03/10/2014
Athens, 1 October 2014 — Leading scientists and policymakers meeting in Athens this week acknowledged that marine litter remained a “tremendous challenge” in almost all regions of the world, with significant socio-economic consequences and clear impacts on marine ecosystems.
Marine litter affects communities and seas in every region of the world, and negatively impacts biodiversity, fisheries and coastal economies. Photo: Peter Prokosch/UNEP GRID Arendal
The three-day 16th Global Meeting of the Regional Seas Conventions and Action Plans was held amid growing concern worldwide about the threat that widespread plastic waste poses to marine life, with conservative estimates of overall financial damage of plastic to marine ecosystems standing at US$13 billion each year.
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03/10/2014
Human Wrongs Watch
By Uri Avnery*, 03/10/14 — IF I could choose between the two rhetorical gladiators, I would rather have Mahmoud Abbas representing Israel and Netanyahu representing the other side.
Netanyahu used all the tricks taught in a beginners course in public speaking. He rotated his head regularly from left to right and back, stretched out his arms, raised and lowered his voice convincingly.
At one point he produced the required visual surprise. Last time it was a childish drawing of an imagined Iranian atom bomb, this time it was a photo of Palestinian children in Gaza playing next to a rocket launcher.Abbas stood almost motionless and read his speech (in Arabic) with quiet dignity. No gimmicks.
(Netanyahu was carrying with him a stock of photos to exhibit – ISIS beheadings and such – rather like a salesman carrying samples.)
Everything a bit too slick, too smooth, too “sincere”. Like the furniture marketeer he once was.
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03/10/2014
In these dramatic and perilous times, United Nations Deputy Secretary-General Jan Eliasson urged the international community to reaffirm the power and potential of bringing about change through peaceful means, following in the footsteps of Mahatma Gandhi, who inspired the International Day of Non-Violence, marked on 2 October 2014.
“Non-Violence,” a sculpture by Karl Fredrik Reutersward, sits permanently outside UN Headquarters in New York
“The response to violence is all too often more violence when, in fact, reconciliation and dialogue is needed,” Eliasson said in a special event for the occasion, held at UN Headquarters in New York.
He called for embracing the fundamental values embodied by Gandhi: passion, compassion, and belief in the dignity and equal worth of all human beings.
Eliasson recalled Gandhi’s warning that “an eye for an eye ends up making the whole world blind.”
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03/10/2014
With a quarter of the world’s population living in urban slums, a sustainable response to improving the living conditions of the urban poor is becoming increasingly necessary, the United Nations agency tasked with promoting environmentally and socially sustainable cities and towns said on 2 October 2014.
Photo: UN-Habitat/Julius Mwelu
In a press release made available ahead of World Habitat Day, UN Habitat warned that urban poverty was not just a present problem affecting today’s metropolitan environments but “an ever-growing concern posing development and humanitarian threats to humankind.”*
The theme of this year’s World Habitat Day, observed annually on the first Monday of October, is Voices from the Slums – an effort to highlight the hardships of slum living through the voices of the urban poor while also giving rise to their experiences and ideas about improving their living conditions.
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03/10/2014
The United Nations refugee agency on 2 October 2014 reported that new data on irregular crossings of the Mediterranean in the third quarter of 2013 show an alarming increase in the numbers of people perishing while attempting to make the journey to Europe.
UNHCR staff talk with some of the growing number of people making the dangerous crossing of the Mediterranean to Italy. Photo: UNHCR/A. Belrhazi
“We are failing to heed the lessons from the terrible events of last October, and more and more refugees are drowning trying to reach safety,” said António Guterres, UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR), referring to the tragic incident a year ago this week in which a boat carrying migrants from Libya caught fire and sank within sight of the Italian island of Lampedusa, leaving 368 people dead and just 155 survivors.*
According to the agency, 90,000 people crossed to Europe between July 1 and September 30 and at least 2,200 lost their lives, compared to 75,000 people and 800 deaths for the period between January 1 and June 30.
In all, 165,000 people have made the crossing so far this year compared to 60,000 for all of 2013 – making 2014 a record year and reflecting the level of desperation among many of those involved.
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HUMAN WRONGS WATCH 