News headlines in 2021, page 91

UN Secretary-General António Guterres on Wednesday repeated his call for a global COVID-19 vaccination plan to boost production and reach millions over the coming months, in line with recommendations by the World Health Organization (WHO).

Financial support will be critical if developing countries are to meet global climate goals, the Chairman of the Presidency of Bosnia and Herzegovina, Željko Komšić, said in the UN General Assembly on Wednesday.    

LETHBRIDGE, Canada, Sep 22 (IPS) - Food processing extends shelf-life and can transforms raw food into attractive, marketable products. It can also prevent contamination. The transformation can involve numerous physical and chemical processes such as mincing, cooking, canning, liquefaction, pickling, macerating, emulsification, irradiation and lyophilization. Frozen processed and raw food changes transport and storage requirements radically; while the packaging of food, both raw and processed, is an industry unto itself.

Two decades after a landmark declaration was adopted to eradicate racism, discrimination continues to “permeate institutions, social structures and everyday life in every society”, the UN chief told a high-level meeting on Wednesday.

Afghanistan’s girls and women are showing “bravery” in the face of real “fears and pressures” following the formation of the new, de-facto authorities in Afghanistan,  according to a UNICEF member of staff, one of the few westerners to remain in Kabul.

NAIROBI, KENYA, Sep 22 (IPS) - Food security experts have raised an alarm that with as many as 811 million people the world over or 10 percent of the global population going hungry, the world is off-track to ending hunger and malnutrition.

COVID-19 has set back progress towards the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), undermining decades of development efforts, according to a new report by the UN Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO).  

There has been little sign of improvement in the diets of the world’s youngest children over the last ten years, the United Nations Children's Fund (UNICEF) said on Wednesday. 

Afghanistan’s health system is on the brink of collapse, the head of the World Health Organisation, WHO, warned on Wednesday. 

NEW YORK, Sep 22 (IPS) - When the UN Charter was being drafted in the closing days of the Second World War in 1945, a debate ensued on what its opening words should be. Jan Smuts, representative of colonial South Africa, had originally suggested that the UN Charter begin with the words, ‘The High Contracting Parties.’