26/11/2012
Washington, DC – Governments should pre-emptively ban fully autonomous weapons because of the danger they pose to civilians in armed conflict, Human Rights Watch said in a new report. “These future weapons, sometimes called “killer robots,” would be able to choose and fire on targets without human intervention.”
© 2012 Russell Christian for Human Rights Watch
The 50-page report, “Losing Humanity: The Case Against Killer Robots,” [2] outlines concerns about these fully autonomous weapons, which would inherently lack human qualities that provide legal and non-legal checks on the killing of civilians. In addition, the obstacles to holding anyone accountable for harm caused by the weapons would weaken the law’s power to deter future violations.
“Giving machines the power to decide who lives and dies on the battlefield would take technology too far,” said Steve Goose [3], Arms Division director at Human Rights Watch.
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26/11/2012
By EurActiv*, 26 November 2012 — The EU will not commit to renew climate funding which runs out in 2013 ahead of talks at the Doha climate summit, which opens today (26 November). But new climate aid may be announced in the conference’s second week.
Image from EurActiv
Development NGOs reacted angrily to an EU statement on 23 November which said only that in Doha, the EU would “discuss with its developing country partners how major flows of EU climate finance can continue in 2013-2014”.
“If the EU and other developed countries are serious about making climate action a reality for the period 2013-2020, they can’t afford to come to Doha empty handed,” Lies Craeynest, Oxfam’s EU policy adviser told EurActiv.
“Vague promises to increase support in developing countries won’t help communities who are facing the impacts of climate change now,” she said.
Senior EU officials believe that most member states have factored climate aid into their medium term financial plans and leaders are likely to announce commitments at the conference itself.
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25/11/2012
“Up to 70 per cent of women experience physical or sexual violence at some point in their lifetime (and) as many as a quarter of all pregnant women are affected,” UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon warned in message to mark the International Day for the Elimination of Violence against Women.
Photo: United Nations
“Millions of women and girls around the world are assaulted, beaten, raped, mutilated or even murdered in what constitutes appalling violations of their human rights,” he added.
The UN General Assembly designated 25 November as the International Day for the Elimination of Violence against Women in a 1999 resolution inviting governments, international organizations and non-governmental organizations (NGOs) to “organize activities designed to raise public awareness of the problem on that day.”
The day harks to the 25 November, 1960, assassination of the three Mirabal sisters, who were political activists in the Dominican Republic, on orders of Dominican ruler Rafael Trujillo.
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25/11/2012
Violence against women and girls is one of the most widespread violations of human rights. In some countries, up to 7 in 10 women will be beaten, raped, abused or mutilated in their lifetimes, according to UN Women, the United Nations Entity for Gender Equality and the Empowerment of Women.
UN Women
To raise awareness and trigger action to end this global phenomenon, International Day for the Elimination of Violence against Women on 25 November, and the ensuing 16 Days of Activism against Gender Violence are commemorated every year around the world.*
Ending violence against women is one of UN Women’s priority areas. UN Women also coordinates the UN Secretary-General’s UNiTE to End Violence against Women campaign and supports widespread social mobilization through its Say NO – UNiTE to End Violence against Women platform.
In addition, UN Women manages the UN Trust Fund to End Violence against Women which commemorates its 16th anniversary in 2012.
Last year for 25 November, UN Women Executive Director Michelle Bachelet unveiled a 16-Step Policy Agenda. This year, UN Women launches “COMMIT” – a new global initiative which calls on leaders worldwide to fulfill their promise and take a stand to end violence against women and girls.
It will showcase concrete national commitments to ending the scourge of such violence.
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25/11/2012
UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon has reaffirmed his support to convene a United Nations-sponsored Conference “attended by all the States in the Middle East with the aim of establishing a zone free of nuclear weapons and other weapons of mass destruction.”
Image: ICAN
The Conference, also backed by Russia, the United Kingdom and the United States, would take place next year in Finland, and would be facilitated by the Finnish Under-Secretary of State, Jaakko Laajava, the UN reported.
“I have worked closely with the co-conveners to support the facilitator, Mr. Jaakko Laajava,” Ban said in a statement issued by his spokesperson on 24 November 2012.
“He has conducted intensive consultations with the States of the region to prepare the convening of the conference in 2012. I have also personally engaged with the States of the region at the highest level to underline the importance of the Conference in promoting long-term regional stability, peace and security on the basis of equality.”
Ban stressed that organizing States have a “collective responsibility: to make every effort to convene the conference as mandated, and said he would continue to work with them on that basis.
He also noted his full support for the proposal put forward by Mr. Laajava to conduct multilateral consultations in the shortest possible time to allow the conference to be held in early 2013.
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25/11/2012
A UN system-wide plan to create a safer working environment for journalists has been given new momentum at a UNESCO-organized meeting that ended in Vienna on Friday 23 November 2012*. So far, more than 600 journalists and media workers have been killed in the last ten years.
In other words, on average every week a journalist loses his or her life for bringing news and information to the public, according to the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO). 2012 has been the deadliest year ever for the media.
Finalist of the eYeka competition in support of World Press Freedom Day | UNESCO
The Vienna meeting brought together representatives from 15 United Nations bodies, including Frank Larue, the UN Special Rapporteur for the promotion and protection of the right to freedom of opinion, and Christof Heyns, UN Special Rapporteur on extrajudicial, summary or arbitrary executions.
More than 40 non-governmental and intergovernmental organizations, independent experts, media groups and professional associations also attended.
They pledged to work together and with relevant national authorities to ensure that the recommendations of the United Nations Plan of Action on the Safety of Journalists and the Issue of Impunity were applied at country level.
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25/11/2012
By Lauri Myllyvirta, Greenpeace*, 23 November 2012 — It’s been quite a week. In this lead up to the UN climate conference in Doha which starts Monday [26 November 2012], there was news almost every day about soaring CO2 emissions and the threat of catastrophic climate change.
On Monday, the World Bank issued an exceptional plea for governments not to give up on the fight against dangerous climate change.
Its report “Turn Down the Heat: Why a 4°C Warmer World Must be Avoided”, painted a dismal picture of what our world could turn into, during one lifetime, if current trends of atmospheric pollution continue.
The world won’t be a nice place to live. The main reason the global climate is currently headed for 4°C of warming is because of coal burning. Massive expansion in the use of coal has caused more than two thirds of the increases in global CO2 emissions in recent years.
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20/11/2012
The civilian death toll in Gaza has continued to rise since the new wave of violence between the territory and Israel intensified last week, the UN agency assisting Palestinian refugees warned* on 19 November 2012, reiterating its call for all sides to stop the violence.
In the foreground: the remains of the Ministry of Interior’s Civilian Affairs office after Israeli bombardments in Gaza City. UN Photo/Shareef Sarhan
“The situation [for civilians] is bad,” said the spokesperson for the UN Relief and Works Agency for Palestinian Refugees in the Near East (UNRWA), Christopher Gunness.
“This is a very densely populated place. There are many, many civilians. More than half of Gaza’s 1.7 million people are children, and what we are seeing are rockets flying out of this area, populated largely by civilians, and airstrikes coming in.”
“The civilian death toll is rising and it will continue to rise, unless the words of Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon are heeded by the parties on the ground,” Mr. Gunness added.
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20/11/2012
By Mairead Corrigan Maguire*, 1976 Nobel Peace Laureate, TRANSCEND – It is with the greatest sadness, mixed with frustration, and a sense of helplessness, that many people around the world, myself included, watched on television the horrific scenes of death and destruction perpetrated, yet again, by the latest Israeli military assault on Gaza and its besieged, mostly young population.
**Image: Palestinians in a Gaza neighborhood during the 2008-09 Gaza War | Credit: Al Jazeera | http://cc.aljazeera.net
The question on many people’s lips is: ‘When is the Israeli government going to stop this bombing, and continual wars, and threats of wars against the Palestinians and their neighbours, and admit that there will never be a military solution to the Palestinian Occupation? And start to talk seriously with their enemies in order to solve problems for the sake of Palestinians, Israelis and indeed the whole Middle East and the World’?
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19/11/2012
Five months from now, the government of Norway will host an international conference on the humanitarian consequences of nuclear weapons.
With this International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons (ICAN) conference– Civil Society Forum – Oslo, 2-3 March, 2013 — governments clearly signal that they are finally ready to pull their heads from the sand and open their eyes to the catastrophic and all-too-real humanitarian effects of nuclear weapons.
If just one of the world’s 19,000 nuclear weapons was detonated, be it intentionally or accidentally, not only would it kill thousands of people instantly, but, as the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) has concluded, first responders would be unable to provide the emergency relief so urgently needed, ICAN informs.
“This would compound the humanitarian impact of the blast and transfom it into a catastrophe. This makes the continued existence and deployment of nuclear weapons one of the most serious humanitarian challenges of our time.”
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HUMAN WRONGS WATCH 