Africa

Wai Wai Nu continues her activism Rohingya, women and human rights.

By Mariya Salim
NEW DELHI, India, Nov 23 2020 (IPS)

Instead of being cowed by her seven-year imprisonment, Wai Wai Nu, emerged stronger and more determined to fight for the rights of all people, including the Rohingya in her native Myanmar.

In an exclusive interview with IPS, Wai Wai says her prison experience made her all the more aware of the need for human rights activism. What kept her going during her prison years was the desire to help other women inmates to ‘have a dream’.

“I feel I was privileged when I compare myself to the other young girls and women that I interacted with while I was in prison,” Wai Wai says.

“Most of them were unaware of how corrupt the political system was. I had a dream, a vision, whether or not I could achieve it because of my imprisonment was secondary. I felt I could help them have a dream.”

The youngest of three siblings, Wai Wai (33), spent seven years as a political prisoner with her family. Imprisoned at only 18, she was forced to give up her education, her everyday life. Still, she came out of prison undeterred and today is an inspiration to many women and activists fighting for human rights and dignity of their communities and beyond.

Her family is Rohingya, a Muslim minority in Myanmar which has been facing continued persecution and marginalisation by state and non-state actors alike.

It was her father’s activism that led to her imprisonment. Her father, who was elected to parliament in 1990, received a 47-year prison sentence, which was politically motivated. The family was released in 2012.

Wai Wai has received many awards for her activism including the N-Peace award in 2014. She was named as one of the Top 100 women by BBC the same year and the Time magazine named her one of the Next Generation Leaders in 2017.

However, she considers her most outstanding achievement to be the ability to emerge as a woman leader from her community and inspire many like her to be changemakers.

“I started my activism when I was 25-years-old. Apart from the many challenges, I was faced with patriarchy from within my community initially as there were close no women in leadership roles. Now I see an acceptance from the same community, and I am proud to have been able to break this stereotype”.

An achievement that Wai Wai sees as imperative though not tangible is being able to bridge the gap between the Rohingya in Myanmar, who are extremely marginalised and isolated from mainstream Myanmar, and the rest of Myanmar and society at large.

“I speak Burmese fluently, I grew up in the city, and I think, through my activism, I have been able to break the stereotypes created in part by the media and address the Islamophobia around my community, which is seen by so many as alien,” Wai Wai says.

“We (Rohingya) have played an important role in Burmese history, in its independence, and I want to remind the world of this too. Today a lot of young people see me as someone who did not give up and tell me how my story inspires them to continue to achieve. I value this more than any achievement or award that I have ever received.”

Wai Wai recalls that she realised she needed to help women prisoners because of the stigma they faced during and after their incarceration.

She says she needed to help these women because they suffered a double burden: they faced the direct consequences of being imprisoned, and beyond the prison walls, their suffering continued.

Once they had finished serving their prison time, most were not accepted back into their families, those married were abandoned by their husbands and had to start their lives all over again.

The fact that most came from impoverished economic backgrounds only worsened their situation.

“I felt I could help fix this.”’

Wai Wai founded the Women’s Peace Network in 2012.

She says her father continues to fight for human rights and draws inspiration from religion despite suffering and facing the consequences of his activism, Wai Wai says he feels “he has the duty towards helping those who need support.” He told her that he would have to face Allah when he dies and wants to walk on the path of justice “I draw inspiration from his strength and beliefs in justice and equality,” she says.

Wai Wai has been an open advocate for democracy and human rights for all.

While referring to Myanmar’s transition to democracy, she says that it concerns her that the world celebrates a flawed democracy like Myanmar for its own geopolitical or economic gains. Here millions of people still live in a Genocide-like situation, and the effect is to legitimise a flawed democracy and help prolong atrocities and crimes against the most marginalised in the country.

“When we talk of democracy, we need to ensure that human rights of all are protected, that there is political participation by all, freedom of expression and assembly are upheld,” Wai Wai says.

“When a state has marginalised an entire community and made them outsiders … Where the military has used this transition to democracy as a means to maintain its power: To accept and celebrate this as a successful transition to democracy is like rewarding a State that has not even met the benchmark of basic democratic criterion.”

Of the many challenges that Wai Wai has faced, one that she has to continue to fight is that of others stereotyping her and manipulating her into limiting her work and her activism.

‘There are many who only want me to talk about the human rights of my community and want to limit my ability to contribute to other issues. Yes, I have the responsibility towards my community and my people, but that does not stop me from advocating for universal principles like democracy, empowerment of youth and justice and peace in society.”

Wai Wai Nu is the founder and director of Women’s Peace Network and is currently serving as a fellow at the centre for the prevention of Genocide, US Holocaust Museum.

Mariya Salim is a fellow at IPS UN Bureau

 

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Despite global commitments from a growing number of governments, companies and financial institutions, the money and effort being directed towards damaging development far exceeds the efforts being made to support sustainable livelihoods. We have not, as a global community managed to put the brakes on the juggernaut of unsustainable economic development. Credit: United Nations

By Sarah Rogerson
OXFORD, UK, Nov 23 2020 (IPS)

At the beginning of 2020, there were hopes that this would be a ’super year for nature’. It has not turned out that way. Tropical forests, so crucial for biodiversity, the climate and the indigenous communities who live in them, have continued to be destroyed at alarming rates. In fact, despite the shutdown of large parts of the global economy, rates of deforestation globally have increased since last year.

The market forces driving deforestation are baked deep into the system of global trade. Agricultural expansion for commodities such as soy and palm oil accounts for two thirds of the problem worldwide. And forests are also being cleared to make way for mining, and for infrastructure to link once remote areas to the global markets they supply.

Coal mining is estimated to affect 1.74 million hectares of forest in Indonesia alone, with as much as nine percent of the country’s remaining forests at risk from permits for new mines. And the threat to forests from road building is significant, with 25 million kilometres of roads likely to be built by 2050, mainly in developing countries.

Underpinning these industries is over a trillion dollars a year in financing from financial institutions around the world. This investment and lending is the fuel that keeps the deforestation fires alight.

Six years ago, governments, companies and civil society signed the New York Declaration on Forests, setting a goal to end global deforestation by 2030. Each year, an independent civil society network led by Climate Focus and including Global Canopy provides a progress assessment. This year, it focuses on the NYDF goals of reducing deforestation from mining and infrastructure by 2020 (goal 3), and supporting alternatives to deforestation for subsistence needs (goal 4).

The findings are an urgent wake-up call. The threat to forests worldwide from these activities is growing, and indigenous people and local communities continue to bear a devastating cost.

But the report also highlights opportunities for progress. A growing number of governments are facing up to this issue and some companies are waking up to the risks of inaction. The same is true of the finance sector, which could become a driver of transformational change.

The opportunity for finance

Financial institutions do not, it must be recognised, have a great track record on these issues. Global Canopy’s annual Forest 500 assessment of the most influential financial institutions in agricultural and timber forest-risk supply chains has consistently found that the majority do not publicly recognise a need to engage on the issue of deforestation.

Fewer still publish clear information about how they will deal with deforestation risks identified in their portfolios, and none of the 150 financial institutions assessed in 2019 had policies across all relevant human rights issues. As a result, investment and lending has largely continued to flow to companies linked to land grabs and deforestation.

Nearly 87% of indigenous territories in the Amazon are recognised in Brazilian law, yet government concessions for mining and oil extraction overlap nearly 24% of recognised territories. This infringement of the communities’ rights is being overlooked by the companies involved, and by the financial institutions that finance them.

Yet there are signs of change. In June this year a group of 29 investors requested meetings with the Brazilian government because of concerns about the fires raging in the Amazon. Some, including BlackRock, have said they will engage with the companies they finance on deforestation risks. And some have gone further, with Citigroup, Standard Chartered, and Rabobank disinvesting from Indonesian food giant Indofood following concerns about deforestation linked to palm oil, and Nordea Asset Management dropped investments in Brazilian meat giant, JBS.

There is also support for the Equator Principles, which provide a framework for banks and investors to assess and manage social and environmental risks in project finance. Companies in the mining and extractive sectors are among the 110 financial institutions to have signed up, although reporting on implementation is voluntary and patchy.

There is also growing recognition that biodiversity loss represents a risk to investments. More than 30 financial institutions have joined an informal working group to develop a Task Force for Nature-related Disclosure (TNFD), intended to help financial institutions shift finance away from destructive activities such as deforestation. Some within the sector are developing new impact investment products designed to support poverty alleviation and sustainable development.

And there are also signs of a shift in development banks – whose finance plays such a critical role in so many development projects in the Global South. Just this month, public development banks from around the world made a joint declaration to “support the transformation of the global economy and societies toward sustainable and resilient development”.

No silver bullets

It is of course one thing to recognise the problem, another to solve it. Transforming the finance sector so that money is moved away from mining or agricultural projects linked to deforestation, and invested in sustainable alternatives that benefit local communities is an enormous challenge – made all the more difficult by the lack of transparency that currently engulfs these sectors.

For while the banks and investors funding deforestation activities are all too often invisible to the local communities and indigenous groups on the ground, those communities, and the impacts of financial investments on their land and livelihoods are similarly invisible or ignored.

But these links are increasingly being brought into the light, and new tools and technologies are bringing a new level of transparency and accountability. The new Trase Finance tool is a great example, it maps the deforestation risks for investors linked to Brazilian soy and beef, and Indonesian palm oil, and aims to extend coverage to include half of major forest-risk commodities by next year. Bringing about a new era of radical transparency could be the key for moving beyond recognition and into real solutions.

Increased transparency brings with it greater accountability, creating an opportunity for local communities to identify the financial institutions involved, and a reputational risk for financial institutions linked to infringements of land rights.

Grassroots movements can play an important role in demanding accountability from the companies and financial institutions involved where land rights are affected. Campaigns can raise awareness with the wider public, creating a reputational risk for the companies involved, and for the financial institutions that finance them. Campaigners have targeted BlackRock for its investments in JBS, for example, pushing for greater action from the investor.

Governments in consumer countries are also increasingly looking at how they can reduce their exposure to deforestation in imported products, with both the European Union and UK proposing mandatory due diligence for companies, requiring far greater transparency from all involved. These measures should be strengthened to include due diligence on human rights.

A global problem

We are all implicated in tropical deforestation – as consumers, as pension-fund holders, as citizens. In the Global North, economies rely on commodities produced in developing and emerging economies, enabled by production practices linked with deforestation.

Despite global commitments from a growing number of governments, companies and financial institutions, the money and effort being directed towards damaging development far exceeds the efforts being made to support sustainable livelihoods. We have not, as a global community managed to put the brakes on the juggernaut of unsustainable economic development.

To meet the NYDF goal of ending deforestation by 2030, as well as climate goals under the Paris Agreement, this must change urgently, and the finance sector is crucial to making this happen.

 

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The post Could the Finance Sector Hold the Key to Ending Deforestation? appeared first on Inter Press Service.

Excerpt:

Sarah Rogerson is a researcher at Global Canopy. Prior to Global Canopy, she has worked on corporate environmental transparency with both CDP and the Climate Disclosure Standards Board, and on domestic recycling and engagement with Keep Britain Tidy. She has a degree in Natural Sciences (Zoology) from the University of Cambridge

The post Could the Finance Sector Hold the Key to Ending Deforestation? appeared first on Inter Press Service.

Women farmers clearing farmland in Northern Bangladesh. Credit: Naimul Haq/IPS

By Danielle Nierenberg
NEW YORK, Nov 23 2020 (IPS)

Wealthier countries struggling to contain the widening COVID-19 pandemic amid protests over lockdowns and restrictions risk ignoring an even greater danger out there – a looming global food emergency.

Even before the virus surfaced nearly a year ago, an estimated 690 million people around the world were undernourished, 144 million or 21 per cent of children under five-years-old were stunted, and about 57 per cent of people in sub-Saharan Africa and South Asia could not afford a healthy diet.

The ranks of the chronically food insecure are rising dramatically in 2020 as the pandemic adds to the miseries of communities already labouring under conflict, the climate crisis, economic slowdowns and, in east Africa, desert locusts. Every percentage drop in global GDP means 700,000 more stunted children, according to UN estimates.

All this means the world is dangerously off track in its efforts to meet the UN Sustainable Development Goals by 2030, with food systems underpinning all 17 of those targets.

Yet we do produce enough food for the world’s 7.8 billion people. It’s our food systems that are broken. Hunger is rising even as the world wastes and loses more than one billion tonnes of food every year.

About one third of all food produced for human consumption goes to waste, according to the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations, with consumers in rich countries wasting almost as much food as the entire net production of sub-Saharan Africa.

Danielle Nierenberg

With agriculture and the current food system responsible for around 21 to 37 per cent of total greenhouse gas emissions, our food choices matter not just for health and social justice, but also for their impact on the climate and bio-diversity. The true impact of food production and consumption needs a far better understanding and cost accounting.

Resetting the Food System from Farm to Fork, a virtual event hosted on December 1 by the Barilla Center for Food & Nutrition in partnership with Food Tank, will help set the stage for the UN 2021 Food Systems Summit.

Experts will present concrete, practical solutions to re-align food systems with human needs and planetary boundaries to become more resilient, inclusive and sustainable in the aftermath of the pandemic and beyond.

The conference will highlight the important role of smallholders and women who make up a sizeable proportion of the agricultural workforce – 43 percent on average in developing countries, according to FAO, the UN food agency.

Women are tending to bear the brunt of hunger, but as farmers, innovators and decision-makers, they need to be involved for real change to happen. They are the backbone of the rural economy, especially in poorer countries, but receive only a fraction of the land, credit, inputs such as improved seeds and fertilizers, agricultural training and information compared to men.

Africa is a huge net importer of food but 75 per cent of crops grown in sub-Saharan Africa are produced by smallholder farms, with family farms estimated to number over 100 million. Women do the bulk of weeding work while three-quarters of children aged 5 to 14 are forced to leave school and do farm labour at peak times.

Sixty percent of Africa’s total population are below 25 year, yet countries are struggling to keep young people involved in agriculture and agribusiness.

Our challenge is to transform food systems so that people are no longer food insecure and can afford a healthy diet while at the same time ensuring environmental sustainability. There is no one-size-fits-all solution for countries, and policy-makers lack reliable data on the whole spectrum of food production.

The Barilla Center for Food & Nutrition has a 10-point action plan for fixing the global food system, and improving standards, terminology and measurement are among those priorities. Its Food Sustainability Index, developed with the Economist Intelligence Unit, uses the three pillars of nutrition, sustainable agriculture, and food loss and waste to provide a tool that can shed light on the progress countries are making on the path to a more sustainable food system.

The COVID-19 pandemic may add between 83 and 132 million people to the total number of undernourished in the world this year alone, depending on the scale of the economic slowdown, according to preliminary assessments.

Disruptions have raised food costs, made it more difficult for farmers to access seeds, animal feed and fertilisers, and resulted in higher post-harvest losses as food rots uncollected on farms.

In the words of UN Special Envoy Agnes Kalibata: “Countries face an agonizing trade-off between saving lives or livelihoods or, in a worst-case scenario, saving people from COVID-19 to have them die from hunger.”

The problems facing our food systems for years have been highlighted by this crisis, as have the numerous frailties of global supply chains and the state of national health systems.

Let us seize this opportunity presented by the pandemic and shape a resilient food system that is sustainable, fairer, and healthier for all people and the planet.

Podcast: “Food Talk with Dani Nierenberg“ I chat with the most important folks in the food system about the most important food news.

 

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Excerpt:

Danielle Nierenberg is President and Founder Food Tank: Highlighting stories of hope and success in the food system

The post Farmers Will (Again) Feed the World appeared first on Inter Press Service.

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By Cecilia Russell
JOHANNESBURG, South Africa, Nov 20 2020 (IPS)

Japan should step up and play a role as a global facilitator for equitable access to COVID-19 vaccines, Dr Daisaku Higashi said at a recent Japan Parliamentarians Federation for Population (JPFP) study meeting.

The country should use the credibility developed in the post-Second World War era as a country with expertise in peacebuilding to ensure that developing countries are included in the vaccines’ rollout.

Higashi, a renowned commentator from Sophia University, warned that only an international effort could solve the problems caused by COVID-19

“Even if Japan succeeds in containing COVID-19 somehow, as long as the pandemic continues elsewhere in the world, there could always be a resurgence as soon as our border is opened to large numbers of foreign visitors,” he said. “The global economy overall will shrink if the global pandemic were to persist, dealing a major blow to corporate profitability and employment in Japan.”

“As close to half of Japan’s trading partners are developing countries, it is in Japan’s interest to contain the disease globally. Because the COVID-19 pandemic is a global threat that no one country can fend it off on its own – it is a human security issue,” Higashi said.

Dr Daisaku Higashi of Sophia University calls for Japan to play an increasing role in health international politics.

His comments are particularly pertinent because in November Pfizer and a German company, BioNTech, presented presenting preliminary data indicating that their coronavirus vaccine was over 90 percent effective. A week later Moderna reported similar findings that its vaccine was 94.5 percent effective.

Higashi said all countries should be encouraged to join COVAX – a facility for the pooled procurement of safe vaccines.

COVAX which operates under the auspicious of ACT Accelerator, which aims to accelerate the development and manufacture of COVID-19 vaccines and to guarantee fair and equitable access for every country in the world.

Higashi welcomed the Government of Japan’s decision to join the facilities and pledge as much as about $500 million in advance market contributions that will allow developing countries to have access to the vaccines under the COVAX Facility.

“This is truly the moment when Japan should play its role as a “global facilitator” to promote dialogue for the development of global solutions for COVID-19 with Japan as the host country and with ideas coming from participating member states, international organisations, experts, and NGOs,” he said.

Japan should use its influence to persuade the United States, China, and Russia, which are not participating in COVAX to join, Higashi said.

Dr Kayo Takuma of Tokyo Metropolitan University has called for Japanese support of COVAX aimed at ensuring an equitable access to COVID-19 vaccines.

International health and politics expert, Dr Kayo Takuma of Tokyo Metropolitan University, addressed the challenges of global health cooperation that were laid bare by the COVID-19 pandemic.

Takuma said while several other global health issues had resulted in international cooperation in the fields of health9 and infection control, this has floundered during the COVID-19 pandemic. Serious challenges emerged because the spread of the coronavirus had broad implications not only on health but also on the global economy and growing uncertainty brought about by poverty.

This created “greater room, for good or ill, for the politicisation of the pandemic,” Takuma said.

“The U.S.-China cooperation against SARS, World Health Organisation (WHO)-U.S. cooperation against H1N1 influenza, and U.S. leadership against AIDS and Ebola are some examples of good practices in international cooperation in the field of health, particularly infection control,” he said.

However, Trump against the backdrop of U.S.-China tensions criticised WHO for being China-centric and not fulfilling its basic responsibilities and withdrew from the WHO.

While President-elect Joe Biden has said he would return to the WHO, the continued concern is that the international health body could remain underfunded and in need of reform.

“As the history of the U.S. initiative in founding WHO and its leadership in global health shows, the loss from the U.S. withdrawal will be felt not only in funding. There is also a wide range of other areas (that will be affected), including human talent, medicines, and the U.S.’s standing in the world,” Takuma said. He reminded the audience that U.S. contributions accounted for 12% of WHO’s budget.

He said China played an increasing role in its promotion of global health as part of its Belt and Road Initiative. However, the realities are that “even though China is promoting its vaccine and mask diplomacy, it is not near replacing the U.S. either in terms of funding or ability to supply drugs, as evidenced by lack of trust in the quality of China’s vaccines and masks.”

There were also other calls for WHO reform – with Germany and France wishing to strengthen WHO’s authority in initial responses to health crises.

Takuma, like Higashi, called for Japan to actively promote in COVAX and other frameworks for fair distribution of vaccines around the world.

“The country could strengthen cooperation with the U.S. and China as Japan has good relations with both countries and focusing on cooperation with Asian countries through such initiatives as ASEAN Center for Infectious Diseases,” he concluded.

 

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By Thalif Deen
UNITED NATIONS, Nov 20 2020 (IPS)

The world’s major military powers exercise their dominance largely because of their massive weapons arsenals, including sophisticated fighter planes, drones, ballistic missiles, warships, battle tanks, heavy artillery—and nuclear weapons of mass destruction (WMDs).

But the sudden surge in the coronavirus pandemic last week, particularly in the US and Europe, has resurrected the lingering question that cries out for an answer: Will overwhelming fire power and WMDs become obsolete if biological weapons, currently banned by a UN convention, are used in wars in a distant future?

According to the latest figures from Cable News Network (CNN), the grim statistics of the coronavirus pandemic include 56.4 million infections and 1.5 million deaths worldwide.

As of last week, the US alone has been setting records: more than 11.5 million pandemic cases and over 250,500 deaths since last March, with more than 193,000 infections every day.

The New York Times quoted unnamed experts as predicting that the US will soon be reporting over 2,000 deaths a day and that 100,000 to 200,000 more Americans could die in the coming months. One forecast predicted a US death toll of 471,000 by next March—in the continued absence of an effective vaccine.

The pandemic has also destabilized the global economy with world poverty and hunger skyrocketing to new highs. And all this, without a single shot being fired in an eight-month long war against a spreading virus.

Dr. Natalie J. Goldring, a Senior Fellow and Adjunct Full Professor with the Security Studies Program in the Edmund A. Walsh School of Foreign Service at Georgetown University, told IPS the world faces multiple crises “with the potential to devastate our communities, including the threat of climate change and the risk of nuclear war”

And UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres, she said, has warned of another potential crisis, which is that terrorists could use biological weapons to produce disastrous results. He pointed out that this sort of weapon use could be even more harmful than COVID-19.

“If a terrorist group were able to carry out the complex tasks of creating and using biological weapons, an intentional release of a biological weapon could be even more deadly than COVID-19,” said Dr Goldring, who is also Visiting Professor of the Practice in Duke University’s Washington DC program and represents the Acronym Institute at the United Nations on conventional weapons and arms trade issues.

She said Guterres makes the important point that “we need to focus immediately on preventing this type of development. We also need to vastly increase the capacity of our communities to respond to infectious diseases.”

“Countries with large military forces often threaten to use those forces to achieve foreign policy and other goals. One question is whether the use of biological weapons could in effect make these conventional and nuclear forces obsolete?”, she asked.

“I’d argue that nuclear weapons are already obsolete and counterproductive. By continuing to develop and deploy these weapons, States increase the risk of nuclear theft and give other countries incentives to develop nuclear weapons in response,” Dr Goldring declared.

Providing a grim economic scenario of the devastation caused by the pandemic, Guterres warned last month of the possibility of an even worse disaster: the risks of bioterrorist attacks deploying deadly germs.

He said it has already shown some of the ways in which preparedness might fall short, “if a disease were to be deliberately manipulated to be more virulent, or intentionally released in multiple places at once”.

“So, as we consider how to improve our response to future disease threats, we should also devote serious attention to preventing the deliberate use of diseases as weapons,” he declared, speaking at a Security Council meeting on the maintenance of international peace and security— and the implications of COVID-19

Meanwhile, if terrorist groups, as Guterres fears, acquire the knowledge to use biological weapons, suicide bombers and AK-47 assault rifles used in random killings, may also become obsolete in future attacks.

Professor Francis Boyle, professor of international law at the University of Illinois College of Law, told IPS “It is not the terrorist groups that are the problem here”.

“It is the terrorist governments like the USA, China, Russia, UK, Israel etc. that have the most advanced biological warfare facilities and biological weapons in the world that threaten the very existence of all humanity as Covid-19 is now doing,” said Professor Boyle who has advised numerous international bodies in the areas of human rights, war crimes, genocide, nuclear policy, and bio-warfare.

Dr Filippa Lentzos, Associate Senior Researcher, Armament and Disarmament Programme, at the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI), told IPS: “I don’t believe bioweapons will become the wave of the future”.

“Many might well pivot away from bombs, guns and other explosive weapons — we’re already seeing hybrid warfare and greater reliance on cyber, disinformation, etc — but adoption will be uneven across the globe”.

She said: “I suspect there would also be differences in uptake between state and non-state actors. The way I view potential future biological weapons is as an extreme niche form of weaponry, only potentially ‘suitable’ under very limited circumstances.”

Asked about the use of biological weapons as part of germ warfare during World War I, she said, in an interview with IPS last March, there was some covert use by Germany during World War I to infect horses with biological agents to block their use by Allied military forces.

“In World War II, there were substantial covert attacks on China by Japan, as well as some clandestine use in Europe against Germany. There has been very limited known use since 1945”, said Dr Lentzos, who is also an Associate Editor of the journal BioSocieties, and the NGO Coordinator for the Biological and Toxin Weapons Convention.

According to the UN Office for Disarmament Affairs (UNODA), the Biological Weapons Convention (BWC), the first multilateral disarmament treaty banning the development, production and stockpiling of an entire category of weapons of mass destruction, was opened for signature on 10 April 1972 and entered into force on 26 March 1975.

Guterres said last week he could have never imagined that hunger would rise again during his time in office as Secretary-General.

And according to the Rome-based World Food Programme (WFP), 130 million more people risk being pushed to the brink of starvation by the end of the year.

“This is totally unacceptable,” said Guterres. The COVID-19 recovery must address inequalities and fragilities, and the question of food will be central to a sustainable and inclusive recovery

Meanwhile, David Beasley, WFP executive director, said the socio-economic impact of the pandemic is more devastating than the disease itself.

He pointed out that many people in low- and middle-income countries, who a few months ago were poor but just about getting by, now find their livelihoods have been destroyed.

Remittances sent from workers abroad to their families at home have also dried up, causing immense hardship. As a result, hunger rates are sky-rocketing around the world, he said.

Thalif Deen, is a former Director, Foreign Military Markets at Defense Marketing Services; Senior Defense Analyst at Forecast International; and military editor Middle East/Africa at Jane’s Information Group, US. He is also co-author of “How to Survive a Nuclear Disaster” (New Century).

 

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The post A Potential Weapon Kills Over 1.5 Million Worldwide –Without a Single Shot Being Fired appeared first on Inter Press Service.

Human rights groups claim the charges are an excuse to suppress political opposition.