'Unseen' News and Views
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(UN News)* — Sweeping preventative measures seem to be curbing the spread of COVID-19 in the Great Lakes region of Africa, but the economic impact of the global pandemic threatens hard-won gains made along the long road back to peace and stability, the Secretary-General’s Special Envoy for the region said on Wednesday [22 April 2020].
Briefing the Security Council during open videoconference proceedings, Huang Xia urged the international community not to let up on its support for the continent-spanning region that includes Burundi, Democratic Republic of the Congo, Rwanda, South Sudan and Uganda, among several other nations.
23 April 2020 (UN Environment)* — In the past, coronaviruses that circulated in humans caused only mild infections. This changed in 2002, when the SARS-CoV virus presented itself in humans as the disease we now know as SARS. In 2020, SARS-CoV-2–a relative of the same virus–has presented itself in humans in the disease we now call COVID-19.
Photo by Unsplash/@capyvara
Bernard Bett leads research on neglected and emerging infectious diseases at the International Livestock Research Institute as part of the research portfolio under the Improving Human Health flagship.
Nairobi, 22 April 2020 (UN Environment)* – In response to the COVID-19 crisis, an unprecedented coalition has come together to launch “Earth School,” which provides free, high-quality educational content to help students, parents and teachers around the world who are currently at home.
Initiated by the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) and TED-Ed, Earth School takes students on a 30-day “Adventure” through the natural world.
UN News* — The world is not only facing “a global health pandemic but also a global humanitarian catastrophe”, the UN food relief agency chief told the Security Council on Tuesday [21 April 2020] via video link.
21 April 2020 (UN News)* — With most of the world’s students now at home due to COVID-19, the pandemic is revealing startling divides in digitally-based distance learning, data from the UN education and cultural agency, UNESCO, and partners has revealed.
UNICEF In response to school closures caused by COVID-19, UNESCO recommends the use of distance learning programmes to limit the disruption of education.
They found that half of all students currently out of the classroom – or nearly 830 million learners globally — do not have access to a computer. Additionally, more than 40 per cent have no Internet access at home.
A young child participates in a plant workshop organized by UNDP Peru and FAO in Ayacucho, Peru. Photo: UNDP Peru.By United Nations* — Mother Earth is clearly urging a call to action. Nature is suffering. Australian fires, heat records and the worst locust invasion in Kenya. Now we face COVID -19, a worldwide health pandemic link to the health of our ecosystem.*
Climate change, man-made changes to nature as well as crimes that disrupt biodiversity, such as deforestation, land-use change, intensified agriculture and livestock production or the growing illegal wildlife trade, can increase contact and the transmission of infectious diseases from animals to humans (zoonotic diseases) like COVID-19.
April 2020 (Wall Street International)* — Everything seems to be always in a process of mixing ingredients and the generation of an intermediate or perhaps final product. An evolution.
In the processes of synthesis, dilution, or amalgamation, two or several factors or elements combine and achieve a different state of being together, in accordance with the energies that each brings to the process. During the combination moment all is very unstable and unsettled.
– The current financial crisis, triggered as a result of withholding or delaying payment of assessed contributions by Member States, is nothing new to the United Nations.
Security Council Members Hold Open videoconference meeting in a locked down UN building. Credit: United Nations
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