News

-Top risks are climate crisis, growing social divides, heightened cyber risks and an uneven global recovery, as pandemic lingers on

-Global survey of experts finds only 1 in 6 are optimistic and only 1 in 10 believe the global recovery will accelerate

-To resolve these systemic issues, global leaders must adopt a coordinated multistakeholder response, even as room for cooperation narrows

-Read the Global Risks Report 2022 here and find out more about the Global Risks Initiative here. Join the conversation using #risks22  

(Following is a press release from the World Economic Forum)

Geneva, Switzerland, 11 January 2022 – Climate risks dominate global concerns as the world enters the third year of the pandemic. According to the Global Risks Report 2022, while the top long-term risks relate to climate, the top shorter-term global concerns include societal divides, livelihood crises and mental health deterioration.
 
Additionally, most experts believe a global economic recovery will be volatile and uneven over the next three years.
 
Now in its 17th edition, the report encourages leaders to think outside the quarterly reporting cycle and create policies that manage risks and shape the agenda for the coming years. It explores four areas of emerging risk: cybersecurity; competition in space; a disorderly climate transition; and migration pressures, each requiring global coordination for successful management.
 
“Health and economic disruptions are compounding social cleavages. This is creating tensions at a time when collaboration within societies and among the international community will be fundamental to ensure a more even and rapid global recovery. Global leaders must come together and adopt a coordinated multistakeholder approach to tackle unrelenting global challenges and build resilience ahead of the next crisis,” said Saadia Zahidi, Managing Director, World Economic Forum.
 
Carolina Klint, Risk Management Leader, Continental Europe, Marsh, said: “As companies recover from the pandemic, they are rightly sharpening their focus on organizational resilience and ESG credentials. With cyber threats now growing faster than our ability to eradicate them permanently, it is clear that neither resilience nor governance are possible without credible and sophisticated cyber risk management plans. Similarly, organizations need to start understanding their space risks, particularly the risk to satellites on which we have become increasingly reliant, given the rise in geopolitical ambitions and tensions.”
 
Peter Giger, Group Chief Risk Officer, Zurich Insurance Group, said: “The climate crisis remains the biggest long-term threat facing humanity. Failure to act on climate change could shrink global GDP by one-sixth and the commitments taken at COP26 are still not enough to achieve the 1.5 C goal. It is not too late for governments and businesses to act on the risks they face and to drive an innovative, determined and inclusive transition that protects economies and people.”
 
The report closes with reflections on year two of the COVID-19 pandemic, yielding fresh insights on national-level resilience. The chapter also draws on the World Economic Forum’s communities of risk experts – the Chief Risk Officers Community and Global Future Council on Frontier Risks – to offer practical advice for implementing resilience for organizations.
 
The Global Risks Report 2022 has been developed with the invaluable support of the World Economic Forum’s Global Risks Advisory Board. It also benefits from ongoing collaboration with its Strategic Partners, Marsh McLennan, SK Group and Zurich Insurance Group, and its academic advisers at the Oxford Martin School (University of Oxford), the National University of Singapore and the Wharton Risk Management and Decision Processes Center (University of Pennsylvania)

By J. Tuyet Nguyen

Oslo/New York, December 11 – Dmitry Muratov of Russia and Maria Ressa of the Philippines, who co-share the 2021 Nobel Peace Prize, denounced tyranny and governments that rule their countries when they received (December 10) the coveted prize which this year was given to journalists for the first time in 80 years. The Norwegian Nobel Committee said both Muratov and Ressa are awarded the prize “for their efforts to safeguard freedom of expression, which is a precondition for democracy and lasting peace.”

Muratov, who co-founded and edited Novaya Gazeta, an independent newspaper, holds Russian President Vladimir Putin’s government responsible for the deaths of six of his investigative reporters, including well-known Anna Politkovskaya.

The US-based Committee to Protect Journalists said at least 24 journalists were killed because of their reporting works and 293 others are behind bars worldwide in 2021.

Muratov said in his speech, “But journalism in Russia is going through a dark valley. Over a hundred journalists, media outlets, human rights defenders and NGOs have recently been branded as ‘foreign agents’. In Russia, this means ‘enemies of the people.’ Many of our colleagues have lost their jobs. Some have to leave the country.

Some are deprived of the opportunity to live a normal life for an unknown period of time. Maybe forever… That has happened in our history before.”

“We are journalists, and our mission is clear – to distinguish between facts and fiction. The new generation of professional journalists knows how to work with big data and databases. By using these, we have found out whose airplanes are bringing refugees to the conflict area. The facts speak for themselves. The number of Belarusian flights from the Middle East to Minsk has more than quadrupled this autumn. 6 flights in the period August-November 2020 and 27 in the same period this year. The Belarusian airline company brought 4,500 people to possible crossing of the border this year, and only 600 last year. The same number – 6,000 refugees – came with an Iraqi airline company.

This is how armed provocations and conflicts arise. We journalists have uncovered how it is all organized, our task is accomplished. Now it is up to the politicians.”

International Tribunal Against Torture

Muratov denounced the practice of torture in prisons and during investigation, which he said took place under the Stalin era and is “alive and well in today’s Russia.”

“Abuse, rape, terrible living conditions, ban on visits, ban on calling your mother on her birthday, endless extension of custody. Seriously ill people are locked up and beaten in custody, sick children are held hostage, and they are pressured to plead guilty without any evidence against them.

“Criminal cases in our country are often based on false accusations and political motives. Opposition politician Alexei Navalny is being held in jail based on a false accusation from the CEO of the Russian branch of a big French cosmetics company. The accuser was somehow not summoned to the court or neither pleaded to be an aggrieved party. But Navalny is behind bars. The cosmetics company chose to step aside hoping that the odour from this case will not harm the scent of the company’s products.

“We hear more and more often about torture of convicts and detainees. People are being tortured to the breaking point, to make the prison sentence even more brutal. This is barbaric.

“I am now presenting an initiative of setting up an international tribunal against torture, which will have the task to gather information on torture in different parts of the world and different countries, and to identify the executioners and the authorities involved in such crimes.

Of course, I shall rely first and foremost on investigative journalists around the world.

“Torture must be recognized as the most serious crime against humanity.”

We are the antidote against tyranny.

Maria Ressa and Mark Thompson, a former chief executive of The New York Times Company, bylined an article published in the New York Times under the headline “We are the antidote against tyranny.” The government of Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte prevented Ressa from going to Oslo to receive the Nobel Peace Prize. But courts in Manila overruled the government and allowed her to make the trip.

She said in the article, “I, Maria Ressa, co-founded the digital news site Rappler in Manila in 2012. Our aim has always been to pursue the truth wherever it may lead and to report the facts, not what the powerful want the public to hear. But the Philippines is also a dangerous place to be a reporter: 22 journalists have been killed since President Rodrigo Duterte came to power, the latest just this week. At Rappler, relentless political intimidation and harassment are daily realities. In less than two years, the government has filed 10 arrest warrants against me. I’ve had to post bail 10 times just to do my job. Currently I am appealing a conviction and potential six-year jail term for “cyber libel.” I cannot leave the Philippines — even to accept my Nobel Prize — without permission from different courts.”

“The growing intolerance of governments and elites toward a free press across the globe is one major cause of the crisis. Global surveys of censorship, arrests and journalist deaths suggest that the picture has been darkening for years. But Zaffar Abbas, the editor in chief of the independent newspaper Dawn in Pakistan, views Donald Trump’s campaign against “fake news” as a further fateful turn for the worse. Abbas believes that authoritarian regimes and populists see it as a green light to step up their own attacks on journalists. If the leader of the free world could show such open contempt for a free press, why shouldn’t they?”

Ressa and Thompson decided to create and co-chair the International Fund for Public Interest Media to support independent journalism across the world.

“We both know from our different vantage points — Maria on the frontline of the battle for free media in Manila, Mark as a past leader of two of the world’s global news providers, The New York Times and the BBC — what a difference great journalism can make both to the individual lives of readers and viewers and to the civic health of a society. We both know how important secure and sustainable income is if you want to preserve that journalism for today and tomorrow. We both know that the great political and cultural battles that free media faces everywhere can only be won if we first stabilize and future-proof its economics.”

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Rome/New York, November 23 – The UN Food and Agriculture Organization is calling for agri-food systems that can withstand shocks and stresses such as the ongoing Covid-19 pandemic. It said about 3 billion out of the total world population of 7.8 billion currently cannot afford a healthy diet and another billion would be added to the group if they lose one-third of income due to those shocks.

 “Truly resilient agri-food systems must have a robust capacity to prevent, anticipate, absorb, adapt and transform in the face of any disruption, with the functional goal of ensuring food security and nutrition for all and decent livelihoods and incomes for agri-food systems’ actors,” the Rome-based UN agency said in its 2021 State of Food and Agriculture (SOFA) report – Making agrifood systems more resilient to shocks and stresses.

 “Such resilience addresses all dimensions of food security, but focuses specifically on stability of access and sustainability, which ensure food security in both the short and the long term. Another dimension of food security – agency – is deeply connected to human rights, including the right to food, and underscores the need for inclusiveness in systems.”

The report defines shocks as” short-term events that have negative effects on a system, people’s well-being, assets, livelihoods, safety and ability to withstand future shocks.”

“The pandemic highlighted both the resilience and the weakness of our agri-food systems,” FAO Director-General Qu Dongyu said at the virtual release of the report.

It defines the agri-food systems as “the web of activities involved in the production of food and non-food agricultural products and their storage, processing, transportation, distribution and consumption – produce 11 billion tonnes of food a year and employ billions of people, directly or indirectly.”

The report said that shocks have immediate impact while stresses are “slow processes that gradually undermine the capacity of systems to cope with change and which render them more vulnerable.”

“Agri-food systems’ components and actors are exposed to shocks and stresses of various types and intensity and, because components are interlinked, disruption in any of them can spread quickly throughout systems. The same shock or stress may have different impacts on different systems’ components and actors. Among producers, shocks are most likely to affect the livelihoods of low-income, small-scale operators; among food consumers, the poorest will be the most affected by rising food prices.”

The report said lockdowns under the pandemic caused labor shortages and exposed the vulnerability of small and medium agri-food enterprises

“The smooth functioning of food supply chains underpins the resilience of national agri-food systems. A food supply chain is composed of interconnected activities performed by various actors – farmers, processors, wholesalers and retailers – who, in turn, draw on lateral chains that supply inputs and logistic services. The capacity of a food supply chain to absorb shocks depends on the resilience of each of its segments. Diverse, redundant and well-connected food supply chains enhance agri-food systems’ resilience by providing multiple pathways for producing, sourcing and distributing food. This resilience is necessary not only for safeguarding and enhancing the livelihoods of farmers and businesses, but also for ensuring the physical availability of food to all.”

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Rome/New York, October 25 – Years of conflict, drought, economic woes and the recent accumulation of Covid-19 health problems have made Afghanistan home to one of the world’s largest number of people – nearly 23 million – facing severe humanitarian crisis as the harsh winter is approaching while funding available is “a drop in the ocean,” two United Nations agencies said as they launched an urgent appeal for help.

The Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) and the World Food Program (WFP) said the 23 million Afghans facing dire malnutrition and hunger, including 3.2 million children under five, represented more than half of the country’s population. Globally, the affected Afghan population have needs surpassing those in Ethiopia, South Sudan, Syria and Yemen combined.

“It is urgent that we act efficiently and effectively to speed up and scale up our delivery in Afghanistan before winter cuts off a large part of the country, with millions of people – including farmers, women, young children and the elderly – going hungry in the freezing winter. It is a matter of life or death. We cannot wait and see humanitarian disasters unfolding in front of us – it is unacceptable!” said Qu Dongyu, FAO Director-General.

“Afghanistan is now among the world’s worst humanitarian crises – if not the worst – and food security has all but collapsed. This winter, millions of Afghans will be forced to choose between migration and starvation unless we can step up our life-saving assistance, and unless the economy can be resuscitated. We are on a countdown to catastrophe and if we don’t act now, we will have a total disaster on our hands,” said David Beasley, WFP Executive Director.

“Hunger is rising and children are dying. We can’t feed people on promises – funding commitments must turn into hard cash, and the international community must come together to address this crisis, which is fast spinning out of control,” Beasley warned. WFP said it expects operations to cost as much as US$ 220 million a month.

The two UN agencies said in their Integrated Food Security Phase Classification (IPC) report that more than one in two Afghans will be facing crisis (IPC Phase 3) or emergency (IPC Phase 4) levels of acute food insecurity through the November 2021 to March 2022 lean season, requiring urgent humanitarian interventions to meet basic food needs, protect livelihoods and prevent a humanitarian catastrophe.

The report also notes that this is the highest number of acutely food insecure people ever recorded in the 10 years the UN has been conducting IPC analyses in Afghanistan. Globally, Afghanistan is home to one of the largest number of people in acute food insecurity in both absolute and relative terms.

Following is part of the joint WFP-FAO news release:

Hunger spreads from rural to urban areas

The IPC report reflects a 37 percent increase in the number of Afghans facing acute hunger since the last assessment issued in April 2021. Among those at risk are 3.2 million children under-five who are expected to suffer from acute malnutrition by the end of the year. In October, WFP and UNICEF warned that one million children were at risk of dying from severe acute malnutrition without immediate life-saving treatment.

For the first time, urban residents are suffering from food insecurity at similar rates to rural communities, marking the shifting face of hunger in the country. Rampant unemployment and the liquidity crisis mean that all major urban centres are projected to face Emergency (IPC Phase 4) levels of food insecurity, including formerly middle-class populations.

In rural areas, the severe impact of the second drought in four years continues to impact the livelihoods of 7.3 million people who rely on agriculture and livestock to survive.

Current funding a drop in the ocean

FAO and WFP have been alerting the world to huge funding shortfalls and the need for urgent action by the international community before it is too late. Immediate financial support is now crucial to meet the most basic humanitarian needs as Afghans confront winter with no jobs, cash, or prospects, just as another La Niña event is on the horizon, meaning this year’s drought conditions are likely to extend into 2022.

To meet the scale of needs, the UN will need to mobilize resources at unprecedented levels. The UN’s Humanitarian Response Plan remains only a third funded. WFP in planning to ramp up its humanitarian assistance as we enter 2022 to meet the food and nutrition needs of almost 23 million people in Afghanistan. To meet the task at hand WFP may require as much as US$ 220 million per month.

Since the beginning of 2021, WFP has provided food, cash, and nutrition assistance to 10.3 million people, including malnutrition treatment and prevention programmes for nearly 400 000 pregnant and breastfeeding women, and 790 000 children under-five.

FAO continues to deliver vital emergency livelihood interventions at scale in Afghanistan, providing lifesaving support and cash assistance to farmers and livestock owning households who comprise 70 percent of the total population, so they can remain productive.  More than 3.5 million people will be supported this year, with FAO reaching over more than 330 000 in August and September alone

Amid worsening drought, FAO is seeking $11.4 million in urgent funding for its humanitarian response and is seeking a further $200 million for the agricultural season into 2022. FAO is now distributing wheat cultivation packages, including high quality and locally-supplied seeds, fertilizers and training. This campaign is expected to benefit 1.3 million people across 27 out of 34 provinces of the country in the coming weeks.

IPC Report brief can be accessed here & IPC Snapshot here.

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New York, October 6 – The United Nations Security Council was told that UN operations to bring life-saving humanitarian aid to 7 million people in Ethiopia, including 400,000 people living in famine conditions in Tigray, are seriously hampered by continued fighting, severe checkpoints along transportation routes and lack of cash to operate and pay relief workers.

UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres urged the 15-nation Security Council to support and unite behind efforts being made by UN agencies and partners in Ethiopia to bring urgent relief goods and medicine to the 5 million people in Tigray and 2 million in Amhara and Afar. The council is the highest body in the UN system responsible for peace and security matters.

Guterres said the Afar corridor is the only option to transport humanitarian aid to Tigray but access to the area has been severely restricted by official and unofficial checkpoints, insecurity and other obstacles and challenges.

“Vital fuel supplies continue to be blocked, as are essential medicines and equipment,” he said.

“Humanitarian organizations continue to lack the cash they need to operate and to pay their staff. “Access to electricity remains precarious. Millions of people are cut off from communications networks and vital services such as health care. Fighting in Amhara is another serious impediment to humanitarian access.”

“As a result of all these facts, life-saving humanitarian operations are being crippled,” he said.

He said UN officials and workers on the ground in Ethiopia have reported “increasingly alarming eye-witness testimony of the suffering, including growing accounts of hunger-related deaths” which are close to the levels of the devastating famine in Somalia in 2011.

“We are also seeing deeply worrying reports of violations of human rights abuses perpetrated by all sides. I am particularly concerned about chilling accounts of violence against women and children, including sexual and gender-based violence,” Guterres said.

“The country is facing an immense humanitarian crisis that demands immediate attention.

All efforts should be squarely focused on saving lives and avoiding a massive human tragedy.”

In his remarks the council, Guterres said the Ethiopian government’s decision to expel seven UN officials failed to follow a normal procedure and was “particularly disturbing.”

“This unprecedented expulsion should be a matter of deep concern for us all as it relates to the core of relations between the UN and Member States.”

The Ethiopian government on September 30 shocked the UN when it declared seven UN officials persona non grata and ordered them to leave the country within 72 hours. Five of the officials are members of the UN humanitarian affairs office and the other are representatives of the UN Children’s Fund and the UN human rights office.

Despite the difficult challenges facing the UN humanitarian operations in Ethiopia, the UN chief said the UN agencies will continue their work as mandated in the African nation and with local and international partners to support millions of people in need of humanitarian assistance in Tigray, Amhara and Afar, and across the country, in full accordance with the UN Charter and General Assembly resolution 46/182.

“I now call on Ethiopian authorities to allow us to do this without hindrance and to facilitate and enable our work with the urgency that this situation demands.” Guterres said.

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New York, September 30 – UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres said an international response is urgently needed to prevent a catastrophic military conflict in Myanmar that would threaten other Southeast Asian nations.

“The risk of a large-scale armed conflict requires a collective approach to prevent a multi-dimensional catastrophe in the heart of Southeast Asia and beyond,” Guterres said in a report to the 193-nation General Assembly. “Grave humanitarian implications, including rapidly deteriorating food security, an increase in mass displacements and a weakened public health system compounded by a new wave of COVID-19 infections, require a coordinated approach in complementarity with regional actors.”

The UN has called for immediate humanitarian access and assistance to vulnerable communities such as 600,000 Rohingya Muslims in northern Rakhine state and over 700,000 others who fled to Bangladesh after a military crackdown in 2017.

Guterres called for an urgent, unified and international response to put Myanmar back on the track to democratic reform and for the immediate release of the country’s President Win Myint, State Counsellor Aung San Suu Kyi and other government officials who detained after the military takeover in February 2021. The military junta claimed that the general election in November 2020 that elected the civilian government in a landslide was marred by voter fraud.

Large scale protests against the military takeover were violently suppressed by military and security forces resulting in over 1,000 people killed and thousands of arrests and at least 120 people who died while under military detention.

Guterres welcomed the appointment of Brunei’s Second Foreign Minister Erywan Yusof in August as Special Envoy to Myanmar by the Association of Southeast Asian Nations. The UN chief also urged the “timely and comprehensive” implementation of a five-point plan to facilitate a peaceful solution in Myanmar.  The plan called for ending violence, constructive dialogue, the appointment of an envoy to direct mediation efforts and a humanitarian aid package.

Just days before Guterres issued his Myanmar report to the General Assembly, UN High Commissioner for Human Rights Michelle Bachelet in Geneva warned that Myanmar is heading to a nation-wide civil war and the military’s suppression of civilian protests may amount to crimes against humanity or war crimes.

Bachelet said in a report to the 47-member Human Rights Council in Geneva that clashes between the military and civilians have taken place more regularly whereas the country had not seen such violence in generations. The report covered the situation in Myanmar from the military takeover in February to mid-July and was based on interviews with over 70 victims and witnesses to human rights violations, as well as remote monitoring, credible open sources, and meetings with a range of informed stakeholders, UN News said.

“There is no sign of any efforts by the military authorities to stop these violations nor implement previous recommendations to tackle impunity and security sector reform,” Bachelet said calling for the urgent need for strong accountability measures. “The national consequences are terrible and tragic, and the regional consequences could also be profound.”

The report said there have been increasing fighting between the military and ethnic armed groups since the coup, displacing thousands, particularly in Kayin, Shan and Kachin State, where the military has carried out indiscriminate airstrikes and artillery barrages, killing civilians, UN News reported.

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