MADRID, Jun 7 2023 (IPS)* – The good news: oceans cover three-quarters of the Earth’s surface, contain 97% of the world’s water, represent 99% of the living space on the Planet by volume, and are a major source of food and medicine. Much so that they are the main source of protein for more than a billion people around the world.
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Oceans produce at least 50% of the Planet’s oxygen, while absorbing about 30% of carbon dioxide produced by humans, buffering the impacts of global warming. Credit: Claudio Riquelme/IPS
More: Oceans produce at least 50% of the Planet’s oxygen, while absorbing about 30% of carbon dioxide produced by humans, buffering the impacts of global warming.
CAMBRIDGE, MASS., Jun 6 2023 (IPS)* – On June 2, the U.S. government escalated its conflict with Mexico over that country’s restrictions on genetically modified corn, initiating the formal dispute-resolution process under the U.S.-Mexico-Canada Agreement (USMCA).
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“Remove corn and beans from NAFTA!” at a 2008 protest in Ciudad Juarez. It has been a longstanding demand the Mexican farmers’ movement. Credit: Enrique Pérez S.
It is only the latest in a decades-long U.S. assault on Mexico’s food sovereignty using the blunt instrument of a trade agreement that has inundated Mexico with cheap corn, wheat, and other staples, undermining Mexico’s ability to produce its own food.
With the government of Andrés Manuel López Obrador showing no signs of backing down, the conflict may well test the extent to which a major exporter can use a trade agreement to force a sovereign nation to abandon measures it deems necessary to protect public health and the environment.
(UN NEWS)* — Every day, some 1.6 million people worldwide fall ill from eating contaminated food, which kills 420,000 people each year, two UN agencies said on Tuesday [].
The World Health Organization (WHO) and the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) are highlighting the issue ahead of World Food Safety Day, observed annually on 7 June.
This year, focus is on the role of established food safety practices and standards which ensure that what we eat, is safe to consume.
(UN NEWSFor Valdecir Nascimento, 63, the Black movement in Brazil was a “turning point” for her as a young woman, leading her from the revolutionary stilt houses in Alagados, to joining more than 1,000 participants last week at UN Headquarters for the second session of the Permanent Forum on People of African Descent.
Organized under the theme, Realizing the dream: A UN declaration on the promotion, protection and full respect of the human rights of people of African descent, the Permanent Forum heard from experts and leaders from around the world, including Ms. Nascimento, explaining the challenges they have faced, and the dreams they have for the future.
ABUJA, Jun 2 2023 (IPS)* – New research shows that Black mothers in the United States disproportionately live in counties with higher maternal vulnerability and face greater risk of preterm death for the fetus, greater risk of low birth weight for a baby, and a higher number of maternal deaths.
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While poor maternal outcomes among Black women in the U.S. is not new, improving it is imperative. U.S. policymakers can look to sub-Saharan Africa for guidance on reversing this trend. Credit: Ernest Ankomah/IPS
(UN NEWS)* — The United Nations on Friday [] appealed for sustainable funding for its agency that supports Palestine refugees, UNRWA, which is on the brink of financial collapse.
Chronic underfunding over the past decade, and resultant severe austerity measures, mean UNRWA is already operating with a $75 million shortfall, putting its lifesaving programmes across the Middle East at risk.
“As I address you today, I do not have the funds to keep our schools, health centres and other services running as of September,” Commissioner-General Philippe Lazzarini told a pledging conference at UN Headquarters in New York.
In this feature, part of a series exploring the fight against trafficking in the Sahel, UN News focuses on the illegal fuel trade in the region.
UNODC | Graffiti showing a fuel transporter in Porto Novo, Benin.
(UN NEWS)* — Kourou/Koualou, a tiny village in a neutral zone straddling Benin and Burkina Faso, was the centre of a one-million-litre-a-year cross-border illicit fuel trade, a snapshot of a phenomenon that spreads far across the 6,000-kilometre-wide African Sahel region.
Transported by criminal networks and taxed by terrorist groups, illegal fuel flows along four major routes snaking across the Sahel towards ready buyers, siphoning millions from nations on the road to stabilizing their security-challenged region, home to 300 million people.
MADRID, Jun 2 2023 (IPS)* – There is a tangled trafficking web that has been woven across the Sahel, which spans almost 6.000 kilometres from the Atlantic Ocean to the Red Sea, and is home to more than 300 million people in 10 countries: Burkina Faso, Cameroon, Chad, The Gambia, Guinea, Mali, Mauritania, Niger, Nigeria, and Senegal.
Fake or substandard antimalarial medicines kill as many as 267,000 sub-Saharan Africans every year. Credit: Mercedes Sayagues/IPS
This is how several international specialised bodies, mainly the United Nations, depict the aggravated situation in this already highly fragile African region, which the UN describes as a region in crisis, as those living there are prey to “chronic insecurity, climate shocks, conflict, coups, and the rise of criminal and terrorist networks.”
Port-au-Prince/Santiago de Chile, 29 May 2023 (FAO)* – According to the latest Integrated Food Security Phase Classification (IPC) analysis (March 2023), 4.9 million people in Haiti – nearly half of the country’s population – are experiencing high levels of acute food insecurity. This figure represents an increase of 200 000 people in just five months.
And of the total number of people affected, 1.8 million are in Emergency (IPC Phase 4) – up from the analyses in the last three years.
This means that households face large food consumption gaps resulting in high acute malnutrition and excess mortality, or are forced to adopt negative coping mechanisms to cover food needs, such as selling their productive assets or consuming seeds instead of planting them, increasing their vulnerability.
HUMAN WRONGS WATCH 