Save the Children is warning that thousands of lives could be lost to starvation and cholera, especially children from the poorest and most vulnerable households.

About 200,000 more children in Haiti have been pushed into crisis-levels of hunger this year, with almost half the country’s population not knowing where their next meal will come from, Save the Children said.

The number of people experiencing crisis-levels of hunger or worse in Haiti has risen  to 4.7 million — including 2.4 million children — up from 4.3 million earlier this year.

For the first time ever, more than 19,000 people, including about 9,600 children, are facing catastrophic levels of hunger.

Haiti is also battling its worst cholera outbreak since 2010, with more than 6,800 suspected and confirmed cases reported since 2 October. Children are most at risk from the deadly disease, with those 19 and under making up more than 41% of confirmed cases.  Children who are already facing severe acute malnutrition are especially vulnerable to the spread of cholera and are at least three times more likely to die if they contract the deadly disease.

Chantal-Sylvie Imbeault, Save the Children’s Country Director in Haiti said:

“The situation in Haiti is rapidly deteriorating. Millions of children are going to bed hungry every night, and for the first time ever, we’re seeing children face famine-like conditions. Many families are being pushed to the brink and using credit to purchase everyday food items due to a dire combination of economic collapse, political turmoil, and gang violence that is blockading fuel and life-saving food. The country is now on the verge of collapse, and we fear the worst for millions of children.”

Haiti: 200,000 more children pushed into hunger since March, as nearly half the population goes hungry – Haiti | ReliefWeb

 Since Russia invaded Ukraine, some eight million Ukrainian refugees have registered across Europe. The EU has opened its borders and granted displaced Ukrainian citizens temporary protection. With 1.4 million Ukrainian refugees, Poland has taken the largest number. A total of 1,019,789 people entered Germany for reasons related to the war in Ukraine.

Organizations working for refugees have been raising the alarm, accusing European countries of unequal treatment towards Ukrainian refugees on the one hand and refugees from other crisis regions on the other. Ukrainian refugees are being given priority by a two-tier refugee policy.

The EU opened its borders with the  Temporary Protection Directive that allowed Ukrainian refugees to enter the European Union without a visa and without formally requesting asylum. In Germany, refugees fleeing the war in Ukraine don’t need a visa for the first 90 days if they enter before November 30, 2022. After the first 90 days, they need to register and apply for a temporary residence permit. According to Germany’s Office for Migration and Refugees (BAMF), this provision runs until February 28, 2023.

Depending on the host nation, the social benefits that Ukrainian refugees can access vary. In Germany, Ukrainian refugees have been incorporated into the welfare syste since June 1, where they may receive public health insuranc, permission to seek gainful employment, unemployment benefits, child benefits, financial assistance for students of higher education and retirement benefits. Ukrainian refugees are permitted to travel to Germany by train free of charge, and Germany’s national railway company DB even offers numerous concessions for local transport. 

In the early days of the war in Ukraine, refugees who were not considered “white” reported discrimination to various media outlets. In March, the human rights organization Amnesty International observed the situation on the ground and found that refugees fleeing Ukraine who didn’t hold Ukrainian passports, and especially People of Color, were experiencing discrimination both in Ukraine as well as in host countries. In Ukraine, the report continued, students from Pakistan, the Middle East and Africa were hindered from boarding trains in order to leave the country.

In contrast, refugees fleeing crises in other countries such as Syria, Afghanistan, Eritrea and Iraq receive less. 

This is in accordance with the so-called Asylum Seekers’ Benefits Act. They can only hope for a residence permit after months or even years of proceedings. Then, after being recognized as refugees, they, too, have access to the welfare system.

Fact check: Does the EU prioritize Ukrainian refugees? – DW – 11/12/2022

 Described by the United Nations’ desertification agency as one of the greatest threats to human society, it’s estimated that over 40% of the world’s land is already degraded. Around 1.9 billion hectares of land, more than twice the size of the United States, and roughly 1.5 billion people globally are affected in some way by desertification, according to U.N. estimates.

In 2015, at Cop21 in Paris governments agreed to pursue efforts to limit the global average temperature rise to 1.5C. Now, it is irrelevant. The world’s largest food companies, whose products have been linked to the widespread destruction of rainforests, have failed to come up with an adequate strategy to align their business practices with the 1.5C climate target.

The leading producers of soya beans, palm oil, cocoa and cattle published their roadmap to align with 1.5C earlier this week, promising to develop and publish commodity-specific, time-bound targets on stopping deforestation which will be backed by science and checked each year. The companies include the Brazilian beef firm JBS, the American agricultural firm Cargill and the Singaporean food processing firm Wilmar International.

To comply with 1.5C, all land use conversion must stop by 2030 with significant progress made by the middle of the decade, according to scientists.

Nico Muzi, managing director of the environmental group Madre Brava, said the plan announced at Cop27 did amount to some progress but said the commitment fell short of what was needed, especially in the meat sector. 

“There are two flagrant omissions: a cutoff date to stop soy-driven deforestation now, and the exclusion of conversion by cattle and soy expansion of the largest savanna region in South America, Brazil’s Cerrado,” she said.

Cristiane Mazzetti, a senior forest campaigner at Greenpeace Brazil, said some of the companies had previously promised to rid deforestation from their supply chains by 2020 and had failed.

“We cannot afford any more greenwashing or reckless behaviour from these companies who profit from the destruction of ecosystems and come up with more delays and inadequate plans to halt and reverse the destruction they drive that will continue to fry the planet.” 

André Vasconcelos, of Global Canopy, said the companies needed to go further for the plan to be credible.

“Tackling deforestation is integral to staying under 1.5C,” he said. “Traders need to go further, faster. The roadmap needs a proactive stance towards avoiding future deforestation and conversion, including a concrete commitment not to invest in further infrastructural development in key deforestation frontiers. There needs to be a commitment to a common cutoff date across commodities that includes all types of ecosystems.”

Food firms’ plans for 1.5C climate target fall short, say campaigners | Climate crisis | The Guardian

People from working-class families earn several thousands of pounds a year less on average for doing the same jobs as their more privileged peers, according to a landmark study of the class pay gap.

Professionals from working-class backgrounds earn £6,718 less on average, while women and most ethnic minorities face a double disadvantage, according to the Social Mobility Foundation (SMF), which conducted the research. Working-class professional women earn £9,450 less than men, while working-class Bangladeshi professionals earn £10,432 less than their white counterparts in the same jobs.

Working-class chief executives earn £16,749 less than their peers. Finance managers are paid £11,427 less, and accountants and solicitors have a gap of more than £8,000. Police officers, firefighters and army officers earn £5,229 less than their middle or upper-class peers. Academics face a £5,807 penalty, with £5,123 for IT workers. Teachers and social workers also earn about £2,000 less.

The 13% class pay gap affects hundreds of thousands of people and means that tomorrow marks the day when working-class professionals will effectively start working for free.

Revealed: working class people paid thousands less than middle class peers despite doing same jobs | Class issues | The Guardian

 Enough protein to feed the entire world could be produced on an area of land smaller than London if we replace animal farming with factories producing micro-organisms, the Reboot Food manifesto argues.  Three-quarters of the world’s farmland could be rewilded instead.

The cornerstone idea is swapping animal agriculture, where possible, for a technology called precision fermentation, which would involve brewing yeasts and bacteria to make protein. It could create biologically identical animal proteins using genetically engineered micro-organisms fermented in tanks. These factories would be powered by solar, wind and nuclear. They say protein from precision fermentation is up to 40,900 times more land efficient than beef. Campaigners point out that the technology produces 99% of insulin and 80% of rennet worldwide.

The climate author Mark Lynas said: “The mainstream environmental movement’s agricultural policies are making things worse not better. Organic and ‘regenerative’ farming methods encourage agricultural sprawl and have become smokescreens for the livestock industry. It’s time for sensible environmentalists to unite behind food production techniques that use less land, not more.”

George Monbiot wrote about this potential solution in his recent book Regenesis. 

He said: “By rebooting our food systems with precision fermentation we can phase out animal agriculture while greatly increasing the amount of protein available for human consumption.”

Replace animal farms with micro-organism tanks, say campaigners | Food | The Guardian

Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) is warning that a free trade agreement between India and the UK could have a devastating impact on the global supply of generic drugs after its draft intellectual property chapter was leaked.

Médecins Sans Frontières is calling for the UK Government to withdraw the document completely and for India to make sure that barriers to affordable medicines are not written into the trade pact.

Posted on the bilaterals.org website, the draft text indicates that the UK is pushing for harder intellectual property measures as part of the UK–India free trade agreement (FTA).

The proposals would cause “serious harm” to India’s generic pharmaceutical industry. The leaked chapter contains 12 Articles that go beyond the requirements of the World Trade Organization’s Agreement on Trade-Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights (TRIPS Agreement). MSF is concerned that these so-called “TRIPS-plus” provisions could undermine India’s public health safeguards by requiring the country to change its national intellectual property and drug approval laws to introduce more monopolies on medicines.

Article E.2.2 of the leaked chapter stipulates that each party “shall” allow a new medical use of a known medicine to be patentable and shall not require a patent applicant to prove enhanced efficacy for a new medical use or a new form of a known substance or composition as the precondition for patenting. These measures would reverse India’s current patent law, which has ensured that old and repurposed drugs are not eligible for renewed monopoly protection and made it harder for drug companies to obtain additional patents on trivial changes to known medicines.

India is a major supplier of many of the affordable generic medicines that MSF and many countries use to treat people with diseases such as tuberculosis, malaria, and HIV/AIDS. 

“The excessive measures included in the draft intellectual property chapter of the UK–India FTA could jeopardise this supply”, says Leena Menghaney, South Asia Head of MSF’s Access Campaign. “Introducing more and more intellectual property hoops for generic manufacturers in India to jump through will have a chilling effect on the country’s ability to supply millions of people around the world with affordable, lifesaving generic medicines.”

 For example, in October, 2023, the patent on the therapeutic compounds in delamanid, one of the most expensive treatments for drug-resistant tuberculosis, is set to expire, but measures in the draft FTA would delay the availability of more affordable generic delamanid by several years. 

“The Indian Government must reject these harmful intellectual property provisions and demonstrate its commitment to retaining robust and sustainable production of lifesaving generic medicines at affordable prices. Given the disastrous consequences this leaked intellectual property chapter could have on the global supply of generic medicines, the UK Government should withdraw it completely. India should stay vigilant and not allow barriers to affordable medicines to be written into FTA negotiations”, Menghaney says.

Andrew Hill, Senior Visiting Research Fellow at University of Liverpool Institute of Translational Medicine, UK, who researches access to medicines, commented: “The provisions set out in this leaked document would have extremely serious consequences for the NHS and global health…the naive idea that what is good for the pharmaceutical industry is good for patients and public health must be vigorously challenged”.

UK–India trade deal could “jeopardise” generic medicines – The Lancet

  636 fossil fuel lobbyists have been registered at COP27 talks, up 25% from last year’s COP26. Unlike fossil fuel lobbyists, activists harmed disproportionately by the climate crisis “have effectively been shut out of the talks by high costs, visa challenges, and repressive actions by the hosting country.”

There are more fossil fuel lobbyists registered at COP27 than any single national delegation with the exception of the United Arab Emirates.  There are more fossil fuel lobbyists at COP27 than officials from Puerto Rico, Myanmar, Haiti, the Philippines, Mozambique, The Bahamas, Bangladesh, Pakistan, Thailand, and Nepal, which the GermanWatch Global Climate Risk Index deems the 10 countries most impacted by the worsening global climate emergency.

“The extraordinary presence of this industry’s lobbyists at these talks is therefore a twisted joke at the expense of both people and planet…”

“Tobacco lobbyists wouldn’t be welcome at health conferences, arms dealers can’t promote their trade at peace conventions…COP27 looks set to be a festival of fossil fuels and their polluting friends, buoyed by recent bumper profits…” 

“The climate crisis is upon us, yet world governments continue to protect the interests of a few greedy corporations instead of the people who are most affected,” said the Kick Polluters Out campaign. “Nowhere is that more clear than at COP27, where big polluters like fossil fuel lobbyists have once again converged to greenwash their polluting image and block the climate action we so desperately need.”

‘A Twisted Joke’: 636 Fossil Fuel Lobbyists Swarm COP27 Climate Talks (commondreams.org)