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While loved ones braced for the full impact of Typhoon “Hagupit” back home, Filipino activists in Lima urged climate negotiators recently to act, with more urgency, on drafting a global plan to limit such potentially life-threatening events.
The United Nations appealed for $16.4 billion to pay for global humanitarian needs in 2015, saying it needs that money to help 57.5 million of the world’s most vulnerable people.
The cardinal responsible for overseeing Pope Francis’ reform of the Roman Curia has confirmed that two new congregations will be set up and suggested that lay people could be appointed to lead some of Rome’s dicasteries.
Traffickers in Egypt and Libya are increasingly using children to drive boats of migrants to Italy. Many of these teenagers are then detained and imprisoned by the Italian authorities, facing up to 15 years in jail and fines of hundreds of thousands of euros.
It’s estimated that 2.5 billion people globally don’t have access to improved sanitation facilities. The lack of toilets has led to myriad health problems, making it easier for diseases to spread, infecting drinking water and contributing to undernourishment and poverty. A child dies every 20 seconds on account of poor sanitation.
Ten million people worldwide have no nationality, leaving them in a devastating legal limbo, the U.N. refugee agency recently said, launching a campaign to eradicate statelessness within ten years. “Every 10 minutes a new stateless person is born,” U.N. refugee chief Antonio Guterres told reporters in Geneva, describing the situation as “absolutely unacceptable” and “an anomaly in the 21st century.”
Most of the world’s governments are taking measures to reduce the worst and most hazardous forms of child labor, according to a major report recently released by the U.S. Labor Department.
The world’s wildlife populations, including mammals, birds, reptiles, amphibians and fish, have dropped by more than half in the last 40 years, the World Wildlife Fund’s (WWF) said in its latest report. “Put another way, in less than two human generations, population sizes of vertebrate species have dropped by half,” Director General of WWF International Marco Lambertini said in a statement.
In the hinterland village of Pedtad in North Cotabato province, Philippines, a group of former Islamist fighters have put aside their guns in exchange for a more peaceful life managing fishponds. “Tending the farm and pulling out water lilies is safer than carrying guns and roaming the mountains,” said Harun Imba. “In the mountains, your life is always in danger.”
Migrants trying to reach more prosperous countries have died at a rate of 8 every day for the past 14 years, the majority of them trying to get to Europe, according to the most comprehensive ever tally of migrant deaths.
