(UNEP)* — Deepika Hemrom’s parents pay her school fees with plastic. Not Master Card or Visa but actual plastic waste.
Photo: Akshar Foundation / 16 Apr 2021
They are participating in a ground-breaking scheme in Assam, India, that allows low-income families to use single-use plastic in lieu of money to pay for private schooling.
Deepika’s parents are manual labourers and this unique payment method means the 13-year-old, who dreams of becoming a doctor, can access a quality education, which would otherwise be out of her family’s financial reach.
In stirring opening remarks at the international 2021 mega-conference, Palestine Writes, Susan Abulhawa asserts that “… this festival is meant to expand Palestine’s cultural imprint in the world.”
Such an imprint is being achieved by Palestinian cultural creativity, inscribing the Palestinian struggle and the distinctive spirit of the Palestinian people at the center of the moral and political imagination of persons of conscience around the world.
By so doing, Israel’s concerted attempt to remove the Palestinian struggle from the global agenda is being thwarted, discredited, and increasingly likely, reversed.
Small family farms make up 85 per cent of all farms worldwide, and the people who live on them constitute the majority of the rural poor. To mitigate the challenges that come with working in isolation − and to increase profitability and productivity − these smallholders form organizations.
Human Rights Watch on 2 July 2021 joined Afghan and international human rights organizations calling for a United Nations-mandated fact-finding mission to investigate escalating attacks on civilians in Afghanistan to promote justice and accountability.
WASHINGTON DC, Jul 2 2021 (IPS)* – After more than a decade of rising tensions and growing nuclear competition between the two largest nuclear-weapon states, U.S. President Joe Biden and Russian President Vladimir Putin agreed at their June 16 summit to engage in a robust “strategic stability” dialogue to “lay the groundwork for future arms control and risk reduction measures.”
A UN meeting on the International Day for the Total Elimination of Nuclear Weapons, 26 September. Credit: UN Photo/Kim Haughton
2 July 2021 (UN News)* — Some 4.4 million people in Nigeria are facing what the UN humanitarian office, OCHA, is describing as “catastrophic food conditions”.
.
UNOCHA/Damilola Onafuwa | Farmers in northeastern Nigeria have been unable to cultivate their crops because of insecurity.
A combination of insecurity caused by terrorist groups, the effects of climate change and the COVID-19 pandemic, have meant that people in the northeast of the country are struggling to get enough to eat; OCHA says 775,000 are at “extreme risk”.
Many are farmers but are unable to grow their crops fearing for their personal safety, and so rely on humanitarian support “as their only lifeline”.
(UN News)* — Senior UN officials on 2 July 2021 appealed for immediate and unrestricted humanitarian access to Tigray – and for an end to deadly attacks on aid workers – as the Security Council held its first open meeting on the conflict in the restive northern Ethiopian region.
Painting a grim picture, Ramesh Rajasingham, Acting Under-Secretary-General for Humanitarian Affairs and Emergency Relief Coordinator, said that 400,000 people have “crossed the threshold into famine” – with another 1.8 million on the brink of following them.
(Greenpeace International)* — After living on and fighting for their lands for centuries, the rights of Indigenous Peoples in Brazil are endangered by a legal loophole called Marco Temporal that could legalize theft of their lands—unless the Brazilian Supreme Court stops it.
2 July 2021 (UNEP)* — The world’s first-ever international Food Systems Summit is slated for September 2021 and seeks to galvanize a global commitment and action to transform our food systems.
With almost 690 million people going hungry in 2019, and most current farming practices driving biodiversity loss and global heating, there is an urgent need to take stock and change direction.
HUMAN WRONGS WATCH 