News headlines in March 2023, page 20

After Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) ramped up its support for vulnerable workers in the Ukrainian agricultural sector, particularly smallholder farmers.

ROME, Mar 09 (IPS) - There are 151 wind turbines and more than 130 kilometres of connection routes and power lines on the Fosen peninsula, 530 kilometres north of Oslo. Norwegian judges say that they should not be there, and the owners of those lands since time immemorial do too.

BRIGHTON, UK, Mar 09 (IPS) - This year marks the halfway point— eight years in and eight years out— of the UN Sustainable Development Goals to end poverty and reduce inequalities.

SANTIAGO, Mar 09 (IPS) - The global food security crisis reveals an increase in the undernourishment prevalence, reaching higher than in 2015, when countries first agreed to eradicate hunger by 2030 as one of the SDG targets. In the Caribbean, between 2014 and 2021, hunger increased by 2.3 percentage points, affecting 16.4 percent of its population by 2021. Moreover, the Caribbean is a net importer of almost all the main food groups such as cereals, dairy products, fruits and vegetables (except the Dominican Republic), meat and vegetable oils.

PESHAWAR, Mar 09 (IPS) - Hundreds of young women and girls are moving to Pakistan to continue their studies after the Taliban’s restrictions on women’s education in Afghanistan.

The UN on Thursday launched new policy initiatives to ensure the international community delivers on its promises today, for future generations, and that the world is ready to properly respond to “complex shocks” like the COVID-19 pandemic.

The least developed countries (LDCS) are facing a pathway to graduation from the category that will be “riddled with added crises,” UN Deputy Secretary-General Amina Mohammed said on Thursday, and urged the international community to work together so those countries can build resilience to recover from current and future shocks and sustain progress. 

UN-led efforts to prevent a catastrophic oil spill in the Red Sea took a major step forward on Thursday with the announcement of a deal to purchase a vessel that will remove more than a million barrels of oil from a decaying supertanker that has threatened the region for years. 

Amid the biggest reported missile attack on Ukraine in weeks, the UN’s atomic energy agency, IAEA, said on Thursday that Zaporizhzhya nuclear power plant had to switch to backup generators once again, after losing all power.

A UN independent human rights expert criticized the United States for using extraterritorial jurisdiction to impose sanctions on foreign individuals, in a statement issued on Thursday.