United Nations
A UN Mission in Mali has just reported 19 civilians gathered for a wedding died in a French army air strike targeting jihadists in January in central Mali. France denies any wrongdoing.
The UN Environment Programme's Food Waste Index has published a UN research detailing global annual food waste, estimating that "931 million tonnes of food, or 17% of total food available to consumers in 2019" was thrown away.
"It shows that most of this waste comes from households, which discard 11% of the total food available at the consumption stage of the supply chain. Food services and retail outlets waste 5% and 2% respectively. On a global per capita-level, 121 kilograms of consumer level food is wasted each year, with 74 kilograms of this happening in households," the report reads.
“Reducing food waste would cut greenhouse gas emissions, slow the destruction of nature through land conversion and pollution, enhance the availability of food and thus reduce hunger and save money at a time of global recession,” said Inger Andersen, Executive Director of UNEP. “If we want to get serious about tackling climate change, nature and biodiversity loss, and pollution and waste, businesses, governments and citizens around the world have to do their part to reduce food waste. The UN Food Systems Summit this year will provide an opportunity to launch bold new actions to tackle food waste globally.”
As the first European country, the Dutch parliament has passed a non-binding motion declaring the treatment of the Uyghur Muslim minority by China genocide.
The Dutch motion said that actions by the Chinese government such as "measures intended to prevent births" and "having punishment camps" fell under United Nations Resolution 260, generally known as the genocide convention.
Mexico will file a complaint at the UN Security Council on Thursday over "inequality" and "inequity" of Covid-19 vaccine distribution.
"The countries that produce [vaccines] have higher rates of vaccination and Latin America and the Caribbean have much less," so Foreign Minister Marcelo Ebrard. "We're going to raise it in the Security Council because it's not fair," he concluded.
According to the annual greenhouse gas bulletin by the World Meteorological Organization directed to the UNO, the global average of 410 ppm carbon dioxide (CO 2 ) in the atmosphere has been reached for the first time in 2019 since the beginning of industrialisation in 1750.
WMO Secretary-General Petteri Taala stated that "The last time the Earth experienced similar CO 2 concentrations was three to five million years ago".
The European Court of Justice in its current decision stated that CBD not an addictive drug in the sense of the UN Single Convention. The court argued with the current state of science that CBD has no harmful effects on human health (ECJ C-663/18 of 19.11.2020).
This decision is contrary stance of the EU Commission which argued that CBD is an addictive drug.
The United Nation's atomic watchdog has confirmed that Iran has been building an underground centrifuge assembly plant. Satellite images have not yet shown any signs of construction. Rafael Grossi, director-general of the International Atomic Energy Agency, reported that the facility has not been completed yet and further information were confidential.
The country's old facility exploded in what was called "a sabotage attack" during summer.
According to the UN, the two opponents in the civil war have signed an agreement for a ceasefire in Geneva. Military representatives of Prime Minister Fayez Sarraj and General Khalifa Haftar had been in Switzerland since Monday to prepare political talks on Libya's future.
The internationally recognized government of Sarraj, based in the capital Tripoli, has been fighting for years against Haftar and a counter-parliament in Tobruk in eastern Libya for power. According to experts, about 1400 Russian mercenaries are currently fighting in Libya.
Disasters related to weather, climate and water have increased fivefold over the past 50 years. In this time period, over 11000 disasters of these kinds have been recorded, connected to 2 million deaths and 3.6 trillion US-dollars in economic losses.
The Nobel Peace Prize 2020 has been awarded to the United Nation's World Food Programme (WFP) "for its efforts to combat hunger, for its contribution to bettering conditions for peace in conflict-affected areas and for acting as a driving force in efforts to prevent the use of hunger as a weapon of war and conflict".
On the occasion of the 75th anniversary of the United Nations, the German Chancellor Angela Merkel (CDU) invoked its unity and willingness to reform. "In the end, the United Nations can only be as good as its members are united," Merkel said in a video message on Monday evening in New York for the UN anniversary ceremony.
She stated that the UN must continue to develop in order to meet the global challenges of the 21st century.
The United States unilaterally proclaimed on Saturday that United Nations sanctions against Iran are back in force. The U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo said "Today, the United States welcomes the return of virtually all previously terminated UN sanctions on the Islamic Republic of Iran."
Pompeo also stated "If UN member states fail to fulfill their obligations to implement these sanctions, the United States is prepared to use our domestic authorities to impose consequences for those failures and ensure that Iran does not reap the benefits of UN-prohibited activity."
In a joint letter to the U.N. Security Council, France, Germany, and United Kingdom said "Any decision or action taken with a view to re-installing [the sanctions] would be incapable of legal effect."
And the Russian foreign ministry stated "The illegitimate initiatives and actions of the United States by definition cannot have international legal consequences for other countries."
According to the United Nations' Global Biodiversity Outlook report, zero of twenty goals that had been established in 2010 with the goal to preserve nature have been met fully.
Six of the 20 goals have been "partially achieved" namely preventing invasive species, conserving protected areas, access to and sharing benefits from genetic resources, biodiversity strategies and action plans, sharing information, and mobilizing resources.
The other targets only show slow progress or move in the opposite direction.
The US has introduced new sanctions on the government of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad. The sanctions fall under the Caesar Act, which went into effect in June, 2020 and targets industries and entities that deal with the Assad administration, including those in Iran and Russia. U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo said the purpose of the sanctions is to pressure Assad into ending the war, which has entered its ninth year.
Syria is currently facing an economic crisis, with many struggling to find food and other basic goods. Syrian officials have blamed the worsening conditions on American and EU sanctions.
Kelly Craft, U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations, stated the sanctions are not meant to harm civilians, nor do they target humanitarian efforts.
The United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs reports an armed attack in the Masteri village near the Darfur region in Sudan. Over 60 people were killed, further 60 wounded. The Sudanese government has not reported nor commented on the attack.
The U.N. statement added that this attack "was one of the latest of a series of security incidents reported over the last week that left several villages and houses burned, markets and shops looted, and infrastructure damaged."
The United Nations human rights office has stated that the protests in the United States "must be able to continue without those participating in them and also the people reporting on them, the journalists, risking arbitrary arrest or detention, being subject to unnecessary, disproportionate or discriminatory use of force or suffering other violations of their rights".
United Nations have met and discussed possible actions to prevent a breach of the FSO Safer tanker that is anchored off Yemen's coast near the port of Hodeida. The 45-year-old tanker has been abandoned, is under the control of the Iran-backed Huthis and carries 1.1 million barrels of crude oil. The UN Security Council fears that in case the tanker explodes or leaks, the oil would destroy the environment and livelihood of tens of thousands of people that depend on fishing in the area.
The UN Security Council has reportedly proposed a plan to conduct repairs on the ship to which the Huthis had previously agreed in 2019, only for the mission to get cancelled in the last minute. In May a leak in the engine room has been repaired alorad but according to the British UN mission "a permanent solution is urgently needed".
On Saturday the UN Security Council agreed to continue the humanitarian aid to Syria only in a limited way. Due to the new regulation, only one border crossing for aid deliveries from Turkey to Northern Syria is planned, before there were two. According to aid organizations, this new regulation could endanger the care of millions of people in need.
Norbert Röttgen, the german chairman of the Foreign Affairs Committee, calls this decision a "failure of the West all along the line".
He further said to the newspaper "Die Welt": "This failure is due to the withdrawal of the United States and the subsequent vacuum that Russia was happy to fill. And it is the utter reluctance of Europeans not to represent their own interests in the region. The consequences of the displacement and killing of civilians by Assad and Putin, now with China's support in the UN Security Council, affect Europe. The displaced persons will seek protection from us through Turkey."
United Nations secretary-general for humanitarian affairs, Sir Mark Lowcock has stated that he has "worked on Yemen for many years now, seeing many bad moments. This is the darkest moment I have ever seen" as the country battles the Covid-19 pandemic and starvation. People are forced to stay at home and can not afford food anymore. He states that the Yemen operation is in funding danger as donor nations are cutting the money amidst the Covid-19 recession that has hit their own economies. Sir Mark Lowcock stated that "We raised lots of money for it last year. More than $3 billion, and that enabled us to feed 13 million people a month. Now the money has fallen away".
The practice that is used with the intention to change the sexual orientation or gender identity of a person has been subject to a report released by the United Nations. Currently the "conversion therapy" is only banned in five countries around the world with minors often being subjected to the practice, according to the report. The American Medical Association said in a statement that the practice has "no foundation as scientifically valid medical care" and the U.N. says that it "may amount to torture" in their report.