'Unseen' News and Views
The 2021 WHO health and climate change global survey report, which covers 95 countries, found only around a quarter have been able to fully implement national health and climate change plans or strategies.
Other major barriers to progress include the fallout from the COVID-19 pandemic, as well as insufficient human resources.
(UN News)* — The UN World Food Programme (WFP) warned on Monday [8 November 2021] that the number of people teetering on the edge of famine in 43 countries, has risen to 45 million – up by three million this year – as acute hunger spikes around the world.
– Before the February 1 coup, China was among the top international partners of the now-in-opposition National League for Democracy (NLD). From 2015 to early 2020, when China closed its borders due to COVID-19, NLD leader Aung San Suu Kyi made five trips to China and met the Chinese President Xi Jinping five times.
A demonstration, against Myanmar’s military coup, outside the White House in Washington, DC. Credit: Unsplash/Gayatri Malhotra
During one such visit, Xi announced that he would work with the NLD leadership to “jointly create a China-Myanmar community with a shared destiny”. President Xi Jinping himself visited Myanmar in January 2020.
5 November 2021 (UNEP)* — November 6 marks the International Day for Preventing the Exploitation of the Environment in War and Armed Conflict. Curtailing the use of Explosive Weapons in Populated Areas (EWIPA) is a humanitarian priority due to increasing civilian deaths and injuries from armed conflict in urban settings and indirect environmental impacts, which are now recognized as an important dimension of their use.
REUTERS/Ceerwan Aziz / 05 Nov 2021
The environment is an inseparable part of the well-being, health and survival of civilians. EWIPA cause harmful pollution and destruction, which constrains access to the environment civilians live in.
– “For my people, the effects of climate change are an everyday reality. The rainy season is shorter and when it rains, there are floods. And we’ve suffered droughts.” said Hindou Oumarou Ibrahim, a member of the Wodaabe or Mbororo pastoral people of Chad.
In the face of substantial international offers of funding for indigenous lands and forests at COP26, indigenous peoples are calling for specific schemes for their participation. Shuar leader Katan Kontiak (left) of Ecuador and Hindou Oumarou Ibrahim of Chad took part in a Nov. 2 forum on the indigenous peoples and local communities platform. CREDIT: Emilio Godoy/IPS
Nature is critical to our survival: it provides the oxygen we need to breathe, regulates weather patterns, supplies food and water for all living things, and is home to countless species of wildlife, and the ecosystems they need to survive.
According to the UN Environment Programme (UNEP), human activity has disrupted almost 75 per cent of the earth’s surface and put some one million animal and plant species on the endangered list.
– While male circumcision is spread mainly among Muslim and other religious communities, and it is apparently accepted by some medical spheres, more than 200 million girls have already fallen prey to a dangerous, abhorrent practice, which is carried out in the name of social and religious traditions: Female Genital Mutilation (FGM).
Latifatou Compaoré, 14, in Burkina Faso, was inspired by her mother to call for the abandonment of FGM. She has recorded a popular song about ending the practice. Luca Zordan for UNFPA
Such a human rights violation is mostly carried out on young girls between infancy and age 15, is one stark evidence of gender inequality. Nevertheless it is not legally typified as a “crime” nor is it a relevant focus of wealthy societies’ feminist movements.
– Imagine your child, your daughter, being genitally mutilated and, further on, sold or even handed over for free to an older man who will force her to become a child mother, when her body is still far from being formed and thus able to bear with a so early pregnancy.
Globally around 21% of young women were married before their 18th birthday – 650,000,000 girls and women alive today were married as children. Credit: United Nations.
Well, it has been happening and it still happens right now. The victims are as many as a conservative 800 million child-girls.
And this is happening while rich societies are holding intensive debates about the right of adolescents and youngsters to enjoy their freedom of gathering in thousands and get drunk in massive parties in streets and squares without observing any of the most basic measures to prevent COVID19 contagion.
5 November 2021 (UN News)* — Nearly 23 million people, or 55 per cent of the Afghan population, are estimated to be in crisis or experiencing emergency levels of food insecurity between now and March of next year.
HUMAN WRONGS WATCH 