It is remarkable how the media in a select few countries are able to set the record on matters around the world.
Meas Sokhorn (Cambodia), Inverted Sewer, 2014
The European and North American countries enjoy a near-global monopoly over information, their media houses vested with a credibility and authority inherited from their status during colonial times (BBC, for instance) as well as their command of the neocolonial structure of our times (CNN, for instance).
In the 1950s, the post-colonial nations identified the West’s monopoly over media and information and sought to ‘promote the free flow of ideas by word and by image’, as the 1945 Constitution of the United Nations Educational, Scientific, and Cultural Organisation (UNESCO) put it.
ROME, May 29 2023 (IPS)* – Please stop repeating all this softened wording, such as climate change, climate-related hazards, climate crisis, or extreme weather events… And just call it what it really is: climate carnage.
The UN Office for Disaster Risk Reduction has now reported on the “Staggering’ rise in climate emergencies in the last 20 years.’ Credit: Manipadma Jena/IPS
Indeed, several scientific findings, released ahead of the 2023 World Environment Day (5 June), staggeringly indicate that the world-spread climate carnage is predicted to hit all-time records.
See: global temperatures are set to break records during the next five years, the World Meteorological Organization (WMO) on 17 May 2023 alerted.
Warmest year ever
“There is a 98% likelihood that at least one of the next five years, and the five-year period, will be the warmest on record.”
In 1987, at the Organization for African Unity, Thomas Sankara said, “Debt is a cleverly managed reconquest of Africa.” Ethiopia might actually be better off if the US keeps the IMF from signing off on its latest loan request.
The US is holding up Ethiopia’s request for a $2 billion loan from the International Monetary Fund (IMF) for postwar reconstruction and development. I spoke to Robert J. Prince, Retired Senior Lecturer at the University of Denver’s Josef Korbel School of International Studies , about Ethiopia, Africa, and the IMF.
ANN GARRISON: A source who preferred to remain anonymous told me that the US is holding Ethiopia’s loan up, demanding accountability for wartime atrocities, but that their real goal is to force Ethiopia to distance itself from Russia and China, but most of all from Eritrea. That sounds plausible, but what do you think?
CAIRO, May 25 2023 (IPS)* – The conflict in Sudan is impacting the economy in Egypt, and those who make their living moving goods across the borders have spent weeks hoping the situation will normalize.
Long wait at the border between Sudan and Egypt. Credit: Hisham Allam/IPS
Muhammad Saqr, a truck driver, left Cairo with a load of thinners on April 13, heading to Khartoum. By the time he had arrived at the border, the battle had flared up.
Saqr remained, like dozens of trucks, waiting for the borders to be reopened.
(UN NEWS)* — Swift action is needed to prevent flare ups of Israeli-Palestinian violence and avert a looming food crisis, the top UN official in the Middle East told the Security Council on Wednesday [].
UN News/Maher Nasser | Nearly 600,000 people have visited the Holy Sites in Jerusalem since the beginning of Ramadan.
“There is no time to spare,” said Tor Wennesland, the UN Special Coordinator for the Middle East Peace Process.
“We must take action, not only to ensure Palestinian well-being and governance, but as an integral part of ending the occupation and restoring a political horizon toward a viable two-State solution, based on UN resolutions, international law and previous agreements,” he said, briefing the Council on recent grim and dangerous security and humanitarian concerns.
(UN NEWS)* — As a clearer picture emerges of the trail of destruction left by Cyclone Mocha in Myanmar and Bangladesh, humanitarians are continuing to provide life-saving assistance, and the need for an urgent increase in funding.
In Myanmar, the UN appealed on Tuesday [] for $333 million to assist 1.6 million of the most vulnerable people, many of whom have lost their homes as the cyclone hit the west of the country over a week ago.
The UN’s top aid official in the country, Ramanathan Balakrishnan, told reporters in Geneva that the disaster had left hundreds of thousands without a roof over their heads as the monsoon looms.
Among the priorities is providing people with safe shelter and preventing the outbreak and spread of water-borne diseases.
(UN NEWS)* — Children in the Horn of Africa are living through an unprecedented large-scale crisis of hunger, displacement, water scarcity, and insecurity, the UN Children’s Fund (UNICEF) said on Monday [].
More than seven million children under the age of five remain malnourished and in need of urgent nutrition aid, and over 1.9 million boys and girls* are at risk of dying from severe malnutrition.
As the region comes out of one of the worst droughts in 40 years, vulnerable communities have lost cattle, crops, and entire livelihoods over the past three years of failed rains.“
The crisis in the Horn has been devastating for children,” said Mohamed Fall, UNICEF Regional Director for Eastern and Southern Africa.“
LONDON, May 22 2023 (IPS)*– “G7 countries have failed the Global South here in Hiroshima. They failed to cancel debts, and they failed to find what is really required to end the huge increase in hunger worldwide. They can find untold billions to fight the war but can’t even provide half of what is needed by the UN for the most critical humanitarian crises.”
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Adel Mansour takes his WFP food basket home on a cart in Abyan, Yemen. Credit: WFP/Ahmed Altaf
Hunger and debt
“If the G7 really want closer ties to the developing countries and greater backing for the war in Ukraine, then asking Global South leaders to fly across the world for a couple of hours is not going to cut it. They need to cancel debts and do what it takes to end hunger.
ROME, May 22 2023 (IPS)* – Two shocking findings have just been revealed: the G7 countries owe low- and middle-income countries a huge 13.3 trillion USD in unpaid aid and funding for climate action, at a time when one billion people now face cholera risk, precisely because of the staggering reduction and even non-payment of committed assistance.
This money could otherwise be spent on healthcare, education, gender equality and social protection, as well as addressing the impacts of climate change, says Oxfam. Credit: Jeffrey Moyo/IPS
Such an inhuman reality also reveals that the G7 (Group of the seven wealthiest countries), who represent just 10% of the world’s population, continue to demand the Global South to pay 232 million USD –a day– in debt repayments through 2028, on 17 May 2023 revealed a new analysis from Oxfam ahead of the G7 Summit in Hiroshima, Japan (May 19- 21, 2023).
(UN NEWS)* — As heavy fighting continues in Sudan, UN humanitarians warned on Friday [] that more than one million people have now been forced to flee for their lives.
UNDP Sudan | People fleeing conflict in Sudan wait at a bus station in Khartoum.
A wave of deadly attacks reportedly targeted West Darfur’s capital, El-Geneina, in recent days, while the UN World Health Organization (WHO) said that more than 700 people had been killed and nearly 5,300 injured nationwide, after five weeks of intense clashes and bombardment.
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“Over one million people have now been recorded as displaced, within Sudan or to neighboring countries,” said UNHCR Spokesperson Matthew Saltmarsh, as he issued an urgent appeal to respect the safety of civilians and to allow humanitarian aid to move freely, in line with an agreement reached by the warring parties in Jeddah, on 11 May.
‘Flagrant violations’ of agreement
Under that accord between the national army and rival RSF militia, both sides agreed to allow trapped civilians to leave combat zones and allow humanitarian aid to enter.
HUMAN WRONGS WATCH 