News headlines in March 2021, page 2

BANGKOK, Thailand, Mar 30 (IPS) - The world is emerging from the biggest social and economic shock in living memory, but it will be a long time before the deep scars of the COVID-19 pandemic on human well-being fully heal.

In the Asia-Pacific region, where 60 per cent of the world lives, the pandemic revealed chronic development fault lines through its excessively harmful impact on the most vulnerable. The United Nations Economic and Social Commission for Asia and the Pacific (ESCAP) estimates that 89 million more people in the region have been pushed back into extreme poverty at the $1.90 per day threshold, erasing years of development gains. The economic and educational shutdowns are likely to have severely harmed human capital formation and productivity, exacerbating poverty and inequality.

Disturbing reports of targeted attacks against civilians have continued to emerge from the northern Mozambique town of Palma, marking a serious escalation of violence and volatility in the Cabo Delgado region.

A group of world leaders have joined the head of the World Health Organization (WHO) in calling for an international treaty to improve pandemic preparedness and response in the wake of COVID-19, for the sake of future generations. 

BONN, Germany, Mar 30 (IPS) - The inability of developing nations to spend on post COVID-19 recovery and resilience has placed the world on the "the verge of a debt crisis". “We face the spectre of a divided world and a lost decade for development,” United Nations Secretary-General António Guterres said on Monday, Mar. 29, during a high-level meeting on financing development post COVID-19.

STOCKHOLM / ROME, Mar 30 (IPS) - I was born in the winter in 1990 in a country not my own i was born with my father’s eyes maybe i stole them he doesn’t look like that anymore i was born in seven countries i was born carved up by borders i was born with a graveyard of languages for teeth i was born to be a darkness in an american boy´s bed ...

Safia Elhillo

UNITED NATIONS, Mar 30 (IPS) - The conflict in Syria is now ten years old. A decade of death, destruction, displacement, disease, dread and despair. I have spoken to Syrians in many parts of the country in recent weeks.

SYDNEY and KUALA LUMPUR, Mar 30 (IPS) - COVID-19 has set back the uneven progress of recent decades, directly causing more than two million deaths. The slowdown, due to the pandemic and policy responses, has pushed hundreds of millions more into poverty, hunger and worse, also deepening many inequalities.

A new report on pandemics and cities from UN-Habitat, points the way to how hard-hit urban centres can reduce the impact of future outbreaks and become more equitable, healthy and environmentally friendly.

Now is not the moment to reduce humanitarian aid to Syria, the UN Emergency Relief Coordinator told the Security Council on Monday, stressing that after 10 years of conflict, more support was needed to avoid further “dramatic and widespread” deterioration. 

Independent UN human rights experts have urged companies to closely scrutinize their supply chains following concerns over the alleged detention and forced labour of Muslim Uyghurs in China, according to a statement issued on Monday.