Indonesian authorities should immediately halt plans to develop a sprawling gold mine the size of the city of Jakarta in volatile Papua Province, where it risks fueling conflict and violating the land rights of Indigenous Papuans, Amnesty International said in a new briefing published on 21 March 2022.
Intan Jaya Regency, where the gold ore deposit known as Wabu Block is located, has become a hotspot of conflict between Indonesian security forces and Papuan independence groups in recent years.
KANDAHAR, Afghanistan, 17 March 2022 (UNFPA)* – “I had a miscarriage and my two-year-old daughter got sick,” Anisa* recalled after her local health facility stopped providing maternal and newborn health services. “We both needed medical care, but we did not know where to go.”
CARACAS, Mar 18 2022 (IPS)* – Doris Martínez was a cook in a Venezuelan restaurant that closed its doors; she emigrated to Colombia, got sick from working long hours standing in front of a stove, and returned to her country where, together with her husband and children, she runs a busy fast food kiosk on a road in Valles del Tuy, near the Venezuelan capital. lEn español
Doris Martínez gets ready to start cooking at her food kiosk in Valles del Tuy, an area of small dormitory towns near Caracas. CREDIT: Humberto Márquez/IPS
18 March 2022 (UNHCR)* – UNHCR, the UN Refugee Agency, together with 102 humanitarian and development partners is appealing for US$1.2 billion to deliver much-needed humanitarian assistance and protection to 2.3 million South Sudanese refugees and local communities in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC), Ethiopia, Kenya, Sudan, and Uganda. | Español | Français | عربي
MADRID, Mar 18 2022 (IPS)* – Yemen’s already dire hunger crisis is teetering on the edge of outright catastrophe, with 17.4 million people now in need of food assistance and a growing portion of the population coping with emergency levels of hunger, three UN agencies warned on 14 March 2022.
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Across Yemen, 2.2 million children are acutely malnourished, including nearly more than half a million children facing severe acute malnutrition, a life-threatening condition, according to new IPC report. Credit: United Nations.
Tripoli, 17 March 2022 (IOM)* – At least 70 migrants are missing at sea and presumed dead off the Libyan shore in the past two weeks, according to the International Organization for Migration (IOM).
Mediterranean Sea. Photo IOM/Mohamed Muse
On 12 March, a boat reportedly carrying 25 migrants capsized near the Libyan coast of Tobruk. Authorities rescued six migrants and recovered seven bodies while 12 remain missing.
UNITED NATIONS, Mar 18 2022 (IPS)* – The United Nations Joint Staff Pension Fund (UNJSPF), which is expected to provide retirement, death, disability and related benefits for staff, upon cessation of their services– has a staggering portfolio amounting to over $81.5 billion ranking far, far ahead of the UN’s annual budget of $3.1 billion and its average peacekeeping budget of over $6.4 billion.
The thousands of UN retirees and their beneficiaries, numbering over 71,000 at last count, who depend on their pensions for economic survival, are relentlessly protective of the Fund—while protesting all attempts at risky investments.
MELBOURNE, Australia, Mar 16 2022 (IPS)* – The recently published “No 1 central policy document” (“No 1 document”), China’s national blueprint for rural policy, further demonstrates Beijing’s commitment to safeguarding food security and advancing rural revitalisation.
Genevieve Donnellon-May
The document’s release comes against an increasingly complicated geopolitical environment which, along with factors, such as disruptions to the global food chain supplies and worsening climate change impacts, have forced Beijing to rethink how its national goals can be achieved.
For the past few decades, safeguarding food security has been a critical goal for the Chinese central government.
(UN News)* — Almost one child per second in Ukraine is becoming a refugee of the war, UN humanitarians said on Tuesday [15 March 2022], as the total number of people who have now fled the country since the Russian invasion began, passed three million.
“We have now reached three million mark in terms of movements of people out of Ukraine to neighbouring countries. And among these people there are some 157,000 third-country nationals,” said Paul Dillon, spokesperson for the International Organization for Migration (IOM), speaking in Geneva.
(UN News)* — Security forces in Myanmar have killed at least 1,600 people and detained more than 12,500, since the military coup last year, the UN rights office said on Tuesday [15 March 2022].
Unsplash/Pyae Sone Htun | Protesters attend a march against the military coup in Myanmar.
In a new report warning that serious rights abuses uncovered in Myanmar may amount to war crimes and crimes against humanity, UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, Michelle Bachelet, appealed to the international community to take “concerted, immediate measures to stem the spiral of violence” there.
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