'Unseen' News and Views
(UN News)* — Millions of displaced families across eastern Africa will fall deeper into hunger as food rations dwindle due to humanitarian resources being stretched to the limit as the world grapples with a toxic cocktail of conflict, climate shocks, and COVID-19, UN humanitarians warned on Wednesday [13 April 2022].
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Credit: WHO
The study, elaborated by the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP), found that, globally, not enough attention is being focused on the threat posed by antimicrobial resistance with most antibiotics being excreted into the environment via toilets or through open defecation.
A penguin stands on an iceberg in Yankee Harbour, Antarctica, February 18, 2018. Reuters/Alexandre Meneghini
The Conger ice shelf, which cleaved away from the eastern side of Antarctica in March, is the latest victim of rising temperatures at the Earth’s poles.
Experts say as the polar regions warm, more ice is likely to melt, potentially pushing up sea levels and inundating coastal communities.
(UN News)* – The threat of famine is very real in Somalia and South Sudan and urgent action is needed now to avoid a catastrophe, UN humanitarians warned on Tuesday [12 April 2022].
The alert from the World Food Programme (WFP) and Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) followed the latest food security assessments which showed that six million people in Somalia will face acute food insecurity in the coming months, unless the rains come.
Fully artificial food is an increasingly popular trend focused on developing a new line of synthetically produced, ultra-processed food products by using recent advances in synthetic biology, artificial intelligence, and biotechnology.
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These new products seek to imitate and replace animal products, food additives, and expensive, rare, or socially conflictive ingredients (such as palm oil).
– After two years of human devastation, the world is learning to live with COVID-19 while trying to balance the protection of public health and livelihoods.
For countries in Asia and the Pacific, this is challenging not only because national coffers are heavily strained by record public spending to mitigate pandemic suffering, but also due to deeper structural economic issues.
Armida Salsiah Alisjahbana
COVID-19 has exposed a pandemic of inequality in a region which has the world’s most dynamic economies but also half of the global poor.
A region where nearly half of the total income goes to just 10 per cent of people while the poorest 10 per cent get just 0.2 per cent.
This failure to grow together meant that the pandemic worsened the circumstances of those left behind.
(UN News)* — Decrying the erosion of democracy in Brazil, a UN expert has called for authorities to create and maintain a safe environment conducive to the exercise of the rights to peaceful assembly and association.
“I am concerned that in recent years there have been emerging trends limiting the enjoyment of these rights in all areas,” Clément Nyaletsossi Voule said on Monday [11 April 2022] in São Paulo, speaking at the end of a 12-day visit to South America’s largest country.
(UN News)* — The basic rights of older persons need to be protected today, more than ever before, said the UN human rights chief on Monday [11 April 2022], but existing legal safeguards render them, in effect, “invisible”.
Students eating lunch at Shivbhawani Primary School, Deulekh, Bajhang, Nepal. Credit: Marty Logan
Worldwide 388 million students, or 1 in 2 schoolchildren, received at least one meal or snack per day at school before the COVID-19 pandemic in what the World Food Programme (WFP), quoting the World Bank, calls the world’s “most extensive social safety net.”
(UN News)* — The number of hungry people in the Sahel and West Africa has quadrupled over the last three years, currently reaching 41 million, the UN World Food Programme (WFP) reported on Friday [8 April 2022].
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Issuing the alert, WFP said that the figure rose to 43 million when the Central African Republic was included in the food insecurity estimate.
HUMAN WRONGS WATCH 