10 May 2021 (UN News)* — Is this the year we overcome the global economic crisis caused by the pandemic? Are our jobs in danger? Who has lost the most in the crisis and what can be done to recover?
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IMF/Ernesto Benavides | Goods are transported by hands in Lima, Peru.
As the UN Department of Social and Economic Affairs (DESA) prepares to launch the mid-year update of the 2021 World Economic Situation and Prospects (WESP) report, here are five things you need to know about the state of the global economy.
(UN News)* — The UN agriculture chief on 10 May 2021 warned that severe underfunding of Africa’s agri-food sector has boosted food insecurity and was hampering the future development of countries across the continent.
“Let’s unblock the bottlenecks that are holding back potential by increasing coordination and upskilling human capacity in African nations”, urged QU Dongyu, Director-General of the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO).
(Greenpeace International)* — Climate breakdown. Plastic pollution. Overfishing. The oceans are facing more threats than ever – and yet, there’s a new baddie in town. A secretive industry is ramping up that would put even more pressure on our oceans: deep sea mining.
The deep sea mining industry is planning to send monster machines to plunder the seabed and extract polymetallic nodules – potato-sized lumps of rocks loaded with metals and minerals. Deep sea mining isn’t happening yet, but the kinds of metals this industry is targeting are used in phones, laptops and batteries.
10 May 2021 (IOM)* — Gender inequality is magnified in situations of conflict. Women are disproportionately disadvantaged in terms of personal safety, access to employment, resources and basic services in fragile, conflict-ridden environments. They are most affected by poverty and the value of the support they provide at home is mostly rendered invisible.
Photo: IOM Afghanistan
In a society like Afghanistan, traditional norms often make it difficult for women to access employment, get a loan or start a business. Yet, when women are given an opportunity, they make significant contributions to the growth and development of their families and their communities at large.
Sakina was born in a small village in Helmand in 1995. She was 5 years old when her family fled Afghanistan in 2000 and migrated to Pakistan.
8 May 2021 (Wall Street International)*— This paper is not going to be academic or conceptual, but a long article. I thought that my best contribution would be to give a testimony I have lived through of the triple process of decolonisation, the Non-Aligned Movement and the Group of 77, in which I actively participated.
Dumbarton Oaks in Washington, D.C., was the location of the conference in 1944 | Image from Wall Street International.
I believe that I am one of the few survivors left from the Bandung Conference (1955) and that communicating my experience of the process of the creation and development of the Third World, its vision and values, may be the most useful thing I can do.
LONDON, UK (UNHCR)* – For more than seven decades, Benjamin has lacked something that most people take for granted: a nationality.
Born in Namibia, then part of South Africa, he did not acquire nationality at birth because at the time neither of his parents had citizenship or permanent residency in the country.
9 May 2021 (UN News)* — Misrah, an undocumented migrant worker, and her family, left their home in Ethiopia hoping for a better life. Instead, her three children are now dead, drowned during a perilous sea crossing across the Gulf of Aden, when the overloaded boat smuggling them into the country capsized.
“I have lost everything,” says Misrah, as she struggles to recount the most traumatic of events, witnessing the deaths of her three children.
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The 27-year-old Ethiopian woman, her husband and children – Aziza, five; Rachar, three; and Ikram, two – and at least 55 other migrants and refugees were aboard a boat controlled by smugglers crossing the Gulf of Aden from Yemen to the Horn of Africa via Djibouti, on 12 April.
Thousands of boots on the ground have been replaced by multiple deployments of smart bombs that stay under the radar of public debate
Fewer boots are on the ground compared with Iraq in 2007 | Mike Pryor, US Army (Copyright-free)
8 May 2021 (openDemocracy)* — In the black and white TV schedule of the late 1950s and early 1960s, the Western drama series reigned supreme. One of the most popular was ‘Have Gun, Will Travel’, starring Richard Boone as a mercenary in the late 1800s.
(UN News)* — The United Nations independent human rights expert on Myanmar on Friday [7 May 2021] called on countries that have not yet done so, to impose arms embargo on the country urgently, to stop the “massacre” of citizens across the country.
Unsplash/Zinko Hein | People holding a vigil in Yangon, Myanmar (file photo).
Tom Andrews, UN Special Rapporteur on the human rights situation in the southeast Asian nation, underscored in a statement, the need to stop the flow of weapons and so called dual-use weapons technology into the hands of forces under the command of the military junta, describing it as “literally a matter of life and death.”
In Rio de Janeiro, drug trafficking factions, paramilitaries and evangelical churches have united to fight a ‘holy war’ against their rivals.
Armed men in front of a football field | Ricardo Funari//BrazilPhotos/Alamy Stock Photo
6 May 2021 (openDemocracy)* — Israeli flags fly from the highest spots of the hills surrounding the Cidade Alta favela in the North Zone of Rio de Janeiro. Checkpoints, raised to prevent the entry of police and rival groups, display the Star of David to warn passers-by whose territory they are entering.
HUMAN WRONGS WATCH 