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Un concierge blessé par un voleur était accusé par son assurance d'avoir une part de responsabilité. Le Tribunal fédéral lui a donné raison.

Das Europäische Parlament akzeptiert keine Kürzungen des Haushalts der Kohäsionspolitik und erwartet, dass die Europäische Kommission und ihre neue Präsidentin auf ihrer Seite stehen, so der Europaabgeordnete Younous Omarjee. Younous Omarjee ist ein französischer Abgeordneter und Vorsitzender des Ausschusses für...

(B2) Incident troublant à la limite frontalière avec l’Ossétie du Sud en Géorgie jeudi (24 octobre). Des observateurs européens ont été arrêtés par des ‘militaires’ sud-ossètes

Une patrouille d’observateurs de l’UE près du village de Chorchana en août (crédit : EUMM Georgia)

Interception par des agents armés sud-ossètes

« Dans l’après-midi du 24 octobre, une patrouille de la mission d’observation de l’Union européenne (EUMM) a été brièvement tenue par des agents de sécurité armés d’Ossétie du Sud, alors qu’elle effectuait une patrouille dans la zone Chorchana-Tsnelisi » indique ainsi un communiqué de la mission partagé avec B2.

Une nervosité accrue

Cet incident est le signe d’une certaine nervosité. On avait déjà pu remarquer durant l’été ces tensions avec la mise en place d’une frontière physique plus dure sur certains points de la limite ‘frontalière’ (lire : Regain de tensions entre Ossétie du Sud et Géorgie. La ‘borderisation’ en cause), justement dans la même zone de Chorchana.

Préoccupation européenne

Le chef de la mission de l’UE Erik Hoedt a exprimé sa « profonde préoccupation » face à cette situation « où des agents de sécurité armés empêchent les observateurs de EUMM de mener leurs activités quotidiennes conformément à leur mandat […] dans une zone considérée comme se trouvant sur le territoire administré par Tbilissi, conformément à l’interprétation traditionnelle de la frontière administrative dans cette zone ».

Ligne d’urgence activée

Après ces incidents, EUMM a considérablement accru ses patrouilles pour soutenir la stabilité dans la région de Chorchana-Tsnelisi. La ligne directe d’urgence avec Tskhinvali (siège du gouvernement local d’Ossétie du Sud) a été activée. L’incident fera l’objet de discussions lors de la réunion technique du Mécanisme de prévention et d’intervention en cas d’incident (IPRM), ce vendredi à Ergneti.

(Nicolas Gros-Verheyde)

NB : EUMM Georgia a été mise en place en 2008 en un temps record, selon un accord Medvedev-Sarkozy, afin d’être un intermédiaire neutre d’observation entre les forces des provinces sécessionnistes pro-russes de Sud-Ossétie et d’Abkhazie, et la Géorgie.

Cet article Des observateurs européens en Géorgie arrêtés par des Sud-Ossètes est apparu en premier sur B2 Bruxelles2.

The Libya Football Federation reappoints Tunisian Faouzi Benzarti as national coach on a six-month contract.

Les employés du géant suisse de la grande distribution connaîtront une meilleure situation salariale l'année prochaine.

More than 237 million people are suffering from chronic under nutrition in Africa of which 32.6 million are in Sub Saharan Africa. Credit: Busani Bafana/IPS

By Busani Bafana
ACCRA, Ghana/BULAWAYO, Zimbabwe, Oct 25 2019 (IPS)

There is evident correlation between countries with high levels of children under five years of age who are stunted or wasted and the existence of political instability and/or frequent exposure to natural calamities, experts say.

But current food systems in Africa are not addressing nutrition because of the combination of poor investment in the agriculture value chain, inadequate policies and lack of accountability in addressing malnutrition.

In fact, many governments still focus on providing calories to their populations, not quality diets, Jan Low, Principal Scientist at the International Potato Center and 2016 World Food Prize Laureate, told IPS, warning that hungry populations, especially in urban areas, can become effective political forces for change.

According to the Food and Agriculture Organisation of the United Nations (FAO), a healthy diet meets the nutritional needs of individuals if it provides sufficient, safe, nutritious and diverse foods for an active life and reduced disease risk. Diverse foods should include fruits, vegetables, legumes, seeds, nuts, whole grains and foods low in fats, sugar and salt. However foods that constitute a healthy diet are neither affordable nor available for many people.

• More than 237 million people are suffering from chronic under nutrition in Africa of which 32.6 million are in sub-Saharan Africa, says the FAO. With more people either over eating or not eating food with the necessary nutrients to be healthy and productive.

“Most poor people still get over 60 percent of their calories from staple foods. Two ways in which the quality of the foods can be improved is through fortifying them by breeding in key micronutrients into the crops themselves (biofortification) and adding micronutrients to the staple when it is being transformed industrially (fortification),” said Low.

Accounting for nutrition

According to Low, the Continental Nutrition Accountability Scorecard is an excellent attempt to hold governments in Africa more accountable for progress on nutrition.  

The scorecard is an initiative of the African Union and the African Development Bank and helps governments assess progress towards reaching their nutrition targets and to identify the right partnerships within countries across multiple sectors.

Backstopped by the growing evidence base that investing in good nutrition has positive outcomes on economic development, increasingly governments are developing multi-sectoral nutrition policies. Low told IPS that the scoreboard captures includes indicators concerning access to clean water and good sanitation, for example.  

“Unfortunately, the accountability scorecard only calls for monitoring the adoption of legislation for fortification, not for the investment in development and release of biofortified crops.”

“However, the great challenge is to move from words on paper to action in the ground,” Low said.

Moving commitment from paper to reality would also require governments to make knowledge about nutrition a basic life skill and to embed nutrition education in primary and secondary school education and as part of ante-natal clinic services for pregnant women. 

The international community should also support governments to take an innovative and tough stand in tackling unhealthy processed foods and changing food habits in rapidly urbanising centres through establishing international standards of behaviour in advertising and providing guidance on how to tax and regulate private operators promoting such products. 

Positive public policies on nutrition are key

Sonja Vermeulen, Director of Programmes for the CGIAR System Organisation, told IPS that only four African countries; Benin, Namibia, Nigeria and South Africa so far are known to have national dietary guidelines.

“Most governments focus on quantity of food available (national breadbasket, maize, rice), not quality; and there is little pro-active sustained public policy work to raise nutritional standards, outside of aid programmes,” said Vermeulen.

She lamented that despite studies showing that most diets of central African countries are among the healthiest in the world, many people in low-paid urban jobs are consuming poor quality, low diversity foods such fizzy drinks and white sweetened buns for lunch.

Derek Headey, a senior research fellow at the International Food Policy Research Institute, said poor diets, largely defined in terms of excess consumption of unhealthy foods (like red meat and foods rich in sugar, sodium or fat) as well under-consumption of protective foods (like fruits, vegetables, whole grains, legumes and nuts), are now the leading risk factor in the global burden of disease. 

“That’s not yet true in Africa, but it is coming because consumption of unhealthy foods is rising rapidly in the continent, especially in urban areas,” Headey told IPS. “Obesity rates are already high in many West African countries, and are now rising rapidly elsewhere, even in places where incomes are still relatively low, like Tanzania. Part of that is related to reduced energy expenditure, but of course it is also driven by poor diets.”

Heady said the consequences of neglecting nutrition are dangerous because poor diets and obesity impose significant economic costs on healthcare systems and on the productivity of the workforce.

The Global Panel on agriculture and food systems for nutrition says malnutrition is costly to African economies, accounting for between 3 and 16 percent of GDP annually. Globally, the impact of malnutrition on the economy is estimated to be as high as $3, 5 billion a year or $500 per individual as a result of lost economic growth and lost investment in human capital, according to the Global Panel.

Reducing food loss and waste could positively impact on global food security and nutrition, said the U.N., arguing that reducing on farm losses can help farmer improve their diets through increased food availability and gain more income from selling part of their produce.

“Achieving Zero Hunger is not only about addressing hunger, but also nourishing people while nurturing the planet,” the FAO said.

Overhauling the food system

World Food Prize Laureate Lawrence Haddad has said the world has a huge challenge of moving from global calls for a more nutritious and sustainable system to meaningful and measurable action.

“There has to be some kind of desire or motivation to make food systems more nutrition supportive, how do you create that desire, that demand and motivation? The narrative has to change dramatically from ending hunger only to nourishing populations,” said Haddad, noting that five of the top 10 risk factors for the burden of disease relate to diet and what we eat.

Haddad is also the Executive Director of Global Alliance for Improved Nutrition (GAIN), a Swiss-based foundation launched by the U.N. in 2002 to tackle malnutrition. He told a panel discussion at the recent Alliance for a Green Revolution in Africa Forum in Ghana that data is also a critical element in making food system nutrition sensitive but data on food preparation, storage distribution, retailing, marketing and processing is not accessible in place.

He said documenting where government and businesses made commitments and kept them is important for accountability in the promoting nutrition.

“We really need to be able to adjust to new opportunities and existing and new shocks which could be conflict, climate, could be changing political regimes and could be a while range of things and the key to the ability to adapt in a dynamic way is resources and capacity,” said Haddad.

Though the future for new food systems in Africa can become a reality with commitment. “Unlike many places, Africa can build new food systems, you do not have to try to reform entrenched food systems that are very difficult to change and have vested interests and that have been vesting for hundreds of years. It is not easy but there is a chance to build new food systems.”

Related Articles

• Ghana’s Grains and Groundnuts Face Increasing Contamination Amid Increasing Temperatures
• How to ‘Fix the Business of Food’ and Save the Planet

The post Nutrition – the Best Investment for a Developing Africa appeared first on Inter Press Service.

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A Pakistani child receives a dose of the oral polio vaccine (OPV). Credit: Ashfaq Yusufzai/IPS

By External Source
UNITED NATIONS, Oct 25 2019 (IPS)

In a “historic achievement for humanity”, two of three wild poliovirus strains have been eliminated worldwide, the World Health Organization (WHO) announced on Thursday, following the conclusion by a group of experts that WPV3, type three of the disease, has been eradicated completely.

The deadly viral disease is “very close” to disappearing altogether, with the number of affected children having dropped by 99 per cent since 1988, the UN Children’s Fund (UNICEF) announced on World Polio Day, marked each 24 October, positioning the world closer than ever to its total eradication.

 Afghanistan and Pakistan are the two remaining countries with reported cases, with Nigeria, a third polio-endemic country, having gone three years without a reported infection, placing it on track to be certified polio-free by 2020

The number of recorded cases has fallen from 350,000 in 1988, to less than 40 today, and from a presence in 125 countries, to just two.

Afghanistan and Pakistan are the two remaining countries with reported cases, with Nigeria, a third polio-endemic country, having gone three years without a reported infection, placing it on track to be certified polio-free by 2020.

“Following the eradication of smallpox and wild poliovirus type two, this news represents a historic achievement for humanity”, WHO said, with only type one of the virus remaining.

 

18 million would have been paralyzed

All three strains are symptomatically identical, WHO explains, causing irreversible paralysis, and in cases when muscles become immobilized, the disease leads to death. Early on, other signs may include fever, fatigue, and stiffness in the neck and limbs, though most infected people (90 per cent) have very mild, or no symptoms at all.

Thanks to disease control efforts, including the Global Polio Eradication Initiative (GPEI), comprised of WHO, UNICEF and other health partners, 18 million people are currently walking, who otherwise would have been paralyzed by the virus.

In addition, milestone polio eradication work has saved the world more than $27 billion in health costs in the last 30 years, with potential to generate $14 billion in cumulative cost savings by 2050, when compared to costs incurred in controlling the virus indefinitely.

Beyond Thursday’s milestone, eradication “will send a strong message” regarding the power of vaccines at a time when public trust has been undermined, WHO has said.

As the world faces a spread of misinformation over vaccine safety, eliminating polio will provide “irrefutable evidence” that they work.

UNICEF has stressed that seeing polio disappear means every child, in every household must continue to be vaccinated. The agency has managed to distribute over one billion doses annually, but thousands of children are still missing out.

Vulnerable children live in remote areas or in conflict-affected communities, making access a challenge. Marginalized and underserved communities, already lacking basic resources like water and health care, sometimes only received care through targeted polio vaccination campaigns.

UNICEF continues to lead efforts to increase acceptance and demand for the vaccine through community dialogue, trust-building and evidence-based communication on the effectiveness of the immunization.

 

This story was originally published by UN News

The post World Closer Than Ever to Seeing Polio Disappear for Good appeared first on Inter Press Service.

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