20 May 2019 (UN Environment)* — When animals and insects pick up the pollen of flowers and spread it, they allow plants, including many food crops, to reproduce. Birds, rodents, monkeys and even people pollinate, but the most common pollinators are insects, and among them, bees.
Pollinators contribute directly to food security. Nearly three quarters of the plants that produce 90 per cent of the world’s food require this external help.
20 May 2019 (FAO)*— “It’s a bee!” someone screams as they jump up from their picnic blanket, knocking over their apple juice and flailing their arms, trying to get away from this flying creature. Does this scene sound familiar?
Many people are afraid of bees. And why not? They look like aliens. They have stingers that hurt more than you would expect and some people are very allergic, even deathly allergic, to them.
19 May 2019 (FAO)* — It’s early May in one of Spain’s most prolific honey-producing region, and Julio Solana Muñoz is worried. The third-generation beekeeper has noticed that the flowers in the fields near his town aren’t anywhere near as numerous as they were even a year ago. His hives are dying off, too. In recent years, the mortality rate for his bees has climbed to nearly 35 percent.
By Izumi Nakamitsu, United Nations High Representative for Disarmament Affairs*
Human suffering caused by war is not a new phenomenon.
Izumi Nakamitsu
And while our highest priority remains the prevention of war, evolving patterns of armed violence are posing new and more difficult challenges that require action.
Conflict is migrating into villages, towns and cities, but governments and non-state actors are continuing to use weapons designed for open battlefields.
Many weapons originally intended for battlefield use, those that disperse multiple munitions over a wide area, fire without a direct line of sight to the target, or produce large blasts and fragmentation, pose serious humanitarian concerns when used in populated areas.
New research finds that expanding access and broadening provision of Universal Basic Services would be of greater value to people in the lowest income groups.
Image: HM Treasury, CC BY-NC-ND 2.0
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16 May 2019 (openDemocracy)* — Strengthening and extending universal services would be a more effective way of tackling global poverty and improving wellbeing than a universal basic income (UBI), according to a report by the UCL Institute for Global Prosperity (IGP).
The UN’s Political and Humanitarian Affairs chiefs on Friday [17 May 2019] called on the Security Council to unite in support of an immediate de-escalation of fighting around Syria’s Idlib province, and work towards an enduring political solution on behalf of the Syrian people.
The UN’s head of Political and Peacebuilding Affairs, Rosemary DiCarlo told members that “we have been here before: in Aleppo, Eastern Ghouta and Raqqa” where civilian casualties mounted along with an all-out offensive by the Syrian Government and its allies.
Cox’s Bazar, 17 May 2019 (IOM)* –Under clear 36-degree Celsius skies, an exhausted Rafiq leans against his house, surrounded by his five children. Glancing upwards, he ponders another sweltering walk down a steep dirt path to haul clean water for his family.
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Rohingya refugees at a shallow well in Cox’s Bazar.
A pump just nearby provides water whose drinkability he views as “unreliable” and requires an arduous hillside trek. Sterilizing water by boiling also is difficult because firewood is hard to come by.
While the (surprisingly) still called homo sapiens continues to destroy Mother Nature, bees and other pollinators, such as butterflies, bats and hummingbirds, carry on performing their vital role as one of the most marvellous, unpaid, life guarantors.
18 May 2019 (teleSUR)* — Canada has long been overrun with large numbers of missing and murdered Indigenous women and girls and over-representation of Indigenous people in correctional facilities.
Canadian Museum for Human Rights says the colonial experience in the country, from the time of first contact to present day, is genocide. | Image from teleSUR.
The treatment of Indigenous peoples in Canada was reviewed and will henceforth be identified as a genocide, the Winnipeg-based Museum for Human Rights has declared.
Tuvalu “faces an existential threat from sea-level rise”, the United Nations chief said during his visit to the Pacific island nation on Friday [17 May 2019] whose highest point is less than five metres above the waves.
UN Photo/Mark Garten | The UN Secretary-General António Guterres overflies the low-lying coastline of Tuvalu in the Pacific Ocean. (17 May 2019)
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“We must stop Tuvalu from sinking and the world from sinking with Tuvalu”, Secretary-General António Guterres said in a tweet posted during his on-going trip to the South Pacific.
