News headlines in March 2023, page 16

Essential workers who kept families, societies and economies going while the world was on COVID lockdown, need better pay and conditions urgently, if countries are to future-proof themselves from the next global crisis, UN labour experts said on Wednesday.

MWENEZI, Zimbabwe, Mar 15 (IPS) - From the Masvingo-Beitbridge highway in Zimbabwe at a spot popularly known as Turn-P, the road passing through Neshuro Township has been degraded, disused, and derelict for over two decades, with buses avoiding the route. Now donkey-drawn carts that operate alongside jalopy vehicles have become the new alternative for remote travellers around Mwenezi villages.

OUAGADOUGOU, Burkina Faso, Mar 14 (IPS) - Burkina Faso’s interim President Captain Ibrahim Traoré spoke late last year of the conflicts that are now blighting his country and much of his region. He described the situation in Burkina Faso as predictable given the endemic weaknesses in governance that he believes have led to the economic abandonment of many young people, particularly outside of urban areas.

UNITED NATIONS, Mar 14 (IPS) - When the US was planning to sell fighter planes to a politically-repressive regime in South-east Asia in a bygone era, a spokesman for a human rights organization, responding to a question from a reporter, was quoted as saying there were no plans to oppose the proposed sale because “it is very difficult to link F-16 fighter planes to human rights abuses”

States must be “primary responders” in torture cases, to end impunity and bring justice on behalf of victims, a UN independent expert told the Human Rights Council on Tuesday.

Eight UN agencies on Tuesday published a new report aimed at helping countries address chronic food insecurity and nutrition crises across Europe and Central Asia, made worse by the COVID-19 pandemic, and the war in Ukraine.

During a visit to a center for street children in Beirut, Lebanon, UN Deputy Secretary-General Amina Mohammed said: “Children should be allowed to be children. They should enjoy their rights to education, to health, to safe environment and to not feeling the pressures of an adult at a child’s age.”

More than half of the population in Syria is facing hunger as the country grapples with 12 years of war and recent devastating earthquakes, the World Food Programme (WFP) reported on Tuesday. 

No less than 55 countries are struggling with serious health worker shortages as they continue to seek better paid opportunities in wealthier nations that have stepped up efforts to recruit them amid the COVID-19 pandemic, the World Health Organization (WHO) said on Tuesday.

Multiple interconnected global crises are putting achievement of the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) at risk - both in the Arab region and the rest of the world, UN Deputy Secretary-General Amina Mohammed warned on Tuesday.