News headlines in May 2022, page 3

The Sahel region of Africa should be considered a region of opportunity. despite the “multiple crises” that people there are enduring; that’s according to Annadif Khatir Mahamat Saleh, Special Representative of the UN Secretary-General for West Africa and the Sahel.

RIO DE JANEIRO, May 28 (IPS) - Brazil had the dubious distinction of champion of maternal mortality in Latin America during the COVID-19 pandemic, with a 77 percent increase in such deaths between 2019 and 2021.

Every day, United Nations peacekeepers work to protect millions of vulnerable people in increasingly dangerous places in the world’s most fragile political contexts.

GENEVA, May 27 (IPS) - Climate change, COVID-19, the war in Ukraine – these crises threaten to derail development for 1.7 billion of the world’s most vulnerable people. The international community must take swift, coordinated action now to put the SDGs back on track.

The head of the UN agency leading the fight against HIV/AIDS, welcomed on Friday a public apology from Chile on a landmark case of involuntary sterilization of women living with HIV.

Zambia’s plan to abolish the death penalty adds to the growing global chorus against the practice, the UN Human Rights Office, OHCHR, said on Friday in welcoming the decision. 

The Ocean is the planet’s largest ecosystem, regulating the climate, and providing livelihoods for billions. But its health is in danger. The second UN Ocean Conference, due to take place in June, will be an important opportunity to redress the damage that mankind continues to inflict on marine life and livelihoods.

More countries must “think resilience”, and urgently adopt and improve early warning systems to reduce risks from an increasing number of disasters across the world, a UN disaster forum concluded on Friday.

Amid growing insecurity and gang violence in Haiti, the numbers of desperate people resorting to risky sea crossings has sharply increased. On Friday the UN called for regional Governments to step up protection for refugees.

DURBAN, May 27 (IPS) - Selimatha Dziedzorm Salifu was just seven years old when she went to work for the first time to support her family.