News headlines in March 2021, page 3

The Secretary-General welcomed a recommitted and re-engaged United States administration to United Nations Headquarters on Monday, albeit virtually, calling on it to play a leadership role in drawing up a global vaccination plan to beat COVID-19, and make the upcoming COP26 a watershed moment for climate action.

Three years since the UN Secretary-General launched his Action for Peacekeeping (A4P) initiative to strengthening peacekeeping operations worldwide, “significant progress” has been made “but our work is far from done”, the peacekeeping chief said on Monday. 

Achieving equal rights for women is “the unfinished human rights struggle of this century”, UN Secretary-General António Guterres said in remarks to the Generation Equality Forum which began online from Mexico City on Monday. 

A new report from the UN agency dedicated to ending HIV and AIDS ( UNAIDS) has shown that investing $29 billion a year to HIV response in low and middle income countries by 2025, will put the world back on track to eradicate the virus as a public health threat by 2030.

Though significant steps have been taken to prevent debt crises across the world sparked by the COVID-19 crisis, they have not been sufficient to restore economic stability in many developing countries, according to a policy brief issued by the UN Secretary-General on Monday. 

SYDNEY, Australia, Mar 29 (IPS) - Twelve-year-old Babloo’s (Name changed) parents, who worked as daily wage agricultural labourers in the eastern Indian state of Bihar, were finding it difficult to feed their family of six. They had recently lost their eldest son to sudden illness, when a distant relative convinced them to send Babloo with him to work in a city. He promised to pay Rs 5000 ($70) a month, a significant amount for the impoverished family.

JOHANNESBURG, South Africa, Mar 29 (IPS) - More than eight million people moved onto the poverty line in the Arab region, a conference of Arab and Asian parliamentarians heard.

The hybrid conference, held simultaneously in Beirut, Lebanon, and via video conferencing to delegates in Asia and the Arab region, was a follow up on earlier discussions on the regions' ICPD25 Commitments.

DHAKA, Bangladesh, Mar 29 (IPS) - The Bangladesh National Seed Board has approved the release of the newest biofortified zinc rice variety in the country: the BRRI dhan100. This latest zinc rice variety was developed by the Bangladesh Rice Research Institute (BRRI). HarvestPlus assists BRRI in crop development and breeder seed production of biofortified zinc rice.

Senior United Nations officials have called on the international community to set up funding for relief programmes supporting millions of people in Syria and the region, who depend on the life-saving assistance and livelihood support after a decade of brutal conflict. 

NEW YORK, Mar 29 (IPS) - Nobel Laureate Joseph Stiglitz, Juan Somavia, Jeffrey Sachs, Jose Antonio Ocampo and more than 100 high-level development experts have issued a statement protesting insurance corporations suing Argentina and Bolivia over the reversal of their failed pension privatizations at closed sessions of the International Centre for Settlement of Investment Disputes (ICSID) of the World Bank. If Argentina and Bolivia lose the disputes, it means that impoverished citizens and elderly pensioners will have to compensate wealthy financial corporations. Read their letter: