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En France, le passage de 2023 à la nouvelle année 2024 s’est bien déroulé en musique. Mais, qu’est-ce que les Français ont écouté de beau […]

L’article « Casanova » de Soolking dans le top 3 des chansons les plus écoutées sur Spotify France est apparu en premier sur .

EU-Chefdiplomat Josep Borrell sagte am Mittwoch, dass die EU und Russland nicht in der Lage sein werden, "gutnachbarliche Beziehungen" aufrechtzuerhalten, wenn Moskau "seine alte imperiale Sehnsucht" und "ein nationalistisches und leider gewalttätiges autoritäres Regime" beibehält.

Le 6 février prochain, la Commission européenne devrait présenter sa proposition d’objectif climatique pour 2040. Cette proposition de la Commission von der Leyen préparera le terrain pour une proposition législative formelle du nouvel exécutif, qui sera nommé après les européennes de juin.

Comme annoncé il y a quelques mois de ça, les opérations de production sont de nouveau en cours au complexe Sider d’El Hadjar à Annaba, […]

L’article Industrie : après un arrêt forcé, le complexe Sider d’El Hadjar reprend ses activités est apparu en premier sur .

Le gouvernement militaire guinéen a affirmé avoir déjoué une tentative de coup d'État grâce à la vigilance des forces de défense et de sécurité.

Gladys Mugabe (69) lives with her disabled son in Harare Gardens, a well-known recreational park in the Zimbabwean capital. Credit: Jeffrey Moyo/IPS

By Jeffrey Moyo
HARARE, Jan 4 2024 (IPS)

It is do or die on the streets of Zimbabwe as homeless families battle for survival solely depending on begging. Such is the life of 69-year-old Gladys Mugabe, who lives with her disabled son in Harare Gardens, a well-known recreational park in the Zimbabwean capital, Harare.

Over the decades, Zimbabwe’s economy has underperformed. It started in 2000 with the departure of white commercial farmers, and the country has experienced subsequent periods of hyperinflation, which the International Monetary Fund estimated reached 172% in July last year.

ISS Africa estimates that two out of five Zimbabweans were living in extreme poverty (living on less than US$3.20 per day) in 2019, and although this “poverty rate of nearly 45% is projected to decline to 20% by 2043, 4.7 million Zimbabweans will be living in extreme poverty on the current path.”

Many, like Mugabe, find themselves in their open-air dwellings, and it would seem that being homeless has become a perpetual crisis.

Trynos Munzira, a 43-year-old vendor in Harare, feels that the homeless have moved into the area, making it unsafe for regular people like him to visit the streets and parks.

“People of my age—the 43-year-olds, the 44s—we used to frequent recreational parks, wiling away time, but nowadays it’s impossible because the homeless are all over the parks, contaminating the parks, and there in the parks, they just relieve themselves anywhere,” Munzira told IPS.

Another Harare resident, 33-year-old Nonhlanhla Mandundu, said: “We have suffered because of homeless people who are picking left-over food containers from rubbish bins and leaving these on the streets; they have no toilets because all the toilets in towns are paid for, and so they relieve themselves all over town and urinate anywhere.”

Meanwhile, Zimbabwe’s countrywide housing shortage is estimated at 1,25 million units, translating to a national backlog of five million citizens, or over 40 percent of the total population.

As such, more than 1.2 million Zimbabweans remain on the government’s national housing waiting list.

But this list is not likely to include everybody, like 21-year-old David Paina, an orphan who fled from his foster parents due to abuse. He moved to the streets for safety.

“I started living here in Harare Gardens in 2012. What drove me here was the abuse I faced living with people who were not my parents. I am just crying for help from well-wishers so that I may do better in life,” Paina told IPS.

Yet authorities in the Zimbabwean regime often don’t address the situation of the homeless.

“I left the housing ministry. I am no longer allowed to talk about such issues,” July Moyo, the current Zimbabwean Minister of Local Government, told IPS.

As authorities like Moyo evade accountability, more than two decades after the land reform program here, homeless families have turned out to be a growing issue in every town and city.

Some teenage parents and their children also find themselves on the streets. Although the method of their relocation varies, they frequently experience eviction, move from door to door, find lodging with family and friends, and eventually end up living on the streets where they don’t need to pay rent.

Baba Ano (19) said he started his family on the streets of Harare not so long ago.

In cold and heat, these homeless families find life tough and uncertain, yet they have no choice except to soldier on.

“I came here in October last year. The rain has been pounding me all this time in the open here. Up to now, I am still living here. I am looking for help with accommodation. I have my son, who is disabled, staying with me,” Mugabe told IPS.

There are no official statistics from the country’s Ministry of Social Welfare documenting the number of homeless families.

Local authorities have acknowledged the homelessness crisis that has gripped many Zimbabweans but don’t seem to have any ready answers.

“It’s true we have a problem of homeless people in Harare—in Harare Gardens, Mabvuku Park, Budiriro, Mufakose, Mabelreign, and several others—all these parks have been taken over by homeless families. People are living in the streets and waking up every day, breaking up water pipes to access water, digging holes on the ground to trap water for bathing, and they bathe right there,” Denford Ngadziore, an opposition Citizens Coalition for Change Ward 16 councilor in Harare, told IPS.

Stanely Gama, the Harare City Council spokesperson, said, “We have homeless people for sure who live in parks like Harare Gardens, Mabelreign, and Africa Unity Square. We always do operations to remove them, but we don’t know where they come from, and each time they are removed, they always come back. This is a case to be better handled by the government’s Social Welfare Department.”

But lack of housing may not be the only factor that has rendered many Zimbabweans homeless, according to human rights activists.

Some may be ex-convicts who struggle to return to society.

“People who stay on the streets or in recreational parks are young children and adults—as young as 10. Some of the homeless adults living on the streets are ex-convicts who could not find acceptance with their relatives back home, forcing them to live on the streets and in recreational parks because they have nowhere to go,” said Peace Hungwe, founder of PeaceHub Zimbabwe, an organization that handles mental health cases in Harare.

While the authorities dither, Mugabe counts her losses.

“Where I used to stay, the plot of land was sold, and my belongings were burned in the house in which I used to live. Nothing was saved of all the things I worked to generate for the past 25 years. I am now just a nobody; the things you see gathered here are my only belongings in this world.”

IPS UN Bureau Report

 

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Credit: UNDP El Salvador

By María Noel Vaeza and Michelle Muschett
PANAMA CITY, Panama, Jan 4 2024 (IPS)

Violence against women and girls is one of the most widespread and persistent abuses of fundamental rights at a global level that, to a certain extent, derives from what we consider “normal” in our societies. In addition to firmly condemning that every three women in the world suffer from physical or sexual violence, we must question what we are normalizing as a society for this to happen.

Faced with this question, the Gender Social Norms Index published by the United Nations Development Program (UNDP) reveals that 90% of the population has at least one fundamental prejudice against women, which ranges from believing that men are better business leaders and that they have more rights than women to take a job, to the conviction that it is okay for a man to be violent with his partner.
Gender violence is not a phenomenon that arises out of nowhere and its prevention and eradication also require each of us to be aware of our own biases.

At UN Women and UNDP, we work to reduce gender discrimination and transform sexist attitudes by promoting social norms and positive gender roles. This requires empowering girls and women and working with the entire society to remove stereotypes that promote violent masculinities.

To achieve this, at UN Women we apply the behavioral sciences to involve men and commit them to the prevention of violence against women and girls with more effective awareness campaigns that adapt to the reality of each country in the region. Social norms that limit women’s rights also harm society, they hinder the expansion of human development and increase inequality gaps.

It is no coincidence that the difficulty in achieving progress in social gender norms occurs during a human development crisis. The global Human Development Index (HDI) lost value in 2020 for the first time in history; the same thing happened the following year.

In turn, for Latin America and the Caribbean, the UNDP estimated – based on its proposal for a Multidimensional Poverty Index with a focus on women, that 27.4% of women in 10 countries in the region live in conditions of multidimensional poverty.

The impact of poverty on women varies depending on their location in the territory: in the 16 countries analyzed, 19% of those who live in urban areas are multidimensional poor, while 58% live in rural areas.
The poorest women are those who face greater inequalities, participate less in the labor market, and experience greater time poverty caused by excessive unpaid care work.

These inequality gaps, in addition to being a barrier to human development, are a threat to democracy. Latin America and the Caribbean, the third most democratic region in the world and the only emerging region that aspires to – and still has the possibility of – achieving development through democracy and respect for human rights, will not achieve it if it continues to be the most violent and dangerous region for women.

The Gender Social Norms Index (GSNI) quantifies biases against women, capturing people’s attitudes on women’s roles along four key dimensions: political, educational, economic and physical integrity. The index, covering 85 percent of the global population, reveals that close to 9 out of 10 men and women hold fundamental biases against women. Credit: UNDP

The Latinobarometro 2023 report points out a clear democratic decline in Latin America: the percentage of its population that sees democracy as the preferred form of government fell from 60% in 2000 to 48% in 2023. Women remain underrepresented in decision-making decisions and are the most dissatisfied with democracy with 70%.

At the same time, according to the latest data reported by official organizations to the Gender Equality Observatory of Latin America and the Caribbean, in 2022, at least 4,050 women saw their lives cut short. 4,004 from Latin America and 46 from the Caribbean, from 26 countries in the region, were victims of femicide or feminicide.

This is a clear sign that despite the progress in several countries in the region with the approval of specific and comprehensive legal frameworks and the establishment of specialized prosecutors and protocols to respond to gender violence, the fundamental rights of women continue without translating into tangible achievements.

Without effective governance and solid institutions that guarantee women and girls the full enjoyment of their rights, including the right to live a life free of violence and discrimination, it will be impossible to regain confidence in democracy in the region.

In building more peaceful, just, and inclusive societies, universal access to justice is essential to eradicate gender violence and impunity. Girls, adolescents, and women who suffer violence do not find sufficient protection in the judicial system, and when they have the courage to report, they are often re-victimized until they give up their complaint and seek help and protection from the authorities. public institutions.

At the same time, these women have a triple workload: they face caretaker tasks, domestic work and their paid jobs, which are usually precarious, informal and low-income.

Furthermore, much of the impetus for the judicial process falls on the complainant, who must not only appear before the court on numerous occasions, but also bear the financial costs of transportation, the difficulties in organizing household responsibilities, and the fear of retaliation by the aggressor or members of their communities.

To this must be added both the possible lack of knowledge that many women may have about judicial or extrajudicial procedures, as well as the difficulties in accessing free services and/or ignorance of their existence. There is also little or no public information about specialized services.

For example, in the case of experiencing violence, there is usually distrust on the part of women regarding the speed and effectiveness of the judicial response to their situation and, they also often face practices of re-victimization such as being forced to tell the facts on several occasions. or have their testimony called into question.

From UNDP and UN Women, we call to build more just societies for women. All people and societies can advance through education, social mobilization, adoption of legal and political measures, advocacy for greater budgets to prevent violence, promotion of dialogue, and search for consensus to break down biases and open passage to more peaceful, secure, fair, inclusive, and egalitarian societies as a requirement to leave no one behind on the path towards sustainable development.

María Noel Vaeza is regional director of UN Women for the Americas and the Caribbean;
Michelle Muschett is regional director of UNDP for Latin America and the Caribbean.

IPS UN Bureau

 

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La wilaya d’Alger a pris la décision de fermer la route rapide à Zeralda dans les deux sens de circulation. Cette fermeture, effective dès ce […]

L’article Alger : fermeture temporaire d’un tronçon de l’autoroute de Zeralda durant 3 jours est apparu en premier sur .

Les compagnies aériennes poursuivent leurs stratégies de séduire davantage leurs voyageurs en leur proposant les meilleures offres. Le mois de janvier est aussi une occasion […]

L’article Vols vers l’Algérie à bas prix : ASL Airlines annonce une promotion pour janvier 2024 est apparu en premier sur .

Assistenzärzte in England haben am Mittwoch (3. Januar) mit einer sechstägigen Arbeitsniederlegung im Zusammenhang mit ihren Gehaltsforderungen begonnen. Dies ist der längste Streik in der 75-jährigen Geschichte des staatlichen Nationalen Gesundheitsdienstes (NHS).

Le chiffre d’affaires du géant bâlois a atteint 34,7 milliards de francs l’année dernière, soit une augmentation de 1,4% sur un an.

Le Paris Saint-Germain a remporté dans la soirée de ce mercredi 03 janvier 2024 son 12e trophée des Champions. Ceci, suite à sa victoire 2-0 sur Toulouse en finale au Parc des Princes.

A domicile pour l'édition du Trophée des Champions de cette année, le PSG a pris les devants contre Toulouse en ouvrant le score dès la 3e minute de jeu grâce à Kang-In Lee. Et Toulouse allait craquer une deuxième fois juste avant la mi-temps sur un but de la star française Kylian Mbappé (44e). Un but qui lui permet de devenir le meilleur buteur de l'histoire du PSG au Parc des Princes (111 buts).

De retour des vestiaires, le score ne changera pas au tableau d'affichage. Le PSG s'est contenté de gérer pour s'adjuger son douzième Trophée ds Champions et son premier trophée de la saison.

Le club de la capitale française lance parfaitement son année 2024.

J.S

L'homme d'affaires nigérian, Tony Elumelu a été reçu mercredi 03 janvier 2024 par le chef de l'Etat Patrice Talon.

Tony Elumelu chez Patrice Talon ce mercredi 03 janvier 2024. Pas de détails officiels sur la visite du richissime homme d'affaires nigérian chez le chef de l'Etat. « Rencontre avec le président Patrice Talon et sa charmante épouse, Claudine Talon en République du Bénin », a-t-il posté.
Tony Elumelu, responsable de la fondation qui porte son nom est un homme d'affaires très actif dans divers domaines. Cette fondation entend donner aux entrepreneurs africains, les moyens pour accomplir leurs projets. Pour son déplacement à Cotonou ce mercredi 03 janvier, il a visité Sèmè-City (la cité internationale de l'innovation et du savoir) en raison du partenariat avec sa fondation.
La fondation Tony Elumelu développe le programme annuel de la formation en gestion des entreprises et le mentorat. Selon les chiffres, 1,5 millions d'africains ont été touchés depuis 2015 à travers 57 pays du continent.
La fondation a lancé les candidatures le lundi 1er janvier pour le compte de cette nouvelle année, et les postulants selon nos sources, ont jusqu'au 1er mars pour se faire enregistrer.
La 1ère dame, Claudine Talon, et la fille de Elumelu ont pris part aux échanges avec les deux hommes.

Le chef de la diplomatie européenne Josep Borrell a dénoncé mercredi (3 janvier) les commentaires « incendiaires » de deux ministres israéliens qui ont appelé les Palestiniens à quitter Gaza.

Rund 57.000 Migranten sind im vergangenen Jahr illegal nach Spanien eingereist. Das sind fast doppelt so viele, als noch im Jahr 2022. Die Zahl der Migranten aus Westafrika auf den Kanarischen Inseln stieg auf ein Rekordhoch, wie offizielle Daten zeigten.

Polnische Landwirte werden ihre Blockade am Grenzübergang Medyka zur Ukraine am Donnerstag wieder aufnehmen, wie Protestführer der staatlichen Nachrichtenagentur PAP mitteilten. Ministerpräsident Donald Tusk versuchte, den Konflikt zu entschärfen.

Für das politische Brüssel war das vergangene Jahr von einigen Turbulenzen geprägt. Während die Verhaftungen von EU-Abgeordneten im Zuge des Katargate-Skandals einen Schatten auf die Glaubwürdigkeit des Parlaments warfen, wurde auch einige Meilensteine gelegt.

Die Europäische Kommission wird voraussichtlich am 6. Februar ihr vorgeschlagenes Klimaziel für 2040 vorlegen. Viele sehen darin das Vermächtnis der derzeitigen Kommission an die neue Besetzung der Brüsseler Exekutive, die nach den EU-Wahlen im Juni ernannt werden soll.

Russian hackers were inside Ukrainian telecoms giant Kyivstar's system from at least May last year in a cyberattack that should serve as a "big warning" to the West, Ukraine's cyber spy chief told Reuters.

Ein deutsches Amtsgericht hat ein Regelinsolvenzverfahren gegen den europäischen Marktführer für Schnurlostelefone, Gigaset AG, eröffnet. Damit stellt sich die Frage, wie - oder ob - das angeschlagene Unternehmen restrukturiert werden soll.