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Compiled by EEPA
BRUSSELS (IDN) – The TPLF is keeping control of mountainous areas in Tigray. As many analysts predicted when Mekelle was taken, the ENDF has had difficulties driving the TPLF out of well entrenched mountain positions.
The ENDF has launched an offensive towards Samre, East of Mekelle.
Meanwhile, cruelties against civilians are reported. These include forcing relatives to commit incest on women and girls under the threat of arbitrary execution.
By Devinder Kumar
NEW DELHI (IDN) – With the start of the New Year, India joins the 15-member United Nations Security Council (UNSC) as a non-permanent member for the eighth time. Along with Norway, Kenya, Ireland and Mexico, India will have a two-year term: 2021-2022.
Of the 15 UNSC members, five occupy a permanent seat. They have the right to veto resolutions: China, France, Russia, the United Kingdom and the United States.
By Caroline Mwanga
NEW YORK (IDN) – More than 371,500 children would be born on the first day of 2021, according to the UN Children’s Fund (UNICEF). The agency's Executive Director Henrietta Fore said on the eve of the New Year day: "The children born today enter a world far different than even a year ago, and a New Year brings a new opportunity to reimagine it."
By Jaya Ramachadran
PARIS (IDN) – The UN Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) has urged adequate policies and actions to help the culture sector weather the crisis caused by the COVID-19 pandemic and its fallout. The sector employs more than 30 million people globally. It has been hit much harder than expected.
By EEPA
BRUSSELS (IDN) – More than two million children in Tigray do not have access to food, water and safety and may have been displaced. While there is a severe humanitarian situation regarding 100.000 Eritrean refugees in Tigray; full humanitarian access has not been given.
The following is the text of 2021 United Nations New Year's message delivered by Secretary-General António Guterres.
NEW YORK (IDN) – 2020 has been a year of trials, tragedies and tears.
COVID-19 upended our lives and plunged the world into suffering and grief.
NEW YORK (IDN | UN News) – The President of the United Nations General Assembly has urged everyone around the world "to continue to work together" to end the coronavirus pandemic, and to build an inclusive and sustainable future.
In a message for the New Year, Assembly President Volkan Bozkir said that each individual, community, and country has a role to play, locally and globally, to reduce inequalities, protect the most vulnerable people, and create more just, safer societies.
Compiled by Santo D. Banerjee
NEW YORK (IDN) – For the first time since mid-October, some 25,000 Eritrean refugees, sheltering in two camps in the unsettled Tigray region of Ethiopia, have received desperately needed food aid, reports UN News.
"Families, women, men, children — even new-borns — have been cut off from supplies and essential services for many weeks, so this distribution was urgently needed," said Ann Encontre, the United Nations Refugee Agency (UNHCR) Representative in Ethiopia.
TRIPS waiver proposal from India, South Africa and other members
Viewpoint by Brajendra Navnit
The author is Ambassador and Permanent Representative of India to the World Trade Organisation (WTO). The views expressed are personal.
GENEVA (IDN) – A proposal by India, South Africa and eight other countries calls on the World Trade Organisation (WTO) to exempt member countries from enforcing some patents, and other Intellectual Property (IP) rights under the organization’s Agreement on Trade-Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights, known as TRIPS, for a limited period of time.
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.
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