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	2.3 billion people were food insecure in 2021 by UN News, FAO, WFP, agencies   July 2022   A new United Nations report provides fresh evidence that the world is moving further away from its goal of ending hunger, food insecurity and malnutrition in all its forms.   The 2022 edition of The State of Food Security and Nutrition in the World (SOFI) report presents updates on the food security and nutrition situation around the world, including the estimates of the cost and affordability of a healthy diet. The report also looks at ways in which governments can repurpose their current support to agriculture to reduce the cost of healthy diets.   The report is jointly published by the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO), the International Fund for Agricultural Development (IFAD), the United Nations Children's Fund (UNICEF), the UN World Food Programme (WFP) and the World Health Organization (WHO).   The numbers paint a sobering picture:   2.3 billion people in the world (29.3 percent) were moderately or severely food insecure in 2021 – 350 million more compared to before the outbreak of the COVID‑19 pandemic. Nearly 924 million people (11.7 percent of the global population) faced food insecurity at severe levels, an increase of 207 million in two years.   Almost 3.1 billion people could not afford a healthy diet in 2020, up 112 million from 2019, reflecting the effects of inflation in consumer food prices stemming from the economic impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic and the measures put in place to contain it.   An estimated 45 million children under the age of five were suffering from wasting, the deadliest form of malnutrition, which increases children’s risk of death by up to 12 times. 149 million children under the age of five had stunted growth and development due to a chronic lack of essential nutrients in their diets.   Progress is being made on exclusive breastfeeding, with nearly 44 percent of infants under six months of age being exclusively breastfed worldwide in 2020. This is still short of the 50 percent target by 2030. Of great concern, two in three children are not fed the minimum diverse diet they need to grow and develop to their full potential.   As this report is being published, the ongoing war in Ukraine, involving two of the biggest global producers of staple cereals, oilseeds and fertilizer, is disrupting international supply chains and pushing up the prices of grain, fertilizer, energy, as well as ready-to-use therapeutic food for children with severe malnutrition.   This comes as supply chains are already being adversely affected by increasingly frequent extreme climate events, especially in low-income countries, and has potentially sobering implications for global food security and nutrition.   “This report repeatedly highlights the intensification of these major drivers of food insecurity and malnutrition: conflict, climate extremes and economic shocks, combined with growing inequalities,” the heads of the five UN agencies write in this year's Foreword. “The issue at stake is not whether adversities will continue to occur or not, but how we must take bolder action to build resilience against future shocks.”   UN Deputy Secretary-General Amina Mohammed, said that the figures in the report were a "shocking report card of our efforts to end hunger - we can, and must, do better."   She underlined that billions of people have limited or rationed their food intake, or started eating food that is less nutritious, because they just can't afford alternatives.   "These are people whose lives, livelihoods and prospects for a fruitful and dignified life are being crippled, with their futures eroded and potential and aspirations held back", she said.   WFP Executive Director David Beasley: “There is a real danger these numbers will climb even higher in the months ahead. The global price spikes in food, fuel and fertilizers that we are seeing as a result of the crisis in Ukraine threaten to push countries around the world into famine. The result will be global destabilization, starvation, and mass migration on an unprecedented scale. We have to act today to avert this looming catastrophe.”   “A staggering 50 million people in 45 countries are just one step from famine," said Mr. Beasley.   UNICEF Executive Director Catherine Russell: “The unprecedented scale of the malnutrition crisis demands an unprecedented response. We must double our efforts to ensure that the most vulnerable children have access to nutritious, safe, and affordable diets -- and services for the early prevention, detection and treatment of malnutrition. With so many children’s lives and futures at stake, this is the time to step up our ambition for child nutrition – and we have no time to waste.”   IFAD President Gilbert F. Houngbo: “These are depressing figures for humanity. We continue to move away from our goal of ending hunger by 2030. The ripple effects of the global food crisis will most likely worsen the outcome again next year. We need a more intense approach to end hunger.”   WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus: “Every year, 11 million people die due to unhealthy diets. Rising food prices mean this will only get worse. WHO works to support countries’ efforts to improve food systems through taxing unhealthy foods and subsidising healthy options, protecting children from harmful marketing, and ensuring clear nutrition labels. We must work together to achieve the 2030 global nutrition targets, to fight hunger and malnutrition, and to ensure that food is a source of health for all.”   The number of people unable to afford a healthy diet around the world rose by 112 million, to almost 3.1 billion in 2020, the report says.   People not being able to afford the diet they need for a healthy life means “hundreds of millions are at risk of falling into a vicious circle of malnutrition, ill health and poverty,” said Saskia de Pee, Chief of Analytics and Science for Food and Nutrition at WFP.   “In the longer term this also leads to reduced ‘human capital’ development, poorly nourishing the next generation.” She added: “For many it’s really about how much money do you have available to spend and what can you buy with that.   “Bridging the affordability gap and mitigating its immediate consequences for food security and nutrition requires all hands on deck. Working together with governments, partners, private sector, civil society and academia across the humanitarian-development nexus, we need to strengthen agriculture, social protection, health and education systems.”   The “nutritional needs of adolescent girls, of women, especially if they're pregnant or breastfeeding,” are paramount, said de Pee. “Their diets need to have more minerals and vitamins, such as iron, zinc, vitamin B12 in them.”   “People’s diet costs really go up – if food already accounts for 60 or 70 percent of their expenditure, when food becomes 30-40 percent more expensive, people will start to cut back. The quality of that diet will then really not support all your needs to live a healthy, productive life.”   Access to healthy diets is set to be further restricted as income losses due to COVID-19 are yet to be factored in while inflation continues to affect consumer food prices, placing basic foods out of reach for millions.   Governments must do “anything that can help stabilize prices”, said de Pee. “You want to support the population in the country so that their purchasing power doesn't drop aggressively – this means upscaling social assistance programmes".   As the economic impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic and the war in Ukraine drive up inflation and reduce people’s purchasing power, it is more important than ever for governments to support agriculture in ways that reduces the cost of a healthy diet.   Joyce Njoro, IFAD Lead Technical Specialist, Nutrition said:   "The SOFI report underlines the stark realities of the state of food and nutrition security in the world today. More people are hungry. More people are food insecure. Billions of people cannot afford a healthy diet. While there has been some progress on stunting and exclusive breastfeeding, anaemia among women of reproductive age has increased. In short, the world is far off-track to achieving SDG 2 on zero hunger and eradicating all forms of malnutrition.   At the same time, inequality is widening, with developing countries, countries in fragile situations, rural areas, and women being disproportionately affected by food and nutrition insecurity. While COVID-19 is a major driver, climate change is also compounding these issues. The war in Ukraine and its impacts across the globe will inevitably worsen the 2022 outlook unless drastic measures are taken now.   While the report’s suggestion to repurpose agricultural policies is interesting, low-income countries have fewer options to do so without some form of trade-off. These are also the countries most affected by hunger and malnutrition, as well as the impacts of climate change and conflict. Since there is no “one size fits all” solution, a combination of policy repurposing options should be considered for low- and middle-income countries.   A concerted effort is needed to protect the gains achieved in previous years and reinforce the resilience of the poorest and most vulnerable people in the world".   In reaction to FAO’s “State of Food Insecurity and Nutrition in the World 2022” report, Hanna Saarinen, Oxfam Food Policy Lead said:   “It is deeply concerning that global hunger has been spiralling since 2019 and is now at such devastating levels around the world. This is happening not because of a shortage of food but rather as a consequence of a broken food system further undermined by conflicts, the effects of the COVID pandemic and worsening climate change.   “Despite this being a global food crisis, seeing millions of people going hungry today, food billionaires' wealth has reached stratospheric levels – increasing by $382bn just over the last two years.   “Our food system has for years perpetuated inequality, impoverished small-scale farmers and pushed millions of vulnerable people into hunger while wreaking havoc on the climate.   “Longstanding political failure to address how we feed all the people in the world has made our food system susceptible to fragility and failure".   “We will not break the vicious cycle of hunger and food inflation without addressing the deep inequalities fuelling them. We must fundamentally reimagine a new, more just and sustainable global food system – one that serves the planet and millions of people, rather than a handful of big agribusinesses".   “To save lives now, rich donor governments must honour their promised funding pledges. For example, to date, less than 20% of the $3.8bn UN appeal for the Central Sahel and the Lake Chad Basin has been funded. The East Africa region, which is witnessing its worst drought in recent history and where as many as 28 million people face extreme hunger, and thousands are already starving, has received less than 15% of its nearly $7bn UN appeal to date.   “Governments must stop making empty promises or creating more bureaucratic processes. Instead, they need to invest in small-scale food producers. They need to repurpose our global agriculture and food system to better serve the health of people, our planet, and our economies.   “Developed countries must also free up more resources in order to invest in diverse, local sustainable food production that helps countries to become less dependent on food imports; and support smallholder food producers, especially women.”   http://news.un.org/en/story/2022/07/1122032 http://www.wfp.org/news/un-report-global-hunger-numbers-rose-many-828-million-2021 http://www.wfp.org/stories/sofi-report-record-hunger-rise-un-study-says http://www.fao.org/documents/card/en/c/cc0639en http://data.unicef.org/resources/sofi-2022/ http://www.ifad.org/en/web/latest/-/the-latest-food-security-and-nutrition-report-paints-a-grim-picture.-three-ifad-experts-react-to-the-shocking-figures http://www.oxfam.org/en/press-releases/oxfam-reaction-fao-sofi-report-2022-broken-food-system-perpetuating-hunger http://gnrtfn.org/peoples-monitoring/ Visit the related web page
	More than $2 trillion worth of suspicious transactions flowing through the global financial system by ICIJ, Transparency International, FIDH, agencies International Consortium of Investigative Journalists, agencies   Sep. 2022   New US company owner database ‘taking way too long’ to implement, experts warn. (International Consortium of Investigative Journalists)   A key U.S. reform designed to halt anonymous companies hiding illicit activities and funds remains stalled in the U.S. Treasury Department two years after the FinCEN Files, a global money laundering probe led by the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists, spurred calls for strengthened safeguards.   Experts say the U.S. Treasury Department is badly behind schedule in implementing the law mandating the government to collect ownership data from companies operating in the United States. Transparency advocates who cheered the new law now worry that the delays are so severe that the all-important registry could remain unfinished by the next presidential election, and that a new administration might have less interest in implementing and defending the law.   “There is a lot of anxiety that the Biden administration will take the whole four years to finalize the rules setting up the beneficial ownership registry,” Elise Bean, an anti-corruption expert and former chief counsel of the U.S. Senate Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations, said. “It is hard to understand what is taking so long.”   At the heart of the delays, experts told ICIJ, are the Treasury’s attempts to finalize rules that must be in place before activating an ownership registry, a database that is to be made available to law enforcement agents and bank compliance officers.   “FinCEN is working expeditiously to promulgate rules to implement the statute,” FinCEN spokesperson Jayna Desai told ICIJ, noting that the office does not yet have a date set for the rules to be published.   In September of 2020, ICIJ, BuzzFeed News and more than 100 media outlets published the FinCEN Files, exposing more than $2 trillion worth of suspicious transactions flowing through the global financial system that U.S.-based banks that did little to stop. The project was named after the Treasury Department’s financial crime fighting office, the Financial Crimes Enforcement Network, or FinCEN.   Experts said the creation of a registry of company owners was key to curbing the sort of financial secrecy exposed by the FinCEN Files and other ICIJ investigations. Forcing company owners to identify themselves would help stem flows of dirty money through the U.S. financial system, which advocates have consistently flagged as notoriously opaque and vulnerable to money laundering.   Citing public outcry following the FinCEN Files’ release, U.S. lawmakers advanced a landmark anti-money-laundering bill called the Anti-Money Laundering Act of 2020, which included the Corporate Transparency Act. The law tasked FinCEN with setting up the new database and writing the detailed regulations that would undergird the system.   Those rules were supposed to be finished months ago, but so far, experts say, FinCEN has only proposed one of the three sets of rules needed to launch the ownership database. And even this first set — governing how the data will be collected and who must report company ownership — hasn’t been finalized, experts told ICIJ.   Desai, the FinCEN spokesperson, told ICIJ that FinCEN submitted the final draft of the first rule in late August to the Office of Management and Budget, which must review the rule before it becomes final.   FinCEN’s acting director Himamauli Das told a congressional committee earlier this year that staffing shortages had contributed to delays in creating the database.   “As you are aware, we are missing deadlines,” Das told members of the U.S. House Committee on Financial Services in April. “To be blunt, we will likely continue to do so because our budget situation has required us to make significant trade-offs among competing priorities.”   The beneficial ownership database is likely to have complex interactions with various state authorities and nailing down its numerous elements in rulemaking is no easy task for a short-staffed office.   “This is all taking way too long, much longer than expected, and FinCEN underfunding slowed the process,” Gary Kalman, the director of Transparency International’s U.S. office, told ICIJ. “FinCEN got a bump in funding this year, but more is needed. Still, they should be able to complete this rulemaking process.”   Kalman said that he has seen indications that FinCEN’s overseers within the Treasury Department have taken notice of the delays and may begin focusing more on helping FinCEN speed progress on the database.   He and other transparency advocates have criticized the law for restricting access to the database’s ownership information to certain government officials and bank officers — and not the general public. Kalman said that in countries with public ownership databases, like the U.K., researchers and journalists have been able to give governments crucial feedback on problems in the information. With access restricted to select users, the U.S. will be relying on a much more narrow group for feedback. It is “absolutely crucial” that the Treasury Department nails the setup, Kalman said.   http://www.icij.org/investigations/fincen-files/new-us-company-owner-database-taking-way-too-long-to-implement-experts-warn/ http://www.icij.org/investigations/fincen-files/ http://www.icij.org/ http://www.transparency.org/en/campaigns/global-standards-fatf-beneficial-ownership-transparency http://www.transparency.org/en/news/how-public-beneficial-ownership-registers-advance-anti-corruption   Sep. 2022   Justices is Everybody’s Business. (FIDH)   Over 100 organisations, including International Federation for Human Rights (FIDH) are joining forces to call for a stronger directive on corporate sustainability due diligence and recall that Justices is Everybody’s Business!   For Maddalena Neglia, head of FIDH’s globalisation and human rights desk: "In the face of multiple human rights and environmental violations linked to corporate activities we must act!"   "Calling for a strong EU directive is only part of our fight to ensure that human rights are respected in the context of business activities and that people affected have an effective access to justice", she explains.   "The dominant business model of ‘profit is king’ is killing our present and our future" said Claudia Saller, director at the European Coalition for Corporate Justice. "When people come together as a counterweight, we can tip the scales of power. Otherwise EU leaders only hear what big corporate lobbies tell them”, she added.   The Justice is Everybody’s Business campaign is kicked off on 6 September 2022 with a public action in Brussels where a three metres tall "scales of justice" shows the current imbalances between corporate profits on one side and human rights, environmental and climate justice on the other side – and that public pressure can tip the scales.   “Our campaign begins at the heart of European decision-making, but it doesn’t stop here. The EU should take up its responsibility and set future worldwide standards for more corporate accountability, responsible business conduct and ensure better and free access to justice including for trade unions", explains Isabelle Schomann, Confederal Secretary at the European Trade Union Confederation (ETUC). "We will support all actions across Europe that will end human rights, including trade union rights violations."   An incomplete legal response   Even though countries like France and Germany are leading the way with national human rights due diligence laws, they do not sufficiently protect both people and planet from the impact of European business operations.   In February 2022, the European Commission unveiled its proposal for an EU law, requiring large companies to conduct checks on their investments and supply chains to identify, prevent and address human rights and environmental risks and impacts within and outside the EU. However, the proposal contains dangerous loopholes that will fail to guarantee justice.   The current proposal will fail to prevent harm beyond the first tier of the supply chain – a proposal unfit to effectively prevent human rights abuses that often occur at the beginning of the supply chains, several steps and sub-contractors away from the European companies. It also fails to sufficiently empower those suffering from bad business practices to get justice in courts within the EU.   Instead of striking down serious legal hurdles for those trying to file lawsuits against companies, the current proposal still makes it easy for corporations to evade responsibility.   The draft law also fails to oblige companies to reduce their greenhouse gas emissions and to hold them liable for failing to do so, despite their massive impact on the climate crisis.   "After a summer of droughts, heatwaves and fires, we are here to tell EU leaders that no amount of greenwashing can hide the new everyday reality of the climate crisis", declared Jill McArdle, corporate accountability campaigner at Friends of the Earth Europe. "Companies are major polluters, and as such, must be obliged to reduce their emissions. But if they fail to do so, people must be able to take them to court."   A poll conducted in nine EU countries in 2021 indicated that over 80% of European citizens want strong laws to hold companies liablefor overseas human rights and environmental violations. In a 2021 petition, more than half a million people and 700 civil society organisations from around the world expressed support for such an EU law.   http://www.fidh.org/en/international-advocacy/european-union/european-union-must-put-human-rights-before-profits http://www.the-case.eu/ http://www.business-humanrights.org/en/   Sep. 2022   Towards a global fiscal architecture using a human rights lens - Report by Independent Expert on Foreign Debt and Human Rights, Ms. Attiya Waris.   In this present report, the Independent Expert focuses on exploring more effective and fair mechanisms to use public resources to guarantee human rights for all by tackling the uncontrolled growth of the wealth of a few, which is deepening inequalities. For all Governments, losses in taxable revenue through illicit financial flows reduce the available pool of resources essential for investing in social policies and public services.   Governments cannot tackle those issues alone, making international cooperation and assistance a cornerstone of the present report. A multilateral, inclusive and democratic fiscal architecture is crucial to addressing global tax avoidance and evasion.   In the present report, the Independent Expert addresses the issue of international tax governance through the creation and development of a global United Nations-led tax convention and a global tax body using a human rights lens.   http://www.ohchr.org/en/documents/thematic-reports/a77169-towards-global-fiscal-architecture-using-human-rights-lens-report http://www.icrict.com/press-release/2022/9/16/icrict-declaration-an-emergency-tax-plan-to-confront-the-inflation-crisis-m87sa   http://inequality.org/great-divide/tax-the-rich-global-wealth-report/ http://ips-dc.org/wp-content/uploads/2022/01/Report-Taxing-Extreme-Wealth-What-It-Would-Raise-What-It-Could-Pay-For.pdf http://ips-dc.org/release-billionaire-enabler-states/ http://www.icij.org/investigations/russia-archive/why-western-governments-havent-gotten-serious-about-tackling-offshore-corruption-yet/ http://taxjustice.net/ http://wir2022.wid.world/ http://www.propublica.org/series/the-secret-irs-files http://www.project-syndicate.org/commentary/western-sanctions-russia-oligarch-dark-money-by-daron-acemoglu-2022-03/ http://gfintegrity.org/press-release/report-finds-trade-misinvoicing-continues-to-be-a-massive-and-persistent-problem/ Visit the related web page
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