Tripoli, 17 March 2022 (IOM)* – At least 70 migrants are missing at sea and presumed dead off the Libyan shore in the past two weeks, according to the International Organization for Migration (IOM).
Mediterranean Sea. Photo IOM/Mohamed Muse
On 12 March, a boat reportedly carrying 25 migrants capsized near the Libyan coast of Tobruk. Authorities rescued six migrants and recovered seven bodies while 12 remain missing.
MELBOURNE, Australia, Mar 16 2022 (IPS)* – The recently published “No 1 central policy document” (“No 1 document”), China’s national blueprint for rural policy, further demonstrates Beijing’s commitment to safeguarding food security and advancing rural revitalisation.
Genevieve Donnellon-May
The document’s release comes against an increasingly complicated geopolitical environment which, along with factors, such as disruptions to the global food chain supplies and worsening climate change impacts, have forced Beijing to rethink how its national goals can be achieved.
For the past few decades, safeguarding food security has been a critical goal for the Chinese central government.
(UN News)* — Security forces in Myanmar have killed at least 1,600 people and detained more than 12,500, since the military coup last year, the UN rights office said on Tuesday [15 March 2022].
Unsplash/Pyae Sone Htun | Protesters attend a march against the military coup in Myanmar.
In a new report warning that serious rights abuses uncovered in Myanmar may amount to war crimes and crimes against humanity, UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, Michelle Bachelet, appealed to the international community to take “concerted, immediate measures to stem the spiral of violence” there.
Farmers and fishing communities have had to let go of their folk knowledge on weather and seasonal patterns that used to guide them for the best times to carry out the various steps in their trade—planting, harvesting, setting out to sea, preservative drying of goods, etc.
(UN News)* — Yemen’s already dire hunger crisis is “teetering on the edge of outright catastrophe”, UN agency chiefs said on Monday [14 March 2022], as new data analysis from the war-ravaged country indicated potentially record food insecurity.
Today, more than 17.4 million Yemenis are food insecure; an additional 1.6 million “are expected to fall into emergency levels of hunger” in coming months, taking the total of those with emergency needs, to 7.3 million by the end of the year.
Famine to rise fivefold
Of extreme concern to humanitarians is the likelihood that the number of people experiencing “catastrophic”– or famine-like – levels of hunger, will increase five-fold, from 31,000 now, to 161,000,by 31 December.
With 95% of Venezuelans living in extreme poverty, every day hundreds are forced to walk to neighbouring Colombia in search of work | PORTUGUÊS
Nearly six million Venezuelans have left for neighbouring countries | Carlos Garcia Rawlins/REUTERS/Alamy Stock Photo
12 March 2022 (openDemocracy)* — “I gave my children a small cup of rice. That was all we had. Then I left,” says Emily, sitting on a grassy mound near a river and a road that leads into the Colombian town of Pamplona. Like nearly six million other Venezuelans, she has left home for a neighbouring country.
(UN News)* — Syria’s 11 years of brutal fighting has come at an “unconscionable human cost”, subjecting millions there to human rights violations on a “massive and systematic scale”, said the UN chief on Friday[11 March 2022], marking yet another tragic anniversary.
“The destruction that Syrians have endured is so extensive and deadly that it has few equals in modern history”, said Secretary-General Antonio Guterres in a statement.
(UN News)* — More than 70 percent of South Sudan’s population will struggle to survive the peak of the annual ‘lean season’ this year, as the country grapples with unprecedented levels of food insecurity caused by conflict, climate shocks, COVID-19, and rising costs, the UN’s World Food Programme (WFP) warned on Friday[11 March 2022]
While global attention is focused on Ukraine, said WFP in a press release, a “hidden hunger emergency” is engulfing South Sudan with about 8.3 million there – including refugees – facing extreme hunger in the coming months.
MADRID, Mar 10 2022 (IPS)* – Climate change and land-use change are projected to make wildfires more frequent and intense, with a global increase of extreme fires of up to 14 percent by 2030, 30 percent by the end of 2050 and 50 percent by the end of the century, according to a new report by the UN Environment Programme (UNEP) and GRID-Arendal, a non-profit environmental communications centre based in Norway.
Protect our people and future generations: Water and Climate Leaders call for urgent action
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Geneva 8 March 2022 (WMO)* – Water and Climate Coalition leaders have issued a call for more urgent and united action “to protect our people and future generations” in the face of alarming new scientific evidence from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change of growing global threats to water availability and from water-related hazards.
HUMAN WRONGS WATCH 