Partnership for Financial Inclusion (GPFI) has on 14 June 2024 unveiled a new report that provides evidence of the transformative impact of digital remittances, as a driver of financial inclusion and poverty reduction worldwide.
© IFAD/Purnima Shrestha
Despite persistent gender gaps, the hard-earned money sent back home by migrant workers remains a vital lifeline for over 800 million people, particularly for women and vulnerable populations.
(United Nations)* — It is projected that by 2030 more than US$ 5 trillion will have been sent home by migrants to low- and middle-income countries (LMICs), with much of this money going directly to rural areas where 80 percent of the world’s poor live, facing food shortages and the impacts of climate change.
But what is desertification and what does the plastics crisis have to do with it? Let’s delve into and understand this multifaceted crisis together.
(UN News)* — As nearly 40 per cent of land across the planet is degraded with more acres lost every second, governments, businesses and communities must galvanize action to reverse the damage and protect Earth, the UN chief said in a strong message for the World Day to Combat Desertification and Drought, marked annually on 17 June.
A map of fake solutions shows projects with climate-friendly intentions or appearances but with counterproductive social and environmental impacts. Indigenous communities are one of the most affected population sectors. Credit: Platform for Climate Justice
HUMAN WRONGS WATCH 