The Week With IPS 3/17/2017

2017/3/17	Click here for the online version of this IPS newsletter
	UN Facing Famines, Conflicts and Now U.S. Funding Cuts Lyndal Rowlands In the midst of responding to the worst humanitarian crisis since records began, the UN is now faced with potential funding cuts from its biggest donor, the United States. On Thursday, U.S. President Donald Trump released “America First: A Budget Blueprint to Make America Great Again,” the ... MORE > >
	Brazil and the UAE Determined to Explore New Bilateral Frontiers Doris Calderon The foreign minister of the United Arab Emirates (UAE), Sheikh Abdullah bin Zayed Al Nahyan, made his fifth visit to Brazil Thursday, Mar. 16, in search of new opportunities to exploit the enormous potential in relations between the two countries. In statements to reporters in the Itamaraty ... MORE > >
	“The Struggle Continues” for Human Right to Peace and Inclusion of Women Tharanga Yakupitiyage UN officials and activists gathered to discuss the essential relationships between sustainable peace and gender equality during a two week-long UN meeting, begining March 13. At a side event of the 61st session of the Commission of the Status of Women (CSW), panelists shed light on the ... MORE > >
	Travel Restrictions Cast Shadow on UN Women’s Meeting: Rights Groups Lyndal Rowlands Increasing travel restrictions have prevented delegates from attending this year’s UN Commission on the Status of Women (CSW), according to several women’s rights groups. The travel constraints go beyond U.S. President Donald Trump’s embattled travel ban on refugees and Muslim-majority ... MORE > >
	Caribbean Stakes Future on Climate-Smart Agriculture Desmond Brown As Caribbean Community (CARICOM) countries continue to build on the momentum of the 2015 Paris Climate Agreement and the 22nd Conference of the Parties (COP22) of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) in Marrakech in 2016, special emphasis is being placed on agriculture ... MORE > >
	UN FARMS to Create One Million Days of Work for Mideast Migrants Baher Kamal The problem is rather complex and often not recognised: in one of the major regions of both origin and destination for migrants and refugees -- the Near East and North of Africa, 10 per cent of rural communities is made up of forcibly displaced persons, while more than 25 per cent of the young ... MORE > >
	The Robots are Coming, your Job is at Risk Martin Khor Last year Uber started testing driver-less cars, with humans inside to make corrections in case something goes wrong. If the tests go well, Uber will presumably replace their present army of drivers with fleets of the new cars. Some personally owned cars can already do automatic parking. ... MORE > >
	Most Financial Inflows Not Developmental Anis Chowdhury and Jomo Kwame Sundaram Recent disturbing trends in international finance have particularly problematic implications, especially for developing countries. The recently released United Nations report, World Economic Situation and Prospects 2017 (WESP 2017) is the only recent report of a multilateral inter-governmental ... MORE > >
	Children Tapped to End Child Marriage in Indonesia Kanis Dursin The Indonesian government is tapping children as advocates against child marriage in this Southeast Asian country where over 340,000 girls get married before they reach 18 years old every year. Lenny N. Rosalin, Deputy Minister for Child Growth and Development of the Ministry of Women ... MORE > >
	New Evidence Confirms Risk That Mideast May Become Uninhabitable Baher Kamal New evidence is deepening scientific fears, advanced few years ago, that the Middle East and North Africa risk becoming uninhabitable in a few decades, as accessible fresh water has fallen by two-thirds over the past 40 years. This sharp water scarcity simply not only affects the already ... MORE > >
	Strengthening UN & Business Community Partnerships on SDGs Nikhil Seth and Paloma Durán Just this year, public and private stakeholders from around the globe marked the one-year anniversary of the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). The milestone served as an important reminder of the fifteen-year framework that is now in place. The SDGs were built around a ... MORE > >
	Khat in the Horn of Africa: A Scourge or Blessing? James Jeffrey Throughout a Sunday afternoon in the Ethiopian capital, Yemeni émigré men in their fifties and sixties arrive at a traditional Yemeni-styled mafraj room clutching bundles of green, leafy stalks: khat. As the hours pass they animatedly discuss economics, politics, history, life and more while ... MORE > >
	SPARKS Plugs Gap in Caribbean Climate Research Zadie Neufville On Nov. 30 last year, a new high-performance ‘Super Computer’ was installed at the University of the West Indies (UWI) during climate change week. Dubbed SPARKS - short for the Scientific Platform for Applied Research and Knowledge Sharing - the computer is already churning out the ‘big data’ ... MORE > >