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Women Still Trail Behind Men in All Aspects of Life, Says UN

By Shanta Roy

Women make 77 cents for every dollar men earn. Up to 90 percent of women workers are informally employed. Advancing women’s equality in total could bring a potential boost of 28 trillion dollars to global annual gross domestic product (GDP) by 2025.

NEW YORK (IDN) – The statistics unveiled at an annual meeting of women at the UN were disturbingly revealing: On a global average, women only make 77 cents for every dollar men earn.

There is still a “myriad of laws” in over 150 countries which openly discriminate against women, affecting more than three billion worldwide – and relating to virtually every aspect of women’s lives. (P Extra)

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ASEAN Chairman Duterte Pushes For Migrant Protection Treaty

By Kalinga Seneviratne

BANGKOK (IDN) – Philippines President Rodrigo Duterte has signaled his intention to push harder for the adoption of a binding regional treaty to protect the human rights of migrant workers during his chairmanship of ASEAN (Association of South east Asian Nations) this year.

Though he is strongly supported by Indonesia’s President Joko Widodo, human rights advocates in the region fear that ASEAN’s “consensus” based decision making process may hinder these attempts because Malaysia, Singapore and Thailand may not agree to a binding treaty to protect migrant workers in their countries.

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Bonn To Host Global Festival For Sustainable Development

By Jutta Wolf

BERLIN | BONN (IDN) – The UN SDG Action Campaign, an Initiative of the United Nations Secretary-General, is launching the first Global Festival of Ideas March 1-3 in Bonn with a view to ensuring the attainment of Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) by 2030.

Bonn, former West German capital in divided post-World War II Germany, hosts 22 UN secretariats, including those of the UN Framework Convention for Climate Change (UNFCCC), UN Convention to Combat Desertification (UNCCD), and UN Volunteers (UNV).

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Moroccan Campaign Not Dampening Some Migrants’ Dreams

By Fabíola Ortiz

FEZ, OUJDA and NADOR, Morocco (IDN) – Morocco, traditionally a pathway for sub-Saharan Africans wanting to reach Europe, is now enforcing a national strategy to contain the flow of migrants towards the EU and stifle the aspirations of those still wanting to cross.

There are many reasons that lead people to depart from their countries and become a migrant, often risking their lives on dangerous routes in search of a better life.

Abdoul Karime is a 19-year-old Ivorian who first came to Morocco in 2013 when he was still a teenager and since then has been living amid improvised tents in an informal settlement next to the main train station in the city of Fez. (P39) JAPANESE TEXT VERSION PDF

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Sustainable Development at Risk in E. Europe, Central Asia

By Jaya Ramachandran

BERLIN | BRUSSELS (IDN) – Unless adequate steps are taken with relentless determination, the core objective of the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) agreed by all member states of the United Nations in September 2015, which recommend that “no one be left behind”, will not be achieved in Eastern Europe and Central Asia.

This is the crux of a United Nations report titled ‘Progress at Risk‘, published on October 12 in Brussels. Goals 8 and 10 of the SDGs – aiming to “promote inclusive and sustainable economic growth, employment and decent work for all” and “reduce inequality within and among countries” – are being ignored. (P31) JAPANESE TEXT VERSION PDF

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Almost Every Second Citizen of the World is Now Online

By Jamshed Baruah

GENEVA (IDN) – India has surpassed the United States to become the world’s second largest Internet market, with 333 million users, trailing China’s 721 million. But a new United Nations report says that six nations – including China and India – together account for 55% of the total global population still offline, because of the sheer size of their populations.

While Internet access is approaching saturation in richer nations, connectivity is still not advancing fast enough to help bridge development gaps in areas like education and health care for those in poorer parts of the world, according to the 2016 edition of The State of Broadband report.

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Revelations of Australia’s Abu Ghraib Force Gov’t to Act

By Kalinga Seneviratne

SYDNEY (IDN) – Screening of secretly filmed shocking footage of abuse of juvenile prisoners in a remote northern Australian prison by the Australian Broadcasting Corporation’s (ABC), renowned investigative reporting program ‘Four Corners’, has outraged thousands of Australians who took to the streets to protest and forced the government to act.

The video material filmed between 2010 and 2014 at the Don Dale youth detention centre in the Northern Territory in Australia and screened on July 25 has drawn comparisons to the treatment of prisoners in the notorious prisons run by the U.S. government in Abu Ghraib in Iraq and Guantanamo Bay naval base in Cuba.

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Security Council Updated on Conflicts Causing Severe Hunger

Analysis by Jaya Ramachandran

BERLIN | ROME (IDN) – The UN Security Council is faced with a critical if not an unprecedented situation: it has been warned that “protracted conflicts affecting 17 countries” have now driven more than 56 million people into either “crisis” or “emergency” levels of food insecurity and are hindering global efforts to eradicate malnutrition.

At the same time, according to a recent report by UNEP and the World Resources Institute (WRI), about one-third of all food produced worldwide, worth around US$1 trillion, gets lost or wasted in food production and consumption systems. (P23) GERMAN | INDONESIAN | JAPANESE TEXT VERSION PDF | SPANISH | SWAHILI | TURKISH

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Waiting for Effective Solutions from UN Summit on Refugees

By J C Suresh

TORONTO (IDN) – Governments, civil society organisations and more than 65 million people who are uprooted from their homes are looking forward to the United Nations Summit on Refugees and Migrants on September 19 at UN headquarters in New York.

The high-level meeting being organised by the UN General Assembly will address large movements of refugees and migrants, with the aim of bringing countries together behind a more humane and coordinated approach.

Addressing an event at the world body’s headquarters on July 19 in New York, UN Deputy Secretary-General Jan Eliasson stressed the need for “a discourse about making migration safe, orderly and responsible”, as spelled out in one of the Sustainable Development Goals under Agenda 2030.

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LDC Mid-Term Review: No Graduations, But Good Pupils See Light at End of Tunnel

Analysis by Jacques N. Couvas

ANTALYA | Turkey (IDN) – Commitment to continue the effort by the United Nations and the developed economies to help least developed countries (LDCs) overcome poverty and hunger was the main conclusion of the Mid-Term Review (MTR) conference for the Istanbul Programme of Action for the Least Developed Countries (IPoA), held in Antalya, Turkey, from May 27 to 29.

The purpose of the meeting was to assess whether and how the targets set by the IPoA in 2011 were being met. The results were mixed.

In six plenary sessions, four thematic round tables and 26 side events, officials from 75 countries and international organisations reviewed the progress made by the LDCs towards stimulating growth and improving living conditions in their respective jurisdictions.

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