News headlines in June 2018, page 7

KABUL, Afghanistan, Jun 07 (IPS) - Will Carter is Head of Programme, Norwegian Refugee Council, AfghanistanAfter four decades of perpetual conflict, Afghanistan rolls into two consecutive election years – parliamentary this year, presidential the next. But the country and its people are going through even tougher times than usual with continued displacement and a looming hunger crisis.

YAOUNDE, Cameroon, Jun 07 (IPS) - "Sometimes when I'm alone, I still get flashes of the grisly images I saw in the desert. I feared I was going to die out there. The people transporting us were ready to get rid of any of us where necessary," Njoya Danialo recalled as he narrated the ordeal he endured traveling through the Sahara in search of greener pastures.

UNITED NATIONS, Jun 06 (IPS) - Natalia Kanem is UN Under-Secretary-General and Executive Director, UN Population Fund, Phumzile Mlambo-Ngcuka is UN Under-Secretary-General and Executive Director, UN Women & Achim Steiner, Administrator, UN Development ProgrammeThe numbers are shocking: at least one in three women on the planet has suffered physical or sexual violence, usually at the hands of a family member or intimate partner. More than 700 million women alive today were married as children. Up to 250 million women and girls have undergone female genital mutilation.

CAIRO, Jun 06 (IPS) - Egyptian President Abdel Fattah Al-Sisi, who was re-elected in March, continues the repression of regime opponents. Critics view the situation as increasingly dangerous. "There is no logic anymore," says one.

KATHMANDU, Nepal, Jun 06 (IPS) - Sabin Shrestha is Executive Director of the Forum for Women, Law and Development (FWLD), the Kathmandu-based partner of international women's group Donor Direct Action.Less than thirty years ago the likelihood of a mother dying due to pregnancy or childbirth in Nepal was one of the highest in the world. In 1990 UNICEF estimated that the rate was 901 women or girls out of 100,000 - significantly higher than any of its neighbours.

BOGOTA, Jun 06 (IPS) - Constanza Vieira interviews JUHERN KIM, GGGI acting representative in ColombiaColombia is a global power in biodiversity and water resources, but at the same time it depends on exports of fossil fuels, coal and oil, to the world. But don't panic: in the green economy there are also incomes and jobs - says a world expert on the subject, Juhern Kim.

WASHINGTON DC, Jun 05 (IPS) - Michael Clemens is Co-Director of Migration, Displacement, and Humanitarian Policy & Senior Fellow, Center for Global Development The US is going to use aid to shape migration. That's at least how the president's remarks seem to have laid it out on Wednesday, when he announced his White House is "working on a plan to deduct a lot of aid" from countries whose nationals arrive at the US border. "e may not just give them aid at all."

GENEVA, Jun 05 (IPS) - Yilmaz Akyüz is chief economist, South Centre, Geneva and former Director of the Division on Globalization and Development Strategies, UNCTAD, GenevaIt is now more than a decade and a half since the last severe currency crisis in a major emerging economy ‒ that was in Argentina in 2001-2002 following a series of crises in Russia, Turkey and Brazil.  It is now common knowledge that such crises generally occur when countries fail to manage surges in capital inflows so as to prevent build-up of fragility including currency appreciations, large and persistent current account deficits, increased leverage and currency and maturity mismatches in balance sheets.  

PRETORIA, Jun 05 (IPS) - South Africans await judgement to be handed down in a court case that could set a sweeping precedent by empowering communities on communal land with the right to reject new mining projects.

RAQQA, Syria, Jun 05 (IPS) - Donatella Rovera is a Senior Crisis Response Adviser and Benjamin Walsby is a Middle East Researcher at Amnesty InternationalDriving around in Raqqa, it was easy to believe what a senior US military official said – that more artillery shells were launched into the Syrian city than anywhere else since the Viet Nam war.