PERIYAR CURRENT AFFAIRS 20-NOVEMBER-2017
Topic: Urbanization, their problems and their remedies.
World Toilet Day 2017
Context: World Toilet Day was
celebrated on November 19th.
About the World Toilet Day:
What is it?
In 2013, the United Nations
General Assembly officially designated November 19 as World
Toilet Day. World Toilet Day is coordinated by UN-Water in
collaboration with governments and partners. World Toilet Day is about
inspiring action to tackle the global sanitation crisis.
SDG:
By 2030, the Sustainable
Development Goals, specifically SDG #6, aim to reach everyone with sanitation,
and halve the proportion of untreated wastewater and increase recycling and
safe reuse.
2017 theme: Wastewater.
The global sanitation crisis is
reflected in the following facts, according to reports from the World Health
Organization (WHO) and the United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF):
§ Around 60% of the global
population – 4.5 billion people – either have no toilet at home or one that
doesn’t safely manage excreta.
§ 862 million people worldwide
still practise open defecation.
§ 8 billion people use an
unimproved source of drinking water with no protection against contamination
from faeces.
§ Globally, 80% of the wastewater
generated by society flows back into the ecosystem without being treated or
reused.
§ Only 39% of the global
population (2.9 billion people) use a safely-managed sanitation service, that
is, excreta safely disposed of in situ or treated off-site.
§ Combined with safe water and
good hygiene, improved sanitation could prevent around 842,000 deaths each
year.
Sources: pib.
GS Paper 2:
Topic: Welfare schemes for vulnerable sections of the population by
the Centre and States and the performance of these schemes; mechanisms, laws,
institutions and bodies constituted for the protection and betterment of these
vulnerable sections.
Transgender Persons (Protection
of Rights) Bill
Context:
The Union Ministry of Social
Justice and Empowerment has decided to junk the recommendations of a
parliamentary committee report which was the first ever government document to
recognize the rights of transgender persons to partnerships and marriage, so
that they were no longer criminalized under IPC Section 377, apart from
offering other rights.
The ministry is set to
re-introduce its original version of The Transgender Persons (Protection of
Rights) Bill, in the next session of Parliament.
Recommendations made by the
Parliamentary panel:
§ The parliamentary panel report
had faulted the government’s Bill for its failure to address several crucial
issues. Noting that “Transgender persons remain at risk of criminalisation
under Section 377”, it asked that the Bill must recognise their civil rights
such as marriage, divorce, adoption, whether under personal or secular laws.
§ It had also recommended to
accord legal recognition and protection from Section 377 to, if not all sexual
minorities, at least transgender persons whose welfare comes under the Social
Justice Ministry.
§ The panel had also asked for
reservations, strong provisions against discrimination, penalties on government
officials who subject transgender persons to any kind of violence, skill
training to wean them off begging, and separate public toilets for them.
§ Going beyond rights and
welfare, the panel report also addressed the issue of sexual identity. It asked
for provisions that provide “penal action against abortions of intersex
foetuses and forced surgical assignment of sex of intersex infants.”
§ Most importantly, it redefined
several terms in the Bill. To recognise alternative family structures such as
adoptions of transgender children by the the Hijra or Aravani communities, it
defined family in the Bill as “a group of people related by blood, marriage or
by adoption of a transgender person”.
Background:
The transgender community is
one of the most marginalized in the country because they don’t fit into
existing gender categories. Consequently, they face problems ranging from social
exclusion to discrimination, lack of education facilities, unemployment, and
lack of medical facilities. Census 2011 records the population of ‘others
(people who do not identify themselves either as male or female)’ at 4.87 lakh
while a 2011 survey by NGO Salvation of Oppressed Eunuchs put their number at
19 lakh.
Sources: the hindu.
Topic: Issues relating to development
and management of Social Sector/Services relating to Health, Education, Human
Resources.
Moscow declaration
Context:
Health ministers, NGOs, and
private sector representatives from 120 countries adopted the Moscow
Declaration at the recently held first WHO Global Ministerial Conference on
Ending Tuberculosis in the Sustainable Development Era. India is among the
signatories to the declaration that WHO director-general Dr Tedros Ghebreyesus
described in his address as a “milestone in the history of TB”.
During the conference,
collective commitment was proposed to ramp up action on four fronts:
§ Move rapidly to achieve
universal health coverage by strengthening health systems and improving access
to people-centered TB prevention and care, ensuring no one is left behind.
§ Mobilize sufficient and
sustainable financing through increased domestic and international investments
to close gaps in implementation and research.
§ Advance research and
development of new tools to diagnose, treat, and prevent TB.
§ Build accountability through a
framework to track and review progress on ending TB, including multisectoral
approaches.
About Moscow declaration:
What is it?
The Moscow Declaration to End
TB is a promise to increase multi-sectoral action as well as track progress,
and build accountability. It will also inform the first UN General Assembly
High-Level Meeting on TB in 2018, which will seek further commitments from
heads of state.
The Moscow declaration
emphasised the need for fixing multisectoral responsibility towards ending TB
by 2035, the global target. It also said that multi-drug resistant TB would be
tackled as a national public health crisis.
Need for global attention:
Global efforts to combat TB
have saved an estimated 53 million lives since 2000 and reduced the TB
mortality rate by 37%. However, progress in many countries has stalled, global
targets are off-track, and persistent gaps remain in TB care and prevention.
As a result, TB still kills
more people than any other infectious disease. There are major problems
associated with antimicrobial resistance, and it is the leading killer of
people with HIV. One of the main problems has been a lack of political will and
inadequate investment in fighting TB.
Sources: pib.
Topic: Important International institutions, agencies and fora,
their structure, mandate.
International Committee of
Military Medicine (ICMM)
Context:
The 42nd World Congress of the
International Committee of Military Medicine (ICMM) was recently organised by the Armed Forces
Medical Services (AFMS) under the aegis of the Ministry of Defence (MoD). The
event is being organised for the first time in India, and is the largest
medical conference ever organised by the AFMS. Around 350-400 foreign delegates
from 80 countries are attending the event.
The theme of this 42nd World
Congress is “Military Medicine in Transition: Looking Ahead.”
About ICMM:
What is it?
The ICMM is an international
inter-governmental organisation created in 1921 with its secretariat at
Brussels in Belgium and currently has 112 nations as members.
When and why was it
established?
The ICMM was established after
World War I had revealed the lack of care provided to victims and the need to
strengthen cooperation between the health services of the armed forces
worldwide.
The main objective of the ICMM is to ensure that our
medical services personnel have the means to work together, using similar
practices, in operations involving international cooperation. This is a
long-term goal, and the ICMM can work towards achieving this in a number of
ways: by encouraging activities at which scientific and technical experience is
shared, by developing contacts with the scientific community, by promoting
regional events. This will enable us to pool our resources and work experience
of military medicine, both in the theatre of operations and in a support role
in the case of crisis situations.
Sources: pib.
GS Paper 3:
Topic: Awareness in the fields of IT, Space, Computers, robotics,
nano-technology, bio-technology and issues relating to intellectual property
rights.
NOAA’s JPSS-1 satellite
Context:
The Joint Polar Satellite
System-1, an advanced U.S. weather satellite designed to improve the accuracy
of extended forecasts has been launched into polar orbit from California.
About the Joint Polar Satellite
System-1:
What is it?
The satellite is the first of
four next-generation spacecraft for NASA and the National Oceanic and
Atmospheric Administration.
What is it for?
Circling the Earth from pole to
pole 14 times a day, JPSS-1 carries a suite of five instruments intended to
make global observations that will improve forecasts of severe weather events
three to seven days beforehand. The satellite also will contribute to near-term
weather forecasts, climate and ocean dynamics research, among many other uses.
Significance:
The satellite will improve
weather forecasting, such as predicting a hurricane’s track, and will help
agencies involved with post-storm recovery by visualizing storm damage and the
geographic extent of power outages. JPSS-1 data will also improve recognition
of climate patterns that influence the weather, such as El Nino and La Nina.
Sources: the hindu.
Facts for Prelims:
§ Namami Barak festival:
Context:
The first ever Namami Barak
festival was celebrated on November 18th at Barak Valley in Assam.
What is it?
Namami Barak is an attempt to
pay tribute to the River Barak and to showcase of Barak’s potential and
possibilities to emerge as a hub of trade and commerce. The cultural heritage
of the valley together with its cuisine, fauna and flora, socio-economic and
civic splendor were showcased before the global audience during the festival.
About Barak river:
The Barak River is one of the
major rivers of South Assam and is a part of the Surma-Meghna River System. It
rises in Manipur State, where it is the biggest and the most important of the
hill country rivers. After Manipur it flows through Mizoram and into Assam,
ending after 564 kilometres just after it enters Bangladesh where it forks into
the Surma and Kushiyara rivers.
§ Indira Gandhi Prize:
Context:
Former Prime Minister Manmohan
Singh will be the recipient of this year’s Indira Gandhi Prize for Peace, Disarmament
and Development.
About the award:
The award is given annually to
individuals and organisations in recognition of creative efforts toward
promoting international peace, development and a new international economic
order, ensuring that scientific discoveries are used for the larger good of
humanity, and enlarging the scope of freedom. The award, comprising a cash
prize of ₹25 lakh and a citation, was
instituted by the Indira Gandhi Memorial trust in 1986.
§ Gleadovia konyakianorum:
Context:
Scientists have discovered a
new species of parasitic flowering plant. The species is named Gleadovia
konyakianorum, in honour of the Konyak tribe of Nagas.
Key facts:
§ The plant is a holoparasite
[complete parasite] that derives its entire nutritional requirement from the
host plant, which is a Strobilanthes species.
§ Though it has no chlorophyll,
the plant has a vascular system and extracts its nutrition from the host plant
with the help of a haustorium. A haustorium is a specialised structure
with which plant parasites attach themselves to the tissue of host plants and
derive nutrition.
§ The new plant species is a root
parasite that grows up to 10 cm in height, and bears white, tubular flowers.
Interestingly, this is only the fourth species from the genus Gleadovia to be
found in the world. The other three are Gleadovia banerjiana
(discovered in Manipur), Gleadovia mupinense (found in China) and Gleadovia
ruborum (discovered in Uttarakhand and also reported from China).
§ World’s biggest toilet pot
model unveiled at ‘Trump village’:
World’s biggest toilet pot
model was recently unveiled at Marora, popularly known as the “Trump village”,
in Haryana on the World Toilet Day in a bid to create awareness towards
sanitation and use of toilets.
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