News headlines in September 2021, page 4

UNITED NATIONS, Sep 28 (IPS) - Chakravarthi Raghavan, who passed away early this week, was a prolific writer and a distinguished journalist who covered the United Nations both in New York and Geneva for several decades.

A proponent of development journalism, Raghavan’s voluminous reporting and writings were sharply focused on the global South. A longstanding reporter for Inter Press Service (IPS) news agency in Geneva, he was Editor of Third World Economics and representative of the Third World Network (TWN) in Geneva.

NEW ORLEANS, United States, Sep 28 (IPS) - The global food system needs a massive overhaul – this was clear before the Covid pandemic and it is even more true today.

Feeding the world in a sustainable and healthy way is entirely possible but it is also inextricably linked to tackling the climate crisis by reaching net zero emissions, and to halting the dizzying decline in bio-diversity which is currently threatening the survival of one million plant and animal species.

The UN Special Representative on Sexual Violence in Conflict on Tuesday urged authorities in Guinea to abide by their commitment towards impartial and independent justice, including in relation to a massacre of protesters in the capital, 12 years ago.

Sexual abuse and exploitation allegedly carried out by World Health Organization (WHO) staff during the UN health agency’s response to an Ebola outbreak in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) is “a sickening betrayal of the people we serve,” Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, WHO Director-General said on Tuesday. 

The ongoing COVID-19 crisis has caused and perpetuated “truly shocking” inequality that has affected the world’s most vulnerable individuals, UN rights chief Michelle Bachelet said on Tuesday, in a call for greater coronavirus vaccine solidarity and a human rights-led post-pandemic economic recovery.

SEATTLE, US, Sep 28 (IPS) - A widely condemned Trump administration program designed to slash legal immigration to the United States, initially terminated by the Joe Biden administration, has been reinstated by court rulings on a Republican lawsuit. Human-rights and immigrant justice advocates have gone on the legal and political offensive against the decision, and are pressing the Biden administration to bypass the court’s roadblock.

Following a decade of appalling suffering and losses in Syria, and amid a current period of relative calm, now is the time to push for a political process to end the fighting, UN Special Envoy Geir Pedersen told the Security Council on Tuesday.

A lack of food, hunger and malnutrition affect every country in the world, the UN said on Tuesday, in an urgent appeal for action to reduce the amount of food that’s wasted.

Almost two years into the COVID-19 crisis, a huge divergence in the recovery is undermining global trust and solidarity, according to a new policy brief on jobs and poverty eradication, outlined by UN chief, António Guterres on Tuesday. 

UNITED NATIONS, Sep 28 (IPS) - Rondrotiana Barimalala is a climate researcher at the University of Cape Town in South Africa and a lead author for the IPCC report to the recently released Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) report titled Climate Change 2021: The Physical Science Basis.