'Unseen' News and Views – By Baher Kamal & The Like
Large portions of the West are now classified as being in “exceptional drought”, the most extreme drought category. Many major reservoirs have reached historic low levels and fire officials are warning that another devastating wildfire season has already begun. Hoover Dam, Arizona/Nevada border, United States. © David McNew / Greenpeace.
(UN News)* —Two bills before the Israeli parliament could put a halt to the lifesaving operations of UN Palestine relief agency, UNRWA, which has been indispensable and irreplaceable “more than ever” over the past year of war in Gaza, UN Secretary-General António Guterres said on Tuesday [].
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“That’s why I have written directly to Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to express profound concern about draft legislation that could prevent UNRWA from continuing its essential work in the Occupied Palestinian Territory,” he said at the Security Council stakeout in New York.
9 October 2024 (The Norwegian Refugee Council)* — On 6 October 2024, Israel issued new mass displacement orders targeting the remaining Palestinians of the northern Gaza Strip, ordering them to leave to the south.
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Al-Nasser Street, in Gaza City. Credit: NRC(UN News)* — The UN High Commissioner for Refugees, Filippo Grandi, has concluded an urgent visit to Syria, highlighting the plight of 250,000 people who have crossed into the country fleeing airstrikes in Lebanon.
Stockholm, September 2024 (UNCCD)* — Drought is on track to hitting three in four people globally by 2050. Around the world, scientists and practitioners have amassed a wealth of knowledge on what it takes to anticipate, prepare for, respond and adapt to drought.
At World Water Week, a hard look at the notions that stand in the way of drought resilience
So what is standing in the way of more drought-resilient countries and communities?
WMO report highlights growing shortfalls and stress in global water resources
The last five consecutive years have recorded widespread below-normal conditions for river flows, with reservoir inflows following a similar pattern.
Nuclear weapons are the most destructive, inhumane and indiscriminate weapons ever created. Both in the scale of the devastation they cause, and in their uniquely persistent, spreading, genetically damaging radioactive fallout, they are unlike any other weapons.
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A single nuclear bomb detonated over a large city could kill millions of people. The use of tens or hundreds of nuclear bombs would disrupt the global climate, causing widespread famine.
UN Human Rights Council Examines Nuclear Legacy Consequences in the Marshall Islands
UNICEF calls for a ceasefire to protect children as physical injuries and psychological suffering rise dramatically
AMMAN, 4 October 2024 (UNICEF)* – More than 690 children have reportedly been injured in Lebanon as the conflict has dramatically escalated in recent weeks.
Since 20 August, the number of children injured in the conflict has increased drastically, bringing the total number injured in the last year to 890 as of 2 October, according to the Lebanese Ministry of Public Health.
(WFP)*, 1 October 2024 — Walking through Khartoum’s shattered streets a few weeks ago, I spotted this doll’s head — eyes wide open, red mouth eerily smiling — lost in the rubble of the city’s once-iconic Omdurman market.
(UN News)* — The UN chief has strongly condemned the killing of several Palestinians, including women and children, who died when a residential building in Tulkarem camp in the West Bank was hit by Israeli airstrikes on Thursday [3 ] night.
(UN News)* — People in Lebanon uprooted by Israeli airstrikes including in central Beirut have described being forced to flee “total destruction”, amid fresh reports of Hezbollah projectile attacks into Israel and close-quarter clashes along the UN-patrolled line of separation between the two countries.
()* — The UN-designated human rights expert on Sudan has called for the Sudanese Armed Forces (SAF) and the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces (RSF), along with their allied militias, to take immediate steps to protect civilians in greater Khartoum amid escalating violence and alarming reports of summary executions.
The warning on Thursday [3 October 2024] comes as the SAF launched a major offensive last month to regain control of key areas currently held by the RSF. The two armies led by rival generals have been locked in a brutal power struggle since April 2023.
Armed conflict puts children at an increased risk of grave violations while their risk of being trafficked similarly increases, including in transitional periods, a new UN study has revealed.
A recently displaced mother holds her child in a makeshift displacement shelter in Haiti. Credit: UNICEF/Maxime Le Lijour
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2 October 2024 (UNHCR)* — Since a deadly escalation of the conflict in Lebanon began just over a week ago, the Government estimates that more than 1 million people have already been forced to flee their homes – the worst displacement in decades.
Ali Trad, who was displaced from his home in South Lebanon by airstrikes, holds his grandson, Adam, at a collective shelter in Beirut, Lebanon. © UNHCR/Houssam Hariri
The attacks are the most intense since 2006, with Israeli airstrikes hitting dozens of towns across the country, including South Lebanon, Bekaa and Beirut’s southern suburbs.
Geneva/ Port-au-Prince, 02 October 2024 (IOM)* – Over 700,000 people, more than half of whom are children, are now internally displaced across Haiti, according to a new report by the International Organization for Migration (IOM).
These latest figures show a 22 per cent increase in the number of internally displaced people since June, highlighting the worsening humanitarian situation.
(UN News)* — Action is needed now to stop the Sahara Desert and Mediterranean Sea from “becoming mass graves for migrants”, two UN agencies on warned the Security Council.
Kathmandu under water because of heavy rainfall, which claimed more than 225 lives in last week of September. Photo: Barsha Shah/IPS
The mid- and eastern parts of the country, including the capital, Kathmandu, experienced the heaviest monsoon rains in two decades from September 26-28, leaving many parts of Kathmandu underwater.
Experts say this is one of the deadliest and worst flash floods that impacted thousands of people in decades. Continue reading
For anyone — including a Jew like myself — who hasn’t stubbornly closed their eyes and covered their ears over the past eleven months, one thing should be obvious: it’s simply absurd to label outrage, protest, and despair over the plight of Palestinians in Gaza as “antisemitism.” Period.
23 Sep 2024 – It is irony at its most bitter. Not so very long ago, hundreds of white supremacists marched in Charlottesville, Virginia. With tiki-torches held high, they chanted “Jews will not replace us!” 
And yet here we are, seven years later, and apparently these fanatical card-carrying antisemites have indeed been “replaced” in the minds of many Americans. Why?
Because a deceitful campaign now portrays anti-genocide college students (including many Jews) as the leading purveyors of “the world’s oldest hatred.”
But for anyone — including a Jew like myself — who hasn’t stubbornly closed their eyes and covered their ears over the past eleven months, one thing should be obvious: it’s simply absurd to label outrage, protest, and despair over the plight of Palestinians in Gaza as “antisemitism.” Period.
(Jerusalem) – The Israeli government’s attacks and unlawful blockade against Gazahave inflicted profound trauma and suffering on Palestinian children, especially those with disabilities, Human Rights Watch said in a report released on 30 September 2024.
.The Israeli military’s extensive use of explosive weapons has caused serious injuries resulting in permanent disabilities and lifelong scarring for children in Gaza.
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In her village in Sudan’s West Darfur region, Samar once eagerly attended class, especially math, her favorite. Today, she lives in a teeming refugee site just across the border in Chad, fetching water and milling sorghum so her family can survive.
(UN News)* — More than one million people across Lebanon have been uprooted by ongoing and deadly Israeli airstrikes across the country, including one reported early Monday [] morning in a residential area of central Beirut, adding to fears of a full-scale invasion.
Nakabuye speaks to a crowd of over one thousand at the Youth Climate Strike rally in New York City on September 20, 2024.
But for many of us in the Global South, this crisis is not new. It is a daily reality that we have been living with for years, despite contributing almost nothing to the problem. Continue reading
27 September 2024 (UNEP)* — Record-setting wildfires tearing through South America are likely to become the new normal unless the region makes dramatic investments in fire prevention and limits slash-and-burn agriculture in places like the Amazon, experts are cautioning.
IBAMA/ASCOM
Since May, blazes have ravaged forests and savannahs across Argentina, Bolivia, Brazil, Colombia, Paraguay and Peru as drought has created tinderbox-like conditions in many places.
Even the world’s largest tropical wetland, the wildlife-rich Pantanal, has been smouldering for months.
ROME, 25 September 2024 – The Italian authorities imposed yet another punitive measure on the Geo Barents, the search and rescue vessel operated by Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF), for performing its legal and humanitarian duty to save lives at sea.
This time, the vessel received two separate detention orders, immediately after the Geo Barents had finished disembarking 206 survivors in Genoa, in northern Italy.
Von der Leyen’s Neglect of Rights Persists as She Addresses the Incoming EU Executive
26 September 2024 — There is a stand-alone article in the European Union’s founding Treaty that puts human rights at the core of EU foreign policy.
There are authoritative guidelines and a comprehensive action plan on human rights and democracy, adopted by EU governments, to guide the bloc’s external actions.
Maria Naeku, a Maasaiwoman in Mikese village in Mvomero district tends to her vegetable garden.Credit: Kizito Makoye Shigela/IPS
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The intensity of the present conflict in Lebanon has already claimed the lives of more children per day than the 2006 conflict.
BEIRUT, 26 September 2024 (UNICEF)* – The average number of children killed per day in Lebanon this week is more than double the number of children killed per day during the country’s devastating 2006 conflict.
An estimated 400 children, or about 12 children per day, were killed during the 33-day 2006 conflict[1].
(UN News)* — A new humanitarian crisis is unfolding at Lebanon’s border with Syria as thousands of people flee Israeli shelling linked to the war in Gaza, UN humanitarians said on Thursday [], just as Israel premier Benyamin Netanyahu arrived in New York for the UN General Assembly.
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With the amount of aid Israel is currently allowing into Gaza, it will take humanitarian agencies more than two years to deliver the kits needed to prepare tents, makeshift shelters and damaged homes south of Wadi Gaza for this coming winter, according to the Norwegian Refugee Council-led Shelter Cluster in Palestine.
Makeshift site in Khan Younis, Gaza. Photo credit: Alison Ely / Palestine Shelter Cluster25 September 2024 — At least 25,000 sealing-off kits, the equivalent of 25 truckloads, must be delivered per week to southern Gaza before the end of November, to meet the vast needs.
(UN News)* — Antimicrobial resistance (AMR) is an invisible killer, which is directly responsible for 1.3 million deaths and a contributing factor to five million other fatalities every year.
Environmental activist Nonhle Mbuthuma.
Despite facing death threats, she refused to back down. As a co-founder of the Amadiba Crisis Committee and a 2024 Goldman Prize winner, Mbuthuma continues to fight for her community’s rights and the environment.
Her bravery reflects the countless risks land and environmental defenders face across the globe. Continue reading
(UN News)* —UN Secretary-General António Guterres urged the Security Council on Wednesday [] “to work in lock-step” to end the escalating violence between Israeli forces and Hezbollah militants across the Blue Line in southern Lebanon.
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In a Cholera information campaign, 9-year old Eiad demonstrates safe hygiene practices to mitigate the spread of disease. Credit: UNICEF/ Aymen Alfadil
But a longstanding proposal for the reform of the UNSC has been kicked around the General Assembly hall –and the corridors of the UN– for several decades now.
But it never got off the ground. Continue reading
(UN News)* — As Lebanon mourns the victims of a wave of Israeli airstrikes believed to have left hundreds dead, UN humanitarians warned on Tuesday [] against a return to the “dark days of 2006” when full-scale war broke out, calling for an urgent de-escalation and the protection of civilians.
Power is the ability to make people, states, movements, organizations, or things do what they would not otherwise have done. It is a matter of fact that politics is seen to be about might rather than right.
Power in Politics
It can be said that, in essence, politics is power or, in other words, the ability of some international actor to get the desired results of his/her political behavior by using whatever instruments (legal or not, moral or not, etc.).
23 September 2024 — The richest 1 percent have more wealth than the bottom 95 percent of the world’s population put together, new Oxfam analysis of UBS data reveals today ahead of the annual UN High-Level General Debate.
A boy sits amid scenes of destruction in Macomia town after it was hit by tropical cyclone Kenneth, which made landfall in Cabo Delgado province in Northern Mozambique, on 25th April 2019. Photo: Tommy Trenchard/Oxfam
Billionaires are exerting new levels of control over economies, with a billionaire either running or the principal shareholder of more than a third of the world’s top 50 corporations. The combined market capitalization of these corporations is $13.3 trillion.
Greenpeace Brazil conducted an aerial survey in southern Amazonas and northern Rondônia to monitor deforestation and fires in July 2024. Credit: Marizilda Cruppe / Greenpeace
(UN News)* — In the heart of Colombia, where the scars of conflict run deep, a remarkable transformation is taking place. Farmers, once displaced and dispossessed, are reclaiming their land, rebuilding their communities, and forging a path towards a more peaceful and prosperous future with the support of the UN Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO).
– Bangladesh’s White Paper committee will review foreign loan deals signed by the fallen kleptocratic regime.
Anis Chowdhury
We recommend that it identifies and declares the loans or portions of loans that did not benefit the nation as unpayable, because they were siphoned off the country by corrupt politically powerful elites, or worse used to buy deadly weapons and surveillance equipment to oppress people.
Such loans are “odious” – they stink and are detestable.
It is not clear if sufficient courage will be summoned to even include the loans from the international organisations and significant and powerful donor countries.
However, this is vital as nearly 45% of Bangladesh’s debt is owed to multilateral organisations, such as the Asian Development Bank (ADB), the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund (IMF), whereas about 27% of the total loans is from bilateral donor countries, such as Japan and European Union. Continue reading
In 2023, 380 women and young people were murdered in Honduras. Photo: Ingrid Prestetun/NRC
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20 September 2024 — Honduras is facing an invisible crisis. In 2023 it was the least funded in the world. Almost 30 per cent of its population is in need of humanitarian aid and an increased number of Hondurans are forced to move and seek refuge outside the country’s borders.
Meanwhile, Honduras also continues to host a high number of people seeking asylum within the country or elsewhere in the region.
Here are four things you should know about the crisis in Honduras.
20 September 2024 — The United Kingdom Labour Party is about to meet for its annual conference. Now that Labour is in government, with their leader Keir Starmer as prime minister, it should act to strengthen social security, and tackle poverty and inequality. The first concrete step should be immediately ending the cruel “two-child limit” policy.
Children play in a park on a housing estate in Redcar, Teesside, May 17, 2023. © 2023 Joanne Coates/Bloomberg via Getty Images
The “two-child limit” is an arbitrary social security policy introduced by the Conservative government in 2017, in its austerity-motivated shake-up of social security.
It cuts off child-related social security support to low-income households after the second child. Larger families are left with fewer resources as their need increases.
– The United Nations, over the last year, has been relentlessly promoting the upcoming Summit of the Future – scheduled for September 22-23—as a landmark event.
And rightly so.
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But, surprisingly, the provisional list of speakers, released early this week, reflects notable absentees for a high-level summit– the five permanent members (P5) of the Security Council — whose representatives do not include any head of state (HS) or head of government (HG). Continue reading
(UN News)* — Last October’s terror attacks by Hamas and other Palestinian armed groups on Israeli communities marked a devastating day for children, and the suffering has continued unabated, a senior UNICEF official said on Thursday [].
(UN News)* — The United Nations General Assembly on Wednesday [] voted overwhelmingly to adopt a resolution that demands that Israel “brings to an end without delay its unlawful presence” in the Occupied Palestinian Territory.
HUMAN WRONGS WATCH 