This is the News in Brief from the United Nations.
3.7 million lives could be saved by 2025, through better nutrition
If health services boost their focus on how to eat better, 3.7 million lives could be saved by the year 2025. That’s according to the World Health Organization’s (WHO) latest report on ways of improving nutrition, released on Wednesday.
The report, Essential Nutrition Actions: mainstreaming nutrition throughout the life course, stresses the role of primary health care as the foundation of universal health coverage.
In order to achieve coverage for all, “nutrition should be positioned as one of the cornerstones of essential health packages”, Dr. Naoko Yamamoto, Assistant Director-General at WHO said.
Authors compiled nutrition recommendations, taking into account cultural practices and social norms in different parts of the world.
The use of oral rehydration to treat diarrhoea for example - the leading cause of death for infants in low and middle-income countries - has proved life-saving.
Boosting iron intake in malaria-endemic areas could cut the death rate from disease, and globally, reducing salt intake alone to the recommended level of less than five grams daily, could prevent 1.7 million deaths per year.
WHO’s nutrition guide aims to address the “double burden” of treating people who are underweight and overweight, and provide countries with a roadmap for better interventions.
A third of young people polled by UN, report being a victim of online bullying
Around one-in-three young people across 30 countries say they have been bullied online, while one-in-five report that they have skipped school because of it.
Those are some the key findings in a new poll released on Wednesday by the UN Children’s Fund (UNICEF) and the UN Special Representative on Violence against Children.
Speaking out anonymously through the youth engagement tool, U-Report, almost three-quarters of young people said social networks, including Facebook, Instagram, Snapchat and Twitter, are the most common place for online bullying.
“Connected classrooms mean school no longer ends once a student leaves class, and, unfortunately, neither does schoolyard bulling,” said UNICEF Executive Director Henrietta Fore. “Improving young people’s education experience means accounting for the environment they encounter online as well as offline.”
Some 32 per cent of those polled believed governments should end cyberbullying, 31 per cent put the onus on young people themselves to stop the harassment and 29 per cent cited internet companies as bearing the chief responsibility.
‘Climate of fear everywhere’ in Burundi, warns UN-appointed rights experts
A “climate of fear” exists “everywhere” in Burundi ahead of elections in 2020, that’s from UN-appointed rights investigators on Wednesday, highlighting killings, arbitrary arrests and the torture of political opponents of the Government.
Unveiling its third report, the Commission of inquiry on Burundi alleged that serious rights violations— “including crimes against humanity”—have continued to take place in the Great Lakes State since May last year—its latest investigating period.
Speaking in Geneva, panel expert Françoise Hampson insisted that youth activists known as “Imbonerakure” who are linked to President Pierre Nkurunziza’s ruling party, were responsible for much of the abuse:
“Those principally directly responsible for creating a climate of fear everywhere – when we started our work, because I was on the commission of Inquiry in the first year, most of the pressure seemed to be felt in Bujumbura, even in the most remote little village, and that’s because of the role played by the Imbonerakure; they are present everywhere, and they are able to intimidate, terrify, et cetera.”
In their report, the investigators also compared the situation in Burundi with the UN’s Framework of analysis for atrocity crimes and found that eight common risk factors for criminal atrocities were present.
Natalie Hutchison, UN News.
