United Nations
UN says part of Somalia will reach famine later this year
The United Nations says “famine is at the door” in Somalia with “concrete indications” famine will occur later this year in the southern Bay region. This falls just short of a formal famine declaration in Somalia as thousands are dying in a historic drought made worse by the effects of the war in Ukraine.
U.N. humanitarian chief Martin Griffiths told reporters that he was “shocked to my core these past few days” on a visit to Somalia in which he witnessed starving babies too weak to cry.
A formal famine declaration is rare and a warning that too little help has come too late. At least 1 million people in Somalia have been displaced by the worst drought in decades, driven by climate change, that also affects the wider Horn of Africa including Ethiopia and Kenya.
Famine is the extreme lack of food and a significant death rate from outright starvation or malnutrition combined with diseases like cholera. A declaration means data shows more than a fifth of households have extreme food gaps, more than 30% of children are acutely malnourished and over two people out of 10,000 are dying every day.
Also read: UN warns 6 million Afghans at risk of famine as crises grow
Russia’s invasion of Ukraine has been described as a disaster for Somalia, which has suffered from a shortage of humanitarian aid as international donors focus on Europe. Somalia also sourced at least 90% of its wheat from Russia and Ukraine before the war and has been hit hard by scarcity and the sharp rise in food prices.
“Ukraine has occupied the narrative,” Griffiths said.
Hungry families in Somalia have been staggering for days or weeks on foot through parched terrain in search of assistance. Many bury family members along the way. Even when they reach camps outside urban areas, they find little or no help.
At one camp outside the capital, Mogadishu, Fadumo Abdi Aliyow showed The Associated Press the graves of her two small sons next to their makeshift home. Disease had overwhelmed their weakened bodies. One was 4. The other was eight months old.
Also read: Ukraine's ports must be reopened to avert looming famine threat: UN
“I wanted to die before them so they could bury me,” Aliyow said. Another resident of the camp of 1,800 families, Samey Adan Mohamed, said the last meal she and her eight children had was rice a day ago. Today they had only tea.
Camps like theirs are ringed by death, bringing aid workers to tears. “I couldn’t get out of my head the tiny mounds of ground marking children’s graves,” UNICEF’s deputy regional director Rania Dagash said last week. “I’m from this region and I’ve never seen it so bad.”
A formal famine declaration would bring desperately needed funding. But “tragically, by the time a famine is declared, it’s already too late,” the U.N. World Food Program has said.
When famine was declared in parts of Somalia in 2011, the deaths of a quarter-million people were well underway.
“This is not a repeat of the 2011 famine. It is much worse,” the U.N. humanitarian agency said last week. So far, at least 730 children have died in nutrition centers across Somalia, it said, and more than 213,000 people are at “imminent risk” of dying.
“You feel like you’re looking at the face of death,” Mercy Corps CEO Tjada McKenna told the AP after visiting the badly hit city of Baidoa. There is not enough therapeutic food to treat the acutely malnourished, said McKenna, who saw many young children and pregnant women. “For every one person I saw, imagine all the people who couldn’t get that far. And so many people were arriving each day.”
At the same time, aid funding has dropped more than 60% from the response to Somalia’s previous drought in 2017, USAID administrator Samantha Power said last week, noting a “degree of despair and devastation” not seen before in her career.
The Horn of Africa region has seen four straight failed rainy seasons for the first time in well over four decades. The upcoming rainy season is also expected to fail. That endangers an estimated 20 million people in one of the world’s most impoverished and turbulent regions.
“Sadly, our models show with a high degree of confidence that we are entering the fifth consecutive failed rainy season,” the director of the regional climate prediction center, Guleid Artan, has said. “In Ethiopia, Kenya, and Somalia, we are on the brink of an unprecedented humanitarian catastrophe.”
The rainfall in this year’s failed March-to-May season was the lowest in the last six decades, Artan told the AP. Next year’s March-to-May season doesn’t look good either, he said, worrying that “this could be the seven-year drought, the biblical one.”
Formal famine declarations are rare because data to meet the benchmarks often cannot be obtained because of conflict, poor infrastructure or politics. Governments can be wary of being associated with a term of such grim magnitude. Somalia's recently elected president, however, appointed a drought envoy in one of his first acts in office, which Griffiths called “impressive.”
Because of the remote nature of Somalia’s drought, and with some hard-hit areas under the control of the al-Shabab extremist group which has been hostile to humanitarian efforts, no one knows how many people have died — or will in the months to come.
Hundreds of calls from across Somalia, including from al-Shabab-controlled areas, come in daily to the Somali-run Radio Ergo. Some say no aid is available in camps. Others say water sources have run dry or lament the loss of millions of livestock that are the foundation of their health and wealth.
“People don’t cry because they want their voice to be heard,” radio editor Leyla Mohamed told the AP. “But you can feel they are hurting, that they feel more than we can hear.”
UN human rights expert on climate change to visit Bangladesh from Sept 4-15
UN Special Rapporteur on the promotion and protection of human rights in the context of climate change, Ian Fry, will visit Bangladesh from September 4 to 15.
This is the first official visit by the UN expert, an international environmental law and policy expert, since he took office on May 1 this year.
During the visit, the UN expert will assess how the adverse impact of climate change affects human rights of communities in vulnerable situations.
The Special Rapporteur will focus on loss and damage incurred due to climate change and extreme weather.
Also read: Bangladesh becomes UNHRC member
He said the impacts of climate change continue to take a huge economic and social toll on the people of Bangladesh.
Studies indicate that globally, costs related to loss and damage from climate change impacts will rise to between $290 billion and $580 billion a year by 2030.
"The people of Bangladesh are suffering from the greenhouse gas pollution caused by the developed world. It is time the international community stepped up and took responsibility for these impacts,” the UN expert said.
He will also pay special attention and explore how climate change impacts are forcing people to be displaced from their land and what measures are being taken to address these impacts.
The UN expert will identify good practices, strategies and policies implemented by the government of Bangladesh, as the country adapts to climate change and builds resilience to its adverse impacts for the full and effective enjoyment of human rights.
Fry will travel to Dhaka, Khulna, and Sylhet to meet with communities affected by climate change.
Also read: Act now on climate front, listen to countries like Bangladesh: Bachelet
He will also meet central and local district government officials, and representatives from civil society.
The Special Rapporteur will present a comprehensive report on his visit to the UN Human Rights Council in Geneva in June 2023.
Fry is the first Special Rapporteur on the promotion and protection of human rights in the context of climate change.
He was appointed by the Human Rights Council at its 49th session in March 2022 and started his mandate on May 1.
IGP’s US Visit: Discussion underway among relevant authorities
Home Minister Asaduzzaman Khan on Tuesday said discussion is underway regarding Inspector General of Police (IGP) Benazir Ahmed’s planned visit to the United States, noting an “understanding” between the United Nations and the US.
“There’s an understanding between the UN and the US. It’s (visit) under discussion following that particular process,” he told reporters, mentioning that a decision will be reached once the process is done.
Benazir is scheduled to attend the third United Nations Chiefs of Police Summit (UNCOPS 2022) which will bring together Ministers, Chiefs of Police and senior representatives of regional and professional policing organizations to United Nations Headquarters from August 31 to September 1.
Earlier, US Ambassador to Bangladesh Peter Haas held a meeting with the home minister at the Secretariat.
The home minister explained the steps taken by the government to ensure that there is no violation of laws by the law enforcement agencies.
“We informed them that punitive action was taken against some Rab officials after getting allegations,” he said referring to the steps taken following Narayanganj seven-murder case.
US envoy: Russia intends to dissolve Ukraine from world map
The U.S. ambassador to the United Nations said Friday there should no longer be any doubt that Russia intends to dismantle Ukraine “and dissolve it from the world map entirely.”
Linda Thomas-Greenfield told the U.N. Security Council that the United States is seeing growing signs that Russia is laying the groundwork to attempt to annex all of the eastern Ukrainian regions of Donetsk and Luhansk and the southern Kherson and Zaporizhzhia regions, including by installing “illegitimate proxy officials in Russian-held areas, with the goal of holding sham referenda or decree to join Russia.”
Russia’s Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov “has even stated that this is Russia’s war aim,” she said.
Lavrov told an Arab summit in Cairo on Sunday that Moscow’s overarching goal in Ukraine is to free its people from its “unacceptable regime.”
Apparently suggesting that Moscow’s war aims extend beyond Ukraine’s industrial Donbas region in the east comprising Donetsk and Luhansk, Lavrov said: “We will certainly help the Ukrainian people to get rid of the regime, which is absolutely anti-people and anti-historical.”
Russia’s deputy U.N. ambassador Dmitry Polyansky told the Security Council on Friday that “The de-Nazification and demilitarization of Ukraine will be carried out in full.”
“There must no longer be a threat from this stage to Donbas, nor to Russia, nor to the liberated Ukrainian territories where for the first time in several years people are finally able to feel that they can live the way they want,” he said.
Read:Russia, Ukraine trade blame for shelling of POW prison
Polyansky also warned Western nations supplying long-range artillery and MLRS surface-to-surface rockets that they were shifting “the provisional security line” further toward the west, “and in so doing clarifying even further the aims and objectives of our special military operation.”
Thomas-Greenfield went after countries that say “one country's security should not come at the expense of another's," asking what they call Russia's invasion of Ukraine. She didn't name any country but this is a view China has repeated frequently, including Friday by its deputy U.N. ambassador Geng Shuang.
He told the council, “Putting one's own security above that of others, attempting to strengthen military blocs, establishing absolute superiority ... will only lead to conflict and confrontation, divide the international community and make themselves less secure."
The U.S. ambassador also went after nations that call for all countries to embrace diplomacy without naming Russia, saying: “Let us be clear: Russia’s ongoing actions are the obstacle to a resolution to this crisis.” Again she named no countries but a significant number of nations in Africa, Asia and the Mideast take this approach.
Thomas-Greenfield cited evidence of mounting atrocities including the reported bombings of schools and hospitals, “the killing of aid workers and journalists, the targeting of civilians attempting to flee, the brutal execution-style murder of those going about their daily business in Bucha,” the suburb of Ukraine’s capital Kyiv where local authorities said hundreds of people were killed during its occupation by Russian forces.
She said there is evidence Russia forces “have interrogated, detained forcibly, deported an estimated hundreds of thousands of Ukrainian citizens, including children -- tearing them from their homes and sending them to remote regions in the east.”
Nearly 2 million Ukrainians refugees have been sent to Russia, according to both Ukrainian and Russian officials. Ukraine portrays these journeys as forced transfers to enemy soil, which is considered a war crime. Russia calls them humanitarian evacuations of war victims who already speak Russian and are grateful for a new home.
A recent Associated Press investigation based on dozens of interviews has found that while the situation is more nuanced that the Ukrainians suggest, many refugees are indeed forced to embark on a surreal trip into Russia, subjected along the way to human rights abuses, stripped of documents and left confused and lost about where they are. Those who leave go through a series of what are known as filtration points, where treatment ranges from interrogation and strip searches to being yanked aside and never seen again.
“The United States has information that officials from Russia’s presidential administration are overseeing and coordinating filtration operations,” Thomas-Greenfield told the council.
Polyansky countered that despite Ukraine’s efforts at intimidation of their citizens “people are choosing the country that they trust” -- Russia.
He warned that heavy weapons being poured into Ukraine by the West “will spill over into Europe” because of what he claimed is “the flourishing corruption among Ukraine’s political and military leadership.”
Polyansky said Western weapons are only “dragging out the agony and increasing the suffering of the Ukrainian people.”
Addressing Western ambassadors, he said: “The aims of our special military operation will be achieved either way, however much fuel you pour into the fire in the form of weapons.”
UN projects world population will reach 8 billion on Nov. 15
The United Nations estimated Monday that the world’s population will reach 8 billion on Nov. 15 and that India will replace China as the world’s most populous nation next year.
In a report released on World Population Day, the U.N. also said global population growth fell below 1% in 2020 for the first time since 1950.
According to the latest U.N. projections, the world’s population could grow to around 8.5 billion in 2030, 9.7 billion in 2050 and a peak of around 10.4 billion during the 2080s. It is forecast to remain at that level until 2100.
The report says more than half the projected increase in population up to 2050 will be concentrated in just eight countries: Congo, Egypt, Ethiopia, India, Nigeria, Pakistan, the Philippines and Tanzania.
The report, “World Population Prospects 2022,” puts the world's population at 7.942 billion now and forecasts it will reach 8 billion in mid-November.
John Wilmoth, director of the U.N. Population Division, said at a news conference to release the report that the date when the U.N.’s projection line crosses 8 billion is Nov. 15.
But, he noted, “we do not pretend that that’s the actual date … and we think that the uncertainty is at least plus or minus a year.”
Nonetheless, U.N. Secretary-General Antonio Guterres called 2022 a “milestone year,” with “the birth of the Earth’s eight billionth inhabitant.”
“This is an occasion to celebrate our diversity, recognize our common humanity, and marvel at advancements in health that have extended lifespans and dramatically reduced maternal and child mortality rates,” Guterres said in a statement. “At the same time, it is a reminder of our shared responsibility to care for our planet and a moment to reflect on where we still fall short of our commitments to one another.”
The report projects that next year India, with a current population of 1.412 billion, will surpass China, with a current population of 1.426 billion, but Wilmoth said there is more uncertainty about that date than the Earth reaching 8 billion inhabitants on Nov. 15.
Read:Rising incomes more harmful to environment than population growth: UN report
Wilmoth said the U.N. moved the date forward from 2027, especially as a result of China’s 2020 census. India had been planning its census in 2021, but he said it was delayed because of the pandemic. The U.N. will reassess its projection after it takes place.
The U.N. projects that in 2050 the United States will remain the third most populous country in the world, behind India and China. Nigeria is projected to be No. 4, followed by Pakistan, Indonesia, Brazil, Congo, Ethiopia and Bangladesh. Russia and Mexico, which are in the top 10 most populous countries in 2022, are projected to lose their ninth and 10th spots in 2050.
“The population of 61 countries or areas are projected to decrease by 1% or more between 2022 and 2050,” the report says.
“In countries with at least half a million population, the largest relative reductions in population size over that period, with losses of 20% or more, are expected to take place in Bulgaria, Latvia, Lithuania, Serbia and Ukraine.”
In other highlights, the report said global life expectancy improved almost 9 years from 1990 — to 72.8 years for babies born in 2019 — and is projected to reach 77.2 years in 2050 as death rates continue to decrease. But in 2021, it said, life expectancy in the world’s poorest countries lagged 7 years behind the global average.
As for gender balance, the report says, “Globally, the world counts slightly more men (50.3%) than women (49.7%) in 2022.” “This figure is projected to slowly invert over the course of the century," it says. “By 2050, it is expected that the number of women will equal the number of men.”
The share of working age people between ages 25 and 64 has been increasing in most countries of sub-Saharan Africa, parts of Asia and in Latin America and the Caribbean “thanks to recent reductions in fertility,” the report says.
The U.N. said this “demographic dividend” provides an opportunity for accelerated economic growth for those countries.
In another trend, the report said, “the population above age 65 is growing more rapidly than the population below that age.”
“As a result, the share of global population at age 65 and above is projected to rise from 10% in 2022 to 16% in 2050,” it said.
Wilmoth said high life expectancy and very low levels of fertility and birth rates in European countries, Japan, North America, Australia and New Zealand are driving the tendency toward rapid population aging, and eventually potential population declines.
As a result, over the next few decades, international migration “will be the sole driver of population growth in high-income countries,” the report said.
“By contrast, for the foreseeable future, population increase in low-income and lower-middle-income countries will continue to be driven by an excess of births over deaths,” it said.
Depot Fire: UN for joint efforts in addressing “safety deficits” in workplaces
The United Nations has said the tragic accident at the BM Container depot in Chattogram is reminder of the need to work together towards effective industrial and enterprise safety frameworks and their enforcement.
The UN in Bangladesh on Monday called upon all parties involved to apply renewed vigor in addressing the safety deficits in workplaces across the country.
Also read: Ctg depot fire: DNA samples collection begin to identify deceased
The UN said they extend their assistance to continue to build a safer Bangladesh for all.
“We’re shocked and saddened by the tragic loss of lives and destructions caused by the devastating fire and blast at the BM Container depot in Chattogram,” said the UN in a statement issued by office of the United Nations Resident Coordinator in Bangladesh.
The UNRC office conveyed their deepest and heartfelt condolences to the families of the deceased including nine firefighters and the hundreds who are injured.
Also read: ‘Pray for me,’ fireman Shakil’s last words to mother
Myanmar violence has displaced more than 1 million, says UN
The United Nations' humanitarian relief agency says the number of people displaced within strife-torn Myanmar has for the first time exceeded 1 million, with well over half the total losing their homes after a military takeover last year.
The U.N. Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs says in a report that an already critical situation is being exacerbated by ongoing fighting between the military government and its opponents, the increasing prices of essential commodities, and the coming of monsoon season, while funding for its relief efforts is severely inadequate. Its report covers the situation up to May 26.
The military has hindered or denied independent access to areas not under its control, hampering aid efforts.
Myanmar’s army in February last year seized power from the elected government of Aung San Suu Kyi, triggering widespread peaceful protests. When those were put down with lethal force by the army and police, nonviolent opposition turned into armed resistance, and the country slipped into what some U.N. experts characterize as a civil war.
Also read: Myanmar situation continues to remain unsafe for civilians: Bangladesh
OCHA says that fighting has recently escalated.
“The impact on civilians is worsening daily with frequent indiscriminate attacks and incidents involving explosive hazards, including landmines and explosive remnants of war," the report says.
It says that more than 694,300 people have become displaced from their homes since the army takeover, with thousands being uprooted a second or third time, and an estimated 346,000 people were displaced by fighting before last year’s takeover — mostly in frontier regions populated by ethnic minority groups who have been struggling for greater autonomy for decades.
The report also says about 40,200 people have fled to neighboring countries since the takeover and more than 12,700 “civilian properties,” including houses, churches, monasteries and schools are estimated to have been destroyed.
As of the end of the first quarter of this year, humanitarian assistance reached 2.6 million people in Myanmar, or 41% of the 6.2 million people targeted, OCHA says. The country's total population is over 55 million.
But it warns this year’s Myanmar Humanitarian Response Plan is only 10% funded so far, falling short by $740 million.
An official of the military government's Ministry of Social Welfare, Relief and Resettlement said Wednesday at a news conference in Myanmar's capital Naypyitaw that the government distributed humanitarian aid to more than 130,000 displaced people from May 2021 through May 27 this year.
The official, whose testimony was broadcast but who was not identified by name, said 1,255 houses and five religious buildings were burned or destroyed in fighting between the army and local resistance militias, and consequently received government aid for rebuilding.
Also read: FM urges UNHCR to expedite efforts at Rohingya repatriation to Myanmar
U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees Filippo Grandi said last month that the number of people worldwide forced to flee conflict, violence, human rights violations and persecution has crossed the milestone of 100 million for the first time on record. That's more than 1% of the global population and comprises refugees and asylum-seekers as well as people displaced inside their own countries by conflict.
Violence and conflicts in countries including Ethiopia, Burkina Faso, Myanmar, Nigeria, Afghanistan and the Democratic Republic of Congo had driven the total to almost 90 million by the end of last year. The war in Ukraine pushed the number past the 100 million mark.
The Internal Displacement Monitoring Centre, an independent Geneva-based non-governmental organization, said 53.2 million people were displaced within their countries as a result of conflict and violence as of Dec. 31.
Bangladesh elected to 4 governing councils of UNESCAP' regional institutions
Bangladesh has been elected to the governing councils of all four regional institutions of the United Nations Economic and Social Commission for Asia and the Pacific (UNESCAP) for the period of 2022-25 in Bangkok, Thailand.
Also read:Greater coordination among govt agencies, dev orgs sought
The four regional institutions are the Statistical Institute for Asia and the Pacific (SIAP) situated in Makuhari, Japan; the Asian and Pacific Training Centre for Information and Communication Technology for Development (APCICT) situated in Incheon City, Korea, and the Centre for Sustainable Agricultural Mechanization (CSAM) situated in Beijing, China and the Asian and Pacific Centre for the Development of Disaster Information Management (APDIM) situated in Tehran, Iran.
Bangladesh is the only country besides India that is elected to the governing councils in all four regional institutions of UNESCAP.
The election was held at the United Nations Conference Centre, Bangkok, Thailand as well as at the ESCAP Subregional Office for the Pacific, Suva, Fiji, and at the UN Compound, Beijing, China simultaneously on Thursday.
Bangladesh urges global solidarity to address gaps in migrants’ human rights
Bangladesh has called for enhanced global solidarity to address gaps in migrants’ human rights and protection.
State Minister for Foreign Affairs Shahriar Alam made the call at the United Nations Headquarters in New York on Wednesday.
He was speaking at Roundtable-4 of the International Migration Review Forum (IMRF) at the UN as a panelist.
The roundtable focused on five specific goals of the Global Compact on Migration (GCM) pertaining to data, information provisions, reduction of vulnerabilities, elimination of discrimination, and international cooperation.
Also read: German envoy “unhappy” over BNP misquoting him on democracy & human rights in Bangladesh
The Shahriar stressed that the need of the hour is to improve cooperation among governments, humanitarian actors, consulates, and UN agencies to save lives and reduce risks and vulnerabilities for migrants during their migratory journey, including those caught up in situations of crisis.
International Day of Families observed
The International Day of Families-2022 was observed globally on Sunday with the theme “Families and Urbanization.”
This year’s theme, "Families and Urbanization", aimed to raise awareness on the importance of sustainable, family-friendly urban policies.
Also read: Mother’s Day returns with happiness, celebrations after two deadly pandemic years
Urbanization is one of the most important megatrends shaping our world and the life and wellbeing of families worldwide, said the United Nations.
“My thoughts are with the parents and children I have met in my recent travels whose lives have been upended by the evil of war,” UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres tweeted on Sunday.
He said they will never stop their efforts until all families are together again, living in peace. “I carry with me their stories of sorrow and hope.”
In 1993, the General Assembly decided in a resolution that 15 May of every year should be observed as The International Day of Families.
This day provides an opportunity to promote awareness of issues relating to families and to increase the knowledge of the social, economic and demographic processes affecting families.
Also read: Buddha Purnima today
On 25 September 2015, the 193 member states of the United Nations unanimously adopted the Sustainable Development Goals, a set of 17 goals aiming to eliminate poverty, discrimination, abuse and preventable deaths, address environmental destruction, and usher in an era of development for all people, everywhere.
Families and family-oriented policies and programmes are vital for the achievement of many of these goals, according to the UN.