In the hills of Putumayo, Colombia, the land tells two stories.
For decades, coca cultivation fueled violence, illicit economies, and fear. Today, some farmers are choosing a different path.
In this meditative documentary, UN News correspondent Victoria Fernandez travels to rural Colombia to meet the farmers, producers, and exporters transforming former coca-growing land into fields of sacha inchi and sugar cane.
Through intimate conversations with Sandra Herrera, Doris Caicedo, Delfina Arboleda, Mao Bastidas, and exporter Christian Arias, the film explores how alternative development — supported by the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC) — is creating legal livelihoods and challenging the grip of transnational organized crime.
Shot in the fields, processing plants, and border regions of southern Colombia, The Same Soil is a story of risk, resilience, and the fragile work of cultivating peace.
Follow Commission President Ursula von der Leyen’s press statement on the EU-Mercosur Agreement live from the Brussels headquarters!
In her statement, President von der Leyen announced the ratification of the EU-Mercosur Free Trade Agreement in Uruguay and Argentina. Being the first states to ratify it, these countries showcase the eagerness to advance relations and create a vast market with substantial opportunities, reduced tariffs, and benefits for European businesses. The European Commission will proceed with the provisional application of the agreement while awaiting full consent from the European Parliament.
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Explore the Eurosystem’s strategy for the future of wholesale central bank money and how it lays the foundation for a vibrant and future-oriented European digital asset ecosystem. Learn more about how tokenised Euro central bank liquidity can be used by the market for settling tokenised assets on market distributed ledger technology (DLT) platforms.
#ECBFocusSession #MarketInfrastructure
Follow Commission President Ursula von der Leyen’s press statement on the EU-Mercosur Free Trade Agreement live from the Brussels headquarters!
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Source: United Kingdom UK House of Lords (video statements)
What progress has the government made implementing the recommendations of the LGBT Veterans Independent Review and Financial Recognition Scheme? Lords members pressed the government during LGBT History Month in a question on Monday 23 February.
The United Nations Resident Coordinator in Cuba, Francisco Pichon, told reporters in New York that one month since United States President Donald Trump issued an executive order that created “a fuel blockade for Cuba,” its humanitarian consequences are “deepening by the day.”
Pichon said, “hat we see on the ground is not a temporary shortage, it is a more systemic energy shock that has become the primary humanitarian risk multiplier.”
The 29 January executive order had authorized the imposition of new tariffs on imports from countries that directly or indirectly supply oil to the Government of Cuba.
Pichon said, “the vulnerabilities are rapidly escalating into more acute, humanitarian risks. So, what we find, essential services being scaled back, being disrupted, and daily life for the ordinary people increasingly becoming more fragile.”
Following a US Supreme Court ruling that declared most of the tariffs under the International Emergency Economic Powers Act (IEEPA) illegal, a new executive order was issued on 20 February removing the tariffs on countries supplying oil to Cuba.
The Resident Coordinator said, “although the US government eliminated the specific tariff mechanisms threatening countries which supply oil to Cuba with tariffs – this as a result of the decision of the Supreme Court last week – the national emergency declared on January 29th remains in effect.”
He noted that additional sanctions to countries that provide oil to Cuba are expected and said, “Cuba continues, in fact, to be designated as an unusual and extraordinary threat to the US national security.”
Pichon said, “Cuba depends 90 percent on fossil fuels for energy generation and there is a significant deficit of more than 30 percent of the minimum demand that is required. So, the oil that is available locally, that is produced locally – and I think there might be questions about the capacity of the country to refine it in a moment like this – does help maintain electricity generation to a minimum level.”
