News headlines in January 2023

WASHINGTON DC, Jan 31 (IPS) - Meeting our climate change goals will require massive investments in clean energy projects, in both advanced economies and across the Global South.  But financing projects in the latter group of countries requires an increase in foreign capital inflows that will be constrained by currency exchange rate risk. Creating an innovative Exchange Rate Coverage Facility can help to overcome this constraint.

BRUSSELS, Jan 31 (IPS) - When the parents of Korean jazz singer Youn Sun Nah realized that the COVID-19 pandemic had begun, they called and urged her to return to Seoul from New York, where she was based at the time.

UNITED NATIONS, Jan 31 (IPS) - Recent visits to Afghanistan by senior-led UN delegations underscore the urgency to protect the rights of women and girls, including their access to humanitarian aid and their right to work.

NAIROBI, Jan 31 (IPS) - The new year brought bad news for press freedom on the African continent with the brutal murder of one journalist and the suspicious death of another.

STOCKHOLM, Sweden, Jan 31 (IPS) - Next month (February 24) will mark one year since Russia began its full-scale war on Ukraine. This large-scale land invasion has had repercussions across the geopolitical, humanitarianfinancial, and even food and energy domains. It has also had devastating ecological impacts.

CARACAS, Jan 31 (IPS) - The environmental priority for South America in 2023 can be summed up in the management of its terrestrial and marine protected areas, together with the challenges of the extractivist economy and the transition to a green economy with priority attention to the most vulnerable populations.

The global economy is set to slow down this year before bouncing back in 2024, a senior official with the International Monetary Fund (IMF) has said, citing China’s sudden re-opening following the end of its “zero-COVID” policy, and a mild winter, in Europe as factors. 

The Government of South Sudan, in its first ever briefing to the UN Peacebuilding Commission, outlined its priorities on Tuesday, addressing a host of recommendations from civil society speakers and UN officials.

The international community must promptly deny the legitimacy of Myanmar’s military junta, the UN-appointed independent expert on the situation of human rights in the country said briefing at UN Headquarters in New York on Tuesday, launching a critical report as the coup enters its third year on Wednesday.

Youth empowerment and employment figured heavily in discussions between Saudi officials and the head of the UN Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees (UNRWA), held in the kingdom last weekend.