22 January 2021 (UNHCR)* — On the evening of 31 December, as the hours ticked down to the New Year, 40-year-old Aguiratou Diallo was at home with her four children in their village near the town of Koumbri in northern Burkina Faso, when a group of armed men burst into the courtyard outside.
“They threatened to hurt us if we were still there when they returned the next day. Then they fired into the air to scare us,” said Aguiratou, whose husband was away at work at the time.
By Sébastien Farcis, French journalist based in New Delhi*
For the past nine years, Rajesh Kumar Sharma has been operating a makeshift school between two pillars of the aerial metro that runs across India’s capital. More than 200 children from the surrounding slums attend this open-air classroom every day.
A primary school student attends a Hindi class at the makeshift school under a bridge in New Delhi. Rajesh Kumar Sharma, who started the school, can be seen in the background, teaching other students. cou_04_19_wide_angle_inde_internet_site.jpg
(UNESCO)* — This school does not appear on any map. It does not have whole walls or a complete roof, let alone tables or chairs. Like the small street shops that keep the Indian capital alive, the “Free school under the bridge” has simply merged into New Delhi’s sprawling urban space. It nestles between the massive number five and number six pillars of the aerial metro of this megalopolis of over 20 million inhabitants.
24 January 2021 (UN News)* — A young woman scientist in Burkina Faso is researching the role of micro-organisms in fighting desertification in the Sahel Region, as part of a UN programme to restore degraded land in Africa.
30-year-old Barkissa Fofana studies the relationship between acacia trees, and they way they interact with different fungi and bacteria, in the hope that it will help to explain how they resist drought. This kind of research is an important way to build resilience against climate change, and make land in the Sahel green and productive.
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Ms. Fofana’s work is part of Action Against Desertification (AAD), a programme of the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO), which has restored over 7,000 hectares in Burkina Faso. You can find out more about her projects, the impact of AAD, and the Great Green Wall initiative, here.
Sheldon Cooper/ SOPA Images/Sipa USA via Reuters / 20 Jan 2021
22 January 2021 (UNEP)* — Along with a vow to return to exercise, upping personal intake of fruit and vegetables tops the list of New Year’s resolutions for many. But what if this year’s resolution didn’t end with the eating – and extended to reducing the amount of healthy, nutritious produce that gets trashed?
The Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. (1929-1968)
Stephen F. Somerstein/Getty Images
Martin Luther King, Jr. Day was signed into law as a federal holiday in 1983. I do not wish to trivialize this accomplishment: it took great persistence by civil society groups and it had to conquer serious opposition. Yet what it has established is an indigestible paradox in the nation’s list of saints and heroes.
22 January 2021 (UNEP)* — Overcoming adversity has long been the stock in trade of Do Thi Phuong, a 42-year-old mother of two living in a small village in Viet Nam’s lush Lao Cai province. As the primary breadwinner in her family of six, Phuong is accustomed to being a rock for her family in hard times. Years ago, landslides wiped out all but four out of 42 household rice fields in the village, yet Phuong managed to provide.
But COVID-19 has tested her resolve like nothing else.
REUTERS/Carlos Barria / 22 Jan 2021
Phuong’s village has traditionally been home to indigenous groups that farm the land. Many in the community raise chicken and pigs – each household maintains between 1,000-5,000 chickens, from which they derive their primary income.
22 January 2021 (WMO)* — Tropical Cyclone Eloise is intensifying and is expected to make landfall at 0300 UTC on 23 January in Mozambique, as the equivalent of a category 2 strength on the Saffir Simpson scale.
(UN News)* — The COVID-19 pandemic “will not end for anyone, until it ends for everyone”, an independent UN human rights expert said on Friday [22 January 2021], advocating for an equitable and globally-coordinated vaccine distribution programme.
“The virus can still travel from the vastly unvaccinated massive population of the Global South to the Global North, including in its increasingly mutating forms”, Obiora Okafor, UN Special Rapporteur on human rights and international solidarity, said in a statement.
He explained that with mutations constantly evolving, only inoculating rich countries would likely “complicate or delay” the eradication of the virus.
With an intensive information campaign the Danes would learn to see themselves as members of a multi-cultural society
Denmark is still better known for H.C. Andersen, The Little Mermaid | Image fromWall Street International.
Bernie Sanders points to Denmark
22 January 2021 | Wall Street International* — Denmark is known as a country where social justice prevails and where everyone has secured a daily life without having to live in worry about tomorrow, even if sickness and unemployment knock on the door. I was born in Denmark, two generations ago, and couldn’t help but feeling a bit proud, when the Democratic candidate for the US presidency, Bernie Sanders, pointed to Denmark as a model to be emulated by the USA. What is it worth to be big and mighty, if it does not contribute to give better living conditions to people, asked Sanders.
© FAO/Gideon Vink | Barkissa Fofana, a young microbiologist from Burkina Faso, is confident that science can help combat climate change and desertification.
