(UN News)* —More than 60 million women and girls worldwide who are forcibly displaced or stateless face high risks of gender-based violence (GBV), but funding for lifesaving services to support them is woefully lacking, the UN refugee agency UNHCR said.
UN data reveals that reports of conflict-related sexual violence increased shockingly by 50 per cent last year compared to 2023, and women and girls accounted for 95 per cent of verified cases.
These numbers, however, “represent a small fraction of the reality” as many cases go unreported, the agency warned.
Whether heralded or reviled, Biden’s supposed restraint during the Ukraine war has steadily faded, with more and more dangerous escalation in its place.
U.S. President Joe Biden shakes hands with President of Ukraine Volodymyr Zelensky after a meeting in the White House 21 Sep 2023 in Washington, D.C. (Photo by Drew Angerer/Getty Images)
25 Nov 2024 – President Biden has never wavered from approving huge arms shipments to Israel during more than 13 months of mass murder and deliberate starvation of Palestinian civilians in Gaza.
Biden’s crucial role earned him the name “Genocide Joe.”
UNITED NATIONS, Dec 2 2024 (IPS)* – If and when the devastating military conflicts in Ukraine and Gaza come to an end, the ultimate winners will not be the Russians, the Americans or the Israelis but the world’s arms manufacturers—contemptuously described as “merchants of death”.
Credit: US National Archives
And so will be the winners in a rash of conflicts and civil wars in Syria, Myanmar, Lebanon, Yemen, Sudan and Afghanistan.
4 JUN 2024– The world is warming at a record pace, with unseasonable heat baking nearly every continent on Earth. April, the last month for which statistics are available, marked the 11th consecutive month the planet has set a new temperature high.
Photo: PSI/Science Photo Library via AFP
Experts say that is a clear sign the Earth’s climate is rapidly changing. But many believe – or at least say they believe – that climate change is not real, relying on a series of well-trodden myths to make their point.
MADRID, Nov 26 2024 (IPS)* –In most Western European countries you can purchase –or rent- a 60 square-metres flat that is equipped with two toilets, one for her and one for him. Larger apartments may feature even more.
Safely managed sanitation protects groundwater from human waste pollution. Credit: Lova Rabary-Rakontondravony/IPS
For those who can afford it, such facilities are taken for granted. Yet, nearly half the global population—over 3.5 billion people—live without access to safely managed sanitation, including 419 million forced to practice open defecation.
(UN News)* —Talks began in Busan, South Korea, on Monday [] aiming to clinch a legally binding deal on plastics pollution, led by the UN Environment Programme (UNEP).
UNEP/Cyril Villemain | A 30-foot high monument entitled Turn off the plastics tap by Canadian activist and artist Benjamin von Wong was exhibited at the UN Environment Assembly in Nairobi, Kenya, in 2022.
The meeting follows two years of intergovernmental negotiations to develop a legally binding global instrument that covers land and the marine environment – a blink of an eye in diplomatic circles, where multilateral deals can be decades in the making.
Suliman Azab with one of his children outside their collapsed home in Khan Younis, Gaza. The family were displaced three times by the conflict. Photo: WFP/Ali Jadallah
(UN News)* — Families fleeing from besieged areas of northern Gaza are leaving homes and shelters with just the shirts on their backs, Louise Wateridge, Senior Emergency Coordinator for UNRWA, the UN agency for Palestinian refugees, told UN News on Saturday [].
Speaking from an UNRWA school in Gaza City, which is in the north of the Strip, Ms. Wateridge said that, for almost 50 days, UN humanitarian missions have attempted to deliver supplies to northern Gaza, including besieged areas such as Jabalia, but access to those in desperate need has been extremely limited.
(UN News)* — The number of children being recruited into armed groups across Haiti has increased by 70 per cent over the past year, the UN Children’s Fund (UNICEF) has reported. The unprecedented spike also reveals the alarming deterioration of child protection amid escalating violence in the Caribbean nation.
According to the latest estimates, children now comprise up to half of all armed group members, with recruitment driven by widespread poverty, lack of education and collapse of essential services.
(UN News)* —Rich nations pledged to contribute at least $300 billion annually to the global fight against climate change as UN climate talks came to a contentious end early Sunday [24 November 2024] morning in Baku.
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UNFCCC/Kiara Worth | Wide shot of the plenary hall at the UN climate conference, COP29, in Baku, Azerbaijan.
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Developing nations who had sought over $1 trillion in assistance called the agreement “insulting” and argued it did not give them the vital resources they required to truly address the complexities of the climate crisis.
Photo: PSI/Science Photo Library via AFP
Safely managed sanitation protects groundwater from human waste pollution. Credit: Lova Rabary-Rakontondravony/IPS
HUMAN WRONGS WATCH 