News headlines in July 2022, page 14

MADRID, Jul 14 (IPS) - While the world’s big private business pours billions of dollars in producing automatic machines and assuring their optimal functioning, barley no money has been invested in the hundreds of millions human workers, who are left shockingly unprotected, treated like cheap robots, or even worse.

The international community should lend full support to the incoming administration in Colombia, which has a tremendous opportunity to speed up implementation of the landmark 2016 Peace Agreement that ended more than 50 years of civil war, the top UN official in the country told the Security Council on Thursday. 

Nairobi, Jul 14 (IPS) - It is exactly two years since George Omuodo’s brutal confrontation with fishers from Uganda, an encounter that left him hospitalized with a broken arm and bruised ribs. After listening to his ordeal, one wonders where he gets the courage to go back to the lake every day.

Diseases transmitted from animals to people in Africa have jumped 63 per cent in last decade, compared with the previous ten year period, according to a World Health Organization (WHO) analysis released on Thursday.

UNITED NATIONS, Jul 14 (IPS) - In his opening address to the 2022 Ministerial meeting of the High-Level Political Forum on the UN’s Sustainable Development Goals, July 13-15.Our world is in deep trouble – and so too are the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs).

Time is running out. But there is still hope. Because we know what we need to do:

The decision by a Philippines court to uphold the conviction of campaigning journalist Maria Ressa should be reassessed by the newly elected government, the UN Special Rapporteur on freedom of opinion and expression, Irene Khan, said on Thursday.

ROME, Jul 13 (IPS) - The signs of the last few years indicate a continuous setback towards achieving food security. The Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations’ (FAO) annual report, "The State of Food Security and Nutrition in the World (SOFI)”, prepared together with other UN agencies and presented on July 6th leaves no doubt about the dangerous situation in which we find ourselves regarding the real possibilities of eliminating hunger and poverty by 2030, as solemnly proposed by the international community in October 2015 in New York.

Women working in the health and care sector earn nearly 25 per cent less than their male counterparts – a larger gender pay gap than in other economic sectors, two UN agencies said in a new report on Wednesday. 

The UN chief on Wednesday described progress between Russia and Ukraine on allowing the resumption of grain exports during UN-brokered talks in Türkiye, as a “ray of hope to ease human suffering and alleviate hunger around the world.”

In addition to tackling COVID and the monkeypox outbreak, the UN health agency has also been keeping a close eye on the puzzling spread of hepatitis in previously healthy children, which has left dozens needing lifesaving liver transplants.