ROME, Jun 5 2017 (IPS) – Now that president Donald Trump has announced the withdrawal of the world’s largest polluter in history—the United States, from the Paris Accord, perhaps one of the most specific warnings is what a United Nations independent expert on rights and the environment has just said: “We should be fully aware that we cannot enjoy our basic human rights without a healthy environment.”
Speaking in Geneva ahead of the on Monday 5 June, the UN Special Rapporteur on Human Rights and the Environment, John H. Knox, “We should all be alarmed at the accelerating loss of biodiversity on which healthy ecosystems depend.”
We depend on health…
Laboratory Technician Herbert Mtopa collects biological samples at a clinic in Zimbabwe’s Shamva District under a CultiAF project to assess exposure of women and children to aflatoxins. Credit: Busani Bafana/IPS
NAIROBI, Kenya, Feb 22 2018 (IPS) – In the absence of concerted efforts to raise awareness on the dangers of aflatoxin to humans and domestic animals, advances in technology for early detection of aflatoxin in cereals and seeds such as maize will come to naught,…
Jack Niedenthal, the secretary of Health and Human Development in the Republic of Marshall Islands stands in front of the poster that records the dark past of the Pacific island nation and the need for good healthcare. Credit: Stella Paul/IPS
MAJURO, Apr 5 2019 (IPS) – In Jack Niedenthal’s office in Majuro, there is an ominous reminder of the dark history of the Marshall Islands—once the site for dozens of nuclear tests conducted by the United States between 1946 and 1962. But it also provides a strong message about the future of island nation.
“Given what the Marshall Islands has done for humankind, we deserve the best healthcare in the world,” reads a poster…
Shocked over the killing of five men in Nepal, who had planned to escort home one of their girlfriends from a higher caste, the UN human rights chief stressed that ending caste-based discrimination is “fundamental” to the overall sustainable development vision of leaving no one behind. May 2020
People walk down a street of shops in Kathmandu, Nepal. Credit: World Bank/Peter Kapuscinski
KATHMANDU, Nepal, Mar 11 2021 (IPS) – There is hardly a better way to promote human rights in Nepal than celebrating for being one of the winners of the prestigious , released on the International Women’s Day by the Government of the United States of America.
A…
Apr 16 2021 – When we were growing up in the sixties during the time of the Cold War between the USA and the then Soviet Union, we would often hear about a possible Third World War. Sometimes, the situation would get so heated that people would fear the Third World War might not be far away. I still remember the events in 1961, when the threats and counter-threats between President John Kennedy and Prime Minister Nikita Khrushchev over the Bay of Pigs reached such an extreme level that a Third World War seemed imminent.
Sixty years have passed since then—and no, there hasn t been a Third World War in all those years. At the beginning of last year, such a war seemed to be a far-fetched possibility, rooted only in imaginations. But in the aftermath of the outbreak of the Covid-1…