Plastic bags are also a major contributor to the 8 million tonnes of plastic dumped in the sea every year. Credit: UNEP
ROME, Apr 4 2017 (IPS) – Good news: Kenya has just joined the commitment of other 10 countries to address major plastic pollution by decreeing a ban on the use, manufacture and import of all plastic bags, to take effect in six months.
The Kenyan decision comes three weeks after the UN declared “war on plastic” through its new UN , launched on at (February 22-24, 2017).
The initiative’s campaign urges governments to pass plastic reduction policies; industry to minimise plastic packaging and redesign products; and consumers to change …
Press Conference on IFAD report at the UN Foundation (06/14/17)
UNITED NATIONS, Jun 15 2017 (IPS) – A new report by the International Fund for Agricultural Development (IFAD) says the flow of money from migrants—commonly located in developed countries—to their families in lower income countries has doubled over the last decade.
Dubbed the remittance flow, it increased by 51 percent—from 296 billion dollars in 2007 to 445 billion in 2016—lifting families out of poverty across the world.
Migrants in the United States typically send the largest amount of money, making the U.S. the biggest benefactor, closely followed by Saudi Arabia and R…
Young girls line up at a feeding centre in Mogadishu. Credit: UN Photo/Tobin Jones
UNITED NATIONS, Sep 8 2017 (IPS) – In February, when the government of Somalia sounded an alarm to the UN about risks of a famine in the country, the UN’s Office of Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA), besides quickly shuffling a response team, was acting from a steep sense of history. The Office, instead of sending out massive aid packages, distributed cash vouchers to families who could spend it to buy goods according to their needs.
The famine between the years 2010 and 2012, which killed more than a quarter of a million people in the country, offered important lessons to the aid co…
IPS correspondent Manipadma Jena interviews the Executive Director of United Nations Environment ERIK SOLHEIM ahead of the Dec. 4-6 3rd UN Environment Assembly in Nairobi, where 193 member states will discuss and make global commitments to environmental protection.
Erik Solheim participates in the largest beach clean-up in history at Versova Beach Clean-Up in Mumbai, India, in October 2016. Photo courtesy of UNEP
NAIROBI/NEW DELHI, Dec 1 2017 (IPS) – “Political resolve is the key for succeeding in our fight agains…
Paulina muthoni with her baby, Stephen attending post-natal and well-baby clinic at the Lodwar Referral hospital, Turkana county. With more mothers having access to pre/postnatal health care due to increased sensitization on the importance of seeking professional medical care, maternal/newborn mortality rates have considerably reduced in most of the areas considered high-risk. Credit: UN Kenya/Ngele Ali
NAIROBI, Kenya, Mar 9 2018 (IPS) – Recently, some of us from the Stanford University and U.C. Berkeley community had the privilege of hosting Siddharth Chatterjee, the United Nations Resident Coordinator for Kenya and his team at the Silicon Valley, where he spoke at the . The Kenya te…
Residents of the Eastern Cape’s Amadiba coastal area gather in September 2015. Many fear mining would threaten their way of life by destroying grazing land and creating rifts in the community.
Courtesy: Nonhle Mbuthuma
PRETORIA, Jun 5 2018 (IPS) – South Africans await judgement to be handed down in a court case that could set a sweeping precedent by empowering communities on communal land with the right to reject new mining projects.
Calling the case a referendum on “the right to say no,” re…
A damning reporting by the United Nations on the Myanmar’s army crimes against the Rohingya may come too late for these Rohingya children, many of whom remain traumatised as witnesses of the genocide. Credit: Farid Ahmed/IPS
DHAKA, Aug 27 2018 (IPS) – At 12, Mohammed* is an orphan. He watched his parents being killed by Myanmar government soldiers a year ago. And he is one of an estimated half a million Rohingya children who have survived and been witness to what the United Nations has called genocide.
According to accounts in a U.N. fact-finding released today, the children were likely witnesses to their homes and villages being burnt down, to mass …
STOCKHOLM / ROME, Jan 28 2019 (IPS) – In 1989 I watched Back to the Future, Part II by Robert Zemickis, a complicated story about a youngster who from 1985 time travelled to 2015. Within the movie I spotted a poster from the imaginary 2015: US AIR Surf Vietnam. Back in 1989 I associated Vietnam with the war that lasted from 1955 to the fall of Saigon in 1975 and by different media was brought into the homes of millions, radicalizing and engaging youngsters, not the least me.
Catching sight of the poster I associated it with a scene in Francis Ford Coppola´s masterpiece Apocalypse Now, where a gung-ho US Colonel ordered his troops to attack a fishing village so he and his men co…
is the United Nations Resident Coordinator to Kenya.
Droughts are not new to East Africa. However, abnormally high temperatures in the region are linked to climate change and proving deadly for livelihoods and livestock. Credit: Petterik Wiggers/Oxfam
NAIROBI, Kenya, May 15 2019 (IPS) – There is barely a corner of human life that will not be affected by climate change, and some of its impacts are already being felt. Consider this, 821 million people are now hungry and over 150 million children stunted, putting the hunger eradication goal, SDG 2, at risk.
Today 15 May, is the United Nations International Day of Families and the theme for this year is, ‘Families an…
Cameron Diver is Deputy Director-General, the Pacific Community (SPC)
New Caledonia, Sep 13 2019 (IPS) – In less than 10 days, countries from around the planet will come together in New York for the United Nations Secretary General’s . I look forward to representing at this important event, and throughout “” during the upcoming UN General Assembly.
Cameron Diver
The interconnections and synergies between major issues of global concern and the key role multilateralism and international cooperation can play in helping tackle these challenges are illustrated by the agenda of the week from 23 to 27 September. Underpinned by the , each of the high-level summit…