Archive for August 26th, 2014

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26/08/2014

Why Is the Total Elimination of Nuclear Weapons So Urgent?

Human Wrongs Watch

By John Scales Avery*, 25 August 2014, TRANSCEND Media Service —  In the follow-up to the 2013 high-level meeting on nuclear disarmament, the United Nations General Assembly passed a resolution in which it declared 26 September the International Day for Total Elimination of Nuclear Weapons. The first ever event will take place a month from now on 26 September, 2014.

Source: ICAN

Source: ICAN

What can you, as an individual, do? You can plan an action to commemorate the day. You can write to your Prime Minister/President and/or Foreign Minister, to ask what your government plans to do to commemorate the day. You can ask your local parliamentarian, mayor and city council the same question. You can tell http://www.unfoldzero.org about your activities.

The Inter-parliamentary Union, with 167 members, passed a resolution in March, 2014, calling on its members to support the total elimination of nuclear weapons.

Why is the total elimination of nuclear weapons so urgent? Although somewhat reduced in numbers from the insane heights of the Cold War, the power of today’s nuclear weapons is more than sufficient to destroy human civilization and much of the biosphere.

Many of the weapons are on hair-trigger alert, meaning that those in charge of them have only minutes to decide whether a radar signal is a true or false report of an attack. Most of us alive today owe our existence to Lt. Col. Stanislav Petrov, who correctly reported such a warning as a computer error.

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Posted in Middle East, Mother Earth, Others-USA-Europe-etc., The Peoples, War Lords | 4 Comments »

26/08/2014

South Sudan – Child Soldiers… Again

NAIROBI, 25 August 2014 (IRIN)* – The government of South Sudan signed an Action Plan with the UN in 2012 to end the use of child soldiers but there is evidence the ongoing conflict is eroding any gains achieved.
Photo: Hannah McNeish/IRIN Education or arms?

**Photo: Hannah McNeish/IRIN
Education or arms?

“The current conflict is threatening to erode all the gains so far made in ending the use of child soldiers in South Sudan. The use of child soldiers in South Sudan is something we will raise in our next meeting at the highest levels of the UN,” Leila Zerrougui, The UN special representative of the Secretary-General for children and armed conflict, told IRIN.

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Posted in Africa, Mother Earth, The Peoples, War Lords | 1 Comment »

26/08/2014

USA-Israel vs. Arab-Muslim Worlds: What Happens?

Human Wrongs Watch

By Johan Galtung*, 25 August 2014, TRANSCEND Media Service

Nothing good. But let us have a look at it in the standard peace studies way: Diagnosis-analyzing, Prognosis- forecasting, and Therapy–remedies, even solutions.

**Image: Jewish Wedding in Morocco by Eugène Delacroix, Louvre, Paris | Public Domain | Wikimedia Commons

**Image: Jewish Wedding in Morocco by Eugène Delacroix, Louvre, Paris | Public Domain | Wikimedia Commons

“Israel-Palestine” is the discourse Tel Aviv-Washington prefers. They have all the strong cards: overwhelming military power, political veto in the United Nations Security Council, the economic upper hand in interlocking economies–not just oil cash from Saudi Arabia-Qatar–and the idea of working for a solution with Washington as “mediator”–only USA can bring the two together, gently or roughly–toward a sustainable peace.

It is needed a great distance from reality to believe in that spin.

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26/08/2014

A Lifetime of Waiting

Human Wrongs Watch

Sarah was born and raised in Hagadera refugee camp. Now 21, she’s become a wife and mother without ever setting foot outside the camp. Hagadera refugee camp in Dadaab, Kenya, is just 100 kilometers from the Somali border. For Sarah, it might as well be a million.*

Photo from UNHCR

Photo from UNHCR

Like so many others living here, she was born a refugee and raised in the camp after her mother fled war-torn Somalia a quarter of a century ago. In her tent, which she shares with her husband, Mohammed, she is still living out of the suitcases that her mother first arrived with.

Sarah has become a wife and now a mother without ever stepping foot outside the camp.

Her baby daughter, Somaya, is the second generation of her family to have been born in exile. Although Sarah has never visited her home country, she hopes to go there one day. “I feel like I am Somali,” she says, rocking her child tenderly. “My parents are Somali. I believe that someday Somalia will be peaceful and I will go there.”

Today, over 1 million Somalis remain displaced outside their country. With the crisis well into its third decade, UNHCR launched a Global Initiative on Somali Refugees last year in a bid to find solutions.

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26/08/2014

A Desperate Struggle Against Starvation in South Sudan

Human Wrongs Watch

By Mike Pflanz*, (UNICEF) – As a food crisis threatens millions in conflict-stricken South Sudan, families are eating whatever they can to survive. Without more urgent international help, many will likely die of starvation.*

KIECH KUON, South Sudan, 25 August 2014 – In the field next to Nyakaka Wal’s home in rural South Sudan, maize plants stand tall and dense, an acre or more of desperately needed food slowly growing in the hot sun.

© UNICEF Video | A child is checked for signs of malnutrition in Kiech Kuon, South Sudan.

But it is ripening too slowly for Nyakaka and her children. Harvest is still six weeks away, at least, and she and her family are struggling on the fringes of survival, eating only wild plants plucked from the ground, or dry-roasted cow’s blood.

An estimated 3.9 million people are facing emergency levels of food insecurity in South Sudan, where conflict that broke out at the end of 2013 forced people to flee their homes and fields. As a result, planting was delayed, and food stockpiles kept for lean times were looted.

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Posted in Africa, Mother Earth, The Peoples, War Lords | 2 Comments »

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