21/10/2011
Human Wrongs Watch
Geneva–Almost 470,000 cases of cholera, including 6,595 deaths, have been reported in Haiti since an epidemic of the disease erupted in the Caribbean country one year ago, according to UN figures. Haiti’s total population is estimated in less then 10 million inhabitants. The UN reports that only half of the aid promised for this year was received.
Credit: UN
Some 250,000 of the cholera patients had been hospitalized over the past year, the UN World Health Organization (WHO) reported on October 21. WHO spokesperson, Tarek Jasarevic, said told in Geneva that the disease could infect 75,000 another by the end of the year if the current trend continues, bringing the cumulative total number of cases to about half a million.
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21/10/2011
Human Wrongs Watch
Dhaka–As their numbers grow and their family support weakens, elderly people in Bangladesh are not getting the social protection they need, say campaigners and researchers.
Image: Balaram Mahalder | Wikimedia Commons
Government payments for the elderly are inadequate, critics say, and only one in four elderly are getting them, according to a study by HelpAge International.
Meanwhile, adult children and younger relatives, who traditionally served as a safety net for older generations, are being pulled away, often for work.
The sight of an elderly person begging on the street was unusual five years ago, but it is increasingly common, said Shashwatee Biplob, a social protection and policy manager with HelpAge International in Bangladesh.
“More and more elderly Bangladeshis are being left alone,” she said.
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20/10/2011
Human Wrongs Watch
The UN Special Rapporteur on human rights in Palestinian territories has urged the world to scale up its “protection measures for Palestinian children living under occupation in the West Bank and Gaza”, and called on Israel “to adopt guidelines in line with humanitarian law for children who are arrested or detained by its military authorities.”
Credit: UN
In his statement on Oct. 20 to the General Assembly’s third committee, the UN Special Rapporteur on the situation of human rights in the occupied Palestinian territories Richard Falk expressed concern for the security of children living in the West Bank, saying that occupation is having alarming effects on their health and well-being.
“Prolonged occupation deforms the development of children through pervasive deprivations affecting health, education, and overall security,” Falk warned.
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Posted in Middle East, The Peoples, War Lords |
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20/10/2011
Human Wrongs Watch
By Panos Petrou*
Greece is being rocked by a two-day general strike called by the country’s two main union federations for both private- and public-sector workers, while the Greek parliament, with the center-left PASOK party in the majority, votes on yet another round austerity measures that are savaging the living standards of working people.
Image: Joanna | Wikimedia Commons
As protesters clashed with riot police equipped with tear gas, stun grenades and more, members of Prime Minister George Papandreou’s ruling party passed the latest austerity legislation in a first-round vote October 19–the second vote was set for October 20.
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19/10/2011
Human Wrongs Watch
The UN labour agency warns of a “youth jobs crisis in both developed and developing countries, with young people aged 15 to 24 finding it increasingly difficult to obtain decent employment and future prospects are dim.”
Credit: UN
As it released its “Global Employment Trends for Youth: 2011 Update,” the International Labour Organization (ILO) noted on October 19, 2011 that the global economic crisis led to a “substantial” increase in youth unemployment rates, reversing earlier favourable trends over the past decade.
At the peak of the crisis period in 2009, the global youth unemployment rate saw its largest annual increase on record, rising from 11.8 per cent to 12.7 per cent between 2008 and 2009 – an unprecedented increase of 4.5 million unemployed youth worldwide.
The average increase of the pre-crisis period (1997-2007) was less than 100,000 persons per year.
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19/10/2011
Human Wrongs Watch
Geneva–The number of human beings seeking asylum in enriched industrialized countries –most of them were a massive source of refugees after II World War– has registered a high increase during the first half of 2011. Meanwhile, up to 80 per cent of all refugees on Earth are hosted in mostly impoverished developing nations.
Born stateless, this baby acquired nationality in 2008 in Bangladesh | Credit: UN
Industrialized countries saw a 17 per cent increase in asylum applications in the first half of this year, with most claimants coming from countries with long-standing displacement situations, the Geneva-based UN refugee agency UNHCR reported on October 18, 2011.
UNHCR’s “Asylum Levels and Trends in Industrialized Countries, First Half 2011” report also shows that 198,300 asylum applications were lodged in the period between January 1 and June 30, compared to 169,300 in the same period in 2010.
As application rates normally peak during the second half of the year, UNHCR projects that 2011 may see 420,000 applications by year’s end – the highest total in eight years.
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Posted in Africa, Asia, Latin America & Caribbean, Middle East, Others-USA-Europe-etc., The Peoples |
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19/10/2011
Source: WagingNonViolence
Human Wrongs Watch
By Luisa Trujillo* | WagingNonViolence
During the last three weeks, the Bolivian indigenous movement has taken to the streets in protest against a plan to build a multinational highway running through the Amazon, which would cross indigenous territory and a national reserve.
Source: WagingNonViolence.org
The protests, in which indigenous groups were joined by other national civil movements, now seem to be growing in momentum, to the point of becoming a true popular mobilization.
The Amazon highway is a project financed by the Brazilian government. The road is supposed to connect Bolivia with both the Pacific and Atlantic Oceans, crossing through Brazil and Chile. But it is also slated to pass through the Isiboro Sécure National Park and Indigenous Territory (TIPNIS).
Two main concerns lie behind the indigenous protests of the highway: its environmental effects, as well as the indigenous community’s frustration with facing deadlock in their attempts to gain access to the decision-making process.
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18/10/2011
Human Wrongs Watch
Editorial by Johan Galtung* – TRANSCEND
Image: William Murphy from Dublin, Ireland | Wikimedia Commons
I will work in the tradition of the NGO I represent, TRANSCEND: diagnosis, prognosis, and therapy.
The basic diagnosis is the pathological inequality growth in societies, and in the world. In the Mother of Crises, Occupy Wall Street is now a local Arab Spring, as protest, not yet proposals.
“The bottom 90 percent”–an interesting US category–has annual average family income around $31,000 whereas the top permille has to be measured in millions, and many of them.
Consequently, there is not enough buying power available to get the wheels of the real economy running, but more than enough liquidity at the top to get the finance economy overheated.
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18/10/2011
Human Wrongs Watch
By Elizabeth Schulte and Alan Maass* –Socialist Worker
The Occupy movement that began in New York City’s financial district has spread around the country–and now around the world.
Image: S51438 | Wikimedia Commons
Saturday, October 15, was an international day of action to take the Occupy movement in the U.S. global–a fitting step forward since the demonstrations in New York City and now around the U.S. were inspired by the revolts and rebellions throughout this year in the Arab world and Europe.
It’s impossible to list all the places where people–fed up with a world run for profit and greed, and reeking of political corruption and inequality–turned out to raise their voices. The United for Global Change website reported that demonstrations took place 951 cities in 82 countries–and that’s probably an understatement.
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17/10/2011
Human Wrongs Watch*
‘By some measures, Bangladesh is modernizing rapidly – one in two residents now owns a cell phone. However, when it comes to basic sanitation, progress is clogged.’
Credit:UN
While some point to obstacles of funding and a lack of political leadership, others say toilets, despite their long-established health benefits, have an image problem, adds IRIN, the humanitarian news and analysis service of the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs.
“People don’t associate latrines with health,” said Azizur R. Mollar, who studied sanitation in Dhaka in 2010. “To many Bangladeshis, a toilet is just a concrete platform. Going to the toilet is a matter of practicality,” according to IRIN.
By comparison,” he said, the mobile phone has become “a symbol of the betterment of lives” for Bangladeshis, the usage of which has skyrocketed in a decade. There were 79 million mobile phone users in 2011, up from just 279,000 in 2000, according to the Bangladesh Telecommunication Regulatory Commission.
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HUMAN WRONGS WATCH 