United Nations – Page 7 – Desdemona Despair

Aerial view of Venezuelan migrants in Atacama desert. Photo: Gema Cortes / IOM

September 25, 2022

Hypothermia, dehydration, and 5,000 km on foot: Venezuelan migrants risk their lives for a better future – “It was the first time we experienced cold weather”

17 September 2022 (IOM) – Venezuelans desperate to leave the economic crisis in their country are risking their lives in the hope of a better future, braving extreme weather, border crossing, and bandits along the way. Jhonny, 26, along with his pregnant wife, Cribsel, 19, sits with their two children at a migrant reception centre […]

Global Human Development Index, 1990-2021. In 2021, the global Human Development Index value had declined two years in a row, erasing the gains of the preceding five years. The periods of the global financial crisis and the COVID-19 pandemic are indicated. Graphic: UNDP

September 17, 2022

Human Development Report 2022: For the first time, the Global Human Development Index declined for two years in a row, erasing the gains of the preceding five years – “The world is scrambling to respond to back-to-back crises”

NEW YORK, 8 September 2022 (UNDP) – The world is lurching from crisis to crisis, trapped in a cycle of firefighting and unable to tackle the roots of the troubles that confront us. Without a sharp change of course, we may be heading towards even more deprivations and injustices, warns the United Nations Development Programme […]

The carcasses of goats lie in the sand on the outskirts of Dollow, Somalia, after four failed rainy seasons have driven millions of people to the brink of famine. Photo: Hayden / ZUMA Wire / IMAGO

September 17, 2022

“Pending nightmare” in Somalia with millions at risk of starvation – “Tens of thousands of people will already have died by the time we declare a famine”

By Sertan Sanderson 14 September 2022 (DW) – A humanitarian catastrophe is imminent in Somalia and the Horn of Africa. That’s the joint assessment of the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) and the International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies (IFRC), following months of food security assessments. The number of people in dire […]

Residents ride on a wooden boat as they pass submerged houses amid flood water, following rains and floods during the monsoon season in Bajara village, at the banks of Manchar lake, in Sehwan, Pakistan 6 September 2022. Photo: Akhtar Soomro / REUTERS

September 7, 2022

Pakistan looks “like a sea” after floods, PM says, as 18 more die – “You wouldn’t believe the scale of destruction there”

By Syed Raza Hassan and Asif Shahzad 7 September 2022 SEHWAN, Pakistan (Reuters) – Parts of Pakistan seemed “like a sea”, Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif said on Wednesday, after visiting some of the flood-hit areas that cover as much as a third of the South Asian nation, where 18 more deaths took the toll from […]

People make their way through a flooded area following heavy rains in Karachi, Pakistan on 24 August 2022. Photo: Shahzaib Akber / EPA 24 August 2022.

September 5, 2022

Pakistan struggles to avert danger as floods rise, death toll tops 1,300 – More than 400,000 pregnant women in Sindh province displaced by floods, only 891 have reached relief camps

By Syed Raza Hassan and Asif Shahzad 5 September 2022 ISLAMABAD/KARACHI (Reuters) – Pakistani authorities are struggling to prevent the country’s biggest lake bursting its banks and inundating nearby towns after unprecedented flooding, while the disaster management agency on Monday raised its toll of flood deaths by another 24. Record monsoon rains and melting glaciers […]

Current food security outcomes, Baidoa and Burhakaba Districts in Bay of Somalia, July to September 2022 (left) and projected food security outcomes, Baidoa and Burhakaba Districts in Bay of Somalia, October to December 2022 (right). Famine (IPC Phase 5) is projected to emerge in three areas of Bay Region, Somalia, in late 2022 in the absence of urgent, multisectoral humanitarian assistance. Although levels of acute malnutrition among children and the rate of hunger-related deaths have not yet met the IPC’s technical definition of Famine (IPC Phase 5), those thresholds are expected to be reached during the October to December 2022 projection period based on currently available information that minimal humanitarian food assistance will be delivered in these areas in November and December due to funding constraints. Data: FEWS NET and FSNAU. Graphic: FEWS NET Somalia

September 5, 2022

UN Emergency Relief Coordinator says famine is at the door in Somalia – “The unprecedented failure of four consecutive rainy seasons, decades of conflict, mass displacement, severe economic issues are pushing many people to that brink”

Mogadishu, 5 September 2022 (OCHA) – The Somalia Food Security and Nutrition analysis report shows concrete indications that famine will occur in Baidoa and Burhakaba districts in south-central Somalia between October and December. Full remarks to the press by Under-Secretary-General for Humanitarian Affairs and Emergency Relief Coordinator Martin Griffiths I have been shocked to my […]

Local residents cross a portion of road destroyed by floodwaters in Kalam Valley in northern Pakistan, Sunday, 4 September 2022. More than 1,300 people have died and millions have lost their homes in flooding caused by unusually heavy monsoon rains in Pakistan this year that many experts have blamed on climate change. Photo: Sherin Zada / AP Photo

September 4, 2022

Pakistan floods villages to save a city – Damage estimated at $10 billion – “The scale of devastation is massive and requires an immense humanitarian response for 33 million people”

By Zarar Khan 4 September 2022 ISLAMABAD (AP) – Pakistani engineers cut into an embankment for one of the country’s largest lakes on Sunday to release rising waters in the hopes of saving a nearby city and town from flooding as officials predicted more monsoon rain was on the way for the country’s already devastated […]

Men haul loads through floodwaters in a flooded village in Matiari, in the Sindh province of Pakistan. Photo: Asad Zaidi / UNICEF

September 4, 2022

More than 6.4 million in dire need after unprecedented floods in Pakistan – 1.1 million houses washed away – “18,000 schools have been destroyed and thousands of schools are now fully shuttered”

2 September 2022 (UN) – The scale of the humanitarian crisis in Pakistan is unprecedented, with a third of the country under water, UN humanitarians warned on Friday. With more than 33 million people impacted, that represents 15 per cent of the total Pakistani population, said Dr. Palitha Mahipala, World Health Organization (WHO) Representative in […]

Firefighters work against a wildfire near Landiras, southwestern France, on Saturday, 16 July 2022. Firefighters struggled to contain wildfires in France and Spain as Europe wilted under an unusually extreme heatwave that authorities link to a rise in excess mortality. Photo provided by the fire brigade of the Gironde region (SDIS 33). Photo: SDIS 33 / AP

July 20, 2022

Humanity faces “collective suicide” over climate crisis, warns UN chief – “No nation is immune. Yet we continue to feed our fossil fuel addiction.”

By Fiona Harvey 18 July 2022 (The Guardian) – Wildfires and heatwaves wreaking havoc across swathes of the globe show humanity facing “collective suicide”, the UN secretary general has warned, as governments around the world scramble to protect people from the impacts of extreme heat. António Guterres told ministers from 40 countries meeting to discuss the […]

Maps showing poverty impact hotspots as percentages of countries’ population that could fall into poverty as a result of soaring food and energy prices. Among those countries likely facing high poverty impacts across all poverty lines are Armenia and Uzbekistan in the Caspian Basin; Burkina Faso, Ghana, Kenya, Rwanda and Sudan in Sub-Saharan Africa; Haiti in Latin America; and Pakistan and Sri Lanka in South Asia. In these countries, around 3 percent of the population, on average, could fall into poverty. In Ethiopia, Mali, Nigeria, Sierra Leone, Tanzania and Yemen, the impacts could be particularly hard at the lowest poverty lines, whereas in Albania, Kyrgyz Republic, Moldova, Mongolia, Tajikistan, and Ukraine, the hits could be hardest at $5.50 a day.7 Clear geographical hotspots, depending on the poverty line, emerge in Sub-Saharan Africa, mainly in the Sahel region, the Balkans and the Caspian Basin. Graphic: UNDP

July 7, 2022

Cost-of-living crisis drives 71 million people into extreme poverty in three months – “This cost-of-living crisis is tipping millions of people into poverty and even starvation at breathtaking speed”

By Marc Jones 7 July 2022 LONDON (Reuters) – The global cost-of-living crisis is pushing an additional 71 million people in the world’s poorest countries into extreme poverty, a new report published by the U.N. Development Programme (UNDP) on Thursday has warned. Achim Steiner, UNDP administrator, said an analysis of 159 developing countries showed that […]