BELGRADE, Serbia/LAGHMAN PROVINCE, Afghanistan /ESKİŞEHİR, Turkey, 11 February 2021 (UNFPA)* – How much is a girl worth? If you are Maja, the answer is a chicken, a six-pack of beer and €100. That is how much her family, living in a Roma settlement in Serbia, received in exchange for her hand “in marriage.” She was 11 years old at the time. “They benefited maybe a month from it, and I was left with a problem for my whole life,” Maja, now 18, said.
“My three sisters didn’t do much better. One gave birth when she turned 13. They were not sold, but they ran away from our mother at an early age. I was the only one who was sold.”
Ambition drove the military’s coup. But long before that, the country’s deposed leader squandered many opportunities for real change.
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PA Images | Aung San Suu Kyi ‘failed to pay attention’ to Myanmar’s ethnic groups.
12 February 2021 (openDemocracy)* — The Myanmar coup is a sad and onerous turn of events for a country with a long and unhappy experience of military rule. It is important to note that this is not an institutional crisis. What we are witnessing is a squabble among court factions for the throne.
10 February 2021 (UN News)* — The challenge of tackling climate change is one that the UN needs to talk about “honestly, without scaremongering” and by focusing on scientific fact, according to Inger Andersen, the Executive Director of the UN Environment Programme (UNEP).
The UN agency which Ms Andersen describes as the “environmental conscience of the United Nations”, is at the centre of the global debate about sustainability, the environment and climate change.
The UNEP chief was interviewed by the Under-Secretary-General for Global Communications at the UN, Melissa Fleming, as part of the podcast series Awake at Night.
12 February 2021 (UN News)* — Amidst some positive news from the World Health Organization (WHO) that both COVID-19 deaths and new cases have recently been on the wane, there are “three major threats” to the UN-led international equitable vaccine initiative, COVAX, that require urgent attention.
WHO | A pharmacy at Fasham Urban Comprehensive Health Centre, Shemiranat District Tehran, Iran.
.Briefing UN Member States on Thursday [11 February 2021], WHO chief Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus drew attention to a $27 billion financing gap in the ACT Accelerator, which supports the development and equitable distribution of coronavirus tests, treatments and vaccines globally.
“The longer this gap goes unmet, the harder it becomes to understand why, given this is a tiny fraction of the trillions of dollars that have been mobilized for stimulus packages in G20 countries”, he said.
11 February 2021 (UNEP)* — A deadly flood in northern India, sparked by a cratering glacier, was not an isolated incident but the result of a rapidly warming planet, say experts. They warn the disaster, which has left over 140 feared dead, is a precursor of what is to come unless drastic measures are taken to slow climate change.
Photo: REUTERS/Anshree Fadnavis / 11 Feb 2021
The flood this week in the Himalayan state of Uttarakhand was caused by a glacier breaking away and falling into the valley, sending a surge of water downstream that engulfed villages and workers at a hydroelectric plant.
NEW YORK/GENEVA, 10 February 2021 (UNICEF)* – “Of the 128 million vaccine doses administered so far, more than three quarters of those vaccinations are in just 10 countries that account for 60 per cent of global GDP. | Español
“As of today, almost 130 countries, with 2.5 billion people, are yet to administer a single dose.
“This self-defeating strategy will cost lives and livelihoods, give the virus further opportunity to mutate and evade vaccines and will undermine a global economic recovery.
9 February 2021 (WMO)* — A relief and rescue operation is underway in Uttarakhand in the Indian Himalayas, after a part of the Nanda Devi glacier broke off and collapsed causing a massive massive flood in the Rishi Ganga /Dhauliganga river, reportedly causing loss of life and the destruction of two hydropower plants, bursting open existing dams, and other infrastructure. Many casualties were feared, alongside widespread environmental damage in an ecologically fragile area of Uttarakhand.
The exact cause of the disaster is yet to be ascertained. Early assessments indicate that the event involved a large avalanche of ice and rock.
The role of climate-related drivers, and climate change, was not immediately clear. This was not the first such avalanche from these slopes, as experts have identified a similar (but smaller) event from late-2016.
UNITED NATIONS, Feb 11 2021 (IPS)* – The Norwegian Refugee Council (NRC) has called for unimpeded access to all parts of Ethiopia’s Tigray Region, to locate an estimated 20,000 unaccounted for refugees and assess damage to its Hitsaats Camp which was looted and set alight in early January.
In Ethiopia’s northern Tigray region. Norwegian Refugee Council (NRC) says that for three months Ethiopia’s Tigray Region has been completely blocked off from the world. The reports that have trickled out speak to extensive violence, extensive conflict and extensive impact on civilians, the humanitarian agency says. (File photo) Credit: James Jeffrey/IPS
(New York) – Myanmar police should immediately end the use of excessive and lethal force against people protesting the February 1, 2021, military coup, Human Rights Watch said today [9 February 2021]. On February 9, police shot a young woman in the back of her head and wounded a man in his chest at a protest in the capital, Naypyidaw, a doctor reported.
(UN News)* — Without the resilience of the economies of East Asia and the Pacific, there would have been no global trade recovery at the end of last year, UN analysts said on Wednesday [10 February 2021].
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UNCTAD/Jan Hoffmann | Shipping containers at a port in the Democratic Republic of São Tomé and Príncipe. (file)
“The recovery process has been uneven, with many countries lagging”, said UNCTAD economist Alessandro Nicita.
According to a new report from the agency, exports from East Asia grew about 12 per cent in the last quarter of 2020, while imports increased by around five per cent.
HUMAN WRONGS WATCH 