'Unseen' News and Views
Young people have made big steps towards a more sustainable future – here’s how you can get involved. ©Unsplash/Chang Duong
(FAO)* — With climate change, conflict, hunger and environmental crises regularly in the news and social media every day, the younger generation is more aware than ever of global issues and arguably also more active than ever. And why shouldn’t they be? It is their future at risk.
3 October 2021 (UN News)* — A Spanish artist is using a giant 40-metre-high artwork painted on the side of a building in the Belgian capital, Brussels, to pose questions about climate change and the effect it’s having on global ecosystems.
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The theme recognizes that cities are responsible for some 70 percent of global carbon dioxide emissions with transport, buildings, energy, and waste management accounting for the bulk of urban greenhouse gas emissions.
29 September 2021 (UNEP)* — Despite being responsible for only around 3 per cent of global carbon dioxide emissions, experts say that Africa will be the region hardest hit by climate change.
According to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change’s (IPCC) latest major report, the continent is warming faster than the global average, which is likely to bring devastating impacts, from extreme rainfall to drought to coastal flooding.
– The September 16, 2021 announcement from the World Bank that it had discontinued publication of the Doing Business Report (DBR) marked a major victory for people and planet.
Since 2002, the DBR has scored and ranked countries on the “ease of doing business,” i.e. on regulatory changes and reforms that make them more attractive to private investors.
These “reforms” have included lowering corporate taxes, slashing environmental safeguards, social and labor standards, cutting administrative procedures, and removing restrictions to trade and business.
Cancellation of the DBR comes after data irregularities were found in the 2018 and 2020 reports.
(UN News)* — Urgent support is needed for tens of thousands of missing migrant families who are often forced to rely on smugglers and other informal networks, to trace loved ones, the International Organization for Migration’s (IOM) said on 29 September 2021.
Despite human rights obligations, their perspectives are being ignored in government debates about safe migration. This results in persistent exclusion and marginalization, which has increased during the COVID-19 pandemic.
(UN News)* — Nationally-owned solutions must be found for more than 55 million people displaced within their own countries, according to a new report presented to the UN Secretary-General by the High-Level Panel on Internal Displacement, released on 29 September 2021.
“For several decades, the number of internally displaced persons (IDPs) around the world has been growing, reaching record highs year after year”, Secretary-General António Guterres said, receiving the Panel’s report, Shining a Light on Internal Displacement: A Vision for the Future.
Robert J. Burrowes
Fully understanding significant world events as they happened yesterday and unfold today invariably requires an understanding of the long arc of history; that is, knowledge about how the human world really works. Moreover, without that understanding, it is impossible to devise and implement an effective response. This is certainly the case in the world of 2021.
Increasingly, people around the world are realizing that there is a great deal more going on under cover of the ‘official’ narrative that we are the victims of a ‘virus’ that has, so far, required 18 months of onerous restrictions and a series of government-ordered mandates that tell us all that we must submit to several experimental, gene-altering injections and other measures that will deny our rights and freedoms ongoingly into the future.
– When Ali (name changed) proposed to his best friend, little did he know that her parents would take six years to agree to their alliance because he was born into a Muslim family, and they were Hindus.
Sheeba Aslam Fehmi at an event organized by Dhanak, celebrating couples who married under the Special Marriage Act.
HUMAN WRONGS WATCH 