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In North Korea, state-controlled local elections saw a 99.97% voter turnout on Sunday, July 19, state media reported. New representatives, put forward by the ruling party, were elected.
One in five migrant workers – about 50 million people – lives and works in Europe, making the region home to a quarter of global remittance flows, according to a new report by the International Fund for Agricultural Development (IFAD).
For more than 14 years, a group of Indonesian nuns has been developing organic farming methods to grow food while protecting the environment through a form of lay apostolate that has attracted the attention of many farmers, most of them Muslims.
The maltreatment of children costs countries in East Asia and the Pacific US$209 billion per year, the equivalent to 2% of the region’s GDP, according to a newly-released study by UNICEF. The report drew on more than 360 studies of child maltreatment produced across the region since 2000, with emotional abuse, physical abuse, sexual abuse, and neglect, the witnessing of domestic violence and death from maltreatment, all given an estimated cost.
The U.N. Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) warns that two out of every three people in the world could be living under stressed water conditions in 10 years. The warning came as the U.N. marked the World Day to Combat Desertification last June 17 FAO said land degradation and desertification undercut human rights, starting with the right to food and water.
Through 17 months of conflict, tens of thousands of people have been killed in South Sudan and two million more displaced. Schools, health centers and markets have been looted and destroyed. It took a $1.8 billion humanitarian response last year for the country to avoid a famine. And it’s about to get even worse.
Families across Asia continue to await information about loved ones who have forcibly disappeared while thousands of such individuals languish in unknown prisons around the region. “Asia has the most number of cases of enforced disappearance around the world,” said Mary Aileen Bacalso, secretary general of the Asian Federation Against Involuntary Disappearance (AFAD), on the occasion of this year’s observance of the International Week of the Disappeared. Bacalso said that, in Kashmir alone, some 8,000 young men vanished in the 1990s, most of whom are believed to be buried in unmarked graves.
Global humanitarian assistance rose to record levels in 2014, reflecting the scale and scope of prolonged crises such as the conflicts in Iraq and Syria, as well as increased contributions from Middle Eastern donors, according to a study by the non-profit organization Development Initiatives.
With the looming threat of a tragic return to the past, Burundi risks sinking into another civil war. The news that is coming from missionaries based in the capital Bujumbura is certainly not reassuring. The situation is very tense. Schools, markets and shops are closed. People are scared, especially those who have taken part in demonstrations against current President Pierre Nkurunziza who is running for a third term. He has been in power since 2005 and having led the CNDD (National Council for the Defence of Democracy) rebel group, he now wants to run as its candidate for the presidency in the elections on 26 June this year at all costs.
Human trafficking continues to be a very serious problem in Southeast Asian countries. Criminal networks extend from the west of Burma, crossing the coastal areas of Bangladesh, to the southern coast of Thailand. According to the method used by traffickers, money from emigrants is required on arrival in the country of destination, often in Malaysia, where most of the Rohingya, a Muslim minority persecuted in Burma, and the Bengalis fleeing misery, hope to find refuge.
