News headlines in May 2018, page 6

LONDON, May 10 (IPS) - Savio Carvalho is Global Campaigns Director, WaterAidThey are the foundations of a happy, healthy childhood: good nutrition, health care which includes immunisations and preventative care as well as treatment for illness, a good education. How many among us would even think to list clean water to drink, a safe place to go to the toilet and the ability to keep hands, bodies and surroundings clean with soap and water?

NEW YORK, May 10 (IPS) - Loraine Rickard-Martin, PassBlue*For many years now, media attention on sexual abuse and exploitation by United Nations peacekeepers cornered the UN and pushed it toward reform. Now, the #MeToo movement has put the organization — and many other major institutions across the world — on red alert.

WASHINGTON, May 10 (IPS) - The April inauguration of Ethiopia's new Prime Minister came amid much fanfare and raised expectations for the future of true democracy in Ethiopia, while far less publicized though relevant developments in the American capital could also play a significant role in shaping that future.

UNITED NATIONS, May 10 (IPS) - Reham Qudaih wakes up nightly to the same nightmare: her father shot, lying on the ground in a pool of blood."In my dreams he is on the ground shot. When I have that dream – which I've had more than once I wake up screaming," she told the Norwegian Refugee Council (NRC).

STOCKHOLM, May 09 (IPS) - Together with the president of Mauritius, Swedish Prime Minister Stefan Löfven was to draw up a plan for the future focus of the UN-body ILO. But the work has hit an unexpected speed bump. Löfvens copartner has been forced out of office after a credit card scandal, where she shopped shoes and jewels in London for USD 26,000.There is a compact silence surrounding how the corruption scandal affects ILO's work on developing a plan to change the UN body.

IPIRÁ-PINTADAS, Brazil, May 08 (IPS) - Cattle ranching has been severely affected by drought in Brazi's Northeast region, but it has not only survived but has made a comeback in the Jacuípe river basin thanks to an optimal use of water.

UNITED NATIONS, May 08 (IPS) - Izumi Nakamitsu is the United Nations High Representative for Disarmament AffairsEvery day, hundreds of lives are lost due to gun violence worldwide. Guns are responsible for about half of all violent deaths – nearly a quarter million each year. But the dire consequences of gun violence are not limited to those slain by guns. For every person killed by a gun, many more are injured, maimed, and forced to flee their home and community. Still many more live under constant threats of gun violence.

STOCKHOLM, Sweden, May 08 (IPS) - The underlying message at the fifth annual Stockholm Forum on Peace and Development was summed up in its telling title "The politics of peace."But the task ahead was overwhelmingly difficult: How do you advance peace and development against the backdrop of political unrest in parts of Asia and Africa and continued conflicts in the Middle East— all of them amidst rising global military spending triggering arms sales running into billions of dollars.

KAMPALA, May 08 (IPS) - Agnes Igoye serves as Uganda's deputy National Coordinator Prevention of Trafficking in Persons and heads Uganda Immigration training AcademyI was 14-years-old the first time I came face to face with a human trafficker. The Lord's Resistance Army (LRA) raided my home. Ruthless, they demanded virgins and young girls. In a horrifying escape, I endured a treacherous, long journey that ended in an internally displaced people's camp. I was lucky. Many Ugandan children were not. By the end of the nineteen years' civil war, UNICEF estimated that the LRA had abducted some 20,000 children.

MANILA, May 08 (IPS) - "My son in primary school did not attend a birthday celebration because it was cancelled due to bad air -- and we live in Seoul, a great place to live," said Dr. Frank Rijsberman, director-general of the Global Green Growth Institute (GGGI).