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  • ICT key to poverty reduction – UN boss

    ICT key to poverty reduction – UN boss

    United Nations (UN) Secretary-General, Ban Ki-moon, says access to information and communications technology (ICT) is necessary to address the challenges of poverty and climate change.

    Ban stated this in his message to the ongoing 11th session of the Internet Governance Forum in Jalisco, Mexico, delivered by Lenni Montiel, Assistant Secretary-General for Economic Development.

    “I welcome the theme of this session: ‘Enabling Inclusive and Sustainable Growth’.

    “Indeed, the Internet and information and communication technologies can play an important enabling role in our efforts to fulfil the great promise of the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development.

    “They can deliver smart solutions to address climate change, hunger, poverty and other global challenges.

    “They are tools for providing digital and mobile health care and wider access to education to those in rural areas.

    “They can also help to empower women, generate efficiencies in industrial and agricultural production, and safeguard the environment,” he said.

    The Secretary-General said the 2016 gathering was the first since its 10-year renewal by the General Assembly, which reaffirmed the importance of the Internet Governance Forum multi-stakeholder platform for public policy dialogue.

    “Your efforts have made profound impacts as we strive together to create an equitable, human rights-based knowledge society,” Ban said.

    The UN chief urged the forum to keep working to ensure universal access to a more open information society.

    “Let us address the challenges we face by empowering people everywhere with these transformative technologies so that they can help build a better future for all,” he said.

  • Population of boys outnumber girls in the world – UN

    Population of boys outnumber girls in the world – UN

    A report by United Nations, released on Friday has revealed that girls are substantially outnumbered by boys in the world.

    UN, however, called on countries to invest in girls as the majority of the world’s 10-year-olds live in developing countries.

    This year’s ‘State of the World Population’ report made available by the United Nations Population Fund, UNPF, focused on the well-being of 10-year-old girls as indicators of development success or failure.

    “An estimated 125 million 10-year-olds are alive today and among them over 60 million are girls and 65 million are boys.

    “Over half of the global cohorts of 10-year-olds live in Asia and the Pacific, where there are 111 boys for 100 girls.

    “Almost 9 in 10 of the world’s 10-year-olds live in developing countries where girls face obstacles to equal education, healthcare and safety,’’ the report said.

    According to Regional Humanitarian Coordinator and Head of Fund, in UN’s Jordan office, Daniel Baker, failure to invest in girls is nothing less than planned poverty.

    According to her, “Unless we invest in girls, we are planning to have a poorer future,’’ Baker noted.

    The report also indicated that the world’s population grew 1.1 per cent in 2016 to 7.433 billion from 7.349 billion in 2015.

     

  • 2bn people suffer malnutrition at $3.5trn cost annually – UN

    2bn people suffer malnutrition at $3.5trn cost annually – UN

    The Director-General of the UN Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO), José da Silva, has said no fewer than two billion people representing one in three people on the planet suffer some form of malnutrition.

    Silva said this at a UN meeting on Thursday in Rome on ways to improve diets and ensure sustainable food systems, according to a press statement.

    The FAO chief said the suffering from malnutrition was impacting public health and economic development at an estimated cost of 3.5 trillion dollars per year.

    “No country is immune from malnutrition, either under-nutrition or overweight and obesity, whose “human, social, environmental and economic costs are overwhelming.

    “Nutrition must be considered a public issue, a State responsibility; consumers must be empowered to choose healthy food and diets through nutrition-sensitive social protection, nutrition education, and effective and accurate labeling and advertising,” he said.

    The statement said the two-day event, Jointly organised by FAO and the World Health Organisation (WHO) examined country-level challenges and successes to shed light on effective approaches to reshaping food production.

    The event also examined processing, marketing and retail systems to better tackle the problem of malnutrition, which blighted the lives of billions of individuals and can trap generations in a vicious cycle of poverty and malnutrition.

    Silva pledged FAO’s support to help countries adopt a food systems approach to address all states of the food chain, from production and processing to marketing and consumption.

    He said governments should encourage diversification of agriculture, improved post-harvest management, facilitate market access for poor family farmers and guarantee food-safety.

    The FAO director-general also announced that King Letsie III of Lesotho is FAO’s newest Special Ambassador for Nutrition.

    The statement quoted the WHO’s Director-General, Margaret Chan, represented by Francesco Branca, Director of Nutrition for Health and Development at WHO, as saying that nutrition is a global challenge.

    “Nutrition is a challenge for all countries. Whether it is stunting, wasting, anaemia or obesity, no country is exempted.

    “With the sustainable development goals we are committed to end all forms of malnutrition by the year 2030, in line with the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development,” Chan said.

    No fewer than two billion people on the planet suffer from health-affecting micronutrient deficiencies, and an estimated 150 million children under five years of age are stunted due to poor diets.

    Similarly, at least 1.9 billion people are now overweight, while 600 million of them are classified as obese.

    In April, the UN declared the start of an “International Decade on Nutrition” to follow through on commitments made at the second International Conference on Nutrition (ICN2) in 2014.

    The conference was also to meet the nutrition-related targets of the new Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs).