Category: Finance

UNITED NATIONS— UK Development Minister Vicky Ford has announced a new £22.8 million package of aid for people affected by the worst drought in decades in the Horn of Africa.

Speaking at an event on the humanitarian crisis unfolding in the Horn of Africa at the UN General Assembly (UNGA) in New York, Ford announced the new support to enable the UN and NGO partners to continue lifesaving assistance through cash support; access to water and sanitation services; and the delivery of highly specialized health and nutrition treatment.

The UK has allocated a total of £156 million in humanitarian support for crises in East Africa this financial year.

Drought in the Horn of Africa is one of the world´s worst humanitarian crises. Nearly half of Somalia’s population is in dire need of aid – with 300,000 people forecast to be in famine by October if assistance is not provided immediately.

According to the text, Ford also called on the international community to act immediately to avoid a similar disaster that popped up in 2011, where an estimated quarter of a million people died as a result of drought.

Source: NAM NEWS NETWORK

UNITED NATIONS— UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres and his special envoy for global education, Gordon Brown, launched a multi-billion-dollar International Finance Facility for Education (IFFEd).

With the first projects expected in 2023, IFFEd will support education and skills development investments in lower-middle-income countries. With an initial funding of 2 billion U.S. dollars, the facility is expected to expand to 10 billion dollars by 2030.

Since the COVID-19 pandemic began, two-thirds of countries have cut their education budgets, but education is the building block of peaceful, prosperous, stable societies, said Guterres at a Saturday joint press conference with Brown. “Reducing investment virtually guarantees more serious crises further down the line. We need to get more, not less, money into education systems.”

Wealthy countries can increase funding from domestic sources, but many developing countries are being hit by the cost-of-living crisis, and urgently need support for education, Guterres said, adding that this is exactly the role of the IFFEd.

This facility is aimed at getting financing to lower-middle-income countries — home to half of the world’s children and youth — and to the majority of the world’s displaced and refugee children, he noted.

IFFEd is not a new fund, but a mechanism to increase the resources available to multilateral banks to provide low-cost education finance. It will complement and work alongside existing tools that provide grants and other assistance, said Guterres, urging all international donors and philanthropic organizations to back IFFEd.

Brown said IFFEd is to deal with a crisis when 260 million school-age children do not go to school, 400 million children at the age of 11 are not able to read or write and leave education for good, and 840 million children and young people, by the time they leave education in their teens, have no qualifications for the workplace of the future.

“Over time, we expect the fund to grow from the two billion (dollars) that it will be initially, to five billion and then to 10 billion. This means that today we’re announcing the biggest-ever single investment in global education that the world has seen, and we believe it can transform the prospects of millions of children,” he said.

Source: Nam News Network

The United Nation’s latest global population projection predicts there will be 8 billion people on the planet by November and that the population will gradually increase to 8.5 billion by 2050 and to more than 10 billion by 2080. That growth will come with significant economic and environmental implications.

The projected growth is not evenly spread across the world. Some regions, including Eastern and Southeastern Asia, are expected to shrink in population, while North America and Europe are expected to grow at very low rates. The bulk of the population growth is expected to come from sub-Saharan Africa and Central and Southern Asia.

The move past the 8 billion mark masks the fact that globally, the population is growing at its slowest rate since the 1950s. Two-thirds of all people currently live in regions where the fertility rate, measured in births per woman, has fallen below the replacement rate of 2.1. In many cases, those falling rates are driven in part by government policies.

Sub-Saharan Africa

Growth will be most concentrated among eight countries: the Democratic Republic of Congo, Egypt, Ethiopia, India, Nigeria, Pakistan, the Philippines and the United Republic of Tanzania.

Of those eight, the countries in sub-Saharan Africa will account for more than half of the world’s population increase over the next 30 years, creating what U.N. officials called a potential “demographic dividend,” with the share of working-age adults, defined as those between 26 and 64 years of age, rising as a share of the population.

Countries looking forward to an increase in the number of working age people as a share of the overall population, “have an opportunity to maximize the benefits of the dividend by investing in human capital formation,” the report found.

“While the demographic circumstances underlying the dividend are conducive to rapid economic growth on a per capita basis, reaping its potential benefits requires significant investments in education and health, progress towards gender equality and the availability of gainful employment.”

A ‘graying’ globe

Unlike the countries of sub-Saharan Africa, the population of the planet as a whole is trending older. Between 1980 and 2022, the number of people ages 65 or older tripled to 771 million and is on track to hit 994 million by 2030 and 1.6 billion by 2050.

Some regions are aging faster than others. By 2050, the percentage of people 65 or older in Eastern and Southeastern Asia is expected to double from 13% to 26%. In Europe and North America, nearly 19% of the population is currently 65 or older, and that proportion is expected to rise to nearly 27% by 2050.

By contrast, sub-Saharan Africa is projected to have just 5% of its population in that age bracket by 2050.

“Countries with aging populations should take steps to adapt public programs to the growing proportion of older persons, including sound social security and pension systems, the establishment of universal health care and long-term care systems,” the U.N. urged.

India to be most populous

China is currently the world’s most populous country with 1.43 billion people, but that is expected to change by next year, with India, currently at 1.41 billion, surpassing it. China’s population is actually expected to begin shrinking this year, as decades of low birthrates take their demographic toll.

Projecting out to 2050, India is expected to remain the most populous country with 1.67 billion, followed by China at 1.317 billion. The United States, currently in a very distant third place with 337 million people, will maintain that position, as the population grows modestly to 375 million.

However, the United States will have to share third place with Nigeria. Currently, the sixth most populous country with 216 million residents, Nigeria is expected to grow to 375 million by 2050.

Pakistan, currently the fifth largest country with 234 million people, will retain that rank, while growing to 366 million.

The Democratic Republic of Congo is expected to see a large percentage increase. Currently at 97 million people, its population is expected to more than double to 215 million by 2050.

Environmental challenges

The report notes that as global population growth continues, it creates possible complications in the fight against climate change. All else equal, an increase in people means more greenhouse gases are being emitted into the atmosphere.

“The growth of the population itself may not be the direct cause of environmental damage; it may nevertheless exacerbate the problem or accelerate the timing of its emergence, depending on the problem in question, the time frame considered, the available technology and the demographic, social and economic context,” it said.

However, the report argues that the most highly developed countries should bear the largest burden.

“Whereas all countries should take actions to tackle climate change and protect the environment, more developed countries — whose per capita consumption of material resources is generally the highest — bear the greatest responsibility for implementing strategies to decouple human economic activity from environmental degradation.”

Source: Voice of America

GENEVA— Fresh waves of Covid-19 cases show that the pandemic is “nowhere near over”, the World Health Organization’s chief warned.

Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said he was worried that case numbers were continuing to rise, putting further pressure on stretched health systems and workers.

“New waves of the virus demonstrate again that Covid-19 is nowhere near over,” he told a news conference, adding: “As the virus pushes at us, we must push back.”

“The virus is running freely and countries are not effectively managing the disease burden based on their capacity, in terms of both hospitalisation for acute cases and the expanding number of people with post-COVID condition, often referred to as Long COVID,” he said.

“As COVID-19 transmission and hospitalisations rise, governments must also deploy tried and tested measures like masking, improved ventilation and test and treat protocols,” Tedros insisted.

The WHO’s emergency committee on COVID-19 met on Friday via video-conference and determined the pandemic remains a Public Health Emergency of International Concern – the highest alarm the WHO can sound.

WHO emergencies director Michael Ryan told the meeting global COVID-19 cases reported to the WHO increased by 30 per cent in the last two weeks, largely driven by Omicron sub-variants BA.4, BA.5 and and the lifting of public health and social measures.

Ryan said recent changes in testing policies were hindering the detection of cases and the monitoring of virus evolution.

The committee stressed the need to reduce transmission of the virus as the implications of a pandemic caused by a new respiratory virus would not be fully understood, the WHO said in a statement.

The group voiced concern over steep reductions in testing, resulting in reduced surveillance and genomic sequencing.

“This impedes assessments of currently circulating and emerging variants of the virus,” the WHO said, feeding the inability to interpret trends in transmission.

The committee said the trajectory of virus evolution and the characteristics of emerging variants remained “uncertain and unpredictable”, with the absence of measures to reduce transmission increasing the likelihood of “new, fitter variants emerging, with different degrees of virulence, transmissibility, and immune escape potential”.

Source: NAM NEWS NETWORK

UNITED NATIONS —

The United Nations said Monday that thousands of children in war zones suffered grave abuses including rape, maiming and death last year, and that concerns are growing for children in new regions of conflict, including Ukraine.

“The fact remains that hundreds, if not thousands, of children are victims of violence in armed conflict every day of every week of every month of every year in conflict-affected states and regions,” Virginia Gamba, the special representative of the secretary-general for children and armed conflict, told reporters at the launch of the annual report.

The most dangerous places to be a child last year were Afghanistan, the Democratic Republic of Congo, Israel and the occupied Palestinian territories, Somalia and Yemen.

Gamba’s office, working with U.N. teams on the ground, verified nearly 24,000 grave violations against children. More than 8,000 were killed or maimed due to conflict, 6,310 were recruited and used in combat; and nearly 3,500 children were abducted.

Among worrying trends the report uncovered is the significant increase in abductions and sexual violence against children. Both were up 20% from 2020.

Gamba said many of the girls abducted are then trafficked, and that armed groups such as Boko Haram and West Africa’s branch of the Islamic State group target girls specifically for this purpose; it is not a random act of violence in a conflict. Ninety-eight percent of sexual violence documented in the report targeted girls.

While the vast majority of monitored violations were against boys — some 70% — overall the number of abuses against them has decreased, while girls suffered an increase in killing and maiming, abduction and rape.

“By 2020, one out of four children victims of grave violations were girls, but by 2021, one out of three are girls,” Gamba said. “The Lake Chad Basin region, which was included in children and armed conflict agenda last year, showed the most significant increase of girls affected by grave violations among all situations on the agenda.”

Cameroon, the Central African Republic, Chad, Libya, Niger and Nigeria are all part of the Lake Chad Basin region and have suffered variations of instability, intercommunal violence, terrorism and conflict.

Naming and shaming

The annual report is known for “naming and shaming” governments that mistreat children. But the 2021 report had no surprise listings.

Fifty-seven parties to conflict, seven of which are government-related actors, are mentioned, while the rest are nonstate groups.

Among the state offenders are Myanmar’s military, the Tatmadaw, which was listed for maiming, killing and raping children. Congo’s army, the FARDC, for raping children. Syria’s government forces and pro-government militias for recruiting, killing and maiming, raping and attacking schools and/or hospitals.

A lengthy list of nonstate groups, including terrorists and rebel groups such as Islamic State, al-Qaida, Boko Haram and al-Shabab were also cited for multiple violations.

Afghanistan’s Taliban was listed for recruiting, maiming, killing and abducting children, as well as attacking schools and hospitals. Gamba said monitoring in Afghanistan in 2021 ended on Aug. 15, when the Taliban seized power after the government collapsed and the U.N. switched its focus to the humanitarian emergency. But in those first 7 1/2 months, there were nearly 3,000 verified violations against children.

“It still is one of the low points in my life to look at what is happening in Afghanistan,” Gamba said.

She said monitors have resumed their work there “however we can.”

New conflicts

The special representative’s office has now been mandated by U.N. Secretary-General Antonio Guterres to immediately begin monitoring four new situations of concern: Ethiopia, Mozambique, Ukraine and the Central Sahel.

On Ukraine, she is most concerned about attacks on schools and hospitals and the killing and maiming of children. Her Ukraine mandate starts immediately and includes both the protection of children and the prevention of abuses against them.

Good news

There were some positive developments in the report. Some countries that have been listed have seen improvement after signing action plans with Gamba’s office and engaging with them.

She pointed to South Sudan, which in 2018 was the second-highest offender with more than 4,000 violations against children each year.

“Today there is less than 300 a year,” Gamba said. “Why? The action plans put in place, measures put in place, laws, training, capacity that has been put in place.”

Source: Voice Of America

The world’s population is expected to reach 8 billion on November 15, the United Nations said Monday, with India replacing China as the world’s most populous country.

The United Nations released its report, World Population Prospects 2022, on World Population Day, which is observed every year on July 11. This year’s theme is “A world of 8 billion: Towards a resilient future for all — Harnessing opportunities and ensuring rights and choices for all.”

Despite 2022 being a “milestone year” for global population, according to U.N. Secretary-General António Guterres, the population growth rate fell below 1% in 2020 and is growing at its slowest pace since 1950.

The U.N. said global population could potentially reach 8.5 billion in 2030, 9.7 billion in 2050 and 10.4 billion by the 2080s. The population is projected to remain steady at 10.4 billion until 2100.

More than half of the growth by 2050 is expected to come from Africa, which is the world’s fastest-growing continent, the U.N. said. The growth in Africa comes despite a slowing global fertility rate, which is expected to decline to 2.2 births per woman by 2050, down from 2.5 births in 2019, and 3.2 births in 1990.

World Population Day is a reminder of the world’s most pressing issues, including overpopulation. The current global population stands at 7.942 billion people.

Source: Voice of America