News headlines in January 2022, page 14

The UN Refugee Agency (UNHCR) called on Friday for concerted international action to end armed conflict in Africa’s central Sahel region, which has forced more than 2.5 million people to flee their homes in the last decade.

KATHMANDU, Nepal, Jan 14 (IPS) - There is no doubt that the building the magnificent Women’s Pavilion at the Dubai World Expo 2020 deserves unconditional praise and admiration, a bold landmark that projects the concept of gender empowerment and gender equality.

STOCKHOLM, Jan 13 (IPS) - In several countries around the globe, telling the truth is according to its rulers and other influential, generally wealthy, persons a serious crime that might be punished by muzzling the truth-tellers, slandering and humiliating them, and threatening their families and friends. If that does not make them shut up and repent they might be tortured, imprisoned and even killed.

The World Health Organization (WHO) recommended on Thursday two new drugs to treat patients with COVID-19, one for patients with critical diseaseand one for non-severe cases.

About $150 million from the United Nations Central Emergency Response Fund (CERF), the largest allocation ever, was released on Thursday to boost underfunded humanitarian operations across 13 countries.

WASHINGTON DC, Jan 13 (IPS) - On Jan. 3, the leaders of the five nuclear-armed members of the nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty (NPT) issued a rare joint statement on preventing nuclear war in which they affirmed, for the first time, the 1985 Reagan-Gorbachev maxim that “a nuclear war cannot be won and must never be fought.”

Iran must halt the looming execution of juvenile offender Hossein Shahbazi, four experts appointed by the UN Human Rights Council said on Thursday. 

UNITED NATIONS, Jan 13 (IPS) - The 22-month-old coronavirus pandemic – which has claimed over 5.4 million lives worldwide, devastated economies and reduced an additional 100 million people to poverty—has also disrupted the work of a partially locked-down United Nations triggering a potential cash crisis in the world body.

Describing a “nightmare unfolding in Afghanistan”, the United Nations’ Secretary-General, António Guterres, warned on Thursday that the world is “in a race against time to help the Afghan people.”

The UN’s key report on the global economy, released on Thursday, shows that the rapid spread of the Omicron COVID-19 variant has put the brakes on a rapid recovery, counteracting signs of solid growth at the end of last year.