HuffPost Canada closed in 2021 and this site is maintained as an online
archive. If you have questions or concerns, please check our
FAQ or contact
support@huffpost.com.
nigeria
Beyoncé, Rihanna and others are backing protesters in Nigeria amid an intense wave of police brutality.
Michael Neu is accused of wiring some of the money he helped obtain to “co-conspirators."
The wheels of gender equality are in motion in the UK but there is evidently still a long way to go -- "subtle" and institutional bias persist, women still get paid 18 per cent less than men and only 25 per cent of UK STEM graduates are female.
Climate change is certainly partly to blame for droughts that destroy crops, kill livestock and dry up rivers. However, the main cause of hunger crises is conflict. If the guns were silenced and humanitarian access were restored, it would save more lives in the short term than the return of the rains and crops.
As an increasing number of governments, like the Trudeau administration in Canada, place pronounced emphasis on the fate of women and girls in their global foreign aid and development commitments, such efforts will forever remain stained by the presence in Nigeria of hundreds of women and girls who have endured the worst of treatment by the worst of humanity with little international coordinated effort to rescue them.
As humanitarian partners scale up their response to provide urgent life-saving support to the most vulnerable children and families, we're also left fielding questions about how, once again, the situation could deteriorate to such a point that a formal declaration of famine was made.
Famine has been declared in parts of South Sudan and looms in Nigeria, Somalia and Yemen. Every day children are dying and UNICEF is working with partners to provide life-saving support for children and families. These are the stories of some of the children caught in this crisis.
Conflict attacks the systems that support the routines of daily life. The result is that, during conflict, millions of children miss out on the basic vaccines they need to stay healthy and have a fair chance in life. Most often the children affected are the most vulnerable to disease.
Every day, the news through all its venues reaches us with increasing calls to humanity to rise to the occasion and effect change. Our great danger is the temptation to move from one issue to another, like a stone skipping over a quiet pond, instead of sticking to our original commitments, seeing them through to the end. Just such a cause occurred 842 days ago, when the Nigerian terrorist group Boko Haram captured 276 Nigerian schoolgirls, dragging them off into captivity and the kinds of horror that are too easy to imagine.
Each refugee-producing situation is different and could be caused by a range of catalysts, including war, political unrest, terrorism or even climate change. However, within each situation, there is one constant: that the needs of girls consistently go unheard and unmet.
