A four-year-old asthmatic girl from Ukraine was forced to relocate to a gas station earlier this week where she could connect her ventilator, after a Russian missile attack cut off her city’s electricity supply, leaving her without any other means of receiving life-saving oxygen. Pictures of her frightened, frozen eyes made social media. But according […] Continue reading ->
The battle against pandemics can only be won through multilateralism, according to Augusto Santos Silva, president of the Portuguese parliament. During a keynote address at the UNITE Global Summit on Tuesday, Silva stressed that “viruses and bacteria know no borders. They do not have to show passports and they are not subject to border control. […] Continue reading ->
Parliamentarians from around the world have called on the World Health Organization to engage civil society in the establishment of a “pandemic treaty,” if the organization hopes to have such a document not only ratified but also implemented. “The current process remains exclusionary,” said Giada Girelli, a senior analyst on human rights and justice at […] Continue reading ->
“Every aspect of the COVID-19 response, beginning with the origins of the pandemic in Wuhan to China’s current Zero-COVID strategy, has had severe restrictions on human rights,” according to Prof Lawrence Gostin, a member of the independent Panel for a Global Health Convention. Speaking Monday afternoon at the UNITE Global Summit in Lisbon, he called […] Continue reading ->
Women and girls are more at risk of getting killed at home by intimate partners or family. A new report by UN Women and the UN Office on Drugs and Crimes (UNODC) said that more than five women or girls are killed every hour across the world by their partners or families. The report, released […] Continue reading ->
As the first snows fall across Ukraine, World Health Organization officials in Kyiv warn the coming winter will be “life-threatening for millions” of Ukrainians. At a press conference in Kyiv on Monday, WHO’s European Regional Director Dr Hans Kluge called the Russian airstrikes on Ukraine’s energy and medical infrastructure “the largest attack on health care […] Continue reading ->
Negotiations on a ‘pandemic treaty’ are starting in earnest within weeks as the World Health Organization (WHO) distributed the first ‘zero-sum’ conceptual draft of the agreement to member states on Friday – but one of the biggest conundrums is how to pay to mitigate the next pandemic. The COVID-19 pandemic has had a significant impact […] Continue reading ->
SHARM EL SHEIKH, EGYPT – Michael Terungwa, a solar entrepreneur in Abuja, Nigeria, will know that real progress is being made on climate change when things change in his hometown. When the 10-20% in customs and tariffs that he pays for cheap, imported Chinese solar panels are removed; when his customers’ solar purchases are subsidized […] Continue reading ->
As ceremonies opened in Sharm El-Sheik’s grand plenary hall on Monday, only one word came to mind in trying to sum up the scene: surreal. World leaders paraded into the hall to music seemingly taken from a Star Wars film. The cast of speakers taking the stage consisted of a petro-state monarch, a friendly host […] Continue reading ->
Sharm El Sheikh, Egypt – Over 120 heads of state are expected to attend this year´s UN Climate Conference (COP 27), which begins Sunday, raising hopes that global leaders will at least give a nod to the most existential crisis facing humanity by bothering to attend in person. But in a world paralyzed by the […] Continue reading ->