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UN Recap: October 17-22, 2021

Here is a fast take on what the international community has been up to this past week, as seen from the United Nations perch:

Airstrikes target Mekelle

The Ethiopian government launched a series of airstrikes this week on Tigray’s capital, Mekelle, one of which forced a U.N. aid flight to turn around midair.

New provocations from DPRK

North Korea has continued to test-fire missiles, spurring the United States, Britain and France to call a U.N. Security Council meeting on Wednesday.

Africa hardest hit by climate change

A new U.N. climate report says the African continent is warming faster and to a higher temperature than other parts of the world, despite being responsible for less than 4% of the world’s greenhouse gas emissions.

Human rights discussions

The U.N. General Assembly’s third committee had its annual briefings Friday from the special rapporteurs on the human rights situations in North Korea and Myanmar.

News in brief

— UNICEF said Tuesday that 10,000 children have been killed or maimed in Yemen since fighting started in March 2015. That is the equivalent of four children every day. And that is the number of cases the U.N. children’s agency has been able to verify; the real number is likely higher.

— UNICEF said the numbers of women (71) and children (30) kidnapped for ransom in Haiti in the first eight months of 2021 have surpassed the totals for all of 2020. The overwhelming majority of abductees are Haitians and are taken in the capital, Port-au-Prince.

— The U.N. Security Council has set off on its first field mission since before the pandemic. The 15 members are heading to Mali and Niger through Tuesday. They are checking on Mali’s transition and discussing terrorism, the effects of climate change in the Sahel and other issues with leaders, civil society and U.N. country teams.

— U.N. Secretary-General Antonio Guterres and the U.N. Security Council separately welcomed the declaration of a unilateral cease-fire on October 15 by President Faustin Archange Touadéra in the Central African Republic. That country has been trying to restore state authority after years of intercommunal violence and territory grabs by armed groups.

Some good news

The United Nations said a national house-to-house polio vaccination campaign in Afghanistan will resume November 8, after a three-year halt, with the support of the Taliban authorities.

Quote of note

“Today, women’s leadership is a cause. Tomorrow, it must be the norm,” U.N. Secretary-General Antonio Guterres said Friday on the 21st anniversary of Resolution 1325, which demands the full and equal participation of women in conflict resolution, peacebuilding and post-conflict reconstruction.

Next week

The G-20 meets in Rome ahead of a critical U.N. climate conference in Scotland in early November. On Tuesday, the U.N. General Assembly will hold its own pre-conference high-level session on delivering climate action.

Did you know?

U.N. peacekeepers are called “blue helmets” because of the color of their berets and helmets. There are more than 87,000 peacekeepers from 121 countries currently deployed in a dozen missions. Their missions are authorized by U.N. Security Council resolutions to protect civilians and strengthen security in post-conflict and fragile states.

Source: Voice of America

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Largest Triceratops Skeleton Ever Found Sells for $7.7M

The largest triceratops skeleton ever found was sold for $7.74 million Thursday at an auction in Paris to a private American collector.

In a statement on its website, the Drouot auction house said the fossilized remains of “Big John,” as the skeleton is known, was expected to go for between $1.4 and $1.7 million. But they said the prehistoric remains aroused the enthusiasm of bidders onsite at the auction house, on the phone and online.

An anonymous U.S. collector finally won the bidding battle. A representative for the buyer told reporters “the individual is absolutely thrilled with the idea of being able to bring a piece like this to his personal use.”

Triceratops, which means “three-horned face” in Latin, was a large plant-eating dinosaur that lived between 66 million and 84 million years ago. It was distinctive for the two large horns on its forehead and a third on its nose. Big John is named after the owner of the parcel of land where the bones were discovered in 2014 in the upper midwestern U.S. state of South Dakota.

Experts say Big John is unique and rare among dinosaur fossils because more than 60% of its skeleton and 75% of its skull are complete.

Last year, a Tyrannosaurus rex skeleton was sold in New York for a record-breaking $31.8 million. Paleontologists say enthusiasm for dinosaur bones by private collectors is pricing them out of reach of the world’s museums.

Source: Voice of America

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US Regulators Unveil Blueprint to Tackle Financial Climate Risks

WASHINGTON —

Climate change is an "emerging threat" to U.S. financial stability that regulators should address in their everyday work, a top U.S. regulatory panel said Thursday, a first for the United States, which has lagged other wealthy countries on tackling financial climate risks.

The Financial Stability Oversight Council (FSOC) issued a 133-page report that could lead to new rules and stricter oversight for Wall Street. It provided a road map for integrating climate risk management into the financial regulatory system.

That includes filling in data gaps, pushing for climate-related disclosures by companies, beefing up climate expertise at agencies, and building tools to better model and forecast financial risks, such as scenario analysis.

The FSOC comprises heads of the top financial agencies and is chaired by Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen. Created following the 2007-09 financial crisis, its role is to identify and address vulnerabilities in the U.S. financial system.

The report is part of President Joe Biden's plan to aggressively tackle climate change and comes ahead of his trip to Glasgow, Scotland, for a United Nations climate summit.

"It’s a critical first step forward to the threat of addressing climate change, but will by no means be the end of this work," Yellen said of the report.

With Biden's climate agenda stalling in a divided Congress, the report will signal to the world that the United States is serious about tackling climate risks, adding to the global debate on the issue.

"This is the first time that all of the banking and financial regulators will come out in one document and talk about what they can do on climate change," said Todd Phillips, director of financial regulation at the Center for American Progress, a liberal think tank.

Climate change could upend the financial system, because physical threats such as rising sea levels, as well as policies and carbon-neutral technologies aimed at slowing global warming, could destroy trillions of dollars of assets, risk experts say.

In a 2020 report, the Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) cited data estimating that $1 trillion to $4 trillion of global wealth tied to fossil fuel assets could ultimately be lost. With a record $51 billion pouring into U.S. sustainable funds in 2020, investors are pushing for better information on risks companies face from climate change.

U.S. regulators have done little to date to tackle climate risks, and the United States lags its peers on the issue. Biden, a Democrat, has said he wants every government agency to begin incorporating climate risk into its agenda.

The report also calls for the FSOC to create two new internal committees. One would consist of regulatory staff who will frequently report on efforts to police climate risks. The second will be an advisory committee of outside experts, including from academia, nonprofits and the private sector.

The lack of recommendations for tough new rules frustrated some progressives and environmental groups, who are anxious for bold steps from Washington to address what Biden himself has called an existential crisis.

Steven Rothstein, managing director of Ceres Accelerator for Sustainable Capital Markets, a climate advocacy group, said it was good regulators identified climate change as an undeniable risk, but more needs to come quickly.

"With a very small window to prevent the next climate disaster, each agency must now provide specific timelines when they plan to put in place measures to protect the safety and soundness of our financial system, our institutions, our savings and our communities," he said in a statement.

Source: Voice of America

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CDC Panel Backs Expanded Rollout of COVID-19 Boosters

WASHINGTON —

Millions more Americans are closer to getting a COVID-19 booster as influential government advisers on Thursday endorsed extra doses of all three of the nation's vaccines and opened the possibility of choosing a different company's brand for that next shot.

Certain people who received Pfizer vaccinations months ago already are eligible for a booster, and now advisers to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention say specific Moderna and Johnson & Johnson recipients should qualify, too. And in a bigger change, the panel allowed the flexibility of "mixing and matching" that extra dose, regardless of which type people received first.

The Food and Drug Administration authorized such an expansion of the nation's booster campaign on Wednesday, but the CDC, guided by its advisory panel, has the final word on who should roll up their sleeves. CDC Director Dr. Rochelle Walensky was expected to rule soon.

"We're at a different place in the pandemic than we were earlier" when supply constraints meant people had to take whatever shot they were offered, noted CDC adviser Dr. Helen Keipp Talbot of Vanderbilt University.

She called it "priceless" to be able to choose a different kind of shot for the booster if, for example, someone might be at risk for a rare side effect from a specific vaccine.

There still are restrictions on who qualifies for a booster and when. Starting six months past their last Pfizer vaccination, people are urged to get a booster if they're 65 or older, nursing home residents, or at least 50 and at increased risk of severe disease because of health problems. Boosters also were allowed, but not urged, for adults of any age at increased risk of infection because of health problems or their jobs or living conditions. That includes health care workers, teachers, and people in jails or homeless shelters.

The CDC panel backed the same booster qualifications for Moderna recipients. Moderna's booster will come at half the dose of the original two shots.

As for the single-shot J&J vaccine, a COVID-19 booster is recommended for all recipients at least two months after vaccination. That's because the J&J vaccine hasn't proved as protective as the two-dose Moderna or Pfizer options.

The panel didn't explicitly recommend that patients get a different brand than they started with, but it left open the option — saying only that a booster of some sort was recommended. And some of the advisers said they would prefer that J&J recipients receive a competitor's booster, citing preliminary data from an ongoing government study that suggested a bigger boost in virus-fighting antibodies from that combination.

About two-thirds of Americans eligible for COVID-19 shots are fully vaccinated, and the government says getting first shots to the unvaccinated remains the priority. While health authorities hope boosters will shore up waning immunity against milder coronavirus infections, all the vaccines still offer strong protection against hospitalizations and death.

The CDC's advisers wrestled with whether people who didn't really need boosters might be getting them, especially otherwise healthy young adults whose only qualification was their job.

Dr. Sarah Long of Drexel University voiced concerns about opening those people to rare but serious side effects from another dose if they already were adequately protected.

"I have my own concerns that we appear to be recommending vaccines for people who I don't think need it," added Dr. Beth Bell of the University of Washington.

But she stressed that the vaccines work and that moving forward with the recommendations makes sense for the sake of being clear and allowing flexibility when it comes to boosters.

Despite the concerns of some members, the panel vote ended up being unanimous.

The vast majority of the nearly 190 million Americans who are fully vaccinated against COVID-19 have received the Pfizer or Moderna options, while J&J recipients account for about 15 million.

Source: Voice of America

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Agency Helps Kenya’s Returning Abused Workers Reintegrate

Laborers from Kenya say they have endured abuse in the Middle East, often at the hands of their employers. But an aid agency is offering them a chance to rebuild their lives in Kenya. Hundreds of survivors of forced labor are now able to access support offered by a group that offers a soft landing for those in need.

Faith Murunga’s store on the outskirts of Kenya’s capital is open for business. It has been barely six months old in operation, helping her put food on her family’s table.

It isn’t what she had anticipated when she left Kenya in 2019 for work in Saudi Arabia, a popular work destination for those unable to find jobs in Kenya. She says what she was promised as she emigrated and what she found there were worlds apart.

She says, the boss came and told me that as long as I agreed to travel to their country, I must do each and every chore. He said, I would not have the right to complain. They had paid a lot of money to buy me. I was therefore their property,” Murunga said.

During her two years of service in Saudi Arabia, Murunga suffered both emotional and physical abuse at the hands of her employer, until a good Samaritan came to her aid and facilitated her return to Kenya.

Back home, she received help from Haart Kenya, an organization that fights human trafficking and helps people like Faith.

Since Haart Kenya was formed in 2010, the organization has helped more than 700 survivors of forced labor who have come home scarred.

Mercy Atieno, the organization’s outreach manager, says the survivors, 80% of them women, have varying degrees of trauma when they seek help.

“When a survivor comes to us, they are distressed. Some of them appear abused. They don’t know what to do next and you find someone who does not know where to start, they do not have a house, they don’t want to go back home because everyone knows they went abroad, so they are expecting they will come with something,” Atieno said.

The organization takes in survivors of forced labor and other work-related abuses and helps them rebuild their lives through counseling, training, and supporting their ability to make a living. Mercy Atieno explains.

“This process is a very participatory process, where together with the case worker and the survivor, charting ways through which they are going to work together for proper rehabilitation, so the survivor has a voice and they actually say no to a service, because our services are individualized, and they are survivor-centered,” Atieno said.

The Kenya Union of Domestic, Hotels, Educational Institutions, Hospitals and Allied Workers, or KUDHEIHA, the union that fights for the rights of workers, says the migration of workers to the Middle East is likely to continue as long as Kenya’s 10% unemployment rate stays as high as it is.

Albert Njeru, the union’s general secretary, advises those seeking work as unskilled labor abroad to be extra vigilant.

“Seek for proper information, consult widely, and before you go get it right, don’t go where you can see black spots,” Njeru said.

Haart Kenya’s leadership says it is ready to handle cases like Faith’s as they appear. For now, Faith says she is grateful for another chance at life, away from the abuse she suffered in a foreign land.

Source: Voice of America