News headlines in March 2022, page 11

SYDNEY and KUALA LUMPUR, Mar 22 (IPS) - “If your only tool is a hammer, every problem looks like a nail”. Still haunted by the clever preaching of monetarist guru Milton Friedman’s ghost, all too many monetary authorities address every inflationary threat or sign they see by raising interest rates.

One year after brutal attacks by suspected Al Shabab militants began in northern Mozambique, thousands continue to flee ongoing violence in Cabo Delgado province, the UN refugee agency, UNHCR, said on Tuesday.

It’s time for a diplomatic solution to be found to end Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, amidst signs of hope that progress can be made to end an “unwinnable” and “indefensible” war, said the UN chief on Tuesday.

The UN has helped tens of thousands of Ukrainian refugees to cross into Poland and other neighbouring countries. Chris Melzer, spokesperson for the UN refugee agency (UNHCR) in Germany, told UN News that he has witnessed many traumatic scenes, of families ripped apart by the crisis.

The UN’s top rights official said on Monday that amidst a “profound crisis” facing access to basic human rights in Myanmar following the coup in February last year, hundreds of localized armed resistance groups have now formed across the country, triggering “widespread violence in areas that were previously stable”.

While groundwater accounts for 99 per cent of all running freshwater on Earth, it is often undervalued, mismanaged, and overexploited, according to a report published on Monday by the UN scientific organization, UNESCO. 

As the total forced to flee their homes in Ukraine rises above 10 million, attacks on healthcare facilities there due to Russia’s continuing bombardment are averaging more than two per day, the UN warned on Monday.

PORTLAND, USA, Mar 21 (IPS) - Planet Earth is increasingly being transformed into planet Plastics. Approximately 400,000,000 metric tons of plastics are produced worldwide annually. Those plastics amount to about 50 kilograms, or 110 pounds, every year for each of the 8 billion human inhabitants living on the unfolding planet Plastics.

The goal to limit future warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius, highlighted in the Paris Agreement on climate change, and driven home in last November’s COP26, gathering in Glasgow, is now on “life support” and “in intensive care,” the UN chief told the Economist Sustainability Summit on Monday.   

Widespread sexual violence against women and girls in conflict is being fueled by systemic impunity, the United Nations Commission on Human Rights in South Sudan said on Monday.