While commending the institutions of the European Union for their gradual achievements in the field of safeguards and remedies over sanctions, these steps need to be further reinforced, a United Nations human rights expert has said.

This recommendation has come in an end-of-mission statement by Mr Idriss Jazairy, UN Special Rapporteur on the negative impact of unilateral coercive measures on the enjoyment of human rights.

On the 19th of June the UN Refugee Agency (UNHCR) released its annual report on “Global Trends on forced displacement” for 2016. The  report  collects the yearly data on  the different categories of people affected by forced displacement:  refugees, returned refugees, asylum seekers, Internal Displaced People (IDPs), returned IDPs, stateless people and other persons  of concern to UNHCR.

Forced displacement worldwide at its highest in decades. UNHCR’s annual Global Trends report says an unprecedented 65.6 million people were uprooted from their homes by conflict and persecution at the end of 2016, which is an increase of 300,000 from 2015. This is a record number, higher than the previous record set in 2015. The distribution of this number among the categories of the report shows that that 22.5 million are refugees, 40.3 million are IDPs, 2.8 million are asylum seekers, and finally 3.2 million reported stateless people – however, the total number of stateless people is estimated to be 10 million.

States should control corporations across national borders to protect communities from the negative impacts of their activities, UN human rights experts have said in an authoritative new guidance * on the Obligations of States parties to the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights (CESCR) in the context of business activities.

“States should regulate corporations that are domiciled in their territory and/or jurisdiction. This refers to corporations which have their statutory seat, central administration or principal place of business on their national territory,” the experts of the UN Committee on Economic, Social and Cultural rights say in the guidance*, officially termed the General Comment, published on June 23rd.

The world economy has not still recovered from the effects of the financial crisis that began almost a decade ago first in the US and then in Europe. Policy response to the crisis, the combination of fiscal restraint and ultra-easy monetary policy, has not only failed to bring about a robust recovery but has also aggravated systemic problems in the global economy, notably inequality and chronic demand gap, on the one hand, and financial fragility, on the other. It has generated strong destabilizing spillovers to the Global South. Major emerging economies that were expected a few years ago to become global locomotives have not only lost their momentum, but have also become highly vulnerable to trade and financial shocks.

Sarah Makau, Kenya

"What we have to ask ourselves is this: is Africa in control of our resources or is Africa entangled in this global system of accumulation which was brought by colonialism? How do we escape that bondage?" summarized Mela Chiponda, a participant at the Second annual WoMin Feminist School, hosted by Netright Ghana.

"We didn't have title deeds, the land was not demarcated, nobody knew the acreage of their farms. So when we learned about this, the government came in and started to demarcate. and there was pause in the mining activities. But we are worried. It feels like a lion we have chased off, and it's lying in the grass waiting" said Sarah Makau, from Kenya.