News headlines in 2021, page 83

The ongoing COVID-19 crisis has caused and perpetuated “truly shocking” inequality that has affected the world’s most vulnerable individuals, UN rights chief Michelle Bachelet said on Tuesday, in a call for greater coronavirus vaccine solidarity and a human rights-led post-pandemic economic recovery.

SEATTLE, US, Sep 28 (IPS) - A widely condemned Trump administration program designed to slash legal immigration to the United States, initially terminated by the Joe Biden administration, has been reinstated by court rulings on a Republican lawsuit. Human-rights and immigrant justice advocates have gone on the legal and political offensive against the decision, and are pressing the Biden administration to bypass the court’s roadblock.

Following a decade of appalling suffering and losses in Syria, and amid a current period of relative calm, now is the time to push for a political process to end the fighting, UN Special Envoy Geir Pedersen told the Security Council on Tuesday.

A lack of food, hunger and malnutrition affect every country in the world, the UN said on Tuesday, in an urgent appeal for action to reduce the amount of food that’s wasted.

Almost two years into the COVID-19 crisis, a huge divergence in the recovery is undermining global trust and solidarity, according to a new policy brief on jobs and poverty eradication, outlined by UN chief, António Guterres on Tuesday. 

UNITED NATIONS, Sep 28 (IPS) - Rondrotiana Barimalala is a climate researcher at the University of Cape Town in South Africa and a lead author for the IPCC report to the recently released Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) report titled Climate Change 2021: The Physical Science Basis.

More than 200,000 lives could be saved annually if the goals of a new global strategy to defeat meningitis are achieved, the World Health Organization (WHO) said on Tuesday.

UNITED NATIONS, Sep 28 (IPS) - When the Taliban ruled Afghanistan during 1996-2001, the United Nations was engaged in a losing battle for women’s rights.

And that battle was occasionally led by two senior female UN officials, one of them working for a UN agency providing humanitarian assistance inside unfriendly Taliban territory.

KUALA LUMPUR, Malaysia, Sep 28 (IPS) - US President Biden’s earlier support for a vaccine patent waiver raised hopes for his summit last week. However, it proved disappointing, not only for efforts to end the pandemic, but also for US leadership in these challenging times.

Amidst the global COVID-19 crisis, the President of the General Assembly closed the UN High-Level session on Monday, crediting “sound mitigation measures” and high vaccination rates for its success.