COVID-19

Photo: Johnson visited the British Virgin Islands after Hurricane Irma on 13 September 2020. Source: Wikimedia Commons

Boris Johnson's Merger of DFID – Will it Massacre UK’s ODA?

Viewpoint by Patrick I Gomes

The writer, Dr Patrick I Gomes, was Secretary-General of the African, Caribbean and Pacific (ACP) Group of States for five years until Angola's Ambassador to the European Union, Mr. Georges Rebelo Pinto Chikoti, took over on March 1. The 79-nation inter-regional body officially became the Organisation of African, Caribbean and Pacific States (OACPS) on April 5, 2020. Dr Gomes was previously Ambassador of the Republic of Guyana, to the EU in Brussels.

: Opinion Editor; SUSTAINABILITY; Global Partnerships; 01 July 2020

Photo: The UN Population Fund (UNFPA) is providing services to displaced women and girls across northeast Syria. Credit: UNFPA Syria.

Put Women at The Centre of Syria Crisis Response

Viewpoint by Dr Natalia Kanem and Phumzile Mlambo-Ngcuka

Dr Natalia Kanem is the Executive Director of the United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA) and Ms Phumzile Mlambo-Ngcuka Executive Director of UN Women.

NEW YORK (IDN) – As the Syria crisis enters its 10th year, the situation is especially dire for women and girls, with the effects of COVID-19 compounding the risks and hardships for millions of people inside the country and for refugees around the region.

Today nearly 12 million people in Syria require urgent humanitarian assistance and around 4 million depend on cross-border aid. Some 5.7 million Syrians have fled and are now residing in countries throughout the region.

: UN Bureau; OPINION; 01 July 2020

Photo: Mass graves – such as these in northern Rio de Janeiro – have been needed to bury the dead during the pandemic. Credit: EPA-EFE

COVID-19: How Brazil Became the World's 2nd Worst Hit Country

Viewpoint by Alfredo Saad Filho*

LONDON (IDN) – The COVID-19 pandemic has stress-tested countries, economies and political systems like never before. Nowhere has the outcome been more devastating than in Brazil, arguably the country with the worst pandemic response in the world.

Brazil’s vulnerabilities are visible in the mass graves in São Paulo and Manaus. The country is competing with the USA for the largest number of diagnosed COVID-19 cases (more than one million) and the highest number of fatalities (above 50,000 – but likely to be a vast undercount). Disturbingly, there is no sign that Brazil’s cases or deaths have peaked yet.

: Phil Harris; OPINION; 01 July 2020

Collage of the photos of Dr J. Enkhsaikhan on the left, Blue Banner and Chinggis Khaan (Sükhbaatar) Square in Mongolia's capital city Ulaanbaatar on the right (CC BY-SA 4.0).

Combating the Threat of Nuclear Weapons Needs 'Responsible' Media

Viewpoint by Dr J. Enkhsaikhan

The writer is former Permanent Representative of Mongolia to the United Nations, and Chairman of Blue Banner NGO. The following is his foreword to the annual publication, 'Toward A World Without Nuclear Weapons'. The latest edition will be online in the next few days on https://www.nuclearabolition.info/index.php/archive/project-publications.

ULAANBAATAR (IDN) – The first half of 2020 has demonstrated once again that the world has indeed become closely interconnected and that cooperation of states and other stakeholders is imperative to deal with the current three existential threats that know no borders: the existence of weapons of mass destruction, the climate change and the COVID-19 pandemic.

: Opinion Editor; OPINION; 26 June 2020

Photo: Volunteer health workers in Lagos, Nigeria, are on the streets to help distribute food. Source: DW.COM

Using Covid-19 Donations to Give Charity A Bad Name

Viewpoint by Azu Ishiekwene

The writer is the Managing Director/Editor-In-Chief of The Interview magazine based in Abuja, Nigeria.

ABUJA (IDN) – Global response to the outbreak of the Coronavirus in Africa has been remarkable, especially following fears that should the virus take hold, its impact on the continent could be catastrophic.

Twenty of the 80 beneficiaries of the $50billion announced as emergency financing facility by the International Monetary Fund (IMF) are in Africa.

: Opinion Editor; OPINION; 25 June 2020

Photo: A Palestine refugee woman receives food assistance at the UNRWA Khan Younis Distribution Centre in Gaza. Credit: UNRWA | Tamer Hamam

Conference Raises $130m for UN Palestinian Refugee Agency

By Bernhard Schell

AMMAN | STOCKHOLM (IDN) – Seventy-five governments and non-governmental organisations have pledged $130 million in financial commitments to sustain the operations and services of the acutely underfunded United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine refugees in the Near East (UNRWA). They gave the assurance at an extraordinary global meeting at the ministerial level. Sweden and Jordan hosted the online conference on June 23.

: Bernhard Schell; SUSTAINABILITY; Poverty; 24 June 2020

Photo: Factory workers in an assembly line in Cambodia. Credit: ILO/Marcel Crozet

COVID-19: UN Chief Warns of an Unprecedented Jobs Crisis

By Jaya Ramachandran

GENEVA (IDN) – The world of work is deeply suffering from the impact of COVID-19 pandemic. Almost all of the planet's workers, some 94 per cent, were living in countries with some type of workplace closure measures in place in May 2020, according to the UN Secretary-General's Policy Brief on the World of Work and COVID-19 prepared with the International Labour Organization (ILO).

UN Chief António Guterres has, therefore, called for a three-phased response to the situation.

: Jaya Ramachandran; COVID-19; 20 June 2020

A UN Day Will Address Serious Concerns of Widows Worldwide

Viewpoint by Roseline Orwa *

BONDO, Kenya (IDN) – COVID-19, the deadly pandemic that has upended our world, is also, according to a new report, “a widow-making machine”. The emerging scientific evidence that many more men than women are dying from COVID-19 shows that the coronavirus crisis is creating new widows even as global economic turbulence affects women who have been struggling with poverty, discrimination and injustice for years.

International Widows’ Day on 23 June is a reminder of the challenges faced by the world’s 258 million formidable, courageous widows and the 585 million children in their care – and the pandemic makes those challenges even greater.

: Opinion Editor; SUSTAINABILITY; Health & Well Being; 19 June 2020

Photo: Peacekeepers exemplify ‘service, sacrifice and selflessness’, in face of pandemic. Source: United Nations Peacekeping.

Why COVID-19 Offers A Chance to Transform UN Peacekeeping

Viewpoint by Charles T. Hunt and Adam Day *

LONDON (IDN | The Conversation) – United Nations Peacekeeping may be entering a period of major change. Over the past four years, there has been a steady decline in the number of peacekeepers deployed worldwide. And two of the largest peacekeeping missions in history are beginning to draw down.

These two developments hint at the fact that UN peacekeeping may appear poised to shrink further. There are a number of factors driving this. They include budgetary pressures and a contested track record. Added to this have been the more recent financial and practical challenges posed by the COVID-19 pandemic.

: Opinion Editor; OPINION; 18 June 2020

Looking Beyond the COVID-19 'Pandemic of Fear'

Viewpoint by Jonathan Power*

LUND, Sweden (IDN) – Perspective and proportion are everything in this Pandemic of Fear that now consumes our attention and our daily lives. With very rare exceptions the media ignores this. As I write there have been world-wide 436,005 deaths from Coronavirus. But a remarkable, barely noticed, 4,137,712 have recovered.