'Unseen' News and Views – By Baher Kamal & The Like
New information on child labour, forced labour and human trafficking in global supply chains is revealed in a report compiled by the ILO, OECD, IOM and UNICEF – members of the Alliance 8.7 partnership on child labour, forced labour, modern slavery and human trafficking. (*)
The Earth is living, and also creates life. Over 4 billion years the Earth has evolved a rich biodiversity — an abundance of different living organisms and ecosystems — that can meet all our needs and sustain life.
Through biodiversity and the living functions of the biosphere, the Earth regulates temperature and climate, and has created the conditions for our species to evolve.
The plight of sanitation workers in the developing world should be addressed urgently, the UN said on Thursday [14 November 2019], warning that their rights, health and dignity are at risk. *
Highlighting the dangers for the millions of people who clean toilets, sewers and septic tanks, ahead of World Toilet Day next Tuesday, the World Health Organization (WHO) insisted that while the workforce performs an essential public service, their own health is compromised and they are often shunned.
12 November 2019 (UN Environment)* — In November 2007, strong winds and heavy rain from Cyclone Sidr tore through the southern coast of Bangladesh. Soon, the coastal districts became a wasteland. Houses destroyed, tin shacks flattened and schools blown away. However, the destruction wrought by the deadly cyclone was only the beginning.
LONDON/NEW YORK/BARCELONA, November 12, 2019 (UNICEF)* — Pneumonia claimed the lives of more than 800,000 children under the age of five last year, or one child every 39 seconds, according to a new analysis.
Most deaths occurred among children under the age of two, and almost 153,000 within the first month of life. [1]
DAYLESFORD, Australia, 11 November 2019 – The date 11 November is well known and commemorated in many parts of the world because it marks the Armistice ending World War I – ‘the Great War’ – in 1918.
Robert J. Burrowes,
In the evocative words used by Kurt Vonnegut Jr., an atheist humanist, in his novel Breakfast of Champions, the day is remembered thus:
‘When I was a boy … all the people of all the nations which fought in the First World War were silent during the eleventh minute of the eleventh hour of Armistice Day, which was the eleventh day of the eleventh month. It was at that minute in nineteen-hundred and eighteen, that millions upon millions of human beings stopped butchering one another.
I have talked to old men who were on battlefields at that minute. They have told me in one way or another that the sudden silence was the Voice of God. So we still have among us some men who can remember when God spoke clearly to mankind.’
– Every day 830 women die while giving life. At least 33,000 girls are forced into child marriage with 11,000 girls undergoing female genital mutilation.
Gender equality and women empowerment at the heart of ICPD25. Credit: Joyce Chimbi / IPS
The UN Deputy Secretary-General has called for gender equality, women’s empowerment and women’s rights to be integrated at the heart of global efforts to achieve a sustainable future for all. *
8 November 2019 (WHO)* — The impact of successive storms, cyclones and heavy rains has been severe in 2019, and in the wake of heavy flooding, WHO is upping disease surveillance actions and providing critical supplies to hard-hit populations across Africa and the Eastern Mediterranean Region.
Credit: EPA (photo posted ere from WHO).
