News headlines for “Natural Disasters”, page 219
A Truly Global Effort is Needed to Eradicate FGM by 2030
- Inter Press Service
NEW DELHI, Feb 06 (IPS) - Divya Srinivasan is South Asia Consultant for international women's rights organisation Equality Now*
According to official data on the global prevalence of Female Genital Mutilation (FGM) released by UNICEF there are 200 million women and girls in the world who have been cut. Shocking though this statistic is, it seriously underestimates the nature and scale of the problem.
Confronting the Challenges of Migration in West & Central Africa
- Inter Press Service
UNITED NATIONS, Feb 05 (IPS) - Richard Danziger is IOM's Regional Director for West and Central Africa
Without a doubt, migration is a defining issue of this century. One billion people, one-seventh of the world's population, are migrants. Some 258 million people are international migrants, 40 million are internally displaced and 24 million are refugees or asylum seekers.
In 2018, there was no longer a single state that can claim to be untouched by human mobility.
Making Communities Drought Resilient
- Inter Press Service
GEORGETOWN, Feb 01 (IPS) - The United Nations Convention to Combat Desertification (UNCCD's) Drought Initiative is in full swing with dozens of countries signing up to plan their drought programme.
People Power Will Bring Change -- Not Davos
- Inter Press Service
JOHANNESBURG, South Africa, Jan 31 (IPS) - Jenny Ricks is the global convenor at Fight Inequality Alliance.
They said they cared about climate change but they flew in on private jets in record numbers. They said they cared about inequality but laughed off the idea of higher taxes for the rich. They spoke about democracy and human rights but they dined with a far-right populist. If there was ever any doubt about Davos representing the epitome of duplicity, then 2019 has firmly laid that to rest.
Billions of Dollars Available for Reducing and Reversing Land Degradation
- Inter Press Service
GEORGETOWN, Jan 30 (IPS) - The United Nations Convention to Combat Desertification (UNCCD) has debunked the notion that there is no funding available for countries to prevent, reduce or reverse land degradation.
Ending Poverty is Possible, but it Means Facing up to Inequality – Within & Between Countries
- Inter Press Service
UNITED NATIONS, Jan 28 (IPS) - Liu Zhenmin* is UN Under-Secretary-General for Economic and Social Affairs World leaders have committed to ending poverty everywhere for all people by 2030.
Achieving this aim means facing up to the need for dramatic declines in inequalities – in income, in opportunity, in exposure to risk, across gender, between countries and within countries – over the next decade.
Sum & Substance of Climate Diplomacy
- Inter Press Service
NEW DELHI, Jan 23 (IPS) - As I was attending the 24th Conference of Parties to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change—to create a rulebook to operationalise the Paris Agreement—in Katowice, Poland, it dawned on me, like never before, that the negotiations were taking place in a make-believe world.
Why Are so Many Humanitarian Crises Under-reported?
- Inter Press Service
NORWICH, UK, Jan 22 (IPS) - Dr Martin Scott* is a Senior Lecturer in Media and International Development at the University of East Anglia, UK.
According to a recent poll of aid agencies by the Thomson Reuters Foundation, the most under-reported crisis of 2018 was the conflict in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC).
Strangers in the Land: A Congolese Murder Case
- Inter Press Service
STOCKHOLM / ROME, Jan 21 (IPS) - A man walks down the street.
It's a street in a strange world.
Maybe it's the Third World.
Maybe it's his first time around.
He doesn't speak the language.
He holds no currency.
He is a foreign man.
He is surrounded by the sound.
The sound!
Cattle in the marketplace,
scatterlings and orphanages.
He looks around, around.I thought about this song by Paul Simon while I in 2011 spent a few weeks in Kinshasa. I was a foreign man in a strange world, surrounded by sights and sounds, completely dependent on my new-found Congolese friends. When our taxi got stuck in a traffic jam and we had to walk to our destination I was stopped by a group of heavily armed youngsters, lead by a man who claimed to be a policeman, charging me with an exaggerated high fine for taking photos within a restricted area.
Davos, Inequality & the Climate Emergency
- Inter Press Service
BERLIN, Jan 18 (IPS) - Daniel Mittler is the Political Director of Greenpeace International and is on the steering committee of the global Fight Inequality alliance.
Four of the top five most impactful threats in this year's World Economic Forum´s Global Risks report are related to climate change. The report warns that we are "sleepwalking to disaster" . But that is not true.
The disaster is already here, it´s not something we are still walking towards. Climate change is no future threat, it´s a current one. We have entered a new phase, one in which the impacts are coming faster, with greater intensity.
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