Africa

The consequences of the prolonged COVID-19 pandemic, deteriorating socio-economic conditions, protracted displacement and the critical shortfall in solutions to displacement are leading to widespread despair among refugees, warns UNHCR, the UN Refugee Agency.

Despite the gains and major investments in e-government by many countries, the digital divide persists. Seven out of eight countries with low scores are in Africa and belong to the least developed countries group.

Several Ebola Treatment Units (ETUs) were constructed across the country and these have in turn been used in the COVID-19 response. Although these centers have not been used to accommodate confirmed COVID-19 patients, they have however been used as quarantine centers for people under observations.

 The report, Human Mobility, Shared Opportunities: A Review of the 2009 Human Development Report and the Way Ahead, looks back at the last decade and assesses how future policy responses could facilitate safe, orderly, and regular migration.

The main players in the Libyan crisis are now Russia, the UAE, France and Egypt on one side and Turkey and Italy on the other. The biggest threat is the fact that these countries are not concerned with the territorial integrity of Libya. Economic and strategic interests are what brought them to Libya.

Thirty-two of the world’s largest companies stand to see their profits jump by $109 billion more in 2020 as the Covid-19 pandemic lays bare an economic model that delivers profits for the wealthiest on the back of the poorest, according to a new Oxfam report released this week.

War, rising food prices, a health system overwhelmed by COVID-19, and funding challenges are deeply impacting access to food for children all across Yemen, pushing up the number of children who are on the brink of hunger or even starvation, Save the Children has warned.  

The latest estimates are that a staggering 3 billion people or more cannot afford a healthy diet. In sub-Saharan Africa and southern Asia, this is the case for 57 percent of the population – though no region, including North America and Europe, is spared.

Efforts to stem the impact of COVID-19 in low to middle-income countries could be creating a health time bomb in their slum communities by deepening existing inequalities, according to an international team of health researchers led by the University of Warwick.