16 July 2019 (FAO)* — The world is more connected than ever: economies, travel, media. Unfortunately, this also holds true for the world’s challenges. Plastic and pollution in our ocean harm the global fish supply. Water scarcity, rising sea levels, air pollution, deforestation … all of these affect the entire world.
After nearly a decade of progress, the number of people who suffer from hunger has slowly increased over the past three years, with about one in every nine people globally suffering from hunger today, the United Nations said in a new report released on Monday [15 July 2019].
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FAO/Manan Vatsyayana | Local school children eat their meals at the Ban Bor Primary School in Xay District, Lao People’s Democratic Republic. (14 May 2019)
Before the UN Conference on a Nuclear Weapons [WMD] Free Zone in the Middle East
Edward Hicks, Peaceable Kingdom, c. 1834, oil on canvas – Lion with Lamb
In the spirit of TRANSCEND co-founder and friend Dieter Fischer, I’ll start with a joke. When Arafat and Rabin die they ask God, “When will there be peace in the Middle East?” God says, “Not in my lifetime.”
15 July 2019 (UN Environment)*— Today is Youth Skills Day. There are 1.2 billion young people aged 15 to 24 years in the world, accounting for 16 per cent of the global population.
Engaging young people in sustainable development efforts is central to achieving the Sustainable Development Goals.
And, to averting the worst threats and challenges to sustainable development, including the impacts of climate change, unemployment, poverty, gender inequality, conflict and migration.
How developing countries lose $3 billion every day through an accounting trick that allows corporations to avoid paying tax.
Image: Kurtis Garbutt, CC by 2.0
10 July 2019 (openDemocracy)* — Amazon.com Inc. was brought to court by the U.S. Internal Revenue Service (IRS) in 2017 for transfer pricing discrepancies. In 2005 and 2006, the multinational tech company had transferred $255 million in royalty payments to its tax haven in Luxembourg, but according to the IRS these royalty payments should have amounted to $3.5 billion. This transfer pricing adjustment would have increased Amazon’s federal tax payments by more than $1 billion.
12 July 20193 (Norwegian Refugee Council)* — Imagine you’re a refugee in a foreign country. You have no income and few possessions. You desperately need transport so you can earn money to feed your family. But the nearest town is 20km away and the bus fare is expensive. What do you do?
Photo: Qhubeka
Bicycles are a lifeline for many refugees. Cheap, quick and efficient, they are a vital tool on the road to self-reliance.
The problem to be explored in this paper can be stated very briefly as follows: is peace research necessarily a peaceful activity? More precisely, is there a meaningful distinction between violent and nonviolent methodologies in peace research?
(Greenpeace International)*— While plastic pollution has won the public’s interest as one of the major threats we are facing, the responsibility of big companies that are addicted to single-use plastic has been kept largely as a side note.
NAIROBI, Jul 12 2019 (IPS)* – Many NGOs around the world are fighting inequality between the rich and the poor, between the policies that make rich countries richer, and poor countries poorer.
Education for over 60,000 children in camps and host community is disrupted because of damage to learning centres
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UNICEF/UN0226412/Brown
COX’S BAZAR, Bangladesh/NEW YORK, 9 July 2019(UNICEF)* – Thousands of children and families living in the Rohingya refugee camps and host communities in Cox’s Bazar in south-eastern Bangladesh are at risk from flooding and landslides caused by heavy rainfall in the last few days.
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