Killer gangs are inches from ruling all of Haiti
The collapse of Haiti's government in April last year was a challenge but also an opportunity. An interim government called the Transitional Presidential Council was installed. A UN-brokered Kenyan-led security mission arrived soon after. But a year later things are worse than ever. 'We are approaching a point of no return,' María Isabel Salvador, the UN's top official in Haiti, told its Security Council at a meeting on April 21st.
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The Guardian
3 hours ago
- The Guardian
UN expert urges criminalizing fossil fuel disinformation, banning lobbying
A leading UN expert is calling for criminal penalties against those peddling disinformation about the climate crisis and a total ban on fossil fuel industry lobbying and advertising, as part of a radical shake-up to safeguard human rights and curtail planetary catastrophe. Elisa Morgera, the UN special rapporteur on human rights and climate change who presents her damning new report to the general assembly in Geneva on Monday, argues that the US, UK, Canada, Australia and other wealthy fossil fuel nations are legally obliged under international law to fully phase out oil, gas and coal by 2030 – and compensate communities for harms caused. Fracking, oil sands and gas flaring should be banned, as should fossil fuel exploration, subsidies, investments and false tech solutions that will lock in future generations to polluting and increasingly costly oil, gas and coal. 'Despite overwhelming evidence of the interlinked, intergenerational, severe and widespread human rights impacts of the fossil fuel life cycle … these countries have and are still accruing enormous profits from fossil fuels, and are still not taking decisive action,' said Morgera, professor of global environmental law at the University of Strathclyde. 'These countries are responsible for not having prevented the widespread human rights harm arising from climate change and other planetary crises we are facing – biodiversity loss, plastic pollution and economic inequalities – caused by fossil fuels extraction, use and waste.' Island nations, Indigenous and other vulnerable communities – who have benefited least from fossil fuels – now face the worst and compounding harms caused by the climate crisis and other environmental harms linked to their extraction, transport and use for energy, fuel, plastics and synthetic fertilizers. The report points to a mountain of evidence on the severe, far-reaching and cumulative damage caused by the fossil fuel industry – oil, gas, coal, fertilizers and plastics – on almost every human right including the rights to life, self-determination, health, food, water, housing, education, information and livelihoods. Morgera makes the case for the 'defossilization' of our entire economies – in other words the eradication of fossil fuels from all sectors including politics, finance, food, media, tech and knowledge. The transition to clean energy is not enough to tackle the widespread and mounting harms caused by the fossil fuels, she argues. In order to comply with existing international human rights law, states are obliged to inform their citizens about the widespread harms caused by fossil fuels and that phasing out oil, gas and coal is the most effective way to fight the climate crisis. People also have the right to know how the industry – and its allies – has for 60 years systematically obstructed access to this knowledge and meaningful climate action by peddling disinformation and misinformation, attacks on climate scientists and activists, and by capturing democratic decision-making spaces including the annual UN climate negotiations. 'The fossil fuel playbook has undermined the protection of all human rights that are negatively impacted by climate change for over six decades,' said Morgera in the imperative of defossilizing our economies report. States must ban fossil fuel ads and lobbying, criminalize greenwashing (misinformation and misrepresentation) by the fossil fuel industry, media and advertising firms, and enforce harsh penalties for attacks on climate advocates who are facing a rise in malicious lawsuits, online harassment and physical violence. Communities across the world are facing growing threats from sea level rise, desertification, drought, melting glaciers, extreme heat, floods, and other climate-related impacts. This is on top of the deadly air pollution, water scarcity, biodiversity loss, and forced displacement of Indigenous and rural peoples associated with every stage of the fossil fuel lifecycle. Meanwhile, fossil fuel and petrochemical companies have benefited from huge profits, taxpayer subsidies, tax avoidance schemes and undue protection under international investment law – without ever reducing energy poverty and economic inequalities. In 2023, oil and gas companies globally earned $2.4tn, while coal companies pocketed $2.5tn, according to the report. Removing fossil fuel subsidies, estimated to have topped $1.4tn for OECD members and 48 other countries in 2023, would alone reduce emissions by up to 10% by 2030. Redirecting these subsidies would help wealthy fossil fuel-producing states fulfill their legal obligations to aid developing countries to phase out fossil fuels – and provide financial and other remedies for the widespread human rights violations and environmental damage they have caused – and continue to cause. The compensation could also be funded by enforcing penalties for damages caused by fossil fuel companies, and cracking down on tax evasion and avoidance by the industry, as well as introducing wealth and windfall taxes. States could – and should – require the industry to finance climate adaptation, mitigation and loss and damage through climate superfunds or other mechanisms that are directly accessible to affected communities. Land unjustly appropriated for fossil fuel operations should be cleaned up, remediated and returned to Indigenous communities, people of African descent and peasants, if they want it back, or they should be fairly compensated, Morgera argues. The report lays out the human rights case for decisive and transformative political action to limit the pain and suffering from the climate crisis. The recommendations offer a glimpse at a world in which the basic rights of all people are prioritized above the profits and benefits enjoyed by a few, but will probably be dismissed by some as radical and untenable. 'Paradoxically what may seem radical or unrealistic – a transition to a renewable energy-based economy – is now cheaper and safer for our economics and a healthier option for our societies,' Morgera told the Guardian. 'The transition can also lead to significant savings of taxpayers' money that is currently going into responding to climate change impacts, saving health costs, and also recouping lost tax revenue from fossil fuel companies. This could be the single most impactful health contribution we could ever make. The transition seems radical and unrealistic because fossil fuel companies have been so good at making it seem so.'
The Independent
5 hours ago
- The Independent
Nations are meeting to drum up trillions to combat poverty — but the US isn't going
Many of the world's nations are gathering starting Monday in Spain for a high-level conference to tackle the growing gap between rich and poor nations and try to drum up trillions of dollars needed to close it. The United States, previously a major contributor, pulled its participation, so finding funding will be tough. The four-day Financing for Development meeting in the southern city of Seville is taking place as many countries face escalating debt burdens, declining investments, decreasing international aid and increasing trade barriers. The United Nations and Spain, the conference co-hosts, believe it is an opportunity to reverse the downward spiral, close the staggering $4 trillion annual financing gap to promote development, bring millions of people out of poverty and help achieve the U.N.'s wide-ranging and badly lagging Sustainable Development Goals for 2030. U.N. Deputy Secretary-General Amina Mohammed said Wednesday that despite 'the headwinds' and high geopolitical tensions, there is hope the world can address one of the most important global challenges — ensuring all people have access to food, health care, education and water. 'This conference is an appeal to action,' Spain's U.N. Ambassador Hector Gomez Hernandez said, 'and we have the extraordinary opportunity to send a very strong message to defend the international community's commitment to multilateralism.' High-level delegations, including more than 70 world leaders, are expected in Seville, Mohammed said, along with several thousand others from international financial institutions, development banks, philanthropic organizations, the private sector and civil society. At its last preparatory meeting on June 17, the United States rejected the 38-page outcome document that had been negotiated for months by the U.N.'s 193 member nations and announced its withdrawal from the process and from the Seville conference. The rest of the countries then approved the document by consensus and sent it to Seville, where it is expected to be adopted by conference participants without changes. It will be known as the Seville Commitment — or Compromiso de Sevilla in Spanish. The document says the leaders and high-level representatives have decided to launch 'an ambitious package of reforms and actions to close the financing gap with urgency,' saying it is now estimated at $4 trillion a year. Among the proposals and actions, it calls for minimum tax revenue of 15% of a country's gross domestic product to increase government resources, a tripling of lending by multilateral development banks, and scaling up private financing by providing incentives for investing in critical areas like infrastructure. It also calls for a number of reforms to help countries deal with rising debt. U.N. trade chief Rebeca Grynspan told a news conference Friday that 'development is going backward' and the global debt crisis has worsened. Last year, 3.3 billion people were living in countries that pay more interest on their debts than they spend on health or education — and the number will increase to 3.4 billion people this year, she said. And developing countries will pay $947 billion to service debts this year, up from $847 billion last year. She spoke at a press conference where an expert group on debt appointed by U.N. Secretary-General Antonio Guterres presented 11 recommendations that they say can resolve the debt crisis, empower borrowing countries and create a fairer system. While the U.S. objected to many actions in the outcome document, American diplomat Jonathan Shrier told the June 17 meeting: 'Our commitment to international cooperation and long-term economic development remains steadfast.' He said, however, that the text 'crosses many of our red lines,' including interfering with the governance of international financial institutions, tripling the annual lending capacity of multilateral development banks and proposals envisioning a role for the U.N. in the global debt architecture. Shrier also objected to proposals on trade, tax and innovation that are not in line with U.S. policy, as well as language on a U.N. framework convention on international tax cooperation. The United States was the world's largest single funder of foreign aid. The Trump administration has dismantled its main aid agency, the U.S. Agency for International Development, while drastically slashing foreign assistance funding, calling it wasteful and contrary to the Republican president's agenda. Other Western donors also have cut back international aid. The U.N.'s Mohammed said the U.S. withdrawal from the conference was 'unfortunate,' stressing that 'many of the recommendations you see cannot be pursued without a continuous engagement with the U.S.' After Seville, "we will engage again with the U.S. and hope that we can make the case that they be part of the success of pulling millions of people out of poverty.'
North Wales Chronicle
8 hours ago
- North Wales Chronicle
British Israeli soldier killed in Gaza, reports say
He was named locally as 20-year-old Sergeant Yisrael Natan Rosenfeld from the city of Ra'anana. The Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office said it is 'looking into reports that an IDF soldier who died in combat in Gaza is a British national'. The IDF soldier, of the 601st Combat Engineering Battalion, was killed by an explosive device on Sunday, the Times of Israel reported. The paper said Mr Rosenfeld moved to Israel from London with his family 11 years ago. Israel has been operating in Gaza since the Hamas militant group's October 7 2023 attack on Israel. More than 860 Israeli soldiers have been killed since the war began, including more than 400 during the fighting in Gaza. US-led ceasefire efforts have repeatedly stalled. The Israeli offensive has devastated Gaza and killed more than 56,000 people, according to Gaza's Health Ministry, a branch of the Hamas government. The death toll is by far the highest in any round of Israeli-Palestinian fighting.
