News headlines in March 2022, page 2

GENEVA, Mar 31 (IPS) - For more than one month now, the entire population of Ukraine has been enduring a living nightmare. The lives of millions of people are in upheaval as they are forced to flee their homes or hide in basements and bomb shelters as their cities are pummeled and destroyed.

As the world focuses its attention on the war in Ukraine, the UN reminded the international community on Thursday to remember Afghanistan as it kicked off a pledging conference to save the lives and livelihoods of those in the landlocked country.

The World Entrepreneurs Investment Forum (WEIF 2022) closed in Dubai on Wednesday with participants adopting the ‘UAE Declaration’, which calls for greater collaboration, integration and connectivity across the Arab world and a strong focus on women entrepreneurs to help achieve the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) by 2030.

The peace process in Yemen has been “stalled for too long,” the top UN envoy for the country told a summit meeting on Wednesday in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, aiming to build on the Saudi-led coalition’s unilateral declaration of a ceasefire, ahead of the holy month of Ramadan.

A third of the world’s population has yet to receive a single dose of COVID-19 vaccine, including a shocking 83 per cent of all Africans, said the head of the World Health Organization (WHO) on Wednesday.

PALMIRA, Colombia, Mar 30 (IPS) - As he points to a white shelf that holds bean seeds, Austrian biologist Peter Wenzl explains that one of them, obtained in Ecuador, provided a gene for the discovery that major seed protein arcelin offers resistance to the bean weevil.

Since the start of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, more than 4 million people have fled the country - two million of them, are children. As the UN agency mandated to coordinate and lead on global education, UNESCO is carefully mapping exactly how host countries are supporting and providing education, to help keep young Ukrainian refugees on track - their lives totally upended in a matter of weeks.

The UN chief has called for $100 million each year in assessed contributions from Member States, to fund the world body’s peacebuilding activities, describing such an investment as “a bargain” compared with the punitive costs of war.

Credible reports indicate that Russian armed forces have used cluster munitions in populated areas of Ukraine, at least two dozen times since they invaded on 24 February, UN rights chief Michelle Bachelet said on Wednesday.

BRATISLAVA, Mar 30 (IPS) - States must do more to protect women and children fleeing war in Ukraine, rights groups have urged, amid growing concerns they are falling prey to trafficking and sexual violence.