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By Klara Smits
BRUSSELS (IDN) – After his visit to Austria, Libya’s foreign minister Mohammed Sayala told the Kuwaiti News Agency on January 31 that Libya’s southern borders have now become Europe’s borders. Illegal migration could not be stopped at the Mediterranean Sea, he argued. Therefore, he promised that on the February 20, Libya will present the EU with a policy to cooperate on ‘protecting’ those southern borders. The plan will also include border agreements with Chad, Niger and Sudan.
By Peter J. Jacques
The writer is a Professor of Political Science at the University of Central Florida in Orlando, USA. He recounts what Indigenous Amazigh people told him during field work in the High Atlas Mountains of Morocco.
ORLANDO (IDN) – Life and death for whole communities hang in the balance of achieving the 17 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) that include eliminating poverty, conserving forests, and addressing climate change, passed by the United Nations unanimously in 2015. Take for example, the Indigenous Amazigh people who live in the mountains around Marrakech. They are representative of people who need to be served first by sustainable development.
By Sean Buchanan
LONDON (IDN) – Amid a deterioration of trust in democracy, people around the world clearly disillusioned with formal political institutions are turning their anger into protest.
Besides being self-seeking, the political class is seen as riddled with corruption, leading to a situation where democratic progress has slowed to a near halt. Indeed, even some countries which had been demonstrating robust and open governance systems are now starting to backslide with democratic norms, while their institutions are under threat.
By UN DESA Voice
NEW YORK (IDN) – Languages play a crucial role in our daily lives. They also make up our unique cultural identities. Yet, of the about 6,700 languages spoken in the world today, 40 percent are at risk of disappearing. Most of them are indigenous languages. And when a language dies, it can mean the end of a community’s values and traditions.
This is where the 2019 International Year of Indigenous Languages comes in. UN DESA Voice spoke with Mirian Masaquiza in UN DESA’s Division for Inclusive Social Development (DISD), about the year and its mission to protect and preserve the world’s indigenous languages.
By Lisa Vives, Global Information Network
NEW YORK (IDN) – Building on the vision and mission of the 2017 National Women’s March in the U.S., women around the world will mark January 19 with marches and other actions “supporting the advocacy and resistance movements that reflect our multiple and intersecting identities".
The main march in 2019 will be in Washington D.C., but there are dozens of other marches that are scheduled for the same day. So far, there is least one in every state.
Some states will hold multiple marches: California will have 20; Michigan and Florida will each have eight; and Pennsylvania, New York and Texas will each have seven.
By UN Migration
COX'S BAZAR (IDN-INPS) – Work has begun on one of the largest bamboo treatment plants ever installed in an emergency response, as IOM experts tackle a tiny insect that is devastating structures in the world’s biggest refugee settlement.
An infestation of "boring beetles" means the bamboo in almost every shelter in the Rohingya refugee camps in Cox's Bazar – home to around 240,000 families – needs to be replaced. With just over four months to go until the beginning of the next monsoon season, the race is on to provide families living in the worst-affected shelters with new, more-durable bamboo.
By Caroline Mwanga
NEW YORK (IDN) – Contrary to the widespread view coloured by the too-common images of young African migrants crossing the Mediterranean, migration in Africa is dominated by Africans moving within Africa, says Ashraf El Nour, the director of the International Organization for Migration (IOM) Office to the UN in New York.
They migrate mostly to neighbouring countries, or within the same region. Africa's share of global migration, which on the whole stood at 258 million in 2017, are 36 million people of which 19 million moved within the continent and 17 million outside Africa, El Nour told Africa Renewal's Zipporah Musau.
By Santo D. Banerjee
NEW YORK | PORT VILA (IDN) – One month old Joy Nowai has become the world’s first child to be given a vaccine delivered commercially by drone in a remote island in the South Pacific country of Vanuatu, the United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF) reported on December 18.
The vaccine delivery through the state-of-the-art craft covered almost 40 kilometres of rugged mountainous terrain from Dillon’s Bay on the west side of the island to the east landing in remote Cook’s Bay, where 13 children and five pregnant women were vaccinated by Miriam Nampil, a registered nurse.
Viewpoint by Jonathan Power*
LUND, Sweden (IDN-INPS) – In the Western world there is a constant debate about democracy. In the U.S. the Democrats charge quite correctly that the House’s constituencies are gerrymandered against them. Then there’s the insoluble issue of the Senate’s anti-democratic bias where its numbers are tilted against the Democrats by the fact that rural, less populated, states which tend to be conservative, elect two senators, just as do the Democratic-inclined, heavily populated, states.
By Katsuhiro Asagiri
TOKYO (IDN) – When the UN General Assembly adopted the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR) in Paris on December 10, 1948, it came up with a milestone document in the history of human rights that took into account the horrendous experiences of the Second World War.
With the end of that war, and the creation of the United Nations, the international community vowed never again to allow atrocities like those of the Second World War happen again. It pledged, for the first time, fundamental human rights to be universally protected.
IDN-InDepthNews offers news analyses, features, reports and viewpoints that impact the world and its peoples. It has been online since 2009. Its network spans countries around the world.