overall health
Despite the progress made in medicine this year, combating global health problems was an uphill battle, as diseases like covid-19, monkeypox and the Ebola virus took their toll in many parts of the world. According to one New York Times December 18 article, “More than 5.47 billion people worldwide have received a dose of a Covid-19 vaccine.”
For many in the scientific community, this represented a remarkable feat in the fight against Covid-19 and its devastating effects on the global community. Still, the importance of the global rollout was undermined by the vaccine gap, which showed vast inequalities in administration between the Global North and the Global South.
In South Africa, a country with one of the highest rates of HIV infections, the South African Healthcare Products Regulatory Authority confirmed the registration of an HIV prevention jab by the company ViiV Healthcare, called CAB-LA. The jab is a long-acting version of an antiretroviral drug that is taken every two months and has been shown to reduce a person’s chances of contracting the virus by 79%.
Although cost (R54,000 each) remains a point of contention in South Africa, ViiV Healthcare has committed to offering CAB-LA to low-income countries at a non-profit price. Although covid-19 remained the biggest health problem for people around the world, mental health ranked second among the main health problems, according to an Ipsos study.
A turbulent year for technology
The top tech news this year was the changes (and backlash) after Elon Musk closed on his $44 billion acquisition of Twitter in October and decided to lay off thousands of employees around the world. But Twitter wasn’t the only tech company to hit the headlines in 2022.
Shortly after Musk caused a storm, Meta (Facebook’s parent company) CEO Mark Zuckerberg laid off 11,000 employees in response to declining ad revenue and revenue. Zuckerberg sent an email to employees stating that Meta was “taking a number of additional steps to become a more agile and efficient company by reducing discretionary spending and extending our hiring freeze through the first quarter.”
As Amazon and other tech companies continue to lay off employees, Tik Tok received pushback regarding its use in numerous US states, as officials announced concerns over the alleged extraction of personal data from US citizens by of the Beijing-based company. Some 19 states have at least partially blocked access to the social media platform on government computers despite a lack of evidence of threats or problems in a country where more than 100 million of its users live.
Bandits and terrorists teaming up in Nigeria?
Although the US returned to the spotlight this year for mass shootings, Nigeria was one of several countries that drew international attention for incidents of gun violence that often resulted from bandit attacks, clashes between herders and farmers and ethnic-religious conflicts.
The country began 2022 with the Zamfara massacres, which took place from January 4 to 6 and resulted in the deaths of more than 200 people, according to some sources. The attack was led by bandits, who are recognized by the government as terrorists as they kidnapped, killed and looted in various regions of Zamfara state. The attack has been called the deadliest terror attack in Nigeria’s recent history.
It was followed by massacres in Plateau state in April, another attack in Zamfara in May and a bomb attack in Ondo state against a church of Catholic worshipers in June. Multiple deaths were recorded in each incident. On December 19, local authorities in Kaduna State reported more than 20 civilian deaths after two separate bandit attacks in the state.
Reports attribute the attacks to greed, though experts suggest there may be growing links between the bandits and jihadist groups.
Slavery apology receives backlash
Dutch Prime Minister Mark Rutte apologized in December on behalf of his government for the Netherlands’ role in the Atlantic slave trade, which transported more than half a million people from Africa and Asia to the Americas.
“I apologize for the past actions of the Dutch State: to the people enslaved in the past, in all parts of the world, who suffered as a consequence of those actions, as well as their daughters and sons, and all their descendants, until the day of today,” Rutte said in a nationally televised address.
After his speech, Rutte told reporters that the government would not compensate “individuals, grandchildren, or great-grandchildren of enslaved persons.”
For this reason, in addition to the lack of consultation with descendants of slaves, many have criticized the apology. “The repair was not even mentioned,” said a director of an organization called The Black Archives. “So, beautiful words, but it’s not clear what the next concrete steps will be.”
In 2022, several nations, leaders, and royals addressed or apologized for abuses of slavery, including in speeches by King Charles III and the Prince of Wales.
The Taliban continue to ban female education
Since the Taliban took power in August last year, women’s liberation in Afghanistan has taken priority as a human rights issue. As recently as mid-December, the Taliban announced the closure of the country’s women’s universities.
“Everyone is informed to implement the aforementioned order to suspend women’s education until further notice,” read a letter signed by the Ministry of Higher Education.
The announcement means that women will experience further constraints in access to education, as most secondary schools have already banned girls from attending. Other rules in the country require women to travel with a male relative, adhere to strict dress codes and prohibit them from going to places like parks or gyms.
Elsewhere in the Middle East, hundreds of Iranian civilians have been killed since protests broke out over Mahsa Amini, a woman who died in police custody after being arrested for failing to comply with a dress code.
crazed animals
Animal attack-themed movies like No, Beast Y Jurassic World Dominion grossed at the box office in 2022. Apparently, there’s something about watching animals wreak havoc on society. In reality, however, animal attacks, which saw increased reporting and occurrence in some regions this year, are anything but entertaining.
Animal attacks were seen in zoos, vacation spots, towns, and particularly neighborhoods in South Africa, where a series of pit bull attacks ignited debate over ownership and a ban on the breed. Victims of the deadly attacks included a three-year-old Hennenman boy and a 15-month-old boy from east London.
In Yamaguchi, Japan, residents saw 50 attacks on humans, including children, by Japanese macaque monkeys in incidents that began in July. Conservation efforts revived the species’ dwindling population efforts, but failed to see the potential effect of the extinction of its top predators, namely the Japanese wolf and mountain hawk-eagle. In India, 112 elephant attacks were reported in 2021-22, with deforestation and urbanization cited as the main reason, while calls for government intervention mounted in December in a series of hippo attacks in India. some regions of Kenya.
Russia-Ukraine War
Images captured by a Ukrainian drone were posted online on December 19, showing the dire state of the town of Bakhmut as battles continue following Russia’s withdrawal from Kherson in November. In the three-minute video, plumes of smoke billow the air, fighters clash and fires engulf buildings in the city, which had a pre-war population of 70,000.
Reports indicate that Bakhmut’s value to Russia lies in its location, which would allow President Vladimir Putin’s forces to launch attacks on several key cities in the Donetsk region.
According to the Institute for the Study of War and its daily assessments of the invasion, Russia suffered a defeat by holding positions in the southern region of the city.
“I would like to wish you light, but it is such a difficult situation that there is light and then there is not. The main thing is that there is light inside, ”Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy said about the troops he visited on the city front.
As the war enters its 10th month, the civilian death toll has surpassed 6,000, including the deaths of more than 400 children, according to the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights.
