More than one million people in southern Madagascar are going hungry in what the World Food Programme (WFP) believes could become the first-ever famine brought on by climate change.  Successive years of drought have forced people in rural communities to eat locusts, fruit and cactus leaves because they have been unable to plant or harvest sweet potatoes, tomatoes and other crops.  Alice Rahmoun, WFP Communications Officer in the capital, Antananarivo, was in the region recently. She said families have been selling prized assets, such as cattle, farmland and even homes, to survive.    Ms. Rahmoun spoke to Dianne Penn about the UN agency’s support to some 700,000 people, with plans to reach more, and hopes for the COP26 climate change conference which opens later this month in Glasgow, Scotland. 

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WFP: Madagascar families facing world’s first potential climate change famine

$667 million funding call to help Afghans through economic crisis  COVID-19 responsible for up to 180,000 health worker deaths: WHO   UN weather agency approves sweeping initiatives to boost forecasting data  

News in Brief 21 October 2021

 ‘Overzealous’ security services undermining South Sudan peace: rights experts  Humanitarian assistance stepped up on Yemen’s west coast  Freedom of thought increasingly violated worldwide by technology: UN expert  

News in Brief 20 October 2021

There aren’t plenty of fish in the sea - not anymore. Lefteris Arapakis grew up in a family where generations before him were fishermen. But as the climate of the Mediterranean changes, so does the fishing economy.  And while he was trying to solve that, he stumbled on a different solution. Now the self-proclaimed “worst fisherman in Greece” is hauling in a bountiful catch every day - of plastic pollution. We talked to Lefteris about how to use local knowledge and direct action to find solutions that work for your community - and how a bottle of whiskey can kick start the process. To learn more, see No Denying It episode 9: Erin McGoff Introduces Lefteris Arapakis Find all episodes here https://news.un.org/en/podcast/no-denying-it Find more stories about climate action from UN News at news.un.org.

Erin McGoff Introduces Lefteris Arapakis

 ‘Shameful milestone’ in Yemen as child deaths, injuries, pass 10,000   Airstrikes in Tigray mark new intensification in Ethiopian conflict: OCHA  700,000 affected by South Sudan’s worst flooding in decades- UNHCR  

News in Brief 19 October 2021

 Polio vaccination set to recommence across Afghanistan in November - WHO  Syrians agree to start drafting new constitution, says UN negotiator   Salt-affected soils cause increasing problems for agriculture, FAO warns  

News in Brief 18 October 2021

For more than two years, a UN-appointed team of 59 people has been collecting and analyzing more than two million pieces of evidence about possible human rights violations in Myanmar. The team of professionals are formally known as the Independent Investigative Mechanism for Myanmar, (IIMM) or Myanmar Mechanism, and was created in 2018 by the Human Rights Council. In an extensive interview with UN News, the head of the Mechanism, Nicholas Koumjian, explains the importance of preserving this evidence before it is potentially lost.

For head of Myanmar Mechanism, time is of essence for accountability

 Displaced in northeast Nigeria ‘knocking on door of starvation’: WFP  Yemen ceasefire needed urgently to gain access to thousands in need  Rights experts lead tribute to slain French teacher Samuel Paty  

News in Brief 15 October 2021

In this week’s show, just one in seven COVID cases is detected in Africa while deaths from another deadly disease – tuberculosis – rise for the first time in a decade, the World Health Organization tells us. An update too from Afghanistan, where the UN refugee agency is desperately worried about a lack of funds for lifesaving aid work – and plunging winter temperatures…We’ll also meet the team behind The Walk, an ambitious project to raise awareness about Syrian refugees, which involves walking a huge puppet across Europe.

UN Catch-Up Dateline Geneva: Africa’s COVID tracing gap, TB alert, Afghanistan and ‘The Walk’

 COVID-19 caused rise in TB deaths for first time in a decade  Africa’s COVID-19 diagnosis gap; just 1 in 7 infections detected  Mali maestro’s message of peace to Sahel region’s youngsters drawn to extremism   

News in Brief 14 October 2021

It’s not very often at the UN that we get the chance to talk to talented musicians whose work can help to promote the Organization’s goals of peace, human rights and development; but that’s exactly what happened when Mali songwriter Vieux Farka Touré agreed to tell us all about his brand new composition, A Song For The Sahel.  In partnership with the humanitarian coordination office OCHA, Mr. Touré set out to write a message of hope to the people of the Sahel, a region where spreading violence has left almost 29 million people in need of life-saving assistance and protection; that’s five million more people than last year.   Here he is now, talking - and singing - to UN News’s Daniel Johnson. 

Song for the Sahel aims to spread message of peace, says Mali maestro

 When disaster strikes, developing countries are still too vulnerable  China pledges $230 billion to global biodiversity fund  UN rights committee finds Paraguay did not respect indigenous rights  

News in Brief 13 October 2021

When he went to school for the first time, five-year-old Kailash Satyarthi saw a child cobbler, sitting outside the school gate.   Seeing the impoverished boy having to work and unable to go to class, gave him a new perspective, and set him on the road to becoming a passionate child rights advocate.   Kailash Satyarthi has been at the forefront of the global movement to end child slavery for decades now.   The human rights activist from India won the Nobel Peace Prize in 2014 and was recently appointed to serve as one of four new UN Sustainable Development Goals Advocates.  Mr. Satyarthi spoke to UN News’s Anshu Sharma in New Delhi.

SDG Advocate calls for more action against child slavery   

 Afghanistan crisis worsening as temperatures drop: UNHCR  Alert over spike in security operations against Libya migrants   European countries commit to restore millions of hectares of land by 2030    

News in Brief 12 October 2021

The most important action the world can take to tackle the climate crisis is to quickly decarbonize every mode of transportation on earth, according to one determined expert, starting with buses.  Alex Mitchell, Senior Vice President of Unlocking Innovation at the Los Angeles Cleantech Incubator, and author of the newsletter, Sustainable Mobility, says that carbon is an existential threat that the world has an obligation to remove from transport.  For Mr. Mitchell, electric buses are a “Swiss army knife solution” to the problem because, as ridership grows, there is less dependency on private car, and because they are equally applicable in both emerging and developed markets.   Ahead of the upcoming UN Sustainable Transport Conference, which takes place between 14 and 16 October, Mr. Mitchell shared with UN News’s Liz Scaffidi, some of the ways the world can shift to safe, accessible and environmentally friendly transportation.

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