News headlines in 2016, page 11

NAIROBI, Kenya, Nov 21 (IPS) - The dismissal of Lt-Gen Johnson Mogoa Kimani Ondieki as commander of the UN Mission in South Sudan (UNMISS) comes off as a knee-jerk reaction that fails to address structural limitations of the UN peacekeeping operations.

Even more worrying for Kenya is that the action practically eviscerates the country's unrivaled contribution to peace and stability in Sudan.

MARRAKESH, Morocco, Nov 21 (IPS) - "No country, irrespective of its size or strength, is immune from the impacts of climate change, and no country can afford to tackle the climate challenge alone."

ROME, Nov 20 (IPS) - Desertification, land degradation, drought, climate change, food insecurity, poverty, loss of biodiversity, forced migration and conflicts, are some of the key challenges facing Africa—a giant continent home to 1,2 billion people living in 54 countries.

IBADAN, Nigeria, Nov 18 (IPS) - Harvesting the benefits of core agricultural research, which often bears on improved crop varieties and plant diseases, increasingly depends on the social and economic conditions into which its seeds are sown.

It is a sign of the times that Kanayo F. Nwanze, the president of the International Fund for Agricultural Development who started off as a cassava entomologist when ITTA posted him to Congo in the 1970s, was recently hailed for his efforts to create African billionaires.

MARRAKECH, Nov 18 (IPS) - The world has been too slow in responding to climate events such as El Niño and La Niña, and those who are the "least responsible are the ones suffering most", Mary Robinson, the special envoy on El Niño and Climate, told IPS at the United Nations Climate Change Conference in Marrakech (COP22).

ROME, Nov 18 (IPS) - To fight or to flee? These are the stark choices Maria, a single mother from the Bangalala midlands of Tanzania, faces repeatedly.

"After the rains failed for a few years, some neighbours claimed our trees were drawing too much water from the ground. We cut them down. Our harvests fell. My mother closed her stall at the local market. That is when my father and I moved from the midlands to the Ruvu Mferejini river valley."

UNITED NATIONS, Nov 18 (IPS) - Coal power does more to harm the world's poor than to help them, even before the devastating impacts of climate change are taken into account, according to a recent report published by 12 international development organisations.

UNITED NATIONS, Nov 17 (IPS) - The governments of Rwanda and Iraq have agreed to work together to fight rape as a weapon of genocide, noting disturbing similarities between sexual violence in Iraq today to the Rwandan genocide twenty years ago.

KUALA LUMPUR, Malaysia, Nov 17 (IPS) - Global income inequality among different regions began to increase about five centuries ago, before accelerating about two centuries ago, according to the great economic historian Angus Maddison. After the brief reversal during the ‘Golden Age' quarter century after the Second World War, higher commodity prices in the decade until 2014, despite protracted slowdowns in most rich countries following the 2008 financial crisis, reduced international disparities between North and South.

MEXICO CITY, Nov 17 (IPS) - "Donald Trump will not stop me from getting to the U.S.," said Juan, a 35-year-old migrant from Nicaragua, referring to the Republican president-elect who will govern that country as of Jan. 20.