News headlines in October 2021, page 9

MADRID, Oct 22 (IPS) - “Imagine that the land your family has worked for generations is suddenly stripped away from you, purchased by wealthy companies or governments to produce food or bio-fuels or simply as a profitable investment for other people, often far away. You watch on helplessly as vast tracts of land are cleared for mono-culture crops and rivers are polluted with run-off and chemicals.”

The process of drafting a new constitution for Syria has been “a big disappointment” UN Special Envoy for Syria, Geir Pedersen concluded on Friday. Following the end of discussions in Geneva, a consensus on how to move forward was not achieved, he added.

A 46-strong group of countries across the wider European region has agreed to establish a new legally binding mechanism that would protect environmental defenders, the UN Economic Commission for Europe (UNECE) said on Friday.

Israel has been urged to either release or charge five Palestinian prisoners currently on hunger strike in Israeli prisons. Grave concerns have been expressed for the lives of the prisoners by UN independent rights experts, who on Thursday, called on the Israeli Government to completely end the “unlawful practice “ of administrative detention. 

At least eight people have died along the border between Belarus and the European Union, where multiple groups of asylum-seekers, refugees and migrants have been stranded for weeks in increasingly dire conditions. 

The Libyan government must immediately address the dire situation of asylum-seekers and refugees, in a humane manner, consistent with international human rights law, the UN refugee agency (UNHCR) said on Friday. 

PARIS, Oct 22 (IPS) - Public development banks have committed to ramp up action to tackle climate change, to protect biodiversity, to promote human rights, to align their investments with the SDGs and the Paris Agreement, and to create spaces of dialogue with civil society, farmers, indigenous peoples, and communities affected by the projects that they, as banks, finance.

At a celebratory concert in New York on Thursday night, marking the anniversary of the foundational UN Charter entering into force, the Secretary-General said that the “spirit of solidarity and action” that marks United Nations United Nations Day itself, is “wonderfully expressed in the power of music”.  

JOHANNESBURG, Oct 21 (IPS) - Before COVID-19 came along, tuberculosis (TB) was a primary focus of health authorities in sub-Saharan Africa. In 2019, approximately 1.4 million people were diagnosed with TB in the region, but epidemiologists estimated that 1 million more had TB but were neither diagnosed nor treated.

More than one million people in southern Madagascar are struggling to get enough to eat, due to what could become the first famine caused by climate change, according to the World Food Programme (WFP).