Amid war and disease, World Happiness Report 2022 shows bright spot, but anger grows in South Asia

Regional Trends of Negative Affect and Stress, 2006-2021. Negative affect as a whole was highest and rising in MENA and South Asia, with the increase greatest in South Asia. All regions have more negative affect now than ten years ago, except for Eastern Europe. Graphic: SDSN World Happiness Report

March 20, 2022

Amid war and disease, World Happiness Report 2022 shows bright spot, but anger grows in South Asia

18 March 2022 (McGill University) – In this troubled time of war and pandemic, the World Happiness Report 2022 shows a bright light in dark times. According to the team of international researchers, including McGill University Professor Christopher Barrington-Leigh, the pandemic brought not only pain and suffering but also an increase in social support and benevolence. As the […]

Map showing the 12 worst countries in the Global Impunity Index 2021. CPJ’s Global Impunity Index spotlights countries where journalists are murdered and their killers go free. Editor’s note: This map reflects that CPJ holds Russian authorities responsible for press freedom violations in Ukraine’s Crimea. Russia’s 2014 annexation of Crimea led to de facto control of its media sphere, with Russian authorities jailing independent journalists, closing down media outlets and forcing critical journalists to flee. Graphic: CPJ

November 7, 2021

CPJ’s Global Impunity Index 2021: Killers of journalists still get away with murder – No one held to account in 81 percent of journalist murders during the last 10 years

By Jennifer Dunham 28 October 2021 (CPJ) – Somalia remains the world’s worst country for unsolved killings of journalists, according to CPJ’s annual Global Impunity Index, which spotlights countries where members of the press are singled out for murder and the perpetrators go free. The index showed little change from a year earlier, with Syria, […]

Forcibly displaced people worldwide, 1990-2019. At the end of 2019, nearly 80 million people were displaced as a result of persecution, conflict, violence, human rights violations, or events seriously disturbing public order. Forced displacement is now affecting more than one per cent of humanity – 1 in every 97 people – and with fewer and fewer of those who flee being able to return home. Graphic: UNHCR

June 20, 2020

UN refugee report 2020: 1 percent of humanity now displaced, doubling since 2010 – “Forced displacement now is not only vastly more widespread but is no longer a short-term and temporary phenomenon”

18 June 2020 (UNHCR) – UNHCR, the UN Refugee Agency, is today appealing to countries worldwide to do far more to find homes for millions of refugees and others displaced by conflict, persecution or events seriously disturbing public order. This is as a report released today showed that forced displacement is now affecting more than […]

Map showing the Global Peace Index for 2020. The average level of global peacefulness deteriorated 0.34 percent on the 2020 GPI. This is the ninth time in the last 12 years that global peacefulness has deteriorated. Graphic: Institute for Economics and Peace

June 13, 2020

Global peacefulness falls for the fourth time in the last five years – “We find ourselves at a critical juncture”

11 June 2020 (Institute for Economics and Peace) – This is the 14th edition of the Global Peace Index (GPI), which ranks 163 independent states and territories according to their level of peacefulness. In addition to presenting the findings from the 2020 GPI, this year’s report includes an analysis of the effect of the COVID-19 […]

Breakdown of total fossil fuel support in PIDG, 2002-2018, by sub-sector ($USD). Data: Source: Private Infrastructure Development Group Annual Report 2018. Graphic: Global Witness

February 6, 2020

Obscure investment fund uses UK aid money to finance fossil fuel projects – “A farcical situation where the Government, on one hand, spends aid money to mitigate climate change, and on the other hand finances fossil fuels all over the world”

6 February 2020 (Global Witness) – We are at the beginning of a year of climate spin by the British Government. This year, the UK will host the 26th UN Climate Change Conference (COP26) in Glasgow. While the Government claims to be a ‘climate leader’, we reveal how a little-known investment group funded by the […]

Water towers of the World: the most important mountainous and glacial regions in the Americas, which serve as the “water towers” for billions living downstream. Data: Walter Immerzeel, Utrecht University. Graphic: Brian T. Jacobs / National Geographic

December 28, 2019

World’s supply of fresh water in trouble as mountain ice vanishes – 1.9 billion people at risk from mountain water shortages – “The most important water towers are also among the most vulnerable”

By Alejandra Borunda 9 December 2019 (National Geographic) – High in the Himalaya, near the base of the Gangotri glacier, water burbles along a narrow river. Pebbles, carried in the small river’s flow, pling as they carom downstream. This water will flow thousands of miles, eventually feeding people, farms, and the natural world on the vast, […]

A swarm of flies hangs in the air in Karachi, Pakistan, on 7 September 2019. Swarms of flies, water-borne illnesses, and rivers of sewage have brought Karachi to its knees this rainy season after decades of mismanagement turned the commercial capital into one of the world’s least liveable cities. Photo: AFP

September 10, 2019

Flies overwhelm Pakistan’s Karachi after monsoon floods garbage and sewage – “We live in hell”

By Ashraf Khan 7 September 2019 (AFP) – Swarms of flies are descending on Pakistan’s commercial capital in what residents say are record numbers this rainy season, adding to the misery of Karachi’s monsoon “hell”. Heavy rains have inundated the sprawling port city of nearly 20 million people for weeks, overwhelming shoddy drainage systems clogged […]

Desdemona Despair

Category: Pakistan