Project Articles

Photo: The jobless in Malaysia. Source: Malay Mail.

COVID-19 Pushes Millions into Destitution

By Jaya Ramachandran

GENEVA (IDN) — A once-in-a-century crisis—a Great Disruption unleashed by the COVID-19 pandemic—hit the world economy in 2020. The pandemic has reached every corner of the globe. Meanwhile, more than 120 million have been infected and close to 2.7 million people killed worldwide.

High unemployment and loss of income have pushed millions into destitution during the pandemic. The total number of people living in poverty is expected to have increased by 131 million in 2020 alone. As many as 797 million people will still be trapped in extreme poverty in 2030, representing a poverty headcount ratio of over 9 per cent. (P33) CHINESE | JAPANESE TEXT VERSION PDF | KOREAN | PORTUGUESE

: Ramesh Jaura; Project Articles; 24 March 2021

UN Acclaims VODAN's Contribution to Fight COVID-19 in Africa

By Reinhard Jacobsen

BRUSSELS (IDN) — The United Nations has commended VODAN-AFRICA for their innovative approach to "data sharing and re-use under the present COVID-19 circumstances". The Virus Outbreak Data Network is a system of sharing data on Coronavirus that ensures that the information remains in the country that generated it, rather than being exported and unavailable to local doctors and scientists.

The network includes computer scientists and health data management experts, clinicians and social scientists from all of the participating countries. Presently, these include Uganda, Kenya, Ethiopia, Nigeria, Tunisia, Liberia and Zimbabwe. (P32) FRENCH | GERMAN | JAPANESE TEXT VERSION PDF | TAGALOG

: IDN-INPS Editor; Project Articles; 12 March 2021

Photo: Syringes are assembled and then packaged in a facility in Spain. © UNICEF/Francis Kokoroko

UN Campaigns to Make Vaccines a Global Public Good

By J Nastranis

NEW YORK (IDN) — New research has cautioned against the growing trend towards "vaccine nationalism" where countries prioritize their own vaccine needs. The study warns that in monopolizing the supply of vaccines against the Covid-19 pandemic, wealthy nations are threatening economic destruction which will hit affluent countries nearly as hard as those in the developing world.

Even if wealthy nations are fully vaccinated by the middle of this year, and poor countries largely shut out, the study concludes that the global economy would suffer losses exceeding $9 trillion, a sum greater than the annual output of Japan and Germany combined. Nearly half of those costs would be absorbed by wealthy countries like the United States, Canada and Britain. (P31) INDONESIAN | JAPANESE TEXT VERSION PDF | THAI | TURKISH

: Ramesh Jaura; Project Articles; 12 March 2021

Photo: Munir Akram, Seventy-sixth President of the Economic and Social Council. Credit: UN ECOSOC

UN's ECOSOC Chief Calls for Backing Up World's Poor Fight COVID-19

By Ramesh Jaura

BERLIN | NEW YORK (IDN) — UN Economic and Social Council (ECOSOC) President Munir Akram has called for a 'Coalition of the Willing' to promote agreement at the global level, on a specific set of early actions to provide fiscal space and supplementary liquidity to developing countries suffering the disastrous impact of COVID-19.

In an email interview with IDN, Mr Akram said speedy actions should include comprehensive debt suspension, debt restructuring for countries in current or potential debt distress, creation of new Special Drawing Rights (SDRs) worth $500 billion and redistribution of unutilized SDR quotas to developing countries. (P 30) CHINESE | JAPANESE TEXT VERSION PDF | KOREAN | P0RTUGUESE | TURKISH

: Ramesh Jaura; Project Articles; 22 February 2021

Mixed Feelings in Kenya's Pumwani Slums as Schools Open

By Francis Kinyua*

NAIROBI (IDN) – After being closed for nine months, schools in Kenya reopened to start a new term and resume the school year that was disrupted in 2020 as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic. On the morning of January 4, the streets were swarmed with elated children wearing colourful uniforms marching to their schools. (P29) GERMAN | HINDI | JAPANESE TEXT VERSION PDF | THAI

: IDN-INPS Editor; Project Articles; 27 January 2021

Overcoming Vaccine Inequities and Enabling Small States' Post-Covid19 Recovery

Viewpoint by P. I. Gomes*

PORT OF SPAIN, Trinidad and Tobago (IDN) – The “catastrophic moral failure” into which the world is seen as heading, according to the World Health Organization (WHO), Director-General, Dr Tedros Ghebreyesus, can readily be understood as having its ideological basis in the callous principle of “profits before people for optimum shareholder-value”. (P28) ARABIC | ITALIAN | JAPANESE TEXT VERSION PDF | SPANISH

: IDN-INPS Editor; Project Articles; 23 January 2021

A New UN Report Calls for Living in Balance with The Planet

By J Nastranis

NEW YORK (IDN) – As the UN Secretary-General António Guterres has repeatedly pointed out, humanity is faced with a "defining moment", a warning that is highlighted in the 30th-anniversary edition of the Human Development Report (HDR), The Next Frontier: Human Development and the Anthropocene. Though humankind has achieved incredible progress, we have taken the Earth for granted, destabilizing the very systems upon which we rely for survival. (P27) ARABIC | INDONESIAN | JAPANESE TEXT VERSION PDF | SPANISH | TURKISH

: Ramesh Jaura; Project Articles; 10 January 2021

Photo: A World Food Programme (WFP) representative in Bolivia talks to Uru-Murato indigenous women about COVID-19 awareness and healthy nutrition practices. Credit: WFP/Morelia Eróstegui

The Rich-Poor Gulf Widens 5 Years After Adoption of Sustainable Development Goals

By J Nastranis

NEW YORK (IDN) – 2020 will be remembered as a year in which a contagious virus shut down the world, widened the gulf between the rich and the poor, triggered a spike in poverty for the first time in decades, and pushed back the United Nations efforts to create more equitable societies jeopardising the Sustainable Development Goals universally agreed in September 2015.

By early December, the United Nations was warning that a record 235 million people would require humanitarian assistance in 2021, comprising an increase of some 40 per cent on 2020 which is almost entirely a consequence of the pandemic. (P26) INDONESIAN | TAGALOG | THAI | JAPANESE TEXT VERSION PDF

: Ramesh Jaura; Goal 3; 30 December 2020

Photo: Women assembling tea. Credit: Kizito Makoye.

Transforming Tea Trade with Taste and Impact in Tanzania

By Kizito Makoye

DAR ES SALAAM (IDN) – Nothing quite compares the taste of Ginger Mint Fusion tea whose aromatic steam mistily wafts off when served in a cup. As any customer at Salt restaurant in Dar es Salaam will attest, the tasty beverage is probably the best money can buy.

Perched at the posh Oyster Bay neighbourhood with lush vegetation – the restaurant, which boasts a tacky décor and grandiose French Style architecture – is a magnet for tea-lovers. (P25) FRENCH | JAPANESE TEXT VERSION PDF | SPANISH

: IDN-INPS Editor; Project Articles; 08 December 2020

The Forgotten HIV/AIDS Pandemic

Viewpoint by Somar Wijayadasa*

NEW YORK (IDN) – Since the first identification of HIV/AIDS in the United States of America (USA), in 1981, approximately 76 million people have been infected with HIV, and nearly 35 million people have died of AIDS — the highest global death toll of all time — and also one of the world’s most politicized, feared and controversial diseases in the history of modern medicine.

However, this year, the deadly coronavirus (COVID-19) has thus far infected over 65 million and killed over 1.5 million people around the world. (P24) GERMAN | HINDI | JAPANESE TEXT VERSION PDF | RUSSIAN (the Russian educational website Ethnosphera)