Rising refugee death toll in Mediterranean crossings
10/6/2022: While reported numbers of refugees and migrants crossing the Mediterranean to Europe are fewer than in 2015, journeys are becoming more fatal. New data for 2021 records 3,231 people as dead or missing at sea in the Mediterranean and the northwest Atlantic.
Source: UN Refugee Agency
Food security now top priority for G20 cooperation
5/6/2022: Many countries have panicked in the face of global food shortages, restricting trade in essential produce in defiance of lessons learned in the 2008 crisis. The G20 summit meeting in Bali in November will be an opportunity to restore global coordination and roll back trade restrictions.
Source: East Asia Forum
Ethiopia’s complicated barriers to peace
7/6/2022: There has been some progress in negotiations between the main warring parties since the start of this year. But movement towards meaningful talks has been slow on account of mistrust and the complexity of the issues.
Source: African Arguments
A call to expand the international right to education
6/6/2022: Leading humanitarians have signed a statement calling for the key target in the Sustainable Development Goal for education to be cemented in international law. This would ensure that all girls and boys have access to quality pre-primary education, and free, equitable and quality secondary education.
Source: Human Rights Watch
Overlapping crises raise risk of famine in six countries
6/6/2022: UN food agencies are concerned that the perfect storm of global crises is undermining relief operations in the world's hunger hotspots. Ethiopia, Nigeria, South Sudan, Yemen, Afghanistan and Somalia all have areas at risk of the most catastrophic conditions, with up to 750,000 people facing starvation.
Source: UN News
Is the UN effective only in humanitarian relief?
6/6/2022: The UN is struggling to contain the spread of violent conflicts across the world. But its declining role in geo-politics has been compensated by its increasingly significant performance as a massive humanitarian relief organization.
Source: Inter Press Service
China’s population is about to shrink
29/5/2022: After four extraordinary decades in which China’s population has swelled from 660 million to 1.4 billion, its population is on track to turn down this year, for the first time since the great famine of 1959-1961.
Source: The Conversation
South Sudan’s sluggish peace deal fuels further instability
30/5/2022: South Sudan’s transitional government is due to wrap up in less than 10 months. Yet the country’s future looks as bleak as it did in 2018 when rival parties signed a deal to end a crippling civil war that killed nearly 400,000 people.
Source: The New Humanitarian
Stockholm+50 calls for urgent environmental transformation
3/6/2022: The Stockholm+50 meeting has renewed international commitments to address global environmental concerns. The meeting celebrated the landmark 1972 UN Conference on the Human Environment which led to multilateral actions to protect the planet.
Source: UN Environment Programme
Fifty years of the UN Environment Programme
1/6/2022: The UN Environment Programme is about to celebrate its 50th anniversary. Notable successes include protecting the ozone layer through the Montreal Protocol and establishing the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change.
Source: China Dialogue