JUBA, 9 April 2022 (WFP)* – Food insecurity is likely to rise by seven percent across South Sudan in the coming months, compared to last year, according to a new United Nations report on food security. UN organizations are renewing the call for more humanitarian and livelihoods assistance to stave off looming hunger and enhance resilience.
PLAYA DEL CARMEN, Mexico , Apr 8 2022 (IPS)* – Along the wide slash of white earth in southwestern Mexico there are no longer trees or animals. In their place, orange signs with white stripes warn visitors: “Heavy machinery in motion,” “No unauthorized personnel allowed”. | En español
With oligarchs using their media outlets to promote far-Right presidential candidates, France is being haunted by its own ghosts.
Government capitulations to the far Right have only aided Emmanuel Macron’s opponents | Victor Joly/Abaca Press/Alamy
6 April 2022 (openDemocracy)* — To understand the coming French election, we need to start not with the incumbent president Emmanuel Macron, nor with any of his rival candidates, but with a billionaire called Vincent Bolloré.
Like many oligarchs, he started out by inheriting a family business founded by his ancestors – in this case, in the 1820s.
The war in Ukraine has placed U.S. and NATO policy toward Russia under a spotlight, highlighting how the United States and its allies have expanded NATO right up to Russia’s borders, backed a coup and now a proxy war in Ukraine, imposed waves of economic sanctions, and launched a debilitating trillion-dollar arms race.
The Nation: Hiroshima – It’s time to ban and eliminate nuclear weapons.
The explicit goal is to pressure, weaken and ultimately eliminate Russia, or a Russia-China partnership, as a strategic competitor to U.S. imperial power.
(UN News)* — Twelve years into the war in Syria, thousands of families “remain in the dark” when it comes to the fates of their missing relatives, UN human rights chief Michelle Bachelet told the General Assembly on Friday [8 April 2022].
“The scale of this tragedy is daunting, with people going missing in different contexts, such as during hostilities, displacement or in detention. All too often, this is connected with a range of human rights violations and abuses,” she said, speaking via videolink from Geneva.
Immediate Humanitarian Access, Protection of Communities Key
Nairobi, – Amhara regional security forces and civilian authorities in Ethiopia’s Western Tigray Zone have committed widespread abuses against Tigrayans since November 2020 that amount to war crimes and crimes against humanity, Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch said in a new report released on 6 April 2022.
(UN News)* – An estimated 6.3 million children under five, in six countries in Africa’s Sahel region, will suffer from wasting this year, UN agencies and their partners warned in a publication issued on Wednesday [6 April 2022].
The West and Central Africa Nutrition working group fears at least 900,000 young lives could be at risk across Burkina Faso, Chad, Mali, Mauritania, Niger and Senegal.
They said the number of under fives in the region expected to suffer from global acute malnutrition has never been so high, with a 27 per cent increase expected this year compared to 2021, marking the fifth consecutive year of record highs.
(UN News)* — Thirty years after the siege of Sarajevo, the UN team in Bosnia and Herzegovina reiterated the importance on Wednesday [6 April 2022] of pursuing justice and reparation for victims, survivors and their family members.
UNDP/Mackenzie Knowles-Coursin | People walk through the streets of Sarajevo, Bosnia and Herzegovina (file photo).
The siege began after Bosnia and Herzegovina declared independence in the wake of the dissolution of the former Yugoslavia.
Bosnian Serbs largely opposed independence, while the other two large ethnic groups, Muslim Bosniaks and Croats, favoured the split from Belgrade.
In 2010-2019 average annual global greenhouse gas emissions were at their highest levels in human history, but the rate of growth has slowed. Since 2010, there have been sustained decreases of up to 85% in the costs of solar and wind energy, and batteries.
(UN News)* — An astonishing 99 per cent of the world’s population breathes polluted air that exceeds internationally approved limits, with negative health impacts kicking in at much lower levels than previously thought, UN medical scientists said on Monday[4 April 2022].
ADB/Ariel Javellana | Emissions from coal-fired power plants contribute to air pollution in Ulaanbaatar, Mongolia.
Noting that fossil fuels are responsible for most of the harmful emissions that are linked to acute and chronic sickness, the World Health Organization (WHO) called for tangible steps to curb their use.
The UN agency also urged more governments to take note that it has made significant revisions to its air quality indicators, including for particulate matter – known as PM2.5 – that can enter the bloodstream, along with nitrogen dioxide (NO2), another common urban pollutant and precursor of particulate matter and ozone.
HUMAN WRONGS WATCH 