The UN and the Government of Ethiopia have appealed for urgent funding to respond to rising hunger in the northern highlands region, the UN humanitarian affairs office, OCHA, reported on Friday.

UN independent human rights experts on Friday expressed profound concern over multiple reports detailing arbitrary arrests, detention and ill-treatment of women and girls in Afghanistan.

In a ceremony held at football giant Real Madrid’s training centre on Friday, the head of the UN’s culture and sport agency unveiled Brazilian football sensation Vinícius Junior as their new Goodwill Ambassador for Education for All.

The number of hungry people in Sudan has doubled over the past year, the World Food Programme (WFP) said on Friday, adding that it is already receiving reports of people dying from starvation.

Thousands of Gazans have continued to flee intense hostilities in Khan Younis towards the massively overcrowded southern city of Rafah which UN humanitarians described as a “pressure cooker of despair” on Friday.

WAGENINGEN, Netherlands, Feb 01 (IPS) - The 500 per cent increase in global agricultural productivity over the past 60 years has largely been made possible by the scientific advances of the “Green Revolution” – from the ability to breed higher yielding varieties to improvements in farm inputs, especially fertiliser.

ABUJA, Feb 01 (IPS) - One day in October 2020, Serah Akpan, 70, was seated in her house at Boki Local Government in Cross River, southern Nigeria, when she heard the murmurings of irate youth outside. Before she could grasp what was really happening, they had broken into her house, bundled her outside, and threatened to kill her for allegedly being a witch.

LONDON, Feb 01 (IPS) - The military must have expected an easier ride. Three years ago, it ousted Myanmar’s democratically elected government. But the coup has been met with fierce resistance, unleashing a bloody conflict with no end in sight.

STOCKHOLM, Sweden, Feb 01 (IPS) - Karl Marx’s Manifesto of the Communist Party begins with the now worn-out phrase: “A spectre is haunting Europe – the spectre of communism. All the powers of old Europe have entered into a holy alliance to exorcise this spectre”. Nowadays the word “communism” could easily be substituted by “migration”. All over Europe, politicians claim that Europe is being destroyed by migrants. In country after country, ghosts of yesterday are awakened. Parliaments include xenophobic politicians who might be considered as inheritors of demagogs who once dragged Europeans into hate and bloodbaths.

UNITED NATIONS, Feb 01 (IPS) - It was a notion which haunted him well before the Second World War – from the history books his mother would read him, to the following of the 1921 trial of young Armenian Soghomon Teilerian.