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Norway's Ambassador Mona Juul speaks in the Security Council at United Nations headquarters, Monday, Apr 29, 2019. (File photo: AP/Richard Drew) - 

The UN Security Council has strongly condemned attacks on schools, teachers and children and called on all parties to promote the right to education in conflicts.

A resolution adopted by the council on Friday (Oct 29) by a 15-0 vote emphasised the “invaluable role” that education plays in providing “life-saving spaces” and its contribution to achieving peace and security.

“For the first time, the Security Council has adopted a resolution uniquely dedicated to the protection of education,” Norway’s UN Ambassador Mona Juul, who sponsored the resolution with Niger, told the council after the vote.

She told the council: “Education is under attack around the world.”

Between 2014 and 2019, Juul said 11,000 attacks that harmed more than 22,000 students and educators in at least 93 countries were reported.

The resolution urges the 193 UN member nations “to develop effective measures to prevent and address attacks and threats of attacks against school and education facilities”.

It condemns the military use of schools, which violates international law and may make the buildings “legitimate targets of attack, thus endangering children’s and teachers’ safety as well as their education”.

The resolution urges all parties to armed conflicts to respect that schools are civilian facilities under international humanitarian law. And it calls on all countries “to take concrete measures to mitigate and avoid the use of schools by armed forces”.

The council expressed “deep concern that girls and women may be the intended victims of attacks targeting their access to and continuation of education”, saying such attacks can include rape, sexual violence and sexual slavery.

Council members urged UN members “to take steps to address girls’ equal enjoyment of their right to education”.

Juul said the 99 countries that co-sponsored the resolution are “an expression of a truly global commitment to this important cause”.

The Norwegian ambassador stressed that adoption of the resolution must be followed by its full implementation.

“We must do more to safeguard educational institutions from military use and attacks,” Juul said, “and ensure the continuation of education during conflicts - including by investing in education in situations of crisis and conflict”//CNA

A health worker draws a dose of the AstraZeneca/Oxford COVID-19 vaccine, donated to Kenya by the UK government, in Nairobi, Kenya, Aug 8, 2021. (File photo: Reuters/Baz Ratner) - 

Britain will send 20 million COVID-19 vaccine doses to developing countries by the end of this year, in what Prime Minister Boris Johnson will tell other world leaders is a much needed step to speed up the post-pandemic economic recovery.

Leaders of the world's 20 richest countries are gathering in Rome at a meeting which Johnson hopes will make progress on producing firm commitments to cut emissions before climate talks in Glasgow at the United Nations COP26 summit.

But he also needs to get the backing from developing countries, some of which are already experiencing the devastating impact of global warming and have struggled to vaccinate their populations against COVID-19 as Western countries race ahead.

At a meeting of the leaders of the seven largest advanced economies earlier this year, Britain pledged at least 100 million shots as part of a G7 aim to offer 1 billion doses, a scheme critics said was too slow and unambitious.

Britain said in a statement it had delivered 10 million doses of the Oxford-AstraZeneca vaccine to the COVAX vaccine-sharing facility, with 10 million more to be delivered in the coming weeks, taking the total to 30.6 million in 2021.

In 2022, Britain will donate at least 20 million more Oxford-AstraZeneca doses and also donate all the 20 million Janssen doses ordered by the government to the COVAX facility, backed by the World Health Organization and the GAVI vaccine alliance.

"Like a waking giant, the world economy is stirring back to life. But the pace of recovery will depend on how quickly we can overcome COVID," Johnson will tell G20 leaders, according to his Downing Street office.

"Our first priority as the G20 must be to press ahead with the rapid, equitable and global distribution of vaccines."

Mass vaccination against the coronavirus is seen as crucial to restoring economic growth, trade and travel, but Western nations are racing ahead of developing countries, many of which have the lowest inoculation rates and rising cases.

One hundred former leaders and government ministers from around the world have called on Italian Prime Minister Mario Draghi, who is hosting the G20 meeting, to address what they said was an unfair distribution of vaccines.

They said the United States, European Union, Britain and Canada would be stockpiling 240 million unused vaccines by the end of the month, which these nations' military could immediately airlift to countries in greater need.

By the end of February a total of 1.1 billion surplus vaccines could be transferred, it said//CNA

Half of Afghanistan's population risks not having enough food to eat, says UN humanitarian chief. (Photo: AP/Oriane Zerah) - 

The UN humanitarian chief had a dire message for leaders of the world’s 20 largest economies meeting this weekend: Worry about Afghanistan because its economy is collapsing and half the population risks not having enough food to eat as the snows have already started to fall.

Martin Griffiths said in an interview on Friday (Oct 29) with The Associated Press that “the needs in Afghanistan are skyrocketing".

Half the Afghan children under age five are at risk of acute malnutrition and there is an outbreak of measles in every single province which is “a red light” and “the canary in the mine” for what’s happening in society, he said.

Griffiths warned that food insecurity leads to malnutrition, then disease and death, and “absent corrective action” the world will be seeing deaths in Afghanistan.

He said the World Food Program is feeding 4 million people in Afghanistan now, but the UN predicts that because of the dire winter conditions and the economic collapse it is going to have to provide food to triple that number - 12 million Afghans - “and that’s massive".

WFP appealed this week for US$200 million to finance its operations until the end of the year, and Griffiths urged countries that suspended development assistance for Afghanistan after the Taliban takeover on Aug 15, including the United States and European countries, to transfer that money for desperately needed humanitarian aid.

He noted that the European Union already shifted about €100 million to humanitarian work, and the US announced more than US$144 million in humanitarian aid on Thursday, raising its total aid to Afghans in the country and refugees in the region to nearly US$474 million in 2021.

Griffiths said the current crisis is the result of two large droughts in the past few years, the disruption of services during the conflict between the Taliban and the Afghan government and the collapse of the economy.

“So, the message that I would give to the leaders of the G 20 is worry about economic collapse in Afghanistan, because economic collapse in Afghanistan will, of course, have an exponential effect on the region,” he said.

“And the specific issue that I would ask them to focus on first, is the issue of getting cash into the economy in Afghanistan - not into the hands of the Taliban - into the hands of the people whose access to their own bank accounts is not frozen.”

Griffiths said it is also critical that frontline health workers, teachers and others get their salaries paid.

He said many ideas are being discussed with increasing urgency to get liquidity into the market and his message is that an urgent response is needed this year, not next spring.

Among the ideas are physically taking cash into Afghanistan, which Griffiths said has “lots of difficulties", and using the local Afghani currency. But the issue is how to get traders to safely provide Afghanis for use by humanitarian organisations, he said, and “they will probably only do that if they think that they can get external currency for those Afghanis".

The G20 summit on Saturday and Sunday is taking place in Rome.

Griffiths warned of exponential effects of an economic collapse, saying the first worry is that if people do not get services, food, schooling for their children and health care they will move, either inside the country or flee Afghanistan to survive.

The second worry, he said, is the growing problem of terrorism, “and that is something which usually breeds in times of uncertainty and in times of suffering".

“And that would be a terrible legacy to visit all the people of Afghanistan,” Griffiths said. “So far, I think we’re just holding our breath about the stability of the country and talking daily to the Taliban about what they need to do, for example, to make sure that women and girls have their rights.”

The undersecretary-general for humanitarian affairs said the Taliban need to ensure the rights of women and girls “because that’s part of stabilising Afghanistan"//CNA

Shoppers browse an outdoor retail area on the first day of eased COVID-19 regulations in Melbourne, Australia, on Oct 22, 2021. (Photo: Reuters/Sandra Sanders) - 

Melbourne, Australia's second-largest city which has endured nearly nine months of lockdowns since the start of the pandemic, saw people flocking to shops and gigs for the first time in months on Saturday (Oct 30) as public health curbs eased.

The city of five million, which re-emerged from its sixth lockdown last week, was reopening further as full vaccination rates across Victoria state, of which Melbourne is capital, was set to reach 80 per cent for those 16 and older.

People queued at malls and boutiques despite cool weather for their first in-person shopping since early August, waiting to be let in as capacity limits were observed, television footage showed.

A crowd of 5,500 were expected to attend the Victoria Derby racehorse on Saturday, the first large event in post-lockdown Melbourne, which was to be followed by a concert for 4,000 fully vaccinated at the Sidney Myer Music Bowl in the evening.

Victoria reported 1,355 new daily COVID-19 infections, its lowest in nearly a month. There were also 11 deaths reported, with health authorities saying serious infections mainly affected the unvaccinated.

"So please - particularly for those people in their 20s - go out and get vaccinated, that is your best and in fact, your only real protection against the impact of COVID," said Jeroen Weimar, Victoria's COVID-19 response commander.

Across Australia, New South Wales reported 236 new cases and three deaths. The Australian Capital Territory reported nine new infections.

Neighbouring New Zealand had 160 new cases, most of them in Auckland, which has been battling an outbreak of the Delta variant for months.

Once champions of a COVID-zero strategy of managing the pandemic, both Australia and New Zealand have been moving towards living with the virus through extensive vaccinations, as the Delta variant has proven too transmissible to suppress.

As of Saturday, 74 per cent of eligible people in New Zealand were fully vaccinated and 76.8 per cent of those 16 and older in Australia//CNA