UN
Step up efforts, invest in breastfeeding support policies, progs: UNICEF, WHO
United Nations Children's Fund – UNICEF and the World Health Organization (WHO) have called on governments, donors, civil society, and the private sector to step up efforts to prioritize investing in breastfeeding support policies and programmes, especially in fragile and food insecure contexts.
“As global crises continue to threaten the health and nutrition of millions of babies and children, the vital importance of breastfeeding as the best possible start in life is more critical than ever,” said UNICEF Executive Director Catherine Russell and WHO Director-General Dr Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus in a joint statement on the occasion of World Breastfeeding Week.
World Breastfeeding Week is an annual celebration which is held every year from August 1 to 7 across the world.
This World Breastfeeding Week, under its theme “Step up for breastfeeding: Educate and Support”, UNICEF and WHO are calling on governments to allocate increased resources to protect, promote, and support breastfeeding policies and programmes, especially for the most vulnerable families living in emergency settings.
During emergencies, including those in Afghanistan, Yemen, Ukraine, the Horn of Africa, and the Sahel, breastfeeding guarantees a safe, nutritious and accessible food source for babies and young children.
It offers a powerful line of defense against disease and all forms of child malnutrition, including wasting, according to the UN agencies.
“Breastfeeding also acts as a baby’s first vaccine, protecting them from common childhood illnesses,” reads the joint statement.
Read: Bangladesh ranks 'first in the world' for breastfeeding
Yet the emotional distress, physical exhaustion, lack of space and privacy, and poor sanitation experienced by mothers in emergency settings mean that many babies are missing out on the benefits of breastfeeding to help them survive.
“Fewer than half of all newborn babies are breastfed in the first hour of life, leaving them more vulnerable to disease and death. And only 44 per cent of infants are exclusively breastfed in the first six months of life, short of the World Health Assembly target of 50 per cent by 2025,” according to the joint statement.
Protecting, promoting, and supporting breastfeeding is more important than ever, not just for protecting our planet as the ultimate natural, sustainable, first food system, but also for the survival, growth, and development of millions of infants.
“That is why UNICEF and WHO are calling on governments, donors, civil society, and the private sector to step up efforts to equip health and nutrition workers in facilities and communities with the skills they need to provide quality counselling and practical support to mothers to successfully breastfeed.”
Read: Children want govt investment in education, health, protection: UNICEF
UNICEF and WHO called for protecting caregivers and health care workers from the unethical marketing influence of the formula industry by fully adopting and implementing the International Code of Marketing of Breast Milk Substitutes, including in humanitarian settings.
They called for implement family-friendly policies that provide mothers with the time, space, and support they need to breastfeed.
90% of Earth's topsoil at risk by 2050: FAO
A full 90 percent of the Earth's topsoil is likely to be at risk by 2050, according to the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) of the UN.
To protect soil globally and help farmers, the UN agency Wednesday said the equivalent of one soccer pitch of earth erodes every five seconds.
It also takes around a thousand years to create just a few centimetres of topsoil and to help restore lands. So, the UN agency is calling for more action by countries and partners who signed up to the Global Soil Partnership (GSP) over the last decade.
The five key actions that the FAO called for tasked civilians, governments and international institutions with taking greater action to monitor and care for the soil.
Also read: Most vulnerable now paying more for less food: FAO
One achievement of the GSP has been the partnership with farmers and local governments to enhance soil health.
Programmes were initiated to improve the amount of organic matter in the soil by adopting practices such as using cover crops, crop rotation and agroforestry, the FAO said.
Costa Rica and Mexico signed up to these pilot schemes and trained farmers in the use of best practices which included using cover crops that prevent erosion, crop rotation and tree planting.
Also, the GSP expanded data collection in the form of digital soil mapping.
This technology informs policymakers of relevant soil conditions and empowers them to make informed decisions on managing soil degradation.
Campaigns, such as International Year of Soils and World Soil Day were designed to raise youth awareness of soils and increase participation in preventing further degradation.
Also read: FAO keen to work for modernisation of agriculture sector
While the work of the GSP represents the efforts of non-state partners to promote sustainable soil practices, state policymakers are necessary actors in implementing a sustainable soil policy, the FAO said.
UN agency IFAD reaches record level of support for world’s rural poor
The UN’s International Fund for Agricultural Development (IFAD) doubled down on its commitment to the world’s poorest rural communities in 2021, increasing support to reach 128 million small-scale farmers and vulnerable people, according to its annual report released from Rome on Thursday.
The record level of support for world’s rural poor came amid rising challenges posed by climate change, the COVID-19 pandemic and global economic shocks.
In the IFAD Annual Report 2021, IFAD detailed how its efforts successfully targeted those who needed it most: data released during 2021 revealed that 49 per cent of direct beneficiaries were women, while 22 per cent were youth.
“We know that economic empowerment of women is the key to greater empowerment for all, while more than 600 million youth in rural areas globally need our help,” said Gilbert F. Houngbo, President of IFAD.
“These investments will ultimately help deliver greater food security, poverty reduction and economic resilience to their broader communities – that is, the people who produce a third of the world’s food but are too often left behind,” he said.
Also read: Alvaro Lario to lead response to global food crisis as new IFAD President
The annual report recaps the activities of the UN specialized agency and international finance institution, which mobilizes funds, technical expertise and other resources to combat poverty and hunger among the 3.4 billion people who live in rural areas of the developing world.
With global hunger on the rise and climate change impacting agricultural output, IFAD’s role in ensuring global food security has never been more crucial.
IFAD’s 177 Member States have recognised this by committing a record US$1.55 billion to the agency’s 2022-2024 core resources with the aim of doubling its impact by 2030.
Some of those funds went last year to expanding IFAD’s COVID-19 response initiative – called the Rural Poor Stimulus Facility (RPSF) – to help people survive pandemic-caused financial losses while also protecting the global food supply.
As traditional markets were upended due to COVID-19-related supply chain and transportation disruption, the RPSF stepped in to provide small-scale farmers with seeds, fertilizer, access to liquidity and information.
Support for digital services like e-marketing and e-money were also increased. Twenty million people have received support in 59 hard-hit countries through the RPSF so far in the past two years.
The Annual Report 2021 also highlights IFAD’s efforts to expand its resource mobilisation by enlisting the participation of private sector partners.
Also read: IFAD Member States to appoint next President July 7
This builds on IFAD’s A++ credit rating, attained in 2020, which has allowed the agency to pursue co-financing through partnerships and thereby complement its core three-year “replenishment” resources.
In June 2021, IFAD also launched a Sustainable Development Finance Framework to guide engagement with institutional impact investors who focus on sustainable finance.
Other milestones in 2021 for IFAD included continuing advocacy for rural people and for a transformation of food systems at major international events including the UN Climate Change Conference (COP26) and the UN Food Systems Summit.
The initiatives laid out in 2021 are now serving as building blocks for IFAD’s stepped-up response to the crisis in 2022 prompted by war in Ukraine and the ensuing hike in food, fertilizer, energy and transport costs.
IFAD’s dedicated response to the impacts of the war, called the Crisis Response Initiative, focuses on 22 priority countries in urgent need, and work is now under way in the six in the most critical state – Afghanistan, Ethiopia, Haiti, Mozambique, Somalia and Yemen.
“Our mission is unwavering in the face of conflict, COVID-19 and climate shock: to transform rural economies and food systems, and to drive more sustainable and inclusive development for the most vulnerable small-scale farmers and their communities,” Houngbo said.
UN health agency chief declares monkeypox a global emergency
The chief of the World Health Organization said the expanding monkeypox outbreak in more than 70 countries is an “extraordinary” situation that now qualifies as a global emergency, a declaration Saturday that could spur further investment in treating the once-rare disease and worsen the scramble for scarce vaccines.
WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus made the decision to issue the declaration despite a lack of consensus among experts serving on the U.N. health agency's emergency committee. It was the first time the chief of the U.N. health agency has taken such an action.
“We have an outbreak that has spread around the world rapidly through new modes of transmission about which we understand too little and which meets the criteria in the international health regulations,” Tedros said.
“I know this has not been an easy or straightforward process and that there are divergent views among the members" of the committee, he added.
A global emergency is WHO's highest level of alert, but the designation does not necessarily mean a disease is particularly transmissible or lethal. WHO’s emergencies chief, Dr. Michael Ryan, said the director-general made the decision to put monkeypox in that category to endure the gobal community takes the current outbreaks seriously.
Although monkeypox has been established in parts of central and west Africa for decades, it was not known to spark large outbreaks beyond the continent or to spread widely among people until May, when authorities detected dozens of epidemics in Europe, North America and elsewhere.
Declaring a global emergency means the monkeypox outbreak is an “extraordinary event” that could spill over into more countries and requires a coordinated global response. WHO previously declared emergencies for public health crises such as the COVID-19 pandemic, the 2014 West African Ebola outbreak, the Zika virus in Latin America in 2016 and the ongoing effort to eradicate polio.
The emergency declaration mostly serves as a plea to draw more global resources and attention to an outbreak. Past announcements had mixed impact, given that the U.N. health agency is largely powerless in getting countries to act.
Last month, WHO’s expert committee said the worldwide monkeypox outbreak did not yet amount to an international emergency, but the panel convened this week to reevaluate the situation.
According to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, more than 16,000 cases of monkeypox have been reported in 74 countries since about May. To date, monkeypox deaths have only been reported in Africa, where a more dangerous version of the virus is spreading, mainly in Nigeria and Congo.
UN court rejects Myanmar claims, will hear Rohingya case
Judges at the United Nations’ highest court on Friday dismissed preliminary objections by Myanmar to a case alleging the Southeast Asian nation is responsible for genocide against the Rohingya ethnic minority.
The decision establishing the International Court of Justice’s jurisdiction sets the stage for hearings airing evidence of atrocities against the Rohingya that human rights groups and a U.N. probe say breach the 1948 Genocide Convention. In March, U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken said that the violent repression of the Rohingya population in Myanmar, which formerly was known as Burma, amounts to genocide.
Tun Khin, president of the Burmese Rohingya Organization UK, welcomed the decision, saying 600,000 Rohingya “are still facing genocide,” while “one million people in Bangladesh camps, they are waiting for a hope for justice.”
The African nation of Gambia filed the case in 2019 amid international outrage at the treatment of the Rohingya, hundreds of thousands of whom fled to neighboring Bangladesh amid a brutal crackdown by Myanmar forces in 2017. It argued that both Gambia and Myanmar were parties to the 1948 convention and that all signatories hade a duty to ensure it was enforced.
Judges at the court agreed.
Reading a summary of the decision, the court’s president, U.S. Judge Joan E. Donoghue, said: “Any state party to the Genocide Convention may invoke the responsibility of another state party including through the institution of proceedings before the court.”
A small group of pro-Rohingya protesters gathered outside the court’s headquarters, the Peace Palace, ahead of the decision with a banner reading: “”Speed up delivering justice to Rohingya. The genocide survivors can’t wait for generations.”
One protester stamped on a large photograph of Myanmar’s military government leader, Senior Gen. Min Aung Hlaing.
Read: UN court to rule on jurisdiction in Rohingya genocide case
The court rejected arguments raised at hearings in February by lawyers representing Myanmar that the case should be tossed out because the world court only rules in disputes between states and the Rohingya complaint was brought by Gambia on behalf of the Organization of Islamic Cooperation.
The judges also dismissed Myanmar’s claim that Gambia could not file the case as it was not directly linked to the events in Myanmar and that a legal dispute did not exist between the two countries before the case was filed.
Myanmar’s representative, Ko Ko Hlaing, the military government’s minister for international cooperation, said his nation “will try our utmost to defend our country and to protect our national interest.”
Gambia’s attorney general and justice minister, Dawda Jallow, said: “We are very pleased that justice has been done.”
The Netherlands and Canada have backed Gambia, saying in 2020 that the country “took a laudable step towards ending impunity for those committing atrocities in Myanmar and upholding this pledge. Canada and the Netherlands consider it our obligation to support these efforts which are of concern to all of humanity.”
However, the court ruled Friday that it “would not be appropriate” to send the two countries copies of documents and legal arguments filed in the case.
Myanmar’s military launched what it called a clearance campaign in Rakhine state in 2017 in the aftermath of an attack by a Rohingya insurgent group. More than 700,000 Rohingya fled into neighboring Bangladesh. Myanmar security forces have been accused of mass rapes, killings and torching thousands of Rohingya homes.
Read: Genocide against Rohingya: Bangladesh welcomes ICJ's rejection of Myanmar claims
In 2019, lawyers representing Gambia at the ICJ outlined their allegations of genocide by showing judges maps, satellite images and graphic photos of the military campaign. That led the court to order Myanmar to do all it can to prevent genocide against the Rohingya. The interim ruling was intended to protect the minority while the case is decided in The Hague, a process likely to take years.
The International Court of Justice rules on disputes between states. It is not linked to the International Criminal Court, also based in The Hague, which holds individuals accountable for atrocities. Prosecutors at the ICC are investigating crimes committed against the Rohingya who were forced to flee to Bangladesh.
More women work in health and care but earn 24% less than men: UN
Women working in the health and care sector earn nearly 25 percent less than their male counterparts – a larger gender pay gap than in other economic sectors, two UN agencies said in a new report Wednesday.
"The gender pay gap in the health and care sector: a global analysis in the time of Covid-19" was published by the International Labour Organization (ILO) and the World Health Organization (WHO).
The report documents a raw gender pay gap of roughly 20 percentage points which jumps to 24 percentage points when factors such as age, education and working time are taken into account.
While much of this gap is unexplained, the agencies said it is perhaps due to discrimination towards women, who account for nearly 70 percent of health and care workers worldwide.
The report also revealed that wages in health and care tend to be lower overall when compared with other sectors, which is consistent with the finding that wages often are lower in areas where women are predominant.
Also, even with the pandemic, and the crucial role played by health and care workers during the crisis, there were only marginal improvements in pay equality between 2019 and 2020.
"The health and care sector has endured low pay in general, stubbornly large gender pay gaps, and very demanding working conditions. The Covid-19 pandemic exposed this situation while also demonstrating how vital the sector and its workers are in keeping families, societies and economies going," Manuela Tomei, director of the Conditions of Work and Equality Department at the ILO, said.
The UN report also found a wide variation in gender pay gaps in different countries, indicating that these gaps are not inevitable and that more can be done to close the divide.
Read: UN resident coordinator Gwyn Lewis meets Speaker Dr Shirin
Within countries, gender pay gaps tend to be wider in higher pay categories, where men are over-represented, while women are over-represented in the lower pay categories.
Mothers working in the health and care sector also appear to suffer additional penalties, with gender pay gaps significantly increasing during a woman's reproductive years and persisting throughout the rest of her working life.
A more equitable sharing of family duties between men and women could lead to women making different job choices, according to the report.
The analysis also examines factors that are driving the gender pay gaps in the health and care sector.
Differences in age, education and working time, as well as the difference in the participation of men and women in the public or private sectors, only address part of the problem.
The reasons why women are paid less than men with similar labour market profiles remain, to a large extent, unexplained by labour market factors, the report said.
"Women comprise the majority of workers in the health and care sector, yet in far too many countries systemic biases are resulting in pernicious pay penalties against them," Jim Campbell, WHO's director of the health workforce, said.
UN says Ukraine bears share of blame for nursing home attack
Two weeks after Russia launched its invasion of Ukraine, Kremlin-backed rebels assaulted a nursing home in the eastern region of Luhansk. Dozens of elderly and disabled patients, many of them bedridden, were trapped inside without water or electricity.
The March 11 assault set off a fire that spread throughout the facility, suffocating people who couldn’t move. A small number of patients and staff escaped and fled into a nearby forest, finally getting assistance after walking for 5 kilometers (3 miles).
In a war awash in atrocities, the attack on the nursing home near the village of Stara Krasnyanka stood out for its cruelty. And Ukrainian authorities placed the fault squarely on Russian forces, accusing them of killing more than 50 vulnerable civilians in a brutal and unprovoked attack.
But a new United Nations report has found that Ukraine’s armed forces bear a large, and perhaps equal, share of the blame for what happened in Stara Krasnyanka, which is about 580 kilometers (360 miles) southeast of Kyiv. A few days before the attack, Ukrainian soldiers took up positions inside the nursing home, effectively making the building a target.
At least 22 of the 71 patients survived the assault, but the exact number of people killed remains unknown, according to the U.N.
The report by the U.N.'s Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights doesn’t conclude the Ukrainian soldiers or the Moscow-backed separatist fighters committed a war crime. But it said the battle at the Stara Krasnyanka nursing home is emblematic of the human rights office’s concerns over the potential use of “human shields” to prevent military operations in certain areas.
Read: Russia taking 'operational pause' in Ukraine, analysts say
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This story is part of an ongoing investigation from The Associated Press and the PBS series “Frontline” that includes the War Crimes Watch Ukraine interactive experience and an upcoming documentary.
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The aftermath of the attack on the Stara Krasnyanka home also provides a window into how both Russia and Ukraine move quickly to set the narrative for how events are unfolding on the ground — even when those events may still be shrouded by the fog of war. For Ukraine, maintaining the upper hand in the fight for hearts and minds helps to ensure the continued flow of billions of dollars in Western military and humanitarian aid.
Russia’s frequently indiscriminate shelling of apartment buildings, hospitals, schools and theaters has been the primary cause of the war’s thousands of civilian casualties. Ukraine and its allies, including the United States, have rebuked Moscow for the deaths and injuries and called for those responsible to be brought to justice.
But Ukraine also must abide by the international rules of the battlefield. David Crane, a former U.S. Defense Department official and a veteran of numerous international war crime investigations, said the Ukrainian forces may have violated the laws of armed conflict by not evacuating the nursing home’s residents and staff.
“The bottom-line rule is that civilians cannot intentionally be targeted. Period. For whatever reason,” Crane said. “The Ukrainians placed those people in a situation which was a killing zone. And you can’t do that.”
The Associated Press and the PBS series “Frontline,” drawing from a variety of sources, have independently documented hundreds of attacks across Ukraine that likely constitute war crimes. The vast majority appear to have been committed by Russia. But a handful, including the destruction of the Stara Krasnyanka care home, indicate Ukrainian fighters are also to blame.
The first reports in the media about the Stara Krasnyanka nursing home largely reflected statements issued by Ukrainian officials more than a week after the fighting ended.
Serhiy Haidai, the governor of Luhansk, declared in a March 20 post to his Telegram account that 56 people had been killed “cynically and deliberately” by “Russian occupiers” who “shot at close range from a tank.” The office of Ukraine’s prosecutor general, Iryna Venediktova, said in a statement issued the same day that 56 elderly people died due to the “treacherous actions” of the Russian forces and their allies. Neither statement mentioned whether Ukrainian soldiers had entered the home before the fighting began.
Also read: 12 killed in Ukraine as Russia pounds rebel-claimed province
The Luhansk regional administration, which Haidai leads, did not respond to requests for comment. The Ukrainian prosecutor general's office told The AP on Friday that its Luhansk division continues to investigate Russia's “indiscriminate shelling and forced transfer of persons” from the nursing home. About 50 patients were killed in the attack, the office said, fewer than it stated in March. The prosecutor general's office did not directly respond to the U.N. report, but said it also is looking into whether Ukrainian troops had been in the home.
Moscow-backed separatists have been fighting Ukrainian forces for eight years in the mostly Russian-speaking eastern industrial heartland, the Donbas, which includes the Luhansk and Donetsk regions. They have declared two independent “people's” republics, which were recognized by Russia just before the war began.
Viktoria Serdyukova, the human rights commissioner for the Luhansk separatist government, said in a March 23 statement that the Ukrainian troops were responsible for casualties at the nursing home. The residents had been taken hostage by Ukrainian “militants” and many of them were “burned alive” in a fire started by the Ukrainians as they were retreating, she said.
The U.N. report examined violations of international human rights law that have occurred in Ukraine since Russia invaded on Feb. 24. The Stara Krasnyanka attack totals just two paragraphs in the 38-page report. Although brief, this short section is the most detailed and independent examination of the incident that’s been made public.
The Stara Krasnyanka section is based on eyewitness accounts from staff who survived the attack and information provided by relatives of residents, according to a United Nations official who wasn’t authorized to speak publicly and spoke on condition of anonymity. The Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights is still working to fully document the case, the official said. Among the remaining questions are how many people were killed and who they were.
At the beginning of March, according to the U.N. report, “when active hostilities drew nearer to the care house,” its management requested repeatedly that local authorities evacuate the residents. But an evacuation wasn’t possible because Ukrainian forces were believed to have mined the surrounding area and blocked roads, the report said. The home is built on a hill and is near a key highway, which made the location strategically important.
On March 7, Ukrainian soldiers entered the nursing home, according to the U.N. Two days later, they “engaged in an exchange of fire” with the Moscow-backed separatists, “although it remains unclear which side opened fire first,” the report said. No staff or residents were injured in this first exchange.
On March 11, 71 residents and 15 staff remained in the home with no access to water or electricity. That morning, the Luhansk separatist forces, which the U.N. referred to as “Russian-affiliated armed groups,” attacked with heavy weapons, the report said.
“A fire started and spread across the care house, while the fighting was ongoing,” according to the U.N. An unspecified number of patients and staff fled the home and ran into a nearby forest and were eventually met by the separatist fighters, who gave them assistance, according to the U.N.
A correspondent for the state-owned Russia-1 news channel gained access to the war-ravaged home after the battle and posted a video to his Telegram account in April that accused the Ukrainian soldiers of using “helpless old people” as human shields.
The correspondent, Nikolai Dolgachev, was accompanied into the building by a man identified in the video as a Luhansk separatist soldier who goes by the call sign “Wolf.” The extensive damage to the building, both inside and out, is visible in the video. A body is laying on the floor. The AP verified that the location in the video posted by Dolgachev is the care home by comparing it to other videos and photos of the building.
Dolgachev said the Ukrainian troops set up a “machine gun nest” and an anti-tank weapon in the home. In the video, he stops amid the rubble inside the building to rest his hand on the anti-tank weapon, which he incorrectly called a Tor. The Tor is a Russian-made surface-to-air missile.
Ian Williams, a military expert at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, reviewed the video and said the weapon is an RK-3 Corsar, a Ukrainian-built portable anti-tank guided missile.
While the opposing sides blame each other for the Stara Krasnyanka tragedy, the grim reality is that much of the war in Ukraine is being fought in populated areas, increasing the potential for civilian casualties. Those deaths and injuries become almost inevitable when the civilians are caught in the line of fire.
“The Russians are the bad guys (in this conflict). That’s pretty clear," Crane said. "But everybody is accountable to the law and the laws of armed conflict.”
Joint UN mission on a visit to flood-affected Sylhet region
A joint mission of the United Nations (UN) headed by UN Resident Coordinator Gwyn Lewis is currently visiting the flood-affected Sylhet and Sunamganj districts.
The mission visited different areas in Birgaon union under Sunamganj’s Shantiganj upazila on Saturday. They will be visiting Sylhet’s Gowainghat upazila on Sunday.
The mission attended a press conference at Sylhet city’s Grand Sylhet hotel on Saturday evening, where Lewis said that around 72 lakh people from nine districts of the country’s northeastern region have been affected by severe flooding this year.
“Sylhet, Sunamganj, Maulvibazar, Habiganj and Netrokona districts are the worst-affected areas. Around five lakh people are currently living in shelter homes, among whom a majority have lost their homes to the flooding. Women and girls in particular are facing huge risks at these shelters,” said Lewis.
Read: UN joint team to help Bangladesh to control Aedes mosquitoes
Fearing that more flooding can happen in the coming days, the joint mission said that a Needs Assessment Group headed by the Department of Disaster Management (DDM) and CARE has already started to work to mitigate the losses caused by the ongoing flooding.
The group will assess the losses caused by flooding and will identify immediate and short-term needs, said the mission.
UNFPA Representative Kristine Blokus, UNICEF Representative Sheldon Yett, Development Director of British High Commission Matt Cannell, European Commission Representative Isabella D’Haudt, and Country Manager of START Fund Sajid Rayhan, among others, spoke at the press conference.
Overturning of Roe v Wade abortion law huge blow to women's rights: Bachelet
Friday's decision by the US Supreme Court to strip the nation's constitutional protections for abortion, overturning the 50-year-old Roe v Wade judgment, is a huge blow to women's human rights and gender equality, the UN human rights chief has said.
The decision was made in the specific case of Dobbs v Jackson Women's Health, and Michelle Bachelet said it represents a "major setback" for sexual and reproductive health across the US.
The historic decision returns all questions of legality and access to abortion to the individual states.
Earlier the UN sexual and reproductive health agency (UNFPA) and the World Health Organization (WHO) noted that 45 percent of all abortions around the world are unsafe, making the procedure a leading cause of maternal death.
The agencies said it was inevitable that more women will die, as restrictions by national or regional governments increase.
"Whether abortion is legal or not, it happens all too often. Data show that restricting access to abortion does not prevent people from seeking an abortion, it simply makes it more deadly," the UNFPA said.
According to the agencies' "State of World Population Report 2022," nearly half of all pregnancies worldwide are unintended, and over 60 percent of these may end in abortion.
Read: Myanmar’s people deserve return to democracy ending systemic discrimination: Bachelet
The UNFPA said it feared that more unsafe abortions will occur around the world if access becomes more restricted.
Bachelet said access to safe, legal and effective abortion is firmly rooted in international human rights law and is at the core of women and girls' autonomy, and ability to make their own choices about their bodies and lives, free of discrimination, violence and coercion.
This decision strips such autonomy from millions of women in the US, in particular those with low incomes and those belonging to racial and ethnic minorities, to the detriment of their fundamental rights, she added.
The rights chief highlighted that the decision came after more than 50 countries with previously restrictive laws have liberalised their abortion legislation over the past 25 years.
With the ruling, the US is regrettably moving away from this progressive trend, she said.
Meanwhile, the UN agency, UN Women, said the ability of women to control what happens to their own bodies, is also associated with the roles women are able to play in society, whether as a member of the family, the workforce, or government.
Read: States need to invest in HR to achieve peace, security, dev: Bachelet
The 1994 Programme of Action of the International Conference on Population and Development, signed by 179 countries including the US, recognised how deadly unsafe abortions are and urged all countries to provide post-abortion care to save lives, irrespective of the legal status of abortion.
The document – resulting from a high-level meeting in Cairo, Egypt – also highlighted that all people should be able to access quality information about their reproductive health and contraceptives.
Internet shutdowns hurt human rights, economy, daily life: UN
The real-life effects of shutdowns of the internet on people's lives and human rights are vastly underestimated, according to the UN human rights office.
When major communication channels and networks are slowed down or blocked, this means thousands, even millions of people are deprived of their only means of reaching loved ones, medical assistance, and participating in political debates or decisions, the UN human rights office (OHCHR) report published Thursday said.
"When you see a shutdown happen, it's time to start worrying about human rights," Peggy Hicks, director of the Thematic Engagement, Special Procedures and Right to Development Division of the OHCHR, said.
Shutdowns deepen digital divides between and within countries and are happening in places where there are deteriorating human rights situations, Peggy added.
At a time when substantial development aid is directed towards enhancing connectivity in less developed countries, some of the beneficiaries of that assistance are themselves deepening the digital divide through shutdowns.
At least 27 of the 46 least developed countries implemented shutdowns between 2016 and 2021 despite receiving support to increase their Internet connectivity, Peggy said.
The first major internet shutdown took place in Egypt in 2011, during the Tahrir Square protests that led to hundreds of arrests and killings.
Shutdowns can mean a complete block on internet connectivity, but governments also increasingly ban access to major communication platforms and limit bandwidth and mobile services to 2G transfer speeds, making it difficult to share and watch videos or live picture broadcasts.
Many states refuse to acknowledge interfering in communications or putting pressure on telecom companies to prevent them from sharing information.
The official justification for the shutdowns was unknown in 228 cases reported by civil society across 55 countries.
When authorities recognise having ordered disruptions, justifications often point to public safety, containing the spread of hostility or violence, or combating disinformation.
Yet, shutdowns often achieve the exact opposite. According to Peggy, "199 shutdowns were justified by public safety concerns, and 150 were based on national security grounds. But many of those shutdowns were followed by spikes in violence."
When a state shuts down the internet, both people and economies suffer. The costs to jobs, education, healthcare, and political participation virtually always exceed any hoped-for benefit.
"We call on states to stop doing this, stop imposing shutdowns. Shutdowns are simply never the best answer. Their costs are simply too great to economies, democracy, and people's daily lives," Peggy said.
Also read: The limits of analog censorship in a digital era