Speaking at a panel discussion on migrants in crisis situations, Ambassador Michele Sison, Deputy Permanent Representative of the United States to the United Nations, emphasised the increasing need to assist migrants affected by dire humanitarian and life-threatening situations.

“It is not right that hundreds of thousands of migrants are effectively left to themselves in this kind of chaotic or dangerous situation,” Sison said.

The panel discussion, held last week at the U.N. Headquarters, was co-organised by the International Organization for Migration (IOM), the Permanent Mission of the Philippines and the United States Mission.

This event was part of the New York Migration Series consisting of three briefings and three trainings, organised by IOM to raise awareness of migration amongst Permanent Missions, representatives of United Nations agencies, civil society and other stakeholders at the U.N. Headquarters.

Ambassador Irene Susan Barreiro Natividad, Deputy Permanent Representative of the Philippines to the United Nations introduced the “Migrants in Countries in Crises Initiative (MICIC)”, led by the United States and the Philippines.

The initiative, which was created in the context of the Libyan crisis, aims at developing guidelines for the protection of migrants in crisis situations; to support countries of origin, transit and destination in assisting migrants returning from crises situations; and to address long-term consequences.

Kyung-wha Kang, Assistant Secretary-General and Deputy Emergency Relief Coordinator at the Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA), said international organisations and the U.N. had to realise that the humanitarian system suffers of serious gaps in assessing and addressing the needs of migrants caught in crisis situations.

“In the Central Africa Republic migrants are stranded. This confirms that we need to think more creatively to ensure that migrants are not overlooked in our humanitarian response,” Kang said.

Other vulnerabilities singled out include language barriers; lack of knowledge about services and rights; reservations to access services due to the fear of deportation; and lack of documentation.

Gender inequality especially with reference to mobility can place women and girls in particular danger of becoming victims of sexual and gender based violence, Kang said.

Mohammed Abdiker, IOM Director of Operations and Emergencies underscored the specific vulnerability of migrants who are often caught in crises, and underlined the importance of assessing and addressing migrants’ specific vulnerabilities.

Regarding the involvement of the private sector, Abdiker cited a failure of the private sector in the Libya crisis in which companies did not provide any support.

Andrea Bellardinelli, Chief of the Italian Programmes at the Emergency non-governmental organisation (NGO) presented the NGO’s goal to provide free health care to vulnerable persons such as migrants, seasonal workers, homeless persons and unaccompanied minors.

Providing good health care services to migrants is not only a fundamental right but also prevents additional health care costs on the national system, according to Bellardinelli.

Secretary of the Commission on Filipinos Overseas (CFO) Imelda M. Nicolas presented Philippines’ best practices and lessons learned in protecting the country’s nationals caught in crisis situations.

Philippines protection policy was developed during the Gulf War 1990/1991 and is based upon emergency preparedness, monitoring systems of political and environmental situations as well as the locations of citizens abroad, early warning systems, bi-lateral agreements with host states, as well as an active involvement of migrant communities.

The new initiative Regions Refocus 2015, housed at the Dag Hammarskjöld Foundation, draws attention to the systemic and structural shifts required to achieve sustainable development.

The launch of the initiative, which aims to foster regional and feminist solidarities for justice through policy dialogue among civil society, governments, sub-regional alliances and the United Nations, took place on January 26 at the Ford Foundation’s New York headquarters.

The event brought together civil society, policy makers, United Nations’ officials and academics from each region of the world.

In 2015, the world’s governments will define a global agenda for sustainable development, amidst global trends of rising inequality, declining economic growth rates, and mega public-private partnerships that accelerate the scramble for resources, assets, and markets.

The Region Refocus 2015 report presents analysis and key initiatives emerging from nine regional workshops convened in eight regions to address regionally-defined progressive policies such as sexuality in South Asia, inequalities in the Arab States, illicit financial flows in Latin America, extractive industries in West Africa, climate finance and gender in the Pacific.

“Progressive governments and civil society organisations point to global-level situations – the undemocratic and North-biased international financial architecture, the global lack of application of human rights norms and standards, the bias of the global trade and taxation regimes towards big business – glossed over or left out of the U.N.-led conversation,” Anita Nayar, Director of Regions Refocus 2015, told IPS.

Daisy Alik-Momotaro, Permanent Secretary at the Ministry for Internal Affairs, Marshall Islands gave an insight view on how women have been affected by the sea level rise: “People have been dislocated from their homes. Most of them were women who were not prepared for a radical climate change.”

Speaking on sexing and gendering development Tonya Haynes, CatchAFyah Caribbean Feminist Network stated that sexuality issues should not only be developed in relation to crisis, health or LGBT rights, but also to work: “We should not divorce the macroeconomic from the social.”

“A Pacific working group of civil society, regional development agencies and government has been created to to gather substantive inputs from civil society and support governments to put forward progressive policy positions in multilateral negotiations,” said Noelene Nabulivou of Diverse Voices and Action for Equality, Fiji.

“Recommendations that emerged from the Arab States regional workshop will inform the upcoming economic and social summit of the League of Arab States and the regional high level forum on sustainable development,” said Ziad Abdel Samad of the Arab non-governmental organisation (NGO) Network for Development, Lebanon.

Nayar told IPS about the initiative’s upcoming plans to strengthen sub-regional solidarities between civil society and government: “Next steps include releasing an expanded report with complementary video teach-in style presentations based on the Regions Refocus cross regional discussions and engaging in the Regional preparatory meetings toward Financing for Development (FfD3), including partnering with the U.N. regional commissions.”

The question of how the oil market is going to rebalance itself in 2015 is going to be one of the most challenging ones for the oil industry.

Since June 2014 oil prices have slumped by more than 60 percent due to global oversupply, the strong dollar and less demand. By then the most volatile commodity known to civilisation was almost $115 a barrel. For the first time since 2009, it now stands close to $50 a barrel.

As the sharp decline in oil prices is expected to persist in 2015, there will be significant income shifts from oil-exporting to oil-importing countries.

Cheaper oil is going to act like a shot of adrenalin for the economies of rich oil-importing countries and could mean a $1.5 to $2 trillion transfer from oil-exporting countries to oil-importing countries.

In its bi-annual Global Economic Prospects report, released on January 13, the World Bank said lower oil price will help to lower inflation worldwide.

“The lower oil price, which is expected to persist through 2015, is lowering inflation worldwide and is likely to delay interest rate hikes in rich countries. This creates a window of opportunity for oil-importing countries, such as China and India,” Kaushik Basu, World Bank Chief Economist and Senior Vice President said, noting the World Bank’s expectations for India’s growth to rise to 7 per cent by 2016.

But the global oil price fall is also going to have negative impacts: around the world, oil companies are cutting budgets and cancelling projects. Since last June, the global outplacement firm Challenger, Gray & Christmas, Inc. has tracked 21,917 US job cuts by oil and oil-related industries.

The most vulnerable ones are low-income oil-producing countries whose budgets are dependent on a high oil price, such as Venezuela, Iran and Nigeria. Iraq and Libya are also going to be affected as their oil output is increasing with nearly 4 million barrels per day combined.

With oil production scaling up rapidly in the Middle East, oil prices risk to fall even more, especially if Tehran and Washington reach an agreement on Iran’s nuclear programme.

According to the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development (EBRD) latest economic outlook, published on January 19, Russia’s economy, already hit by Ukraine-related sanctions, will shrink by 4.8 percent this year. Russia, a non-OPEC member, is the world’s largest oil supplier with production in excess of 10 million barrels per day or 13 percent of global crude production.

The most vulnerable African countries include Nigeria, Angola, Equatorial Guinea, Gabon and Sudan, as well as developing nations such as Algeria, Libya and Egypt.

Nigeria, Africa’s top crude exporter is trying to adjust to crashing prices. The oil sector represents 95 percent of export earnings and 75 percent of government revenues. The Nigerian finance minister, Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala, announced on January 20 that Nigeria plans to double its value-added tax and cancel government projects if oil prices continue to slide.

Last week Venezuela’s President Nicolás Maduro was touring across Asia and Russia searching for supportive measures to bolster oil prices. On January 15 Maduro announced that he is planning to create a “formula that impacts the oil market and restores the normalisation of prices” with OPEC and non-OPEC members.

Venezuela’s oil revenues account for about 95 percent of export earnings, the most among the OPEC members.

According to the report on the world oil outlook released by the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) in 2014, oil demand of non-member states of the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) will be greater than the demand of member states in 2015.

“Demand is going to increase clearly in developing countries, with an annual rise of 1.1 mb/d,” the report says. Of the demand increase, developing Asia accounts for 71 percent of the growth in developing countries.

Although OPEC’s official mission states that their goal is to “unify the petroleum policies of its Member Countries and ensure the stabilisation of oil markets” the organisation, which controls about 40 percent of the world market, has failed to do so.

According to Thomas E. Donilon, former National Security Advisor and a member of the Center on Global Energy Policy’s Advisory Board, there is a simple reason for that.

“OPEC is Saudi Arabia, this is a central point,” Donilon said, speaking about the recent oil price collapse, at a seminar at Columbia University on January 21.

“Saudi Arabia made it very clear that it is not going on unilateral basis to reduce production. It is about sending a signal that others would have to participate,” he added.

Over the past weeks, Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates and Kuwait have said repeatedly that the organisation would not cut output to halt the biggest rout since 2008. Though Saudi Arabia has enough resources to do so, the King Abdullah bin Abdulaziz decided in November 2014 not to sacrifice their own market share to restore the price.

The passing of King Abdullah is going to increase uncertainty and increase volatility in oil prices in the near term according to Neil Beveridge, a Hong Kong-based analyst at Sanford C. Bernstein & Co., Bloomberg reported on January 23. “I would not expect a change in policy in the near term to be known, but the passing comes at a challenging time for Saudi Arabia.”

If Saudi Arabia, a country that produces about a third of the OPEC total production (10 million barrels per day) would curb production, the main benefits would go to their main adversaries: Russia and Iran.

So far, the market has recognised the core dynamics of Saudi Arabia’s decision and the global reduction in demand. But there is another factor that must be taken into consideration: the dramatic increase in supply of the United States.

Due to the discovery of shale oil, which is a substitute for conventional crude oil, the American oil production has been boosted by a third to nearly 9 million barrels a day.

Goldman Sachs even speaks about a “new oil order”. “We use this term to describe the transition that the market is going through,” Jeff Currie, global head of commodities research at Goldman Sachs said in a video posted on their website which explains how the U.S. shale revolution has changed the global energy landscape.

Because of the very flat supply curve that is generated out of these shale technologies OPEC has lost much of its pricing power, according to Currie. “If OPEC adds oil on the market or takes oil off the market it does not have a significant impact like it did previously.”

A panel discussion last week focused on the connection between inter-governmental organisations and think tanks, especially how think tanks help to shape transnational policy issues at institutions like the United Nations and governments around the world.

The event coincided with the launch of the 2014 Global Go To Think Tank Index report, probably the most comprehensive ranking of the world’s top think tanks.

The meeting featured a conversation with New York’s leading think tanks, philanthropists, and scholars who discussed the importance of think tanks in peace and security, human rights, and transnational threats.

The panel was chaired by Amy Gadsden, Executive Director of Penn Global at the University of Pennsylvania and a welcome speech was given by Amr Nour, Director of the United Nations Regional Commissions Office (RCNYO).

Stephen J. Del Rosso, Programme Director, International Peace and Security, International Programme, at Carnegie Corporation of New York said the role of think tanks is to be a facilitator or enabler: “We are neither producers nor users of the work that we create or fund.”

Panelists also explored the interdependence between think tanks, universities and foundations. Think tanks produce policy insights and recommendations. They have project timelines, and produce multiple products that try to meet policy makers needs.

Warren Hoge, Senior Adviser for External Relations at the International Peace Institute (IPI) spoke about an ambitious IPI project starting this month: The Independent Commission on Multilateralism (ICM), which will identify policy proposals to enhance the multilateral system’s ability to respond to new global challenges.

The ICM will be chaired by former Australian Prime Minister Kevin Rudd, co-chaired by Foreign Minister of Norway Borge Brende and Canadian Foreign Minister John Baird.

Joseph Saunders, Deputy Program Director at Human Rights Watch said think tanks mainly play two major roles: an agenda-setting role and holding governments and the U.N. system to commitments they have already made. “We see ourselves as fact finders,” Saunders said. “We claim to speak with authorities because we know the situation,” he added.

The issue of transparency and funding think tanks was also addressed. “It is important to be transparent about who is funding what, ” Del Rosso noted. Nour explained there are two sources of funding for the U.N. – “a regular budget and voluntary contributions.”

Critics say think tanks tend to reflect a relatively narrow view of reality. Rather than producing new ideas they are often validating policies. But think tanks have an ability to convince stakeholders, something that governments are not always able to.

Responding to an increase in violence against members of the Jewish faith, the General Assembly Thursday held an informal meeting to discuss concerns about the rise in anti-Semitism worldwide.

Speaking to member states by video message, Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon said that a United Nations that wants to be true to its founding aims and ideals has a duty to speak out against anti-Semitism.

The informal meeting, described as the first to discuss anti-Semitism, was scheduled following a request by 37 Member States in October 2014 – several months before the attack on a kosher supermarket in Paris earlier this month, which raised renewed fears among European and especially French Jews.

Nearly half of the 193-member states did not attend the informal U.N. meeting, but nearly 50 countries were planned to speak.

In a keynote speech, the French-Jewish philosopher Bernard-Henri Levy, denounced anti-Semitism as “radical inhumanity.”

“In Paris, just a few days ago, we heard once again the infamous cry “death to the Jews” and cartoonists were killed for cartooning,” Levy said.

One of the reasons the United Nations was created after World War II was to fight this “plague” of anti-Semitism, Levy pointed out.

Ban, who was at the World Economic Forum in Davos, addressed the meeting via video message, expressing his solidarity in the fight against anti-Semitism worldwide.

“Anti-Semitism is one of the oldest forms of prejudices known to human kind,” Ban stated.

“Our efforts to build a world of mutual understanding are being severely tested today by rising extremism and barbaric acts. The poison of hatred is loose in too many places. Jews remain target, as do Muslims and so many others,” Ban warned.

U.S. Ambassador Samantha Power urged the world to stand up against anti-Semitism and take action to end “this monstrous global problem.”

On this particular day, which was also the French-German day, French Secretary of State for European Affairs, Harlem Désir and German Minister of State for Europe, Michael Roth, came together at the United Nations as a symbol to fight against anti-Semitism, racism and any other form of barbarism.

Désir said there is a need for a European and international legal framework to prevent the diffusion of racist and anti-Semitic speeches: “Terrorists use social networks, they understand that it is the best way to promote a message.”

“We do not want to restrict the use of social media but what we are seeing in the past years and months, is that these networks are being used to promote violence and hatred,” he added.

On Wednesday, French Prime Minister Manuel Valls announced “exceptional measures”, more police and intelligence officers to combat terrorism, especially the threat from online jihadism.

Because of Germany’s role in the Holocaust his country will always be in the forefront of fighting anti-Semitism and pursuing “a zero-tolerance policy”, Roth said.

Alvaro Mendonca e Moura, Acting President of the General Assembly, looked ahead to the International Day of Commemoration of the Victims of the Holocaust on January 27, emphasizing the need to remember the tragedies and to learn from the ‘unspeakable atrocities’ committed.

A new United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) study “Living in the Shadows” released last week reveals the increasingly desperate conditions of Syrian refugees living in urban and rural areas across Jordan.

The report’s findings are based on data gathered using questionnaires answered by some 150,000 Syrian refugees, carried out during home visits by UNHCR’s partner International Relief and Development in 2014.

Almost half of the households visited had no heating, a quarter had unreliable electricity, and 20 percent had no functioning toilet.

Rental costs accounted for more than half of household expenditures, and refugee families were increasingly being forced to share accommodations with others in order to reduce costs.

The situation is particularly worrying for the most vulnerable populations, such as female-headed households with little or no means to provide for themselves, and children who risk losing out on education opportunities.

According to the study, two-thirds of refugees across Jordan are now living below the national poverty line, and one in six Syrian refugee households lives in abject poverty, with less than $40 per person per month to make ends meet.

In an effort to address this critical situation, UNHCR is providing monthly cash assistance to 21,000 of the most vulnerable Syrian families, or 14 percent of the Syrian refugee population living outside camps.

As of the end of 2014, over 10,000 additional Syrian refugee households have been identified as eligible for such assistance but, due to lack of funds, cannot be provided with support.

The UN High Commissioner for Refugees, António Guterres, stated that large numbers of Syrian refugees are sliding into abject poverty, and at an alarming rate, due to the magnitude of the crisis and insufficient support from the international community.

Guterres, who was on a two-day visit to Jordan last week, emphasised that this crisis can be mitigated if the international community steps up efforts to alleviate the suffering of the refugees.

“The generosity of the Jordanian people and the Government needs to be matched by massive support from the international community – support for the refugees themselves and for the local populations hosting them, but also structural and budgetary support to the Jordanian Government for education, health, water and sanitation and electricity to enable it to cope with this enormous challenge,” Guterres said.

Since the beginning of the crisis in 2011, the Government of Jordan, together with humanitarian organisations, has provided Syrian refugees with essential services and support. But as the Syrian conflict enters its fifth year in spring of 2015, the situation for many refugees is increasingly dire as savings and other resources become gradually depleted.

The vast majority (84 percent) of Jordan’s 620,000 registered Syrian refugees live outside the country’s main refugee camps of Zaatari and Azraq.

Funding is running out for the Government of Jordan to sustain free access to health services across the country and the World Food Program is finding it difficult to raise sufficient funds for food assistance, even though the vulnerability of refugees is likely to be even more severe in coming months.

Addressing the Council on Foreign Relations early this week, U.N. Under-Secretary-General for Humanitarian Affairs and Emergency Relief Coordinator, Valerie Amos, delivered the Distinguished Sorensen Lecture on the U.N.’s role in global humanitarian crises.

“For the first time ever, the total number of displaced people and refugees across the world has topped 50 million people, for the first time since about 1945; I shouldn’t say for the first time ever. These are huge and significant numbers,” declared Amos.

The United Nations humanitarian affairs chief pointed out the Sorensen lecture comes at a particularly critical time: “This week alone, horrific events in France and Nigeria have led, for example, to searching questions about the nature of terrorism, security, freedom of speech and religion; the limits or otherwise of press freedom, tolerance, racism, inequality, the impact of social media and the Internet, the lack of connectivity between people and cultures, and the quality of global leadership.”

Amos underlined the fact that humanitarian work is under significant pressure. In 2015, more than 78 million people in 22 countries require urgent humanitarian assistance.

The United Nations estimates that it will cost $16.4 billion to provide urgently needed shelter, essential health care, education and food.

Amos, who will step down in March after more than four years, stated the conflict in Syria has been her low point. While over 3.2 million have fled the conflict that has killed some 200,000 people, more than 12 million people in Syria need help.

“We are feeding millions of people, we are getting healthcare to millions of people, but I still feel that we have failed because we have watched a country descend into war and conflict and we have not been able to stop it,” said Amos.

Amos also said that Ebola is probably the most complex coordination challenge that the international community has ever had to face: “This is not just a health crisis, this is a major economic crisis for the countries of West Africa, it is a major social crisis for those countries as well with some big questions and challenges around how communities traditionally operate.”

Humanitarian actors are increasingly being called on to deal with the consequences of crises that essentially have their roots in a complex set of interrelated factors: poor governance, political paralysis, underdevelopment, rising levels of poverty and inequality.

“Too often, humanitarian organisations are called on to fill the glaring gaps that emerge when States neglect to fulfil their duty to safeguard their citizens. Think for example Syria or South Sudan. Or where, as a result of conflict, the state apparatus has become weak, fragmented or almost nonexistent as in the case of Somalia or the Central African Republic,” stated Amos.

But working in conflict zones, where international humanitarian law is violated, is becoming more dangerous. In 2013, violence against humanitarian aid operations hit an all-time high with 251 separate attacks in which 155 aid workers were killed and 134 were kidnapped.

“We need a stronger, and dare I say it, perhaps a more interventionist global architecture to deal with the humanitarian consequences of conflict. I recognise this would come with major risks – given global power dynamics and other differences around the world,” said Amos.

According to Amos the main problem is the lack of implementation of international humanitarian law. She stressed the need for stronger commitment from governments and multilateral institutions as well as from humanitarian agencies.
“It is no longer acceptable that still less than half of one percent of all international aid is spent on disaster prevention and preparedness.”

Reshaping the United Nations’ approaches to humanitarian aid is going to be a priority for the consultations leading up to the 2016 World Humanitarian Summit, the first ever such Summit which has been called for by the UN Secretary-General.

A global report on “Women in Business and Management,” released Monday by the International Labour Organization (ILO), shows that the number of women in senior and middle management positions has increased over the past 20 years. In 80 of the 108 countries for which ILO data is available, the proportion of women managers has increased during this period.

The findings are the results of a 2013 ILO survey of more than 1,200 companies in Africa, Asia and Pacific, Eastern and Central Europe, Latin America and the Caribbean. The survey was carried out with the assistance of national employers’ organisations in 39 countries.

Jamaica has the highest proportion of women managers at 59.3 percent, while Yemen has the least with 2.1 percent. The U.S. is 15th in the list of 108 countries with 42.7 percent women managers, the U.K. 41st (34.2 percent) and the Russian Federation holds the 25th place (39.1 percent), according to the report.

Today, women own and manage over 30 percent of all businesses, but they are more likely to be found in micro and small enterprises. The report underlines the fact that getting more women to grow their businesses is not only critical for equality but also for national development.

“Our research is showing that women’s ever increasing participation in the labour market has been the biggest engine of global growth and competitiveness,” said Deborah France-Massin, Director of the ILO Bureau for Employers’ Activities, in a press release.

Nevertheless women continue to be shut out of higher level economic decision-making as France-Massin explains: “It is critical for more women to reach senior management positions in strategic areas to build a pool of potential candidates for top jobs such as chief executive officer (CEO) or company presidents. ’Glass walls’ still exist with the concentration of women in certain types of management functions like human resources, communications and administration”.

The report’s statistics show that in the publicly listed companies of the world’s largest stock exchanges, less than 5 percent of CEOs are women. The larger the company, the less likely the head will be a woman. All-male company boards are still common but are decreasing in number, with women attaining 20 per cent or more of all board seats in a handful of countries.

“An increasing number of studies are also demonstrating positive links between women’s participation in top decision making teams and structures and business performance. But there is a long way to go before true gender equality in the workplace, especially when it comes to top management positions, can be achieved,” the report says.

A global survey quoted in the study shows that Norway has the highest global proportion of companies (13.3 percent) with a woman as company board chairperson, followed by Turkey (11.1 percent).

As for African countries, Ghana occupies 26th place with 39 percent, followed by Botswana ranking 28th (38.6 percent).

In Asia, the highest ranking country is the Philippines in 4th place (47.6 percent), followed by Mongolia with 41.9 percent in 17th place.

With 53.1 percent, Colombia holds the second place at the global level and ranks first in Latin America, followed by Panama in fifth place (47.4 percent).

“Unless action is taken, it could take 100 to 200 years to achieve parity at the top. It is time to smash the glass ceiling for good to avoid controversial mandatory quotas that are not always necessary or effective. Having women in top positions is simply good for business,” concluded France-Massin.

On Friday, U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon expressed his condolences to the French people concerning the massacre of 12 people by two gunmen at the Parisian office of the French satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo.

The attack, which was France’s deadliest terror attack in fifty years, killed 10 media workers and two police officers. The magazine’s offices were firebombed by a Molotov cocktail in 2011, but no one was killed on that occasion.

“I am relieved that these terrorists have been killed by the authorities of the French government,” said Ban, speaking in New York, at the Permanent Mission of France to the United Nations, where he signed a book of condolences.

In clarification of this statement, Deputy spokesperson Farhan Haq told IPS in an email: “He was relieved that the armed standoff was resolved without any further casualties (given the number of hostages). His preference would have been for the suspects to be brought to justice peacefully; but in the absence of that, he was relieved no further civilians were killed.”

The Secretary-General emphasized the fact that this “purely unacceptable terrorist attack must be brought to justice, in the name of humanity.”

He added that he is urging people around the world to enhance the level of tolerance and respect for the belief, religion and tradition of others: “Whatever the grievances may be, then all these differences of views should be addressed in a peaceful manner through dialogue. There is nothing which we cannot resolve – the differences of opinion – through dialogue.”

Ban concluded the statement by sending his strong support to the “courageous people of France” and especially to the media: “It is important that freedom of speech, freedom of media, opinion should be protected.”

A recently conducted poll released January 8th by GlobeScan and Oxfam International shows a dramatic increase in the concerns of German and Spanish citizens about the seriousness of poverty and homelessness in their countries.

A total of 24,000 citizens across 24 countries were interviewed face-to-face or by telephone on inequality, poverty and homelessness.

Polling was conducted by GlobeScan and its research partners in each country.

“This poll is powerful evidence that, all over the world, the public clamour to tackle inequality and poverty is growing and hardening by the day. Our political and business leaders will ignore this at their peril”, said Winnie Byanyima, Executive Director at Oxfam International.

Poverty and homelessness continue as top-tier concerns with majorities in 15 of the 24 countries polled seeing these as very serious problems. Other high level concerns are crime and violence, unemployment and the rising cost of food and energy.

In 12 of the 24 countries polled, the perceived seriousness of poverty and homelessness has either increased or remained stable at a high level since the question was last fielded in 2012.

The most significant increases in perceived seriousness over the last two years were found in Germany where it has increased from 24 per cent to 44 per cent and in Spain where it has increased from 76 per cent to 86 per cent.

GlobeScan Foundation president Doug Miller commented: “The current media focus on the growing gap between rich and poor has been deeply felt by citizens in the world over since we first asked about it in 2008. In a number of countries, the strong sense of unfairness threatens to undermine the basic social contract that has hept both risk and poor working towards common end.”

According to the poll, citizens look primarily to government to show leadership on addressing issues of economic and social justice. 59 per cent select government when asked who should lead on this, compared to only 13 per cent for large companies and 6 per cent for trade unions. Another 12 per cent say « all of them » should be collectively responsible.

Poverty and homelessness are seen as the most serious issues globally according to GlobScan; especially in Spain, Nigeria, Chile, France and Peru.

For the first time, Syrians have become the largest refugee population under the mandate of the U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) , overtaking Afghans, who had held that position for more than three decades.

Numbering more than 3 million as of June 2014, Syrian refugees account for 23 per cent of all refugees assisted by UNHCR worldwide, according to the figures from the refugee agency`s Mid-Year Trends 2014 report published on January 7.

”The turnaround clearly demonstrates the rapid deterioration of the situation in Syria”, the report said.

Just two years ago, the Syrian Arab Republic did not even feature among the top 30 source countries of refugees. At the beginning of the conflict, Syrian refugees outside their country represented about 14 per cent of the country’s resident population.

Even though more than 100 countries around the world reported the presence of Syrian refugees during the first half of 2014, neighbouring countries continue to shoulder the greatest burden.

This includes Lebanon (1.1 million), Turkey (798,000), Jordan (645,600), Iraq (220,400), and Egypt (138,100). During the first half of the year, the net Syrian refugee population grew by more than half a million persons in these five countries alone.

With an estimated 6.5 million internally displaced persons (those forced to relocate within their own country), the Syrian Arab Republic continues to face the largest situation of internal displacement worldwide.

Another major finding of the report is the shift in the regional distribution of refugee populations. Until last year, the region hosting the largest refugee population was Asia and the Pacific. But as a result of the Syrian crisis, the Middle East and North Africa have become the regions hosting the largest number of refugees.

A leading non-governmental organisation (NGO), advocating the participation of women in efforts to maintain international peace, has urged the U.N. Security Council to do more to live up to its commitments to its longstanding agenda on women, peace and security (WPS).

The NGO Working Group on Women, Peace and Security (NGOWG) has released a new policy brief entitled Mapping Women, Peace and Security in the UN Security Council: 2013-14: Trends and Recommendations.

The report outlines the findings from the NGOWG`s monitoring and analysis of the Security Council with regards to its implementation of the WPS agenda.

The agenda recognises that a non-gendered understanding of conflict significantly undermines international peace and security efforts.

In recent years, the Security Council has established a strong normative framework on women, peace and security.

Nevertheless, the NGOWG is calling for the body to further institutionalise its commitments.

The group says that consistent support for the broader WPS agenda, especially promoting women’s participation within the core work of its mission mandates, is lacking.

Rather than being embedded as a core function, the Council relies on individual member states to advocate the advancement of the agenda.

More positively, the NGOWG noted a growing willingness on the part of the Security Council to recognise and address sexual violence in conflict.

2015 is the 15th anniversary of the first resolution on women, peace and security, known as the Security Council Resolution 1325.

The landmark resolution recognised that conflict affects men and women differently and that both genders have critical roles to play in peace and security processes and institutions.