Category: Career & Job

“It is time to end the violence,” UN Secretary-General António Guterres said at the high-level meeting of the Regional Oversight Mechanism of the Peace, Security and Cooperation Framework for the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) and the region, held in Bujumbura, Burundi.

Since the resurgence of the M23 armed group in DRC in 2021, more than 500,000 people have fled the violence, he said, also raised concerns about the current “extremely worrisome” security situation in Ituri province.

Current crisis demands action

“The current crisis shows that much still remains to be done,” he warned, adding that the ongoing violence is threatening the stability of the entire Great Lakes region.

The Framework, signed in 2013 in Addis Ababa, had “raised many hopes” of ending decades of violence, he said, encouraging repeated efforts from the signatory countries, African Union, International Conference on the Great Lakes Region, and the Southern African Development Community (SADC).

‘Lay down your arms’

Reiterating his call to armed groups, he said “lay down your arms immediately and rejoin the demobilization, disarmament, and reintegration progress.”

Within the Framework, boosted efforts must now focus on building a foundation of dialogue among parties to identify sustainable solutions to differences, ending impunity for perpetrators of cross-border crimes, and inclusively advancing peace, he stressed.

Indeed, for peace to be sustainable, he said the the voices of women, young people and displaced persons must be fully heard in all political, security and judicial processes.

Peace and development go ‘hand in hand’

Turning to the region’s bounty of rich natural and cultural resourceshe said DRC is home to the world’s second largest rainforest, accounting for 10 percent of global biodiversity.

“We must ensure that it becomes a source of prosperity and development, not of conflict, rivalries, and unsustainable exploitation,” he said. “Peace and development must go hand in hand.”

“The UN remains fully engaged, by your side,” he said, welcoming the initiative taken by the Peace and Security Council of the African Union in February to revitalize the Framework.

“Only together can we achieve the common objectives of peace, security and cooperation of the Addis Ababa Framework,” he said. “The peoples of the region are counting on us.”

In early April, scores of revelers gather in the city of Kawasaki, about 30 minutes south of Tokyo, to celebrate Kanamara Matsuri – Japan’s infamous penis festival, with a name translating roughly to Festival of the Steel Phallus. Kanamara Matsuri’s main festivities have taken place on the first Sunday of April since 1969 (yes, seriously).

At the festival centering on the um, organ and fertility, attendees get to erect gigantic penis statues on handheld shrines, enjoy penis-shaped lollipops, buy penis-shaped candles, and (obviously) dress as penises. There’s a seemingly endless array of phallic merch!

“Amazing. So fun, so unique, such a different experience,” one Australian tourist who went to this year’s gathering told Euronews. “It’s so weird coming from Australia to see something like this, but it looks like everyone’s having a great time.”

Five police officers in Memphis, Tennessee, have been charged with second-degree murder in Nichols’s death in January.

An autopsy report released in the United States has shown that Tire Nichols died of blunt force injuries to the head after he was beaten by police in Memphis, Tennessee, during a January arrest.

The autopsy said the manner of death was homicide. The report released by the medical examiner in Memphis described multiple contusions, brain injuries, cuts and bruises to the head and other parts of the body.

Nichols was Black, as were the five police officers fired and charged with second-degree murder and other counts after his death. They pleaded not guilty on February 17.

Ben Crump, a lawyer for the Nichols family, said they were briefed on Wednesday on the autopsy report by the district attorney in Shelby County, Tennessee, which includes Memphis.

“The official autopsy report further propels our commitment to seeking justice for this senseless tragedy,” a statement released by Crump’s law firm said.

Nichols was stopped by police on January 7 for an alleged traffic violation and was aggressively pulled out of his car by officers. An officer shot at Nichols with a stun gun, but Nichols ran away, towards his nearby home, according to video footage released by the city of Memphis and other police records.

Officers who were part of a crime-suppression team known as Scorpion caught up with Nichols and punched him, kicked him and slugged him with a baton as he yelled at his mother.

After the beating, officers stood by and talked with one another as Nichols struggled with his injuries while he was on the ground, the video showed. One officer also took photos of Nichols as he was propped up against an unmarked police car, video and other records showed.

Nichols was taken to a hospital in an ambulance that left the site of the beating 27 minutes after emergency medical technicians arrived, authorities said.

Nichols, 29, died three days later. His funeral was held on February 1.

Police said Nichols had been suspected of reckless driving, but no verified evidence of a traffic violation had emerged in public documents or video footage. Memphis Police Chief Cerelyn “CJ” Davis said she had seen no evidence justifying the stop or the officers’ response. She disbanded the Scorpion unit after Nichols’s death.

According to the autopsy, ethanol — or drinking alcohol — and tetrahydrocannabinol (THC) were detected in Nichols’s system. THC is found in marijuana.

The concentrations of alcohol and THC detected were low, said Dr Andrew Stolbach, a medical toxicologist with Johns Hopkins Medicine who reviewed the autopsy report at the request of The Associated Press.

The alcohol level is “about equivalent to a drink or two”, Stolbach said. “It’s a level that a lot of people would have after drinking socially, people capable of driving home legally.”

In addition to the five Black officers and charged with murder, one white officer fired involved in the initial traffic stop has been

• by Cecilia Russell (johannesburg)
• Tuesday, May 09, 2023
• Inter Press Service

The wide-ranging declaration also called on governments to support active political and economic participation for women and girls, enhancing and implementing legislation that addresses gender-based violence (GBV) and eradicating harmful practices like child, early, and forced marriages. During discussions and in the declaration, a clear message emerged that budgetary requirements for Universal Health Care (UHC) should be prioritized and the exceptional work done by health workers during the pandemic be recognized.

In his keynote address, Japan’s Prime Minister Kishida Fumio reminded delegates that Covid-19 had exposed the “fragility of the global health architecture and underscored the need for UHC.”

Kishida said that the central vision of the G7 Hiroshima Summit was to emphasize the importance of addressing human security – through building global health architecture, including the “governance for prevention, preparedness, and response to public health crises, including finance. We believe it is important for the G7 to actively and constructively contribute to efforts to improve international governance, secure sustainable financing and strengthen international norms.”

Apart from contributing to resilient, equitable, and sustainable UHC, health innovation was needed to promote a “more effective global ecosystem to enable rapid research and development and equitable access to infectious disease crisis medicines … and to support aging society,” Kishida said.

Former Prime Minister of Japan Fukuda Yasuo, Chair of APDA, and Honorary Chair of JPFP said this conference and its declaration would follow in a tradition of delivering strong messages to the G7 that improving reproductive health was crucial to the development and the future of a planet which now had 8 million people living on it.

“International Community is becoming increasingly confrontational and divided, and there is the emergence of a national leader who is threatening the use of nuclear weapons. No nuclear weapons have been used in the nearly 80 years since Hiroshima and Nagasaki. We must work together to prevent the use of nuclear weapons, which can take many precious lives and people’s daily lives. In this instance, I would like you to search for the path toward appeasement and not division. We must keep all channels of dialogue open so as to ease tension,” Fukuda asked of the conference.

While calling on parliamentarians to work together to address challenges, Fukuda also expressed concern about the widening inequities caused by Covid-19 and climate change and noted: “This network of parliamentarians on population and development has been a vital resource for parliamentarians who share the same concern for not only their own countries but for the entire planet and future generations.”