News headlines in August 2020, page 4

Aug 21 (IPS) - What appears to have started as a mutiny, and resulted in a coup, came on the heels of renewed civilian protests in Bamako, the Malian capital. Tensions have been high since president Ibrahim Boubacar Keïta's 2018 re-election which was marred by irregularities. All the while, he has continued to face allegations of corruption and fraud.

GENEVA, Aug 20 (IPS) - The pandemic is disproportionately affecting women workers. Governments should prioritize policies that offset the effects the COVID-19 crisis is having on their jobs.

Aug 20 (IPS) - "The xapiri have defended the forest since it first came into being. Our ancestors have never devastated it because they kept the spirits by their side," declares Davi Kopenawa Yanomami, who belongs to the 27,000-strong Yanomami people living in the very north of Brazil.

DOHA, Aug 19 (IPS) - Like thousands of migrant workers from Africa and Asia, I am finally in the land of my dreams, Qatar. I knew working here would be tough, but I thought I would be able to regularly send money home to my family and live decently.

Aug 19 (IPS) - President Aliaksandr Lukashenka's government is teetering after he declared victory in a rigged 9 August vote. Protests have exploded. Moscow, Brussels and other stakeholders should avoid transforming the Belarus crisis into a European one, cooperate to warn against repression and insist on new, fair elections.

MBABANE, Aug 19 (IPS) - The coronavirus pandemic has resulted in the escalation of violence against women and children in Sri Lanka.

NEW YORK, Aug 19 (IPS) - There are moments when the world has no choice but to come together. Those moments become historic turning points. This is one of them. We are now faced with the greatest education emergency of our time. Over one billion children are out of school. The COVID-19 pandemic has created an unprecedented crisis of such magnitude and depth that the next generation might neither have the capacity and tools, nor the will, to rebuild - let alone build back better.

Aug 18 (IPS) - Just four months ago, Sudan took the monumental step to ban female genital mutilationa painful, unnecessary and dangerous procedure that leaves lasting scars. Generally carried out on girls before they reach puberty, genital mutilation is now punishable in Sudan by up to three years in prison and subject to a fine.

WASHINGTON, Aug 18 (IPS) - In 1990, Latin America's average GDP per capita was a little over a quarter of the United States' income level, while emerging and developing Asian countries' GDP per capita was only 5 percent. In 2019, Asian countries had grown fourfold, but Latin America was still at the same level.

NEW YORK, Aug 18 (IPS) - We write to call for urgent action to address the global education emergency triggered by COVID-19. With over 1 billion children still out of school because of the lockdown, there is now a real and present danger that the public health crisis will create a COVID generation who lose out on schooling and whose opportunities are permanently damaged.

While the more fortunate have had access to alternatives, the world's poorest children have been locked out of learning, denied internet access, and with the loss of free school meals - once a lifeline for 300 million boys and girls - hunger has grown.