View previous stories
	Aid organisations call on governments to give a single day’s military spending to fight hunger by 250 Non-Government Agencies   A year on since the UN warned of “famines of biblical proportions”, rich donors have funded just 5 percent of the UN’s $7.8bn food security appeal for 2021.   More than 250 NGOs published an open letter today calling upon all governments to urgently increase aid to stop over 34 million people, from being pushed to the brink of starvation this year.   The $5.5bn additional funding recently called for by the WFP and FAO is equivalent to less than 26 hours of the $1.9 trillion that countries spend each year on the military. Yet, as more and more people go to bed hungry, conflict is increasing.   Oxfam International Executive Director, Gabriela Bucher said:   “The richest countries are slashing their food aid even as millions of people go hungry; this is an extraordinary political failure. They must urgently reverse these decisions. And we must confront the fundamental drivers of starvation – global hunger is not about lack of food, but a lack of equality.”   At the end of 2020 the UN estimated that 270 million people were either at high risk of, or already facing, acute levels of hunger.   Already 174 million people in 58 countries have reached that level and are at risk of dying from malnutrition or lack of food, and this figure is only likely to rise in the coming months if nothing is done immediately. Globally, the average food prices are now the highest in seven years.   Conflict is the biggest driver of global hunger, also exacerbated by climate change and the coronavirus pandemic. From Yemen to Afghanistan, South Sudan and Northern Nigeria, conflicts and violence are forcing millions to the brink of starvation.   Many in conflict zones have shared horrifying stories of hunger. Fayda from Lahj governorate in Yemen says: “When humanitarian workers came to my hut, they thought I had food because smoke was coming from my kitchen. But I was not cooking food for my children – instead I could only give them hot water and herbs, after which they went to sleep hungry. I thought about suicide several times but I did not do it because of my children.”   At the outset of the COVID-19 pandemic, the UN Secretary-General called for a global ceasefire to address the pandemic but too few leaders have sought to implement it. Global leaders must support durable and sustainable solutions to conflict, and open pathways for humanitarians to access those in conflict zones to save lives.   Amb. Ahmed Shehu, Regional Coordinator for the Civil Society Network of Lake Chad Basin said: “The situation here is really dire. Seventy percent of people in this region are farmers but they can’t access their land because of violence, so they can’t produce food. These farmers have been providing food for thousands for years – now they have become beggars themselves. Food production is lost, so jobs are lost, so income is lost, so people cannot buy the food. Then, we as aid workers cannot safely even get to people to help them. Some of our members risked the journey to reach starving communities and were abducted – we don’t know where they are. This has a huge impact on those of us desperate to help.”   Among the key signatories to the letter : Oxfam, CARE International, the Danish Refugee Council, Save the Children, the International Rescue Committee, World Vision, the Islamic Relief, and Plan International   http://www.oxfam.org/en/press-releases/aid-organisations-call-governments-give-single-days-military-spending-fight-hunger   * In the first quarter of 2021, donors have provided just 6.1% of the total $36 billion requested in the UN humanitarian appeals for the year. In the food security sector, donors met only 5.3% or $415 million of the total $7.8bn requested. (figures as of April 7, 2021)   The military spending figures are based on 2019 report by the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute which estimated global military spending at $1.9tn.   According to the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO), world food prices stood at their highest level in seven years.   The study by Development Initiatives of the impact of COVID-19 on aid levels, found substantial declines in aid commitments in 2020 for Canada, Germany, the UK and the US, and a small decline for EU institutions. No data are provided on France, Italy and Japan.   The latest figures on global hunger levels are as of March 2021 from FAO-WPF’s Hunger Hotspots report. In December the UN’s Global Humanitarian Overview warned the number of acutely food insecure people could rise to 270 million by the end of 2020. FAO & WFP echoed this estimate in their call to action to avert famine.   http://www.wfp.org/publications/hunger-hotspots-fao-wfp-early-warnings-acute-food-insecurity-august-november-2021 http://www.wfp.org/news/wfp-says-41-million-people-now-imminent-risk-famine-without-urgent-funding-and-immediate http://www.ipcinfo.org/ipcinfo-website/resources/alerts-archive/en/ Visit the related web page
	Corporate Accountability for Human Rights Abuses: A Guide for Victims & NGOs on Recourse Mechanisms by FIDH: International Federation for Human Rights   June 2021   For the 10-year anniversary of the adoption of UN Guiding Principles on Business and Human Rights, FIDH is pleased to announce the publication of an updated version of its long standing resource “Corporate Accountability for Human Rights Abuses: A Guide for Victims and NGOs on Recourse Mechanisms.” The guide has been revamped in the form of an interactive website to become more accessible and widely used.   With this guide, FIDH seeks to provide a practical tool for victims and their representatives, NGOs, and other civil society groups, including unions, social movements, and activists, to seek justice and obtain reparation for victims of human rights abuses involving multinational corporations.   The guide explores the different avenues available to victims, including judicial and non-judicial recourse mechanisms. It focuses primarily on violations committed by or with the involvement of transnational corporations, their subsidiaries, or their commercial partners in third countries where they operate.   The new guide is published against the backdrop of a rapidly-evolving business and human rights field. In the decade following the adoption of United Nations Guiding Principles on Business and Human Rights – a major, yet insufficient, step towards greater accountability for corporate-related violations – several important developments have influenced the avenues through which affected individuals and their representatives can seek remedy for corporate-related harm.   These include important rulings regarding the duty of care doctrine in the United Kingdom and the Netherlands or Alien Tort Statute cases in the United States, the development of new mandatory due diligence standards in the European Union, but also the growing number of climate litigation cases which often draw on human rights, illustrated by the successful climate case brought against Shell in the Netherlands last month. These developments are detailed in the guide, which also features a new section on climate litigation.   “This new edition of the guide prepared by FIDH comes at the most opportune time: while it identifies a range of solutions to fix accountability gaps in corporate violations of human rights, it also serves to identify the sources of impunity, thus guiding governments in improving the remedial framework which victims may rely on,” said Olivier De Schutter, UN Special Rapporteur on Extreme Poverty and Human Rights, who has actively contributed to the guide’s elaboration and update since its inception in 2010.   He continued, “The guide is also unique in its ambition. It presents a complete synthesis of the various possibilities open to victims of human rights violations by transnational corporations and assesses their effectiveness. But the guide is also more than that. It bears testimony to how the international human rights law of is transforming, from imposing obligations only on States – still the primary duty-bearers – to gradually taking into account that non-State actors – particularly corporations operating across borders, on which State control is sometimes weak.”   Eleven years after this guide was first published, the situation remains dire despite growing efforts to tackle the problem. Access to justice for victims of corporate abuse remains largely an illusion and, all too often, impunity stubbornly prevails.   On every continent, victims of human rights violations and serious environmental damage still struggle to obtain justice and reparations.   The guide is comprised of five sections, each examining a different avenue for redress, including intergovernmental mechanisms, legal options, mediation mechanisms such as the OECD National Contact Points, complaint mechanisms established by financial institutions, and holding companies to account based on their voluntary commitments.   To date, however, none of these existing mechanisms fully provide effective redress. Access to effective remedy must be at the heart of normative developments at international, regional, and national levels, including the European Union’s legislative proposal on mandatory human rights and environmental due diligence, expected this fall.   http://corporateaccountability.fidh.org/ http://www.fidh.org/en/issues/globalisation-human-rights/corporate-accountability-for-human-rights-abuses http://seeyouincourt.fidh.org/ http://www.fidh.org/en/issues/globalisation-human-rights/human-rights-and-environmental-rights/a-safe-clean-healthy-and-sustainable-environment-is-integral-to-the http://healthyenvironmentisaright.org/ Visit the related web page
	View more stories