The World Food Programme (WFP) appealed for urgent funding for its operations in the country, where families are battling crisis after crisis, including growing hunger, since the Taliban takeover of 2021.
Catastrophic hunger could become widespread across Afghanistan, and unless humanitarian support is sustained, hundreds of thousands more people will need assistance to survive, the agency said in an alert.
Due to funding constraints, at least four million people will receive just half of what they need to get by in March. Ss food stocks have run out before the next harvest is due in May, this is traditionally the most difficult time of the year for rural families, WFP said.
The cuts come at a time when already vulnerable Afghans are just emerging from yet another freezing winter. Sub-zero temperatures combined with economic distress has pushed millions into despair, the agency added.
WFP urgently needs $ 93 million to assist 13 million people in April and $800 million for the next six months. Although donors gave record amounts in 2022, since November last year WFP had been warning that funds would run out just as the lean season is reaching its peak in March and April.
‘Last lifeline’
The country is at the highest risk of famine in a quarter of a century, with half of all families living in crisis-coping mode to survive. For millions in Afghanistan, WFP’s food assistance is now the “last lifeline”.
Since August 2022, nine out of 10 Afghan families cannot afford enough food – the highest in the world. Nearly 20 million Afghans do not know where their next meal will come from, and six million of them are one step away from famine.
Levels of moderate acute malnutrition are the highest ever recorded in the country. Two thirds of the population – more than 28 million people – need humanitarian assistance in 2023, almost triple than in 2021.
In response, WFP massively scaled up its assistance across Afghanistan in 2022, thanks to generous funding. The agency supported 23 million people, distributing more than 1 million metric tons of food and $326 million in cash or vouchers to help families survive.
Afghanistan: WFP facts & figures
Nine million are suffering acute food insecurity (November 2022 to March 2023)
People suffering emergency-level acute food insecurity (November 2022 to March 2023): one million
Malnourished pregnant and breastfeeding women in 2023: 800,000
Children aged 6 to 59 months with moderate acute malnutrition in 2023: 2.3 million
Children aged 6 to 59 months with severe acute malnutrition in 2023: 800,000
Beneficiaries reached in 2022: 23.4 million
Beneficiaries assisted in 2023 to date: 14.2 million
Beneficiaries planned to be reached in 2023: 21 million
“Brutal” armed conflict has left 10 million children in Burkina Faso, Mali and Niger in need of humanitarian assistance – more than double the number in 2020, UNICEF warned in a new report.
And hostilities spilling over into neighbouring countries, are putting an extra four million children at risk.
“The conflict may not have clear boundaries, there may not be headline-grabbing battles, but slowly and surely things have been getting worse for children, and millions of them are now caught up in the centre of this crisis,” said UNICEF spokesperson John James.
Children living on the frontlines of hostilities between armed groups and national security forces are increasingly in the line of fire, too.
In Burkina Faso, for instance, the number of children killed during the first nine months of 2022 tripled compared to the same period in 2021. Children are also being recruited by armed groups and forced to fight or support militants in backup role, UNICEF said.
In addition, armed groups in Burkina Faso, Mali and Niger have been directly targeting schools, in an “accelerating attack on education”. According to the UNICEF report, more than a fifth of schools in Burkina Faso have closed as a result of attacks.
“More than 8,300 schools in those three countries – Mali, Burkina Faso and Niger – are now closed due to violence and insecurity”, said Mr. James. That’s teachers who fled the schools, children who are too scared to go to the schools, families who are displaced – that’s buildings that have been attacked and caught up in the violence”, UNICEF’s Mr. James told journalists in Geneva.
Spillover effect
Hostilities have already spilled over from the central Sahel into the northern border regions of Benin, Cote d’Ivoire, Ghana and Togo where, UNICEF notes, “children have extremely limited access to essential services and protection”.
At least 172 violent incidents, including attacks by armed groups, were reported in the northern border areas of the four countries in 2022.
Climate crisis and food insecurity
UNICEF explained that the central Sahel suffers from severe food and water scarcity, and that armed groups make survival for civilians even harder by blockading towns and villages and contaminating water points.
Fifty-eight water points were attacked in Burkina Faso alone in 2022, close to a threefold increase from the previous year.
Overall, more than 20,000 people in the border area between Burkina Faso, Mali and Niger face ‘catastrophe-level’ food insecurity by June 2023, according to humanitarian assessments.
Local people in Maiduguri, Nigeria, fetch water at a pump provided by a UN partner.
Climate change shocks
Climate shocks are a key factor affecting crops, with temperatures in the Sahel rising “1.5 times faster than the global average”, and “erratic” rainfall which leads to flooding, UNICEF said.
The impacts of extreme weather events are an important driver of displacement, with over 2.7 million displaced across the three countries.
The crisis in the Sahel is increasingly mirrored globally: in 2022, over 8,000 children worldwide were killed and maimed by armed forces and groups, more than 7,000 children recruited and over 4,000 abducted, the Special Representative of the Secretary-General for Children and Armed Conflict, Virginia Gamba, told the Human Rights Council on Thursday.
A displaced young woman holds her newborn baby in the north-central region of Burkina Faso.
Chronic underfunding
The UN Children’s Fund underscored that the crisis in the central Sahel remains “chronically and critically underfunded”, with only one third of the required funding received by UNICEF in 2022.
This year, the UN agency has appealed for $473.8 million to support its humanitarian response in the central Sahel and in neighbouring coastal countries.
UNICEF has also called for “long-term flexible investment” in essential social services, and stressed the need to work with communities and young people in the region to ensure a better future for them.
Sergii Shulga, Head of the regional council of Kirovohrad Oblast with MEP Lucas Mandel at the European Parliament
On 9-10 March, the head of the regional council of Kirovohrad Oblast (region), Sergii Shulga, visited European institutions in Brussels to raise awareness about the future of his region in the EU and the global context. Kirovohrad Oblast is a region in central Ukraine that had a population of about a million inhabitants before the war.
Only a limited number of local Ukrainians have decided to leave this highly agricultural region as the population mainly lives off the land but with the war raging in the Donbass, about 100,000 displaced persons have suddenly modified and increased the local demography.
Human Rights Without Frontiers met Sergii Shulga and interviewed him.
HRWF: Russia has invaded parts of Ukraine and has caused a lot of damage. Was your region affected as well?
S. Shulga: Since February 2022, Russia has launched over 20 missile attacks on the Kirovohrad region. Last night, there was a hit on the infrastructure again. But we are strong. And we believe in victory. So after it, we will rebuild our economy.
HRWF: Why did you come to Brussels and who did you meet?
S. Shulga: Up to now, no Ukrainian region has taken the initiative to send its highest representatives to Brussels to contact there the missions of the EU regions and identify possible partners for the reconstruction.
I met and talked with Lucas Mandel, an Austrian member of the European Parliament. He is a reliable supporter of Ukraine. He visited our country a few times. He knows our realities and he is quite supportive of any initiative that can be beneficial to Ukraine.
What is important for us in Ukraine is to have concrete solidarity partnerships, not only with regions but also with organizations of the European Union.Photo, Kropyvnytskyi: Oleksandr Maiorov
I had a meeting with the Secretary General of the Assembly of European Regions, Mr. Christian Spahr, to discuss some joint cooperation in the Regional Youth Council, where the Kirovohrad Region has delegated two representatives. One of them has recently become the head of the Mental Health Committee.
I also talked with Mathieu Mori, the Secretary General of the Congress of Local and Regional Authorities. He is a key person for the future development of our network between the Kirovohrad region and the EU regions as he was elected in October 2022 for a period of five years.
As Sweden is currently holding the EU presidency until 30 June, I discussed with the Head of the Southern Sweden Office which represents five regions to envisage potential partnerships. I also had talks with the head of the Lower Austrian Region, the head of the Representation of Carinthia Land as well as representatives of two regions of Slovakia: Bratislava region and Trnava region. The purpose is to put in place various forms of collaboration with our region.
HRWF: What are your current needs?
S. Shulga: The economy of our region is massively of agrarian nature. Ninety-five per cent of the income of our region comes from our agricultural activities. In our region, there are 2 million hectares of rich lands to be cultivated. They were rather spared from the war as the Russian shelling was mainly targeting energy infrastructure and housing: no explosions, no mines and no demining necessity, no holes, no tank carcasses, no toxic products or pollution in our fields.
Last year, through the ports of Mikolayev, Kherson and Odessa we exported four million tons of our grain, corn, sugar beet and sunflower seeds, mainly to the Middle East and Africa. We all know how difficult the negotiations were to break Russia’s blockade of our ports and how fragile this agreement with Russia remains. Brussels needed to know that the Kirovohrad Region helps feed the world with its rich lands. That is also the reason why I needed to come to Brussels. Ukraine needs to get back its Russian-occupied territories, especially along the sea.
HRWF: What will be your objective when you are back in your oblast?
S. Shulga: I would like to organize a conference in Brussels in May to give the opportunity to the Kirovohrad Region to present themselves to the European Union. I informed the Head of the Ukrainian Mission to the EU, Mr Vsevolod Chentsov, about this project and already invited him. This will be part of the process of opening the road to our EU membership. We need and love the EU but the EU also shows with its massive investments that it needs Ukraine and loves Ukraine.
UN member states reached agreement on Saturday 4 March on the first international treaty to protect the high seas, designed to counter threats to ecosystems vital to humanity.
In 1982, UN member states agreed to sign a Convention on the Law of the Sea. The negotiations on the new treaty will have lasted almost twenty years, and their positive outcome is good news because nothing predicted that the member countries would finally agree.
After two weeks of intense discussions, including a late-night session on Friday, delegates finalised a text that can no longer be significantly changed. “There will be no reopening or substantive discussions” on this issue, conference chair Rena Lee assured negotiators.
In addition to the recognition of a common heritage of humanity, the fifty-four page text is supposed to lay the groundwork for a plan to safeguard the ocean. Among other things, it provides for the creation of marine protected areas covering an area equivalent to 30% of the high seas. This is a way of giving concrete expression to the promises made at the last COP for biodiversity signed in Montreal at the beginning of the winter.
“The delimitation of these areas will be based on consensus and on a case-by-case basis,” says Frédéric Le Manach, scientific director of Bloom, an association involved in the fight against the destruction of marine ecosystems. “There is a risk of ending up with protected areas where destructive human activities are still authorised, as is the case in France…
The other pillar of the new treaty? A more equitable sharing of marine genetic resources. The new agreement should thus lead to the creation of a common fund to which a portion of the profits from the high seas would be paid, around 2%. What remains to be done is to “find the right mechanism to implement all this beyond the simple promise”, says Frédéric Le Manach.
The exact content of the text was not immediately released, but campaigners hailed it as a watershed moment for biodiversity protection. “This is a historic day for conservation, and a sign that in a divided world, protecting nature and people can triumph over geopolitics,” said Greenpeace’s Laura Meller.
In a joint statement from the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and the Secretary of State for the Sea, France also welcomed a “historic agreement”. UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres congratulated delegates, according to a spokesman: the agreement is a “victory for multilateralism and for global efforts to counter destructive trends that threaten the health of the oceans, now and for generations to come. EU Environment Commissioner Virginijus Sinkevicius said he was “very proud” of the treaty, hailing it as “a historic moment for our oceans”.
The NGO Bloom, however, fears “soft processes that do not name things” and a Treaty “that will remain a wind” in the absence of “political will to carry out concrete actions”, says Frédéric Le Manach.
The new international treaty on the protection of the high seas must now be translated into the six official UN languages in the coming weeks, before being sent to each of the organisation’s member countries for validation by national parliaments. The consent of at least sixty countries will be required for it to enter into force.
clean tech – In a debate with Presidents Michel and von der Leyen, MEPs reviewed the outcomes of the 9 February EU summit and outlined their expectations for the 23-24 March European Council.
President of the European Council Charles Michel acknowledged Ukraine’s urgent need for more weapons and ammunition and confirmed that EU leaders will work on a proposal by High Representative Borrell to offer Kyiv assistance. He said that the EU supports President Zelenskyy’s peace formula, but admitted that the Kremlin has given no indication it is interested in de-escalation.
President Michel cited the many short-term measures taken by the EU to cope with the crises of recent years, but stressed that these should not undermine the Union’s long-term economic strategy for a green and digital transition. In his view, the EU should focus on making investment available to companies, encouraging innovation and supporting fair trade. Referring to relations with global actors, he said “there is no equidistance between the US and China”. However, “China is a reality, a key actor” with whom the EU must engage at global level, he insisted.
On migration policy, Michel called for “rationality”. The EU should “do more and better” in cooperation with third countries to fight human trafficking and there should be legal and safe migration channels to Europe, because “we cannot let criminals decide who comes to the EU,” he said.
Commission President Ursula von der Leyen reported back from her meeting with US President Joe Biden, saying there is “a striking symmetry between the US Inflation Reduction Act (IRA) and the European Green Deal,” since both aim to fight climate change and boost investment and growth. “We are moving in the same direction,” she said, adding that solutions for some areas of concern regarding the IRA have been found and discussions have been launched for example on raw materials and incentives for the clean tech industry.
“The race to see who is going to be dominant in net-zero technologies is on,” President von der Leyen said, stressing that Europe must nurture its industry. She announced that on Thursday the Commission will present its proposals for a net-zero industry act and a critical raw materials act, both crucial for Europe’s competitiveness and independence. President von der Leyen also highlighted the need to achieve the goal of spending 3% of GDP on research & development, to reduce bureaucracy, and make sure that EU laws do not overburden businesses.
MEPs highlighted the urgent need for the EU to improve its competitiveness and urged measures to ensure fair conditions for EU manufacturers, in light of the current protectionist measures by the US. They stressed the need for more investment, welcomed moves towards an EU raw materials strategy, demanded more ambition in cutting red tape, asked to boost European capital markets, and a renewed vigour in the EU’s trade diplomacy, to achieve new free trade deals with the US and other democracies.
Many speakers focused on the importance of boosting innovation – in the area of clean tech and beyond-, for the EU to become a “high value” rather than “low costs” champion. Some stressed that the EU’s Green deal should also be the bloc’s competitiveness strategy, noting that social fairness and fair pay for workers were fundamental to it.
A number of MEPs criticised the Commission for giving in to lobbying by big energy companies at the expense of consumer prices, while others warned against shifting EU energy dependence from Russia to China
Finally, MEPs called on the Council to address the common European problem of migration, by ensuring that all member states take their fair share of migrants and asylum-seekers and by fighting the illegal activity at the EU borders leading to human tragedies.
genital mutilation – At the Barcelona airport, the mossos d’esquadra have arrested a woman who was trying to take her daughter to Morocco to fly from there to her hometown in Sierra Leone.
What they have done has been, at the same time, to take away the passport of their daughter, who is only 17 months old, with a return order when she turns 18. The intention of this woman was to travel to perform an ablation on the minor, made totally illegal in our country and well-known persecuted.
Now, the Catalan Social Services are in charge of the girl, but let’s remember that this practice is widespread in sub-Saharan African countries and families do not hesitate to travel to their places of origin in order to practice this mutilation on the body of their daughters.
Used to control female sexuality, this practice includes the removal of all or part of the external genitalia. The most extreme practice is called infibulation where the opening of the vagina is sutured up to the minimum limit allowed to let out urine and menstrual bleeding.
Its origin is not clear. There is talk of Ancient Egypt and Sub-Saharan Africa and even ancient Rome where slaves wore brooches or brooches attached to the labia to prevent pregnancy.
Actually, in Ancient Egypt no evidence has been found in mummies, nor was there a figure in which this practice was reflected, in any document or even in works of art of the time. The first mention that is made dates from the year 25 BC, being likely that the inhabitants of Sub-Saharan Africa had exported it.
A Greek papyrus dated to the year 163 BC mentions the operation performed on girls in Memphis, Egypt, at the age at which they received their dowry, which would support the idea that female genital mutilation originates as a form of initiation for young women.
The truth is that ancient civilizations saw it as a deformity and a shame that the clitoris was too large due to continuous rubbing against clothes, which stimulated sexual appetite. Therefore, the Egyptians considered it necessary to remove it before it became too big.
As early as the 19th century, clitoridectomy was practiced in England and the United States to treat psychological symptoms such as masturbation and nymphomania. Depression and neurasthenia were believed to be caused by genital inflammation.
Currently it has been recognized that female genital mutilation is a violation of the human rights of women and girls.
Sweden was the first country in the West to ban female genital mutilation, followed by the United Kingdom in 1985 and the United States in 1997. In the same year UNICEF and the WHO launched a joint statement against this practice, considering it a crime.
Islam, a religion that is practiced in the majority of countries that support it, has begun to distance itself from an action that has nothing to do with their religion, according to what Secretary General Ihsanoglu said at the IV Conference of the Intergovernmental Organization on the role of women in developing countries.
Today, an estimated three million girls are forcibly subjected to this mutilation procedure in 28 African countries and in others such as Yemen, Iraq, Malaysia, Indonesia and in some communities in South America.
February 6 has been proclaimed as the “International Day of Zero Tolerance Against Female Genital Mutilation”.
A long way to go considering the recent reaction of countries to abolish this aberrational practice, but we will continue to fight against it in order to eradicate it, like so many other evils that affect women in our century.
As Commission deadline for implementation of discrimination case law of the Court of Justice of the EU approaches, Italy’s largest trade union calls on Minister for Universities to settle with non-national teaching staff
In its most recent initiative in defence of the rights of foreign language lecturers(Lettori) in Italian universities, FLC CGIL, Italy’s largest trade union, has written an open letter to Minister for Universities and Research, Anna Maria Bernini, calling on her to pay the full compensatory settlements due for decades of discriminatory treatment within the deadline of the 60 days given by the European Commission.
In its press release of 26 January, the Commission announced that it was moving infringement proceedings N.2021/4055 to the reasoned opinion stage and cautioned Italy to comply with the opinion within the two-month period prescribed or face referral of the case to the Court of Justice of the European Union(CJEU). The Commission opened the proceedings in September 2021 because of Italy’s failure to implement the CJEU ruling in favour of the Lettori in Case C-119/04.
The letter to Minister Bernini sketches the legal history of the Lettori in their battle for parity of pay, referencing the 4 victories won before the CJEU. These run from the first and seminal Allué case of 1989 to the Commission’s 2006 victory in its enforcement case against Italy for non-implementation of the earlier Commission v Italy ruling of 2001. A fifth parity of pay case before the CJEU may now follow should Italy fail to comply with the terms of the Commission’s reasoned opinion of January 2023.
“The time span encompassed within this brief legal history equates to 34 years,” writes FLC CGIL in its letter to Minister Bernini. The duration of Italy’s discrimination against the Lettori positions the case as the longest-running breach of the parity of treatment provision of the Treaty on record.
However, in light of Italy’s plans to limit the settlements due to Lettori to the years prior to 1995, the breach is likely to last even longer. In Case C-119/04 the Grand Chamber of the CJEU approved a last-minute Italian law of March 2004 which awarded Lettori a reconstruction of career from the date of first employment. In response, and in the most brazen of its attempts to evade the case law of the CJEU, Italy subsequently enacted the Gelmini law of 2010, a law which retrospectively interpreted the March 2004 law and read it to limit Italy’s liability to the Lettori for reconstruction of career only to the years prior to 1995.
On the point of law at issue, FLC CGIL comments:
“Scrutiny of Law n. 63 of March 2004 shows that it contains no provision to limit the reconstruction of career due to the Lettori under Case C-212/99 to the years prior to 1995. It follows therefore that the Court of Justice ruling in follow-on Case C-119/04 does not, or cannot, be read to condone such a limit. More seriously, it follows that the Gelmini Law’s retrospective interpretation of Law n. 63 of March 2004 seeks to undo the case law of the European Court of Justice, the pinnacle institution of the European Union.”
On December 13 last Lettori from universities all over Italy staged a demonstration on Viale Trastevere in the vicinity of Minister Bernini’s offices on the left bank of the Tiber in Rome. The demonstration was to protest against the fact that Italy continues to deny Lettori their Treaty right to parity of treatment. Just a short walking distance from Viale Trastevere, on the right bank of the Tiber, is the Campidoglio. There, as the letter very pointedly reminds Minster Bernini, “in the Sala dei Conservatori the right to parity of treatment was signed into law as a provision of the historic Treaty of Rome on 25 March 1957”.
The FLC CGIL letter is particularly critical of the fact that the employers responsible for the discrimination against the non-national Lettori should be universities. “That the provenance of the discrimination should be universities, all with Faculties of Jurisprudence which teach EU law and therefore ought to be able to comprehend the rulings of the CJEU condemning discrimination against Lettori in the Italian universities, is most regrettable”, the letter states.
In Case C-119/04, the Commission recommended that a daily fine of €309,750be imposed on Italy for its persistent discrimination against Lettori. The last-minute law introduced in March 2004 conceded that Lettori had a right to an uninterrupted reconstruction of their carers from the date of first employment, with the result that Grand Chamber of the CJEU spared Italy the recommended fines. However, following the handing-down of the sentence the provisions of the law were never subsequently enforced.
Commenting on the possibility of a further case being referred to the CJEU for non-implementation of the ruling in Case C-119/04, the FLC CGIL letter points out:
“In such a scenario lawyers for the Permanent Representation would have to explain to the CJEU, why the Law of March 2004, which spared Italy the daily fines of EUR 309, 750 recommended by the European Commission, was never subsequently implemented as interpreted by the CJEU. “
The infringement proceedings were preceded by a pilot procedure, a mechanism introduced to resolve disputes amicably with member states. Over a 10-year period it markedly failed to achieve its purpose. The move to infringement proceedings proper is credited to a nationwide census of discriminatory conditions in Italian universities conducted by Asso. CEL.L, a La Sapienza based union and an official complainant in the infringement proceedings, and FLC CGIL, Italy’s largest trade union. The Census results conclusively documenting the non-payment of the settlements due under the ruling in Case C-119/04 were deposited with the Commission.
Undoubtedly the most influential parliamentary question on the Lettori issue placed to the Commission during the mandate of the present European Parliament is the question submitted by Clare Daly and co-signed by 7 other Irish MEPs. The FLC CGIL letter to Minister Bernini cites the wording in the parliamentary question which focuses on the reciprocal responsibilities which come with the benefits of EU membership.
“Italian universities receive generous funding from the EU. Italy has received the biggest share of the Recovery Fund. Surely, the ethic of reciprocation demands that Italy obey the rule of law and implement the most recent CJEU ruling in favour of the lettori: case C‑119/04.”
John Gilbert is National Lettori Coordinator for FLC CGIL. A lettore at the University of Florence, his well-received speech to his colleagues at the protest outside Minister Bernini’s offices in December covered many of the points included in the FLC CGIL letter to the minister.
Mr Gilbert said:
“While the Ministry of Universities is located close to the venue where the historic Treaty of Rome was signed, the discriminatory policies against Lettori pursued by the ministry and the Italian government since the 1980s are worlds apart from the provision of the Treaty of Rome, which enshrines the principle of parity of treatment throughout the Union. Through updates of the nation Census we undertook with Asso. CEL.L we will monitor whether the settlements due under the ruling in Case C-119/04 are in fact made and will communicate our findings to Brussels”.
The letter to Minister Bernini has been copied to Commissioner for Jobs and Social Rights, Nicolas Schmit, and to Commission President Ursula von der Leyen, who has taken a personal interest in the Lettori case. It will now be translated into all the mother tongues of the Lettori working in the Italian universities and handed in at their respective embassies in Rome.
We are aware that your entire international community is saddened by this tragedy that will remain in the memory of all people.
We have a special thought for the children who were present during this tragedy marked by horror and incomprehension. A long work of reconstruction and accompaniment will certainly be given by your Church, your ministers and the parents.
We are convinced that your beliefs, your faith and your hope will allow you to overcome this ordeal (James 1: 12).
Your religion adheres to values that are common to all of us because they are based on universal principles:
– freedom of conscience and religion,
– refusal of any form of racism, anti-Semitism, xenophobia,
– fraternity and pacifism.
Our NGO, which brings together people of different faiths as well as non-believers, agrees to quote your Holy Scriptures and to send you these two encouraging verses:
“Do not be afraid, for I am with you. Do not worry, for I am your God. I will make you strong. Yes I will help you; indeed, I will uphold you with my right hand, the hand of justice. All those who are angry with you will be ashamed and humiliated. Those who fight against you will be reduced to nothing and will perish.(Isaiah 41:10-11)
We hope that this message of friendship will bring comfort to all your members.
In a recent study, scientists have shown that carbon-based molecules possess significantly greater dynamism than previously believed. Credit: Durham University
By DURHAM UNIVERSITY
Scientists have demonstrated in a new study that carbon-based molecules can be much more dynamic than previously thought.
When a carbon atom forms four bonds to different groups, the molecule can exist in two mirror-image forms. These mirror-image forms are vital in medicine because they have different biological activities.
Usually, it is impossible to interconvert between these ‘enantiomers’ because to do so would require a bond to be broken, a process that needs too much energy.
The researchers from Durham University and the University of York demonstrated that if the chiral center was part of a dynamic molecular cage structure, then a simple rearrangement of the cage could lead to the inversion of the mirror image form of the molecule.
An animation by @SciCommStudios showing the dynamic inversion of sp3-C stereochemistry in fluxional barbaralane and their metal complexes.
In this way, carbon-based stereochemistry, which is normally considered to be fixed and rigid, became dynamic, fluxional, and responsive – a new paradigm in carbon-centered chirality.
The findings will be published today (March 13, 2023) in the journal Nature Chemistry.
The molecular cage has nine carbons atoms in its structure, which are held together by a pair of carbon–carbon double bonds and a three-membered cyclopropane ring. This combination of bonds allows some of the bonds in the structure to trade places with one another spontaneously.
Project lead investigator, Dr. Aisha Bismillah of Durham University, said: “Our dynamic carbon cages change their shape extremely quickly. They hop back and forth between their mirror-image structures millions of times a second. Seeing them adapt to match changes in their environment is truly remarkable.”
Further to uncovering this unique dynamic form of stereochemical interconversion, the researchers demonstrated that the preferences of the cage could be transmitted to nearby metal centers, opening the possibility that this type of responsive chirality might find uses in catalysis, and the synthesis of chiral molecules for biomedical applications.
Reflecting on the way in which these results overturn established ideas, Dr. Paul McGonigal of University of York, said: “The way our dynamic carbon cage interacts with other molecules and ions is fascinating. The cage adapts, giving the mirror-image structure with the ‘best fit’.
“We hope, in due course that this intriguing bonding concept will be found to apply in other contexts, and potentially used to underpin new applications for more dynamic molecular materials.”
Reference: “Control of dynamic sp3-C stereochemistry” by Aisha N. Bismillah, Toby G. Johnson, Burhan A. Hussein, Andrew T. Turley, Promeet K. Saha, Ho Chi Wong, Juan A. Anguilar, Dmitry S. Yufit and Paul R. McGonigal, 13 March 2023, Nature Chemistry. DOI: 10.1038/s41557-023-01156-7
The research has been funded by the Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (EPSRC) and Leverhulme Trust.
Photo courtesy of: jw-russia.org - Sannikov Konstantin Yevgeniyevich
Konstantin Sannikov sentenced to six years and five months of prison
Despite Russia’s war in Ukraine and a decision of the European Court in 2022 urging Russia to stop all pending criminal proceedings against Jehovah’s Witnesses, Putin has not halted his repression policy against Jehovah’s Witnesses.
On 15 February 2023, the Sovetskiy District Court of Kazan sentenced Konstantin Sannikovto 6 years and 5 months in a penal colony. For conducting peaceful religious services of Jehovah’s Witnesses, the court found him guilty of extremism.
Throughout the preliminary investigation and trial – for more than two years – Konstantin has been in a detention center.
In August 2020, the FSB of Tatarstan initiated a criminal case under part 1 of Art. 282.2 of the Criminal Code of the Russian Federation (organizing the activity of an extremist organization) against Konstantin Sannikov, doctor of forensics and the father of 4 children. Conversations about the Bible among friends were regarded as organizing extremist activity. Sannikov was placed in a detention center, and his bank accounts were frozen. In August 2021, court hearings began. While in custody for about two years, he was never allowed a visit from his wife. During his imprisonment, his chronic illnesses worsened. In court, his boss spoke of him as a responsible and honest worker who had never been reprimanded, but, on the contrary, repeatedly received commendation, incentives and awards. The testimonies of secret witnesses did not correspond to reality and indicated personal aversion to this denomination.
On 20 February 2023, the Vakhitovsky District Court of Kazan found Andrey Bochkarev guilty of organizing the activities of an extremist organization. He pleaded non-guilty. He was sentenced to three years and one month of imprisonment, but he was released in the courtroom, since he has actually served his long term in a pre-trial detention center!
During the first two months and a half of 2023, there were also a lot of suspended sentences to prison; appeal courts and the Cassation Court also confirmed the sentences to effective prison terms of many other Jehovah’s Witnesses who were already in pretrial detention. LINK.
The European Court of Human Rights ruled that the Russian Federation “must take all necessary measures to secure the discontinuation of all pending criminal proceedings against Jehovah’s Witnesses… and the release of all Jehovah’s Witnesses in custody” (§ 285).
