“If ever we needed reminding that we live in an interconnected world, the novel coronavirus has brought that home,” said UN High Commissioner for Refugees Filippo Grandi as the UN Refugee Agency and the World Health Organization today signed a new agreement to strengthen public health services for the millions forcibly displaced from their communities.
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Just being in a garden results in benefits for human health and wellbeing similar to living in wealthy areas, a new large-scale study in England has found. At this time, when so many people in communities around the world are socially isolating to prevent infection with the novel coronavirus, access to a garden can foster wellbeing, physical activity, and enjoyment of nature.
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A new coalition of impact investors has come together to bring their formidable entrepeneurial skills to bear on the novel coronavirus and the deadly disease it causes, COVID-19. The coalition aims to help communities around the world weather this crisis and emerge with a renewed commitment to building a more inclusive, resilient system.
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To help fight the coronavirus, six countries, the European Commission and the Bill & Melina Gates Foundation Monday pledged billions in new funding to Gavi, the Vaccine Alliance. The money will be used to support universal access to a future COVID-19 vaccine and also to support the vaccination of hundreds of millions of children against pneumonia, measles and polio.
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Finland is the happiest country in the world for the third straight year, according to this year’s United Nations World Happiness Report. The World Happiness Report 2020 ranks 156 countries by how happy their citizens perceive themselves to be according to their evaluations of their own lives.
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“What coronavirus has done is reset the economy. It has accelerated the need for a new, better operating system that gives more Americans the incentives and, in many cases, the opportunities they need to create broad-based prosperity,” writes Martin Whittaker, CEO of JUST Capital and a Board member of the Carbon Disclosure Project U.S.”
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The biggest climate conference of the year will be the Earth Day Week No Fly Conference – just one of the 50th anniversary events marking Earth Day 2020. During this public, free, online event, 100 key experts will meet virtually to share the creative solutions needed to build a better future and avert humanity’s most serious crisis – climate change.
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The UN Refugee Agency has airlifted 4.4 tonnes of urgently-needed medical supplies to Tehran to support the COVID-19 response in Iran. The Airbus A330-200 arrived at Imam Khomeini Airport from Frankfurt, Germany Monday afternoon with masks, gloves, essential medicines, soap, and thermometers aboard to help address critical shortages in Iran’s health care system.
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As millions of displaced people move around the world in search of safer lives, learning the language of their adopted homes is a skill best acquired young. Scientists say there appears to be a critical period for language learning, although the length of this period and its underlying causes remain to be unraveled.
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“Frequently invisible, and often overlooked, capacity building is the all-important ‘infrastructure’ that supports and shapes charitable nonprofits into forces for good,” declares the National Council of Nonprofits based in Washington, DC, the largest existing U.S. network of nonprofit organizations.
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In Iraq, displaced people struggle with the loss of electric power as blackouts and brownouts remain frequent even at grid-connected settlements, leaving refugees and the humanitarian community dependent on expensive, polluting diesel generators. In Ethiopia, most refugees lack any reliable access at all to electric lighting.
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Young people are his greatest source of hope, UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres told the world in his New Year’s message today. “From climate action to gender equality to social justice and human rights, your generation is on the frontlines and in the headlines,” he said. “I am inspired by your passion and determination.”
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The world’s first Global Refugee Forum ended Wednesday with hundreds of pledges and a “decisive shift” in approach. More than 770 pledges were made that ranged from financial support to more inclusive government policies to improving access to refugee employment, education, clean energy and resettlement.
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Climate negotiations lasting 16 days have failed to find common ground on international carbon trading rules, one of the important issues at the UN’s COP25 climate summit in Madrid, which wrapped Sunday with a weak accord despite urging from the United Nations and civil society groups to address the climate emergency with “ambition.”
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