World Food Programme calls for more than $130m to reach displaced people and host communities on the brink
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People who’ve fled Cabo Delgado wait for humanitarian assistance in Palma, Mozambique. Photo: WFP/Sean Rajman
Escalating violence in northern Mozambique is pushing hundreds of thousands of people into food insecurity, according to Lola Castro, the World Food Programme (WFP)‘s Regional Director for Southern Africa.
“The situation is dire,” she says. “The food assistance WFP is providing every month is not enough for people to survive. ”
Without a cash injection of US$132.4 million to sustain operations for a year, rations may be cut and food distribution may stop altogether — the operation needs US$10.5 million for the next month.
World Food Programme and UNICEF call on governments to act on nutrition crisis as Covid-19 school closures reduce the diets of 370 million of the most vulnerable children by 40 percent
Mozambique: Schoolgirls in Beira receive rations before schools close in April. Photo: Karel Prinsloo/Arete/UN Mozambique
(UN News)* — The European Union’s failure to lift 20 million people out of poverty by 2020, is “a defeat for social rights”, an independent UN human rights expert said on Friday [29 January 2021], urging the bloc to boldly rethink its whole socio-economic approach.
World Bank/Mano Strauch | Some 20 million children in the EU are at risk of poverty according to the Special Rapporteur’s report.
“Since the EU has experienced steady economic and employment growth until very recently, the only explanation for this failure is that the benefits have not been evenly distributed”, he said.
30 January 2021 (UN News)* — Reducing inequality is one of the UN’s flagship goals, but the gulf between rich and poor worldwide, remains persistently high. In the first of a special two-part series on the financial sector this weekend, Hiro Mizuno, the newly-appointed UN Special Envoy on Innovative Finance and Sustainable Investments, explains how the industry can help to create a fairer, more equitable world.
Before his appointment as Special Envoy, on 30 December 2020, Mr. Mizuno, of Japan, served as Chief Investment Officer of the Japan Government Pension Investment Fund (GPIF). He serves on the board of the Principles for Responsible Investment Association (PRI, an UN-backed body that aims to create sustainable markets that contribute to a more prosperous world for all), and has taken part in UN discussions on promoting the Sustainable Development Goals.
(UN News)* — Violence and insecurity related to the recent elections in the Central African Republic (CAR) has forced more than 200,000 people to flee their homes in less than two months, the UN refugee agency (UNHCR) said on Friday [29 January 2021], warning tens of thousands are facing dire living conditions.
More than half are displaced within the country, but 92,000 people have crossed into the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC), while more than 13,200 are now in Cameroon, Chad and the Republic of the Congo.
The majority of Americans, and the vast majority of people in other countries throughout the world, heaved a sigh of relief when Joe Biden won the 2020 US presidential election. Hopes for the future soared, as the world seemed to be rid of Trump at last!
There is so much wrong with Donald Trump that one hardly knows where to start. He is a bully, braggart, narcissist, racist, misogynist, habitual liar, and tax evader, in addition to being demonstrably ignorant.
Marcelo Rebelo de Sousa, current president of Portugal, since 9 March 2016 | Image from Wall Street International.
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28 Jnuary 2021 (Wall Street International)* — According to certain foreign media, the results of the last election spelled the “end of the Portuguese dream”, meaning the fact that until now Portugal had been the only European country without significant far-right forces.
The truth, however, is that, over the past hundred years, the forces of the far right have held power for nearly fifty years.
The country’s Environment Ministry is defending the January 29 auction as a conservation strategy, but conservationits say the move is based on false population statistics, disputed claims of human-elephant conflict and puts 3% of Namibia’s last elephants up for sale
Namibian elephants in Etosha. Conservationists estimate that between 73 to 84 percent of the government’s quoted elephant population figure consists of ‘trans-boundary’ elephants, those moving between Namibia, Angola Zambia and Botswana. They put the resident elephant population in Namibia at 5,688. They are worried that with 170 heading to the auction block, Namibia is losing 3 percent of its elephant population. Courtesy: Stephan Scholvin
Ten New Insights into Climate Science, published by the WMO co-sponsored World Climate Research Programme, Future Earth and the Earth League, provided a synthesis of the latest findings for policy and society.
29 January 2021 (UN News)* — Thirteen-year-old Min Min scavenges day and night for precious stones in a quarry in Hpakant, northern Myanmar, where perilous conditions have led to the deaths of many workers. With more than a million children working in the country, the UN is fighting to end child labour worldwide.
The child workers run considerable risks: in just one day, in July 2020, some 200 people died in a mudslide at a jade mining site in Hpakant.