MADRID, Aug 12 2022 (IPS)* – While often too quickly attributing -quasi exclusively- the world unprecedented hunger tragedy to the current proxy war in Ukraine, other major causes remain hidden in plain sight.
Food and energy prices have increased to their highest levels in decades. And 62 new food billionaires have been created. Credit: Bigstock.
Like the legend of the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse, the modern ones are a mix of combined causes: inequality; speculation; indebtedness, and the crushing impacts of climate emergency.
MADRID, Aug 11 2022 (IPS)* – The benchmark for world food commodity prices declined “significantly” in July, with major cereal and vegetable oil prices recording double-digit percentage declines.
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What the Russian-Ukrainian conflict has once again laid bare is just how fragile globalised food systems are. Credit: Busani Bafana/IPS
The data, released by the UN Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) on 5 August, adds the FAO Food Price Indexaveraged 140.9 points in July, down 8.6% from June, “marking the fourth consecutive monthly decline since hitting all-time highs earlier in the year.”
UNITED NATIONS, Aug 12 2022 (IPS)* – When world political leaders, mostly presidents and prime ministers, are ousted from power following military coups or street demonstrations, they flee to “safe havens” to avoid being jailed, executed by firing squads or hanged in public.
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A Liberian execution squad fires a volley of shots, killing cabinet ministers of Liberia. April 1980. Credit: Website Rare Historical Photos
Perhaps one of the secure “safe havens”—and a popular “political retirement home”– is Saudi Arabia, a traditionally authoritarian regime, which has provided sanctuary for leaders from Uganda, Tunisia, Pakistan, Yemen and Qatar.
A cartoon in a British newspaper summed it up when it jokingly depicted the “ARRIVALS” terminal in a Saudi airport with a fast-checkout line for visitors– supermarket-style—with a sign that read: “FOR OUSTED WORLD LEADERS ONLY”
10 August 2022 — Racism permeates every aspect of life in the United States, so much so that women of color encounter racism when it comes to their sexual and reproductive health, a situation exacerbated by gender and class discrimination.
In a submission to the United Nations in advance of its review of US compliance with the International Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination, Human Rights Watch and our partners laid out three key areas in which racial discrimination thrives in the US and perpetuates health inequities, with particularly devastating impacts on Black women.
(UN News)* — The UN trade and development body, UNCTAD, has called for action to curb cryptocurrencies in developing nations, in three policy briefs published on Wednesday [10 August 2022].
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Unsplash/Kanchanara | Digital coin crypto currency.
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Although private digital currencies have rewarded some individuals and institutions, they are an unstable financial asset that can bring social risks and costs, the agency warned.
UNCTADsaid their benefits to some are overshadowed by the threats they pose to financial stability, domestic resource mobilization, and the security of monetary systems.
Cryptocurrencies are an alternative form of payment. Transactions are done digitally through encrypted technology known as blockchain.
10 August 2022 (UN News)* — Dozens of people are said to be missing after a boat of migrants and refugees sank in the Aegean Sea on Wednesday off the Greek island of Karpathos, according to the UN refugee agency, UNHCR.
“Very sad news from the Aegean: Dozens of people are missing after a boat sank off the island of Rhodes this morning (Wednesday),” UNHCR’s office in Greece said in a tweet.
News media reported that the vessel sank at dawn after setting sail from southern Türkiye yesterday, heading for Italy.
“A major search and rescue operation is underway,” said UNHCR.
On International Day of the World’s Indigenous Peoples, World Food Programme agronomist Deborah Suc tells Simona Beltrami she’s lost her shyness for sticking up for others – and the environment.
‘The consequences of climate change are hitting us really hard,’ says Deborah Suc who works for WFP in her native Indigenous community in Guatemala. Photo: WFP/Nelson Pacheco
8 August 2022 (WFP)*— As record hunger sweeps the globe, Indigenous peoples’ communities – who’ve been marginalized and left behind throughout history – remain disproportionately affected by food insecurity and malnutrition.
RIO DE JANEIRO, Aug 9 2022 (IPS)* – The mandatory initial permit granted by Brazil’s environmental authority for the repaving of the BR-319 highway, in the heart of the Amazon jungle, intensified the alarm over the possible irreversible destruction of the rainforest. | En español
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View of a bridge in severe disrepair on the BR-319 highway, in the heart of the Amazon, which the Brazilian government plans to repave along the 405-kilometer central section, out of a total of 885 kilometers, because it has deteriorated to the point that is impassable for much of the year. Those who venture along it take three times the normal amount of time to drive the entire length, with the risk of seriously damaging their vehicles. CREDIT: Tarmo Tamming/Flickr
3 Aug 2022 – “I humbly beg forgiveness for the evil committed by so many Christians against the Indigenous Peoples.”
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So said Pope Francis last week, at a powwow in Alberta, at the start of his “apology tour” across Canada — for the participation of the Catholic Church in the multi-century horror of Native American “residential schools” on this continent, which more accurately might be called concentration camps for 6-year-olds.
This papal mega-apology, while cheered by some, has been widely criticized as little more than a wimpy shoulder-shrug — sorry about that — for a governmental, church-complicit policy, lasting well into the 20th century, of snatching indigenous children from their families and squeezing their culture, if not their life, out of them.
AIsrael launched multiple air strikes on Gaza on August 5, in another eruption of open warfare between Israel and Palestinian militants. The latest attacks come just over a year after hundreds were killed in an intense period of conflict in the territory.
Fatima Shbair/AP/AAP
Israel announced its missile strikes were targeting military leaders of the al-Quds Brigades, the military wing of the Islamic Jihad militant organisation in Gaza. Israel alleged Islamic Jihad forces were making “threatening movements” near the Israeli border.
Israel’s strikes killed two key leaders of Islamic Jihad in Gaza and severely damaged its military capabilities.
HUMAN WRONGS WATCH 