'Unseen' News and Views
These critical environmental issues, requiring greater attention, are highlighted in the new Frontiers Report published today by the UN Environment Programme (UNEP).
The Seychelles is a nation made up of some 115 islands in the Indian Ocean. Credit: UN News, Manahas Farquhar/ Matthew Morgan
Speaking before the UN’s Ad Hoc Committee on the Indian Ocean last year, an Indian diplomat told delegates: “India and the Indian Ocean are inseparable. It is not just a statement of a fact of geography; but of deeper civilizational, historical, cultural, economic and political linkages that have been forged over centuries between India and the Ocean that bears its name”.
(UN News)* — Thousands of Eritrean refugees sheltering at a camp in the Ethiopian Afar region, have fled following a deadly attack on the facility earlier this month, the UN refugee agency, UNHCR, said on 18 February 2022.
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(UN News)* — The consequences of colonialism are “still being felt to this day”, Chef de Cabinet Courtenay Rattray told the Special Committee on Decolonization on Friday [18 February 2022].
“Global cooperation is central to addressing its impacts”, he underscored, urging the Committee, also known as C-24, to “commit to making 2022 a year of recovery for everyone”.
– Libya was supposed to hold elections early this year. Instead, it now has two rival political administrations — a return of the divisions of the past.
Graffiti on a wall in Benghazi, Libya, calls for elections and democracy. Credit: The United Nations Support Mission in Libya (UNSMIL)
Libya is entering a new cycle of its political crisis. In December 2021, a mere 48 hours before polls were supposed to open, the elections were postponed. Emad Sayah, the head of Libya’s High National Election Committee (HNEC), declared it to be a case of force majeure. He then proposed to Libya’s parliament, the House of Representatives (HoR), to reschedule the elections for 24 January 2022.
(UN News)* — As the Sahel region “stares down a horrendous food crisis”, the UN emergency food relief chief warned on Wednesday [16 February 2022] that the number of people on the brink of starvation has “increased almost tenfold” over the past three years and “displacement by nearly 400 per cent”.
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(UN News)* — The World Health Organization’s (WHO) top official in Europe on Tuesday [15 February 2022] called on governments and health authorities to “closely examine” why there is low demand and acceptance of COVID-19 vaccines, as an “Omicron tidal wave” slams countries in the east of the region.
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(UN News)* — Recent attacks indicate how the conflict in Yemen risks spiralling out of control, the chief UN mediator for the country told the Security Council on Tuesday [15 February 2022], as he called for “serious efforts” to be made by Yemeni parties, the region and the international community, to end the fighting, now in its seventh year.
The Republican Party Has Become Irresponsible
John Scales Avery
In recent years, and especially since Donald Trump’s term as president, the Republican Party has become irresponsible.
Republican Senators and members of the House of Representatives no longer act to promote whatever is best for their country and the planet. Instead they block whatever the Democratic Party tries to achieve.
The Republican Party is aided by Senators Joe Manchin and Kyrsten Sinema who, although the are nominally Democrats, act as destructively as though they were Republicans. Manchin is paid to do this by giant coal corporations, while Sinema gets her blood money from big pharmaceutical firms.
HUMAN WRONGS WATCH 