News headlines in April 2022, page 6

Kingston, Jamaica, Apr 26 (IPS) - It will take billions of dollars and many years to fix a growing problem that has placed Jamaica into the unlikely bracket of being among the world's most water-scarce countries due to the unavailability of potable water.

LIMA, Apr 25 (IPS) - Women entering the political arena in Peru face multiple obstacles due to gender discrimination that hinders their equal participation, which can even reach the extreme of political harassment and bullying, in an attempt to force them out of the public sphere.

Against the backdrop of shifting population demographics, conflicts, post-pandemic shocks and climate change, the developing world is on the brink of a “perfect storm” of debt, food and energy crises, experts warned the Commission on Population and Development on Monday.

The global economy is under severe stress and the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) are in “need of urgent rescue”, the deputy UN chief told the Financing for Development Forum on Monday.

The explosive growth of extractive operations around the world often plays out on indigenous people’s lands without their consent, causing irreparable harm to their livelihoods, cultures, languages and lives, speakers told the Permanent Forum on Indigenous Issues on Monday, as it opened its 2022 session amid calls to respect their free, prior and informed consent on the existential decisions uprooting their communities.

Humanitarians have launched a renewed appeal for war-ravaged Ukraine that calls for $2.25 billion to provide assistance and protection to nearly nine million people, the UN announced on Monday. 

Recent violence in the occupied West Bank and terror attacks in Israel have killed and injured scores of civilians, the UN Special Coordinator for the Middle East Peace Process updated the Security Council on Monday.

Ethiopia’s eastern Somali Region has been hit by three consecutive below-average rainy seasons, worsening the already deteriorating humanitarian situation for around 3.5 million people, more than half the local population.

Additional peacekeepers have been deployed to Leer county, South Sudan, following a surge of violence, including rapes, gang rapes, beheadings, burning civilians alive, and attacks on humanitarians, the UN Mission in the country, UNMISS, reported on Monday. 

PORTLAND, USA, Apr 25 (IPS) - Since the first Earth Day observed on 22 April 1970, world conditions have worsened greatly across three critically interrelated global dimensions that portend a disastrous future for life on planet Earth.