News headlines in 2021, page 149

The UN Special Representative for Haiti on Thursday, acknowledged the legitimacy of Prime Minister Claude Joseph to lead the Caribbean nation, following the “cowardly” assassination of President Jovenel Moïse on Wednesday, and welcomed his government’s commitment to hold national elections later this year.

The world’s running out of time to limit global temperature rise to below two degrees Celsius, a matter of life or death for climate vulnerable countries on the front line of the crisis, the UN Secretary General reiterated on Thursday.

BRATISLAVA, Jul 08 (IPS) - Wildlife and environmental campaigners have called for international action as concerns grow over a project to create a massive oilfield in one of Africa’s last wildernesses.

Half of the world’s children experience violence on and offline in some form every year, with “devastating and life-long consequences” for their mental health, the UN chief warned a symposium on the issue on Thursday.

Job losses caused by the COVID-19 pandemic combined with high food prices are making it hard for millions of families to get enough to eat, the World Food Programme (WFP) warned on Thursday. 

A new study released on Thursday by the UN Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC) illustrates the devastating impact of COVID-19 on victims and survivors of human trafficking and highlights the increased targeting and exploitation of children during the course of the pandemic.

GENEVA, Jul 08 (IPS) - The Biden administration made a decision to withdraw US troops from Afghanistan based on the Trump-Taliban agreement. Their last combat soldier may have already left. There is nothing to argue about!

The global death toll due to COVID-19 officially passed four million late on Wednesday, marking yet another “grim milestone” and underlining the urgent need for the world to put a Global Vaccine Plan in place to get the pandemic under control, said the UN chief in a statement.

TANGAIL, Bangladesh, Jul 07 (IPS) - When the Bangladesh Forest Department felled Basanti Rema’s banana orchard, Rema, a Garo indigenous forest-dweller of Madhupur Forest, felt she was living a nightmare.

Rema, from Pegmari village in Madhupur, Tangail district, had cultivated the banana plants on half an acre in the Madhupur Forest. But the Forest Department claimed that the land on which the bananas were cultivated belonged to the department. 

A new government action plan in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) has the potential to reverse the urgent and tragic deterioration in the east of the country, where thousands of human rights abuses are being committed against civilians by armed militants, the senior UN official in the country told the Security Council on Wednesday.