By Kester Kenn Klomegah* MOSCOW (IDN) – The World Bank has expressed readiness to commit US$12 billion as concessional loans to assist African countries access foreign vaccines. During a virtual meeting on the Africa COVID-19 Vaccine Financing and Deployment Strategy, the World Bank informed that the emergency vaccine financing projects in Africa, include Ghana, Democratic […]
ALCAP Sets Out into Asia and Africa To Enhance Audio Visual Exchange
By Niba Mirza * BUENOS AIRES (IDN) – The Asociación Latinoamericana de Comunicación Audiovisual Parlamentaria, ALCAP or the Latin American Parliamentary Association of Audio-Visual Communication has ventured into Asia and Africa with the appointment of Mr. Manish Uprety F.R.A.S. as its Special Advisor for the region. ALCAP is a project of promotion, strengthening, integration, dissemination, […]
UN Chief Explains How to Make 2021 A Year of Transformation
By Radwan Jakeem NEW YORK (IDN) – United Nations Secretary-General António Guterres has told the UN’s 193 Member States that in the wake of an “annus horribilis” of death, disaster and despair, 2021 must be a year of transformation. “We need to move from death to health; from disaster to reconstruction; from despair to hope; […]
Security Council to Focus on Climate Change and Security
By J Nastranis NEW YORK (IDN) – “Addressing climate-related security risks to international peace and security through mitigation and resilience-building” will be the focus of a high-level open debate which the UK plans to host in February. According to the Security Council Report, the meeting is expected to consider conflict risks, peacebuilding approaches and ways […]
AU Rallies Support for Equitable Access To COVID-19 Vaccines
By Jeffrey Moyo HARARE (IDN) –The African Union (AU) Chairperson, President Cyril Ramaphosa, has called on the World Trade Organization (WTO) to waiver specific Trade-Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights (TRIPS) obligations related to the prevention and treatment of COVID-19 for a defined period. Together with India, South Africa has proposed a TRIPS waiver in […]
Donations for International Seabed Authority to Support Programmes in the Developing States
By Caroline Mwanga NEW YORK (IDN) – Three countries – Norway, France and Mexico – have reaffirmed their commitment to support, through three separate grants, the implementation by the International Seabed Authority (ISA) of capacity development programmes and activities targeted at developing States members of ISA and to improve their integrated participation in the work […]
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 […]
Court Finds Israeli Tycoon Guilty of Bribing Guinean Officials
By Lisa Vives, Global Information Network NEW YORK (IDN) – The gavel came down on January 22 on billionaire Israeli-French tycoon Beny Steinmetz who, a criminal court in Geneva ruled, bribed government officials in Guinea, West Africa, to enrich himself and his mining company with valuable assets of the African country. The ruling caps a […]
COVID-19 Decimating Ranks of Zimbabwe’s Government
By Lisa Vives, Global Information Network NEW YORK (IDN) – The coronavirus is reaping a “grim harvest” in Zimbabwe. Those were the words of President Emmerson Mnangagwa acknowledging the deadly reach of the virus in the nation’s highest ranks of government. Zimbabwe’s transport and foreign ministers both succumbed to the coronavirus less than two days […]
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 […]