News headlines in 2020, page 100

ROME, Mar 05 (IPS) - The narrative surrounding women's rights in 2020 carries much hope and possibility. A new decade is ushering in important anniversaries and milestones: 25 years since the Beijing Platform for Action, 110 years since the birth of International Women's Day and the 10-year countdown to achieve the UN Sustainable Development Goals.

AMSTERDAM, the Netherlands, Mar 05 (IPS) - Gender inequality - like the climate emergency - is not inevitable, but is kept in place by the poor choices too many cis men make on a daily basis. And it is not just womxn who are hurt and trapped by this patriarchal problem, but girls and non-binary people too, as well as many boys and men.

SYDNEY, Australia, Mar 05 (IPS) - For 13-year-old Karen Semens, growing up on Pohnpei, one of the four main island states in the Federated States of Micronesia, which comprises of more than 600 islands in the western Pacific Ocean, the main challenge is being a girl.

"In our culture, girls don't have the same rights and opportunities nor do they get credit and recognition for their achievements as boys do. This prevents us from speaking our minds. For example in family meetings, only men make the decisions. I would like all girls to be treated as equals and have a say in decision making," the 8th grade pupil from the Ohmine Public Elementary school in Pohnpei, tells IPS.

UNITED NATIONS, Mar 05 (IPS) - For International Women's Day, IPS United Nations is featuring female permanent representatives who to share about their work, inspiration and challenges in an otherwise male-dominated field. This is the first in the series. Ambassador Mona Juul started her role as the Permanent Representative of Norway to the United Nations in January 2019, and is also the president of the United Nations Economic and Social Council (ECOSOC). 

SYDNEY and KUALA LUMPUR, Mar 04 (IPS) - As the outbreak of the novel coronavirus COVID-19 threatens a global pandemic, major stock markets around the world have suffered their worst performance since the 2008 financial crush.

NEW YORK, Mar 04 (IPS) - Brazilian journalist Patrícia Campos Mello made her career reporting from conflict zones around the world -- but lately, the greatest threats to her security are coming from closer to home.

UNITED NATIONS, Mar 04 (IPS) - Twenty-five years after the historic Beijing women's conference in China – a milestone in advancing equal rights – violence against women and girls is not only common, but widely accepted, a new UN report revealed.

UNITED NATIONS, Mar 04 (IPS) - First, it was the ill-fated annual sessions of the UN Commission on the Status of Women (CSW), scheduled for March 9-20, which was undermined by the spreading coronavirus COVID-19.

JAKARTA, Mar 04 (IPS) - Despite having a law and various tasks forces to combat human trafficking, Indonesia is still grappling with the crime that likely sees tens of thousands of people turned into modern day slaves.

STOCKHOLM / ROME, Mar 03 (IPS) - "Social media gives legions of idiots the right to speak when they once only spoke at a bar after a glass of wine, without harming the community. They were immediately silenced, but now they have the same right to speak as a Nobel Prize winner. It's the invasion of the idiots." 1 -- Umberto Eco

The great American impeachment show has ended not with a bang, but with a whimper. The dirt was washed away from President Trump, the perfect Teflon Guy. Maybe his invulnerability comes from the fact that he appears to be more of a brand than a real person, adapted to a frame of mind that increasingly dominates social media – cheap entertainment, shallowness, vulgarity, invectives, and catchy phrases without support in well-founded facts. Trump is all and nothing, a shape shifting trickster pretending to be the role model for voiceless masses.