News headlines in May 2019

NEGOMBO, Sri Lanka, May 31 (IPS) - Caroline Gluck is Senior Regional Public Information Officer, UNHCR, the UN refugee agency. She is based in Bangkok, Thailand

Thirteen-year-old Bariea, a Pakistani asylum seeker in Sri Lanka, is taking shelter at a mosque in the city of Negombo, where an uneasy mix of high anxiety and extreme boredom hover over the room.

COLOMBO, Sri Lanka, May 31 (IPS) - Claudia Sadoff is Director General, International Water Management Institute (IWMI)

Global biodiversity loss has reached critical levels. One million species of plants and animals are now estimated to be at risk of extinction. The window for action is closing, and the world needs to urgently take note.

MADRID, May 31 (IPS) - Do not panic! This is not about telling you how bank accounts and pension funds have been used to finance the production of nuclear bombs (they call it ‘investment').

UNITED NATIONS, May 30 (IPS) - Rather than waiting for adults to act, more young girls and boys are standing up and speaking out on the world's pressing issues.

HAMILTON, Canada, May 30 (IPS) - Colin Mayfield, is Senior Advisor, Water Education and Knowledge Management at United Nations University Institute for Water, Environment and Health (UNU-INWEH), and Hamid Mehmood is a Senior Researcher*.

Post-secondary education relevant to the global water crisis is concentrated in wealthy countries rather than the poorer, developing places where it is needed most.

AMMAN, May 29 (IPS) - Princess Sarah Zeid is a member of UNHCR's Advisory Group on Gender, Forced Displacement, and Protection, a Special Advisor to the World Food Programme on Maternal and Child Health and Nutrition, and Chair of the Newborn Health in Humanitarian Settings Initiative.

On the eve of the Women Deliver conference in Vancouver June 3-6, Princess Sarah Zeid of Jordan interviewed Dr. Olfat Mahmoud, a Palestinian refugee and women's rights advocate.

MADRID, May 29 (IPS) - No, no, no. Nothing to do with what US and Europe's far-right fanatics now use to vociferate, saying once and again that "migrants come here to destroy our democracy, our civilisation, and our life-style".

UNITED NATIONS, May 29 (IPS) - When the UN Security Council met last week to discuss the deaths and devastation caused to civilians in ongoing military conflicts and civil wars, the killings in Yemen and the air attacks on hospitals, schools, mosques, and market places—whether deliberate or otherwise-- were singled out as the worst ever.

BANGKOK, Thailand, May 28 (IPS) - Armida Salsiah Alisjahbana * is UN Under-Secretary-General and Executive Secretary of the UN Economic and Social Commission for Asia and the Pacific (ESCAP)

Since this Commission first met in 1947, our countries have travelled a long journey. Our economies are expected to become larger than the rest of the world combined, measured by purchasing power parity. It is often said the Asia-Pacific region is the engine of the world economy.

KUALA LUMPUR and PENANG, May 28 (IPS) - Over recent decades, the scope, size, concentration, power and even the purpose and role of finance have changed so significantly that a new term, financialization, was coined to name this phenomenon.

Financialization refers to a process that has not only transformed finance itself, but also, the real economy and society. The transformation goes beyond the quantitative to involve qualitative change as finance becomes dominant, instead of serving the needs of the real economy.