Credit: UNFPA
UNITED NATIONS, May 7 2020 (IPS) – The world’s poorer nations, reeling under an unrelenting attack on their fragile economies by the COVID-19 pandemic, have suffered an equally deadly body blow: being buried under heavy debt burdens.
Abiy Ahmed, prime minister of Ethiopia who was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 2019, said last week that in 2019, 64 countries, nearly half of them in sub-Saharan Africa, spent more on than on health.
Ethiopia alone, he said, spends twice as much on paying off external debt as on health. “We spend 47 percent of our on debt servicing”, he wrote in an oped piece in the New York Times.
According to the UK-base…
SINGAPORE, May 26 2020 – Despite all the preoccupation with the current raging pandemic, it sadly appears that there has been no let-up in the global arms race among the major powers. In mid-May, the United States President Donald Trump, at an event for his new Space Force at the White House made a significant announcement, It was that the US was building right now an “incredible” new missile which would travel faster than any other in the world “by a factor of almost three”. This was obviously a response to the latest Russian ‘Avangard’ missile, which Russian President Vladimir Putin claims in invincible, with a speed of twenty times that of sound. The Chinese, reportedly are also feverishly working on their own hypersonic counterparts. All these would be strategic tools to…
Credit: United Nations
UNITED NATIONS, Jul 8 2020 (IPS) – The coronavirus—which has claimed the lives of over 538,000 people and infected more than 11.6 million worldwide—has destabilized virtually every facet of human life ever since its outbreak in late December.
Providing a grim economic scenario of the devastation caused by the pandemic including rising poverty, hunger and unemployment UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres warned last week of the possibility of a…
SYDNEY and KUALA LUMPUR, Aug 7 2020 (IPS) – International Monetary Fund (IMF) Managing Director Kristalina Georgieva has that developing countries would need more than the US$2.5 trillion to provide relief to affected families and businesses and expedite economic recovery.
Anis Chowdhury
With their limited fiscal capacities, developing countries will need to borrow more, increasing their often already high public . Developing country debt has grown rapidly since the 2008-2009 global financial crisis (GFC), reaching historical highs even before the pandemic.
A deep pandemic induced depression may also require governments to take over huge private debt liab…
The triple humanitarian crisis. Photo Credits from left and in clockwise direction-UN Habitat, Kenya Red Cross and FAO Kenya.
NAIROBI, Kenya, Oct 1 2020 (IPS) – The United Nations Deputy Secretary General, Ms Amina Mohammed recently commended “”.
On Monday, 28 September 2020, the President of Kenya, Uhuru Kenyatta hosted a national conference on COVID 19. I was invited to s…
Kundhavi Kadiresan is Managing Director, Global Engagement and Innovation, CGIAR System Organization. CGIAR (formerly the Consultative Group for International Agricultural Research) is a global partnership that unites international organizations engaged in research about food security.
A mother homeschools her children in Shamva district, Zimbabwe, during the COVID-19 pandemic. Over 10,000 confirmed COVID-19 cases in Africa; Zimbabwe and South Sudan among most vulnerable. Credit: WFP/Tatenda Macheka
WASHINGTON DC, Dec 18 2020 (IPS) – Africa, compared to Asia, Europe and the US, has largely escaped the devastating death toll of COVID-19, accounting for a fraction of …
Beirut, Lebanon; Tuesday, September 1st, 2020. Credit: Photojournalist Rahib Yassine
BEIRUT, Lebanon, Feb 1 2021 (IPS) – Humankind is no stranger to the destabilizing events of 2020. The state of the global economy and the outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic hit the headlines. In this ever escalating global crisis, Lebanon, has been facing what can only be described as unimaginable hardships. For the past year the c…
APIA, Samoa, Mar 8 2021 (IPS) – In the February 12th editorial on the issue of illicit drug use, the Samoa Observer stated that “… there is no data currently available to show that drug abuse including meth consumption levels in Samoa have reached crisis levels, which would warrant the government considering decriminalizing drug use and consumption.” The United Nation’s position on this is clear, we must not sit by and wait for a problem to blight our communities before acting. The evidence shows that it is cheaper and more effective to prevent drug use than to deal with the consequences. To be clear, my concerns are for the drug users and their families and not for the criminal dealers.
SYDNEY and KUALA LUMPUR, Jun 1 2021 (IPS) – Pandemic relief measures in developing countries have been limited by modest resources, fear of financial market discipline and policy mimicry. COVID-19 has triggered not only an international public health emergency, but also a global economic crisis, , especially in developing countries.
Struggling to cope
The pandemic’s economic and social impacts weigh more heavily on low- and middle-income countries (LMICs). The estimated that the pandemic pushed 119 to 124 million more people into extreme poverty in 2020.
Anis Chowdhury
The Bank also reported disproportionately larger in terms of closures, drops in s…
Yasmine Sherif, Director of Education Cannot Wait
NEW YORK, Jul 9 2021 (IPS) – It may be a challenge, but it is also an absolute necessity: bridging the gap between international law and reality and quickly crossing the bridge to reach all crisis-affected children and youth left furthest behind. Inclusive and equitable quality education is the right of every girl and boy and the objective of Sustainable Development Goal 4.
Yasmine Sherif
In fact, there are multiple challenges to overcome: in 2020, in countries of emergencies and protracted crisis further hit by COVID-19 the United Nations also registered more than , according to the , dated 22 May.
This …