'Unseen' News and Views
Geneva, 17 April 2020 (IOM)* – The International Organization for Migration (IOM) expresses grave concerns for the fate of hundreds of migrants returned to Libya by the coast guard this year who are now unaccounted for.
IOM Libya staff last week provided food and water to hundreds of migrants returned to Tripoli by the coast guard. Photo: IOM/2020
COVID-19 cases are rising daily amid the dense vegetation of the world’s largest rainforest and triggering a growing sense of fear for survival.
With their population now at around 900,000, the coronavirus has reawakened fears of extermination. | Photo: EFE
Stockholm, March 2020 (Stockholm International Peace Research Institute – SIPRI)* — International transfers of major arms during the five-year period 2015–19 increased by 5.5 per cent compared with 2010–14.
According to new data from the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI), the largest exporters of arms during the past five years were the United States, Russia, France, Germany and China. The new data shows that the flow of arms to the Middle East has increased, with Saudi Arabia clearly being the world’s largest importer.
Somali medic Yasin translates documents for asylum seekers on lockdown in France. © UNHCR/admin
14 April 2020 (UNHCR)* –The COVID-19 crisis has sparked an outpouring of solidarity from people around the world and that includes refugees, keen to help in the countries where they now live.
I am a professor of biology at the University of West Attica in Greece, and a volunteer at Greenpeace. Given the tremendous impact of this pandemic on people’s lives combined with the fact that many experts believe that global heating and other environmental disturbances could facilitate the development of more novel viruses such as COVID-19, I would like to explain how climate change relates to the transmission and spread of infectious diseases.
16 April 2020 (openDemocracy)* — Amidst the turmoil in global financial markets in recent weeks, something unusual has happened.
Investors, seeking shelter from the coronavirus-linked sell-off, have piled into Chinese government bonds on an unprecedented scale. These purchases have increased the total foreign ownership of Beijing’s bonds to record highs, even as much of the country is still emerging from lockdown after the viral outbreak.
15 April 2020 (UN Environment)* — As COVID-19 has expanded around the globe, many of our worlds have seemed to shrink. We see too little of nature, receive too much bad news, and settle for virtual companionship in place of actual community.
A post-COVID-19 world will not be the same one we knew before, but it can be a better one. “When we get past this crisis, which we will, we will face a choice,” says United Nations Secretary-General, António Guterres. “We can go back to the world as it was before or deal decisively with those issues that make us all unnecessarily vulnerable to the crises.”
The changes that we must make to create a better world after the pandemic
We will be faced with the problem of rebuilding the world after the enormous economic and human destruction which the disease will have left in its wake | Image from Wall Street International..
15 April 2020 (Wall Street International)* — I would like to announce the publication of a book, which discusses the changes that we must make to create a better world after the pandemic has ended. The book may be freely downloaded and circulated from the following link.
– President Donald Trump’s threat to abruptly cut all US funding to the World Health Organization (WHO) has been described as ‘reckless and deadly”—particularly at a time when the Geneva-based UN agency was engaged in an uphill battle against the spreading coronavirus.
HUMAN WRONGS WATCH 