10/05/2012
The top UN humanitarian official voiced concern over “unacceptable” conditions in informal settlements sheltering displaced people and former refugees in Afghanistan, and called for greater support for durable solutions to alleviate their hardship.
UN humanitarian chief Valerie Amos (left), jokes with a group of young girls at a refugee camp in the Parwan Se district of Kabul, Afghanistan. UN Photo/Fardin Waezi
.
“I was appalled by what I saw today and in particular the unacceptable conditions families are forced to endure in the heart of the capital city – women and children in particular,” said the UN Under-Secretary-General for Humanitarian Affairs, Valerie Amos, on 9 May after visiting the Parwan Se informal settlement in Kabul.
“More than a third of Afghanistan’s population has personal experience of displacement,” said Amos, who heads the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA), the UN reports.
read more »
Posted in Asia, Market Lords, Others-USA-Europe-etc., The Peoples, War Lords |
Leave a Comment »
09/05/2012
By Andre Colling, Risk Analyst at RED24 (Think Africa Press)* – Amidst regional, tribal and ethnic tensions, Libya’s stability relies on upcoming elections being free, fair and transparent.
Interim Prime Minister Abdurrahim El-Keib. Courtesy of TEDxTripoli.
Libya is expected to hold national elections for the 200-member representative body the Public National Conference (PNC) on June 19. The outcome of the election – the first direct national poll in over 40 years – will be critical for the country’s short-to-medium-term stability.
The current government, led by the National Transitional Council (NTC), is experiencing severe domestic pressure to hold free, fair and fully representative elections following the fall of Colonel Muammar Gaddafi’s regime in 2011.
Numerous high-profile tribal, militia and political groups are publicly critical of the NTC’s handling of the transition and accuse it of a lack of transparency and corruption.
read more »
Posted in Africa, Middle East, Others-USA-Europe-etc., The Peoples, War Lords |
Leave a Comment »
09/05/2012
Niger is the worst place to be a mother in the world, replacing Afghanistan for the first time in two years, while Norway comes in at first place, according to the Save the Children’s State of the World’s Mothers report.
“Malnutrition is the underlying cause of at least a fifth of maternal mortality and more than a third of child deaths,” says the just released report.
The Best and Worst Places to Be a Mom ranking, which compares 165 countries around the globe, looks at factors such as a mother’s health, education and economic status, as well as critical child indicators such as health and nutrition.
This year, ahead of a crucial G8 meeting where President Barack Obama is expected to discuss food and agriculture, the State of the World’s Mothers report focuses on nutrition as one of the key factors in determining mothers’ and their children’s well-being.
read more »
Posted in Africa, Asia, Latin America & Caribbean, Market Lords, Middle East, Mother Earth, Others-USA-Europe-etc., The Peoples |
Leave a Comment »
09/05/2012
“Much has been achieved over the past decade, but there is still much more to do,” said the Under-Secretary-General for Humanitarian Affairs and Emergency Relief Coordinator, Valerie Amos. However, “There are five million Afghan refugees in neighbouring countries and a significant number of people are still internally displaced.”
Afghan returnees at their vegetable patch in eastern Nangarhar province, one of the main areas of return from Pakistan | UN
Afghan refugees constitute the largest and longest-standing refugee situation in the UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) history.
Despite the return of some 5.7 million Afghans to their homeland since 2002, there are still an estimated two million Afghans in Pakistan and close to one million in Iran. In recent years, return rates have slowed down, with an estimated 70,000 refugees going back to Afghanistan last year.
read more »
Posted in Asia, Mother Earth, Others-USA-Europe-etc., The Peoples, War Lords |
1 Comment »
08/05/2012
By Uri Avnery* – TRANSCEND – In some countries, they arrest the president, occupy government offices and TV stations and annul the constitution. They then publish Communique No. 1, explaining the dire need to save the nation from perdition and promising democracy, elections etc.
Netanyahu | Wikimedia Commons
In other countries, they do it more quietly. They just inform the elected leaders that, if they don’t desist from their disastrous policies, the officers will make their views public and precipitate their downfall.
Such officers are generally called a “junta”, the Spanish word for “committee” used by South American generals. Their method is usually called a “putsch”, a German-Swiss term for a sudden blow. (Yes, the Swiss actually had revolts some 170 years ago.)
What almost all such coups have in common is that their instigators thrive on the demagoguery of war. The politicians are invariably accused of cowardice in face of the enemy, failure to defend national honor, and such.
Not in Israel. In our country we are now seeing a kind of verbal uprising against the elected politicians by a group of current and former army generals, foreign intelligence and internal security chiefs. All of them condemn the government’s threat to start a war against Iran, and some of them condemn the government’s failure to negotiate with the Palestinians for peace.
Only in Israel.
read more »
Posted in Middle East, Others-USA-Europe-etc., The Peoples, War Lords |
Leave a Comment »
06/05/2012
By Ramesh Jaura – IDN-InDepthNews*, Berlin – When he took to the road to correct imbalance in the flow of information, which was very much to the detriment of newly independent and developing countries, there was an air of optimism and trust, recalls Roberto Savio, a global citizen par excellence who embodies culture of peace and is a relentless champion of pluralism in the media.
“The economy was growing, the genie of uncontrollable finance was not yet out of the bottle in which it had been shut away by political power, and we young people knew that we had a future,” writes Savio in the book titled The Journalists Who Turned the World Upside Down – Voices of another Information, telling the story of Inter Press Service (IPS) in a lucid and engaging style.
While this book is expected to be published by Amazon in May 2012, its Italian edition I giornalisti che ribaltarono il mondo by Nuovi Mondi has been on the shelves since November 2011. A Spanish edition is under preparation.
Savio – an eminent Italian/Argentine journalist – perceives the book as “a joint history”, “a large quilt made of the stories and faces of people from different continents, with different lives, but united by the same commitment: to renew the world of information, making it more plural and more just.”
read more »
Posted in Africa, Asia, Latin America & Caribbean, Market Lords, Middle East, Mother Earth, Others-USA-Europe-etc., The Peoples, War Lords |
Leave a Comment »
06/05/2012
By Shahira Amin*, Cairo
Violent clashes between protesters staging a sit-in outside the Defence Ministry Headquarters in Cairo’s Abbasseya district and unknown assailants killed at least 20 people on Wednesday and left scores of others injured.
Photo: Jonathan Rashad | Wikimedia Commons
The violence began in the early hours of Wednesday [2 May] when un-identified men in plain clothes attacked the peaceful sit-in —apparently with the aim of dispersing the protesters who had camped out there for several days.
Supporters of Salafist former presidential candidate Hafez Abou Ismail had marched to Abbasseya on Friday evening to protest his exclusion from the presidential race. They were later joined by other activists: mainly liberals and members of the 6 April Movement. They all demanded an end to military rule and a swift handover to a civilian government.
“What started as a peaceful demonstration has turned into a bloodbath,” cried Iman Mohamed, an activist who had joined the sit-in a couple of days earlier. She added that the assailants had fired gun shots and used Molotov cocktails and tear gas. Some of the protesters responded by hurling rocks and stones at the assailants, others engaged in fist fights.
read more »
Posted in Africa, Market Lords, Middle East, Others-USA-Europe-etc., The Peoples, War Lords |
Leave a Comment »
05/05/2012
Dakar/Ouagadougou, (IRIN*) Sahelian governments and local and international aid groups are struggling to cope with both the continual arrivals of people fleeing the regions of Gao, Timbuktu and Kidal in northern Mali, and the mounting number of hungry people across the region as the lean season gets underway.
Altogether some 284,000 Malians have fled the north according to the UN Office for the Co-ordination of Humanitarian Affairs, 107,000 of them thought to be displaced within Mali; 177,000 in neighbouring countries. New arrivals have pushed refugee numbers to 56,664 in Burkina Faso and to 61,000 in Mauritania, and to 39,388 in Niger, according to UNHCR.
These governments are already struggling to get aid to millions of their inhabitants, who are facing hunger due to drought. Fleeing Malians have told the UN Refugee Agency (UNHCR) they want to avoid getting caught up in possible conflict if government soldiers or foreign troops intervene in the north.
The UN estimates that 16 million people across the Sahel are facing hunger this year, and hunger levels are rising as the lean season gets fully underway.
read more »
Posted in Africa, Market Lords, Mother Earth, Others-USA-Europe-etc., The Peoples, War Lords |
Leave a Comment »
02/05/2012
By Alan Maass, Socialist Worker, 1 May – French President Nicolas Sarkozy is frantically racing to the right to win the votes of National Front supporters.
**Marine Le Pen. Author: Marine_le_pen.jpg: Antoine Bayet
The second round of France’s presidential election on May 6 will, as expected, pit the candidates of the country’s two leading parties against each other–and opinion polls show that right-wing President Nicolas Sarkozy is probably headed for defeat, also as expected.
But the shadow of France’s far right, emboldened by a strong showing in the first round of the presidential vote, looms over the campaign as it heads into its final week.
On May Day, supporters of Socialist Party candidate François Hollande will gather for parades and rallies, traditionally organized by unions and the left. But in Paris, there will be two competing events.
read more »
Posted in Market Lords, Others-USA-Europe-etc., The Peoples, War Lords |
Leave a Comment »
02/05/2012
By Vicky Short (WSWS)*, 1 May – “The figures are terrible for everyone and terrible for the government,” Popular Party (PP) Foreign Minister Jose Manuel Garcia-Margallo told Spanish National Radio. “Spain is in a crisis of huge proportions.”
**Spanish primer minister Mariano Rajoy. Photo by: Iker Parriza
The PP president of the regional government in Valencia, Alberto Fabra, declared, “The government has found that it has no money to be able to guarantee the welfare state.”
Spain is officially in recession—the second in little more than two years. Unemployment has soared to nearly one quarter of the population (over half of the youth)—the highest level in almost two decades and far worse than predicted.
Fears the government will not meet deficit-cutting targets agreed with the European Union and International Monetary Fund have pushed up its borrowing costs. There is also growing speculation that bank debts are much higher than admitted.
read more »
Posted in Market Lords, Others-USA-Europe-etc., The Peoples |
2 Comments »
HUMAN WRONGS WATCH 