'Unseen' News and Views
KONSO, Ethiopia, 2 March 2022 (UNFPA)* – “I was discharged from the health facility after the stillbirth of my baby without any medication or treatment. I have been bleeding ever since,” said Asnaketch, sitting in her tent at Haylota IDP (internally displaced persons) site in Konso, a zone in Southern Nations, Nationalities, and Peoples’ Region (SNNPR).
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Asnaketch, 25, had already lost her first baby after ethnic conflict broke out in their village, Gerchi, in Konso zone.
(UN News)*— In the first year of the COVID-19 pandemic, global rates of anxiety and depression increased by a massive 25 per cent, the World Health Organization (WHO) said on Wednesday [2 March 2022].
Findings in the UN health agency’s new report suggest that the greatest deterioration in mental health took place in the areas worst-hit by COVID-19 -where infections were high and social interaction was restricted.
(UN News)* — The UN Committee on the Elimination of Discrimination against Women (CEDAW) called on Thursday [3 March 2022], for Canada to fully address long-standing gender-based discrimination in its Indian Act, which continues to affect tens of thousands of descendants of indigenous women today.
The resolution addresses the full lifecycle of plastic, including its production, design and disposal.
“Against the backdrop of geopolitical turmoil, the UN Environment Assembly shows multilateral cooperation at its best,” said the President of UNEA-5 and Norway’s Minister for Climate and the Environment, Espen Barth Eide. “Plastic pollution has grown into an epidemic. With today’s resolution we are officially on track for a cure.”
Reducing antimicrobial waste is critical to combatting rising levels of drug resistance and protecting the environment
Antimicrobial drug waste is polluting the environment. ©WHO / Diego Rodriguez
Geneva/Nairobi/Paris/Rome (FAO)* – The Global Leaders Group on Antimicrobial Resistance on 2 MARCH 2022 called on all countries to reduce the amount of antimicrobial waste entering the environment.
This includes researching and implementing measures to safely dispose of antimicrobial waste from food, human health and animal health systems, and manufacturing facilities.
Illegal wildlife trade continues to pose a real danger to biodiversity, ecosystems and human health, as a number of emerging diseases stem from animal products, both domestic and wild. Credit: AWF wildlife archive
Right now, one million wild plant and animal species are facing extinction. And three-quarters of the land-based environment, eighty-five percent of wetlands, and two-thirds of oceans have been significantly and negatively altered by human activity.
Pacific Islanders depend on coastal fisheries for food and commercial livelihoods. Credit: Catherine Wilson/IPS
(UN News)* — The world must be made a safer place for people working to protect the planet, who sometimes pay with their own lives for their activism, UN Human Rights High Commissioner Michelle Bachelet said on Tuesday [1 March 2022].
“Protecting the environment goes hand-in-hand with protecting the rights of those who defend it,”she told the UN Human Rights Council in Geneva, which is holding its annual month-long session.
Dangers of speaking out
Ms. Bachelet revealed how speaking out and standing up for environmental rights can come at enormous cost as activists have been killed or subjected to abuse, threats and harassment.
(UN News)* — Shocking abuses against indigenous Papuans have been taking place in Indonesia, UN-appointed rights experts said on Tuesday [1 March 2022], citing child killings, disappearances, torture and enforced mass displacement.
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“Between April and November 2021, we have received allegations indicating several instances of extrajudicial killings, including of young children, enforced disappearance, torture and inhuman treatment and the forced displacement of at least 5,000 indigenous Papuans by security forces,” the three independent experts said in a statement.
Notes from a 1991 meeting prove that the US, UK, France, and Germany assured the Soviet Union that NATO would not expand east. It’s part of a growing body of evidence that the West broke its promise to Russia.
NATO Summit
A newly discovered document provides more evidence that Western governments broke their promise not to expand NATO eastward after German reunification.
HUMAN WRONGS WATCH 