News headlines in December 2021, page 10

Elections next year will be key to a better future for Lebanon, UN Secretary-General António Guterres said on Friday ahead of an official visit to the country later this weekend.  

In a message just ahead of International Migrants Day, celebrated on Saturday, the United Nations Secretary-General said that expressing solidarity with migrants on the move, “has never been more urgent.”

Authorities in Viet Nam must immediately release four activists jailed this week for spreading anti-State propaganda, the UN human rights office, OHCHR, said on Friday. 

Intercommunal clashes that erupted in Cameroon’s Far North region over the past two weeks have driven at least 100,000 people from their homes, although the actual number may be much higher, UNHCR, the UN refugee agency, said on Friday.   

COVID-19 cases are spiking all over the world, but the Executive Director of the UN Children’s Fund (UNICEF) said on Friday that despite the rise of the highly transmissible Omicron variant “nationwide school closures should be avoided whenever possible.”

ROME, Dec 17 (IPS) - Human rights are under global assault. In 2021, the escalation of the worldwide siege on human rights included clampdowns on civil society organisations, attacks on minorities, the undermining of democratic institutions, and violence against journalists.

Serious concerns over alleged severe human rights violations and abuses in Ethiopia should be investigated by an international rights probe, the Human Rights Council agreed in a vote on Friday.

The Malalai Maternity Hospital is one of the busiest in the Afghan capital, Kabul, welcoming around 85 babies into the world every day, including 20 by Caesarean section. But the ongoing crisis in the country is drastically undermining the staff’s capacity to care for their patients.

ROME, Dec 16 (IPS) - The end of this year has revealed the fragility of food systems when faced with sudden disruptions such as those observed during the COVID-19 pandemic. These disruptions have increased the number of people with limited or no access to food in the world. Today, more than 811 million people suffer from hunger, according to recent studies.

Whether at home, at work, in the streets or even online, women and girls across the world remain highly vulnerable to gender-based violence, something which the COVID-19 pandemic has only magnified, six senior UN women leaders said on Thursday.