World News in Brief: Haiti latest, plastic tide in Samoa, Bakery boost in Ukraine, arbitrary detention in Mexico

More than 700,000 people are displaced in the country – over half of whom are children – with recent violence in the capital Port-au-Prince displacing another 12,000 people in recent weeks.

Food insecurity is at an all-time high, affecting half of Haiti’s population, or approximately 5.4 million people.

Pockets of famine

“For the first time since 2022, we are seeing pockets of famine-like conditions in some areas where displaced people are living,” highlighted Associate Spokesperson Stephanie Tremblay.

Despite these challenges, UN agencies and partners continue to deliver humanitarian assistance. In the first half of 2024, around 1.9 million people received some form of relief, including food and cash.

Since the end of February, thousands of hot meals and hundreds of thousands of gallons of water have been distributed to displaced people in the capital.

To curb Haiti’s growing needs, the $684 million Humanitarian Needs and Response Plan has been launched, but it remains only 43 per cent funded.

Samoa facing a plastic tide: Environment expert

Like other Small Pacific Island States, Samoa is facing a surging plastic tide, a top independent rights expert has said.

Marcos Orellana, the Special Rapporteur on toxic environments and human rights, warned on Friday that while Samoa is taking measures to ban some plastics, it “cannot keep up with growing amounts of plastic waste”.

The independent rights expert, who does not work for the UN, added that Samoa was “at the receiving end of cheap plastic imports (and) pesticides that are banned in other countries”, along with used cars and tyres.

Samoa simply “does not have financial, technical and human resources to deal adequately” with all the waste being generated, Mr. Orellana insisted, before calling out plastic producers for not doing enough to prevent pollution in the first place.

The latest international negotiations on a legally binding instrument on plastic pollution had taken a “wrong turn”, the rights expert said, maintaining that current international talks risked “shifting responsibility from plastic-producing States to developing States that lack capacity or resources to confront the global plastic scourge”.

WFP boost for bakeries on Ukraine’s frontline

The UN World Food Programme (WFP) is delivering $870,000 worth of equipment to help support small bakeries located near Ukraine’s frontline as Russia’s invasion grinds on, the agency said on Friday.

WFP collaborates with local food producers to deliver food assistance in frontline regions. In September, these small bakeries supplied over 500,000 loaves of bread which WFP and its partners distributed to communities living near the frontline.

Buy local

More than 80 per cent of WFP’s food assistance in Ukraine is bought from local suppliers.

In total WFP will deliver over 60 pieces of machinery to 14 small bakeries in Mykolaiv, Kherson, Donetsk, Dnipropetrovsk, Zaporizhzhia and Kharkiv regions.

This includes seven industrial generators, 11 rotary ovens, six dough kneading machines, as well as dough dividers, dough rounders and other similar tools.

“Bread is the lifeblood of Ukrainians – but small bakeries in frontline regions have been struggling to sustain their production due to the war and energy challenges,” said Richard Ragan, WFP Country Director in Ukraine.

“By providing additional equipment, we not only support local businesses in the areas most affected by the war, but also make sure that people will have enough fresh bread this winter,” he added. 

Expert calls for release of indigenous human rights defenders in Mexico

On Friday, the independent UN expert who investigates abuses against human rights defenders, Mary Lawlor, voiced alarm over the arbitrary detention of indigenous rights defenders in Mexico and the imposition of harsh sentences against them for peaceful activities aimed at protecting their communities.

The Human Rights Council-appointed Special Rapporteur highlighted cases of 10 indigenous defenders subjected to flawed judicial processes facing charges “such as murder, in some cases even when they were not in the place or area where the crime took place.”

The combined sentences of nine of the 10 defenders totalled almost 300 years in prison, with Zapotec leader Pablo López Alavez detained for 14 years without a sentence. In 2017, the UN Working Group on Arbitrary Detention concluded his detention had been arbitrary.

Ms. Lawlor condemned what she described as a “misuse of criminal law” to suppress indigenous leaders’ efforts to defend land rights and their communities against development exploitation of natural resources, the detrimental effect of an economic model based on extracting wealth from the land together with organised crime.

Collective harm

She underscored that the criminalisation of these defenders not only harms them individually but also undermines the wellbeing and security of their communities.

While Ms. Lawlor welcomed the recent revocation of David Hernández Salazar’s sentence, she argued it only exposed the fabricated nature of his and other defenders’ charges.

“I urge the competent authorities to revoke the sentences of Kenia Hernández Montalván, Tomás Martínez Mandujano, Saúl Rosales Meléndez, Versaín Velasco García, Agustín Pérez Velasco, Martín Pérez Domínguez, Juan Velasco Aguilar and Agustín Pérez Domínguez, and drop the charges against Pablo López Alavez, and release them immediately,” Ms. Lawlor said.

The Special Rapporteur, who is not UN staff and does not represent any government or organization, is in contact with the Mexican authorities regarding these concerns.