Afghanistan could start to run out of food by September, UN warns

Posted on August 23, 2021 by Admin

World Food Programme calls for urgent aid as chaos of Taliban takeover and second drought in three years create dire humanitarian situation

UN agencies have warned of food shortages to Afghanistan as early as September without urgent aid funding, as it emerged first aid supplies, including surgical equipment and severe malnutrition kits, were stuck due to restrictions at Kabul airport.

The World Health Organization (WHO) said on Monday the closure of the airport to commercial flights has held up key deliveries.

‘Nothing to eat’: Somalia hit by triple threat of climate crisis, Covid and conflict

Posted on August 23, 2021 by Admin

Overlapping crises have pushed the fragile east African country to the ‘cusp of humanitarian catastrophe’, with one in four facing food insecurity

Such was the horror that erupted in her village earlier this year that Fadumo Ali Mohamed decided she had no choice but to leave. Through the Lower Shabelle region of Somalia, she walked for 30 kilometres, along with her nine children, eventually getting help to reach the capital by car.

Now in Mogadishu, she is one of more than 800,000 internally displaced people (IDPs) in the capital living in cramped, informal settlements with limited access to food, water and healthcare. She doesn’t like to recall the violence she fled.

‘No one comes here any more’: the human cost as Covid wipes out tourism

Posted on August 19, 2021 by Admin

From Bolivia’s Lake Titicaca to wildlife tourism in Nepal, we find out how the crisis has affected people in four travel hotspots – and whether or not they want the tourists to return

Opinion: Africa’s park tourism crash is a wake-up call. Can we find new ways to finance conservation?

In March last year, it was predicted that the global travel shutdown would cause international arrivals to plummet by 20 to 30% by the end of 2020.

Six weeks later, the UN World Tourism Organisation (UNWTO) revised their warning: international arrivals could fall by up to 80% – equating to a billion fewer tourists and the worst crisis in the history of the industry.

‘Hidden pandemic’: Peruvian children in crisis as carers die

Posted on August 16, 2021 by Admin

With 93,000 children in Peru losing a parent to Covid, many face depression, anxiety and poverty

When Covid-19 began shutting down Nilda López’s vital organs, doctors decided that the best chance of saving her and her unborn baby was to put her into a coma.

Six months pregnant, López feared she would not wake up, or that if she did, her baby would not be there.

Sex workers fighting for human rights among world’s most ‘at risk activists’

Posted on August 12, 2021 by Admin

Exclusive: Front Line Defenders report says rights defenders working in sex industry face ‘targeted attacks’ around the world

‘I’m scared of being killed’: sex worker activists speak out

Sex worker activists are among the most at risk defenders of human rights in the world, facing multiple threats and violent attacks, an extensive investigation has found.

The research, published today by human rights organisation Front Line Defenders, found that their visibility as sex workers who are advocates for their communities’ rights makes them more vulnerable to the violations routinely suffered by sex workers. In addition, they face unique, targeted abuse for their human rights work.

Aid is not helping development in Tanzania | Letter

Posted on July 22, 2021 by Admin

The country is one of the largest recipients of western aid, and yet poverty and unemployment remain rife, write two healthcare professionals

In response to Benny Dembitzer’s letter (20 July), we are currently working in Tanzania, one of the largest recipients of western aid in the world. We are doing research with the Hadza people, investigating the prevalence of psychiatric disorders in that population. In comparison to our observations from 2018, it appears that very little development has occurred in Tanzania. If anything, Tanzanians appear to be poorer and there appears to be more unemployed people now, which, given the challenges of Covid, is even more worrying. This highlights that the current aid model is not fit for purpose and western governments should rethink the way they support Tanzania and other countries urgently.

In the medical field, we are finding that progress has been halted, and probably reversed. One of the causes is that the rich world takes so many doctors, nurses and other health professionals from the developing world. Countries such as Tanzania have educated these professionals at their expense. We collect the ripe fruits.
Dennis Ougrin and Emma Woodhouse
London

‘Hunger has returned’: Covid piles further misery on Brazil’s vulnerable

Posted on July 22, 2021 by Admin

Many blame President Jair Bolsonaro’s failure to handle the pandemic and to provide adequate support for those in need

Even before coronavirus, life was a struggle on Regeneration Street, a rubbish-strewn skid row on the north side of Rio de Janeiro.

Cadaverous crack addicts probe dumpsters for scraps of food; crestfallen down-and-outs sprawl on soiled mattresses and rugs.

Guns, gangs and ‘bad aid’: Haiti’s crisis reaches full throttle

Posted on July 19, 2021 by Admin

Incessant foreign meddling and corrupt elites have ensured life for Haitians remains mired in violence and poverty. President Moïse’s assassination marks an escalating catastrophe

The Haitian political activist Marie Antoinette Duclair appears to have been unaware that two men on a motorbike were following her car through the badly lit streets of Port-au-Prince.

Her passenger on the night of 29 June was a journalist, Diego Charles. They had been attending a meeting, and she was now, at 11 o’clock at night, dropping him at his home in the Christ-Roi area of Haiti’s capital.

Gross inequality stoked the violence in South Africa. It’s a warning to us all | Kenan Malik

Posted on July 18, 2021 by Admin

The country’s social contract has broken, fuelled by corruption and extreme poverty

‘It feels qualitatively different this time.” There are few people I know in South Africa who don’t think this about the carnage now engulfing the nation. Violence was institutionalised during the years of apartheid. In the post-apartheid years, it has rarely been far from the surface – police violence, gangster violence, the violence of protest. What is being exposed now, however, is just how far the social contract that has held the nation together since the end of apartheid has eroded.

Many aspects of the disorder are peculiar to South Africa. There are also themes with wider resonance. Events in the country demonstrate in a particularly acute fashion a phenomenon we are witnessing in different ways and in degrees of severity across the globe: the old order breaking down, with little to fill the void but sectarian movements or identity politics.

Hunger sweeps India in Covid’s shadow as millions miss out on rations

Posted on July 14, 2021 by Admin

Desperation grows for those unable to access subsidised food, as worst hunger in two decades reported

When India’s devastating second wave of Covid-19 struck in April, Nazia Habib Khan’s second marriage abruptly came to an end after a year of beatings and abuse. The 28-year-old daughter of migrants from the southern Indian state of Andhra Pradesh returned to live with her mother, brothers and a sister-in-law in Mumbai.

Their 40 sq metre (400 sq ft) home in Kurla East stands huddled among the 800 or so brick, tin sheet and tarpaulin houses of Qureshi Nagar, the entire shanty town trembling when a train roars past on a nearby railway line.

Almost one in three globally go hungry during pandemic – UN

Posted on July 12, 2021 by Admin

Big leap in malnutrition during Covid, with fifth of children now believed to be stunted, report warns

The number of people who did not have enough food to eat rose steeply during the Covid-19 pandemic to include almost a third of the world, according to a new UN report published on Monday.

Five UN agencies said the number of people without access to healthy diets grew by 320 million last year to nearly 2.37 billion people– more than the increases in the previous five years combined.

I thought HIV meant death but it led me to fight to save millions of lives | Vuyiseka Dubula

Posted on July 5, 2021 by Admin

Twenty years ago in South Africa people were dying unable to access expensive antiretrovirals. The creation of the Global Fund was gamechanging

In 2001, at the age of 22 – when I thought my life had just begun – I was diagnosed with HIV. At that time, the diagnosis felt like a death sentence. Every day, I waited for my hour to die.

However, after two months of waiting, death didn’t come.

‘Wage theft’ in Primark, Nike and H&M supply chain – report

Posted on July 2, 2021 by Admin

No laws were broken but brands failed to ensure workers were paid properly during the pandemic, says Clean Clothes Campaign

Campaigners claim to have found evidence of “wage theft” in the supply chains of Primark, Nike and H&M in a report that outlines the devastating consequences of the pandemic on garment workers in Indonesia, Cambodia and Bangladesh.

Research by the Clean Clothes Campaign found that, while none of the brands had broken any laws, they had failed to ensure that their workers were properly paid throughout the pandemic.

Billions pledged to tackle gender inequality at UN forum

Posted on June 30, 2021 by Admin

Generation Equality Forum in Paris announces plans to radically speed up progress on women’s rights

Billions of pounds will be pledged to support efforts to tackle gender inequality this week at the largest international conference on women’s rights in more than 25 years.

The Generation Equality Forum, hosted in Paris by UN Women and the governments of France and Mexico, will launch plans to radically speed up progress over the next five years.

‘Jaw-dropping’ fall in life expectancy in poor areas of England, report finds

Posted on June 30, 2021 by Admin

Sir Michael Marmot’s report says Covid figures from Manchester reveal sharp decline in social conditions

Boris Johnson’s post-Covid “levelling up” agenda will fail unless it addresses declining life expectancy and deteriorating social conditions in England’s poorest areas, a leading authority on public health has warned, as he published figures showing the impact of the pandemic on Greater Manchester.

Sir Michael Marmot revealed the coronavirus death rate in Greater Manchester was 25% higher than the England average during the year to March, leading to “jaw-dropping” falls in life expectancy and widening social and health inequalities across the region over the past year.

India’s Covid gender gap: women left behind in vaccination drive

Posted on June 28, 2021 by Admin

Misinformation and access issues combined with patriarchal social norms fuelling disparity in distribution across most states

Deep-rooted structural inequalities and patriarchal values are to blame for India’s worrying Covid vaccine gender gap, campaigners and academics have warned.

As of 25 June, of the 309m Covid vaccine doses delivered since January 2021, 143m were administered to women compared with nearly 167m to men, according to CoWin, India’s national statistics site – a ratio of 856 doses given to women for every 1,000 given to men. The difference is not accounted for by India’s gender imbalance of 924 women to 1,000 men.

Half of Zimbabweans fell into extreme poverty during Covid

Posted on June 21, 2021 by Admin

Poor families cannot afford healthcare and schooling but good harvests offer some hope, World Bank finds

The number of Zimbabweans in extreme poverty has reached 7.9 million as the pandemic has delivered another economic shock to the country.

According to the World Bank’s economic and social update report, almost half of Zimbabwe’s population fell into extreme poverty between 2011 and last year, with children bearing the brunt of the misery.

Linen condoms and bed curtains: tour exposes history of sex in Scotland

Posted on June 18, 2021 by Admin

National Trust for Scotland presents exploration of intimacy from 17th to 20th century

The chafing doesn’t bear thinking about. A replica linen condom secured with a dainty blue ribbon is one of the more wince-inducing props for a new exploration of the history of sex and intimate lives in Scotland.

The other material used to fashion prophylactics in the 17th century was animal gut, which was dried then rehydrated at the crucial moment. The Edinburgh-born diarist James Boswell writes about dipping one in a river before intercourse. He was adamant about their use to ward off venereal disease, but still recorded numerous painful bouts of infection in his journals.

Roundup Newswires

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Category Archives: Poverty

Afghanistan could start to run out of food by September, UN warns

‘Nothing to eat’: Somalia hit by triple threat of climate crisis, Covid and conflict

‘No one comes here any more’: the human cost as Covid wipes out tourism

Aid is not helping development in Tanzania | Letter

‘Hunger has returned’: Covid piles further misery on Brazil’s vulnerable

Guns, gangs and ‘bad aid’: Haiti’s crisis reaches full throttle

Gross inequality stoked the violence in South Africa. It’s a warning to us all | Kenan Malik

Hunger sweeps India in Covid’s shadow as millions miss out on rations

Almost one in three globally go hungry during pandemic – UN

‘Wage theft’ in Primark, Nike and H&M supply chain – report

Billions pledged to tackle gender inequality at UN forum

Half of Zimbabweans fell into extreme poverty during Covid