Feb 17 (IPS) - In a busy world where love is a complicated affair, speed dating is one way to connect, but can it work to ignite more sustainable relationships with nature? Are we open to a romance with science and evidence?

Reported incidents of violence against civilians fell by around 42 per cent in 2021 compared with the previous year, according to a new report released by the UN Mission in South Sudan (UNMISS) on Thursday.

Deadly wildfires, noise pollution and other looming environmental threats could cause widespread ecological damage, and need to be urgently addressed, the UN Environment Programme (UNEP) said in a new report published on Thursday.

TRIPOLI, Libia, Feb 17 (IPS) - Libya was supposed to hold elections early this year. Instead, it now has two rival political administrations — a return of the divisions of the past.

In Madagascar, child sex abuse is “widespread and tolerated” in tourist hotspots, UN-appointed rights experts said on Thursday.

Nairobi, Kenya, Feb 16 (IPS) - Unable to walk, see or hear, and without assistance, the multiple barriers between 240 million children with disabilities and the education system mean nearly half are likely never to have attended school.

NEW YORK, Feb 16 (IPS) - Akshaya Kumar is the crisis advocacy director at Human Rights Watch.Efforts to combat the vast global inequity in access to Covid-19 vaccines just got a boost. A Cape Town company claims it successfully made a vaccine that mimics Moderna’s messenger RNA vaccine—without any help from Moderna. This copycat will still need to undergo clinical trials, but the effort could yield Africa’s first Covid-19 vaccine.

As the Sahel region “stares down a horrendous food crisis”, the UN emergency food relief chief warned on Wednesday that the number of people on the brink of starvation has “increased almost tenfold” over the past three years and “displacement by nearly 400 per cent”.

Conflict prevention, counter-terrorism and support to Afghanistan, top the list of issues on which the UN and the Collective Security Treaty Organization – a Eurasian regional grouping comprising Armenia, Belarus, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, the Russian Federation and Tajikistan – should bolster their cooperation, Secretary-General António Guterres told the Security Council on Wednesday.

Haiti is once more at a ‘crossroads’, six months after a devastating earthquake hit the south-west of the country, according to the UN Deputy Secretary-General, Amina Mohammed.