12/12/2014
Reconstruction efforts in Gaza continue as thousands of people will soon have access to building materials for urgent repairs to their homes following last summer’s conflict in the war-ravaged enclave, the UN special envoy in the region said. The UN estimates that over 100,000 homes were damaged or destroyed, affecting more than 600,000 people. Many people still lack access to the municipal water network, and blackouts of up to 18 hours per day are common.
Heavily damaged buildings in Gaza. Photo: UNRWA Archives/Shareef Sarhan
In a statement released on 11 December 2014, the UN Special Coordinator for the Middle East Peace Process, Robert Serry, noted that more than 20,000 homeowners are expected to be able to procure construction material by the end of December for critical repairs ahead of an expectedly cold winter.*
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11/12/2014
New York, 10 December 2014 — People of African descent still face racism in every country, region and continent of the world, said United Nations General Assembly President Sam Kutesa as the word body on 10 December 2014 kicked off its International Decade of People of African Descent.
Students inside a newly built classroom at a camp for internally displaced persons in Port-au-Prince, Haiti. UN Photo/Logan Abassi
“Over the next ten years, people everywhere are encouraged to take part in the global conversation on the realities faced by people of African descent,” Kutesa who is a national of Uganda told the General Assembly, calling the Decade’s launch a historic achievement.*
“The Decade will allow us to explore the challenges faced by people of African descent due to pervasive racism and racial discrimination engrained in our society today,” he added.
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11/12/2014
The universal reach of human rights should not be restricted to one day alone but extended to every day of the year, top United Nations officials declared on 10 December 2014 as they marked Human Rights Day – an annual UN-backed event commemorating the date on which the General Assembly adopted the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.
Credit: UN/OHCHR
Spearheaded by the Office of the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR), this year’s observance – celebrated under the banner of Human Rights 365 – encompasses the idea that “every day is Human Rights Day” and that “each one of us, everywhere, at all times is entitled to the full range of human rights.”*
“On Human Rights Day we speak out,” Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon proclaimed in his message. “We declare that human rights are for all of us, all the time: whoever we are and wherever we are from; no matter our class, our opinions, our sexual orientation.”
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11/12/2014
Only by acting together will world leaders transform the climate challenge into an opportunity to fundamentally rethink how we grow our economies and create a safer, healthier, more livable world, United Nations Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon on 10 December 2014 said.
Renewable energy: a thermo-solar power plant. Photo: World Bank/Dana Smillie | Source: UN New Centre
“I look around and can clearly see efforts to create this alliance taking shape,” said Ban in his remarks to the Heads of State segment at the UN Climate Change Conference in Lima, Peru, known also as the 20th session of the Conference of the Parties (COP 20).*
“That circle of action must continue to grow. Governments as well as business, finance, civil society, academia and all sectors must join forces,” he added.
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10/12/2014
A United States Senate report has confirmed what the international community has long believed – that there was a clear policy orchestrated at a high level within the Bush Administration which allowed to commit gross violations of international human rights law, the United Nations Special Rapporteur on counter terrorism and human rights on 9 December 2014 said.
**Anti-war demonstration during President Bush’s visit to London, June 2008 | Author: CharlieTPhotographic | Wikimedia Commons
Released on 9 December, the so-called Feinstein report, after long-time US Senator Dianne Feinstein who chaired the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence that compiled the document, probes crimes of torture and enforced disappearance of terrorist suspects by the Bush-era CIA.*
“It has taken four years since the report was finalised to reach this point,” said Ben Emmerson in a statement.
Now it is time to take action, he added. “The individuals responsible for the criminal conspiracy revealed in today’s report must be brought to justice, and must face criminal penalties commensurate with the gravity of their crimes,” he said.
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10/12/2014
On the eve of the worldwide commemoration of Human Rights Day, United Nations Deputy Secretary-General, Jan Eliasson, on 9 December 2014 led in New York’s historic Harlem neighborhood, a public reading of the landmark Universal Declaration of Human Rights.
Photo: OHCHR
This year, as Human Rights Day, marked annually on 10 December, coincides with the launch of the International Decade for People of African Descent, the UN Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR) hosted the commemoration in New York to link the two events.*
By taking this event to Harlem, a symbolic location for people of African descent in the United States, it highlights the human rights struggle by African-Americans and people of African descent that continues until today.
The historic Schomburg Center, itself a cultural touchstone, was established in Harlem in 1905 as a research library and an archive repository for information on people of African descent worldwide.
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09/12/2014
Human Wrongs Watch
Beirut, 9 December 2014 (HWW) — Lebanon is undoubtedly a country of records. This small State (10,452 km2) is home to 5,2 million nationals (3,9 million are residents and 1,3 million living abroad), comprising 18 recognised religious groups. Meanwhile, it hosts the highest ratio per capita of refugees on Earth with one million registered Syrians fleeing war in their country. And it has been without president for 199 days today. Now Lebanon may lose half of its people.
*Protests in Beirut | Author: Shakeeb Al-Jabri | Wikimedia Commons
According to a new survey (in Arabic) carried out by Information International, more than 25 percent of all Lebanese have already migrated while another 25 per cent is waiting for obtaining entry visa to different foreign countries.
Another striking outcome of the study is that a vast majority of migrants and ready-to-migrant are young and or university graduated.
In fact, it is estimated that about 46 percent of immigrants are University graduates and near 83 percent are young, which means that number of university graduated who traveled abroad in the last three years would be equivalent to the total number of university graduates in the same period. This would simply imply that all graduates have left Lebanon!
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08/12/2014
Never in recent memory have so many children been subjected to such unspeakable brutality, the UN Children’s Fund (UNICEF) on 8 December 2014 said, as 2014 has been “devastating” for some 15 million children caught up in violent conflicts around the world.
Nearly 400,000 children in Gaza are suffering from psychosocial distress as a result of the 50-day armed conflict in 2014. Photo: UNICEF/Alessio Romenzi
“This has been a devastating year for millions of children,” said Anthony Lake, UNICEF Executive Director, in a press release issued by his organization.*
“Children have been killed while studying in the classroom and while sleeping in their beds; they have been orphaned, kidnapped, tortured, recruited, raped and even sold as slaves,” Lake said. “Never in recent memory have so many children been subjected to such unspeakable brutality.”
As many as 15 million children are caught up in violent conflicts in the Central African Republic, Iraq, South Sudan, Syria, Ukraine and in the Occupied Palestinian territories – including those displaced in their own countries or living as refugees outside their homeland, according to UNICEF.
And an estimated 230 million children live in countries and areas affected by armed conflicts, it said.
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08/12/2014
By Johan Galtung*, 8 December 2014 – TRANSCEND Media Service, Yogyakarta, Indonesia — Coming from Malaysia, the two neighbors are incredibly different. Indonesia, richer in ancient cultures, larger in territory, an archipelago of thousands of islands, has GDP/capita 3,500 and Malaysia 11,500; three times+ more.
Johan Galtung
Products of brutal Western colonialism, Dutch for Indonesia, English for Malaya, which became Malaysia. Exploited, robbed, impoverished.
Both hoped that World War II, fought for democracy-human rights, would end that in 1945, but got wars to keep colonialism instead–till 1949 and 1957, respectively.
Both had been occupied for 3 1/2 years by Japan going south to beat the US-imposed boycott, heading for oil resources in Indonesia (Malaysian oil not yet discovered).
There was a difference: Indonesia’s future leader, Soekarno and his no. 2 Mohammad Hatta had lived in Japan, made friends and met the Dutch returning to “their” colony fighting as a free country–no such freedom in Malaya.
So, why the difference?
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07/12/2014
Human Wrongs Watch
Photo: Greenpeace
“One of the biggest evacuations in peacetime” strikes a sickening chord. Is this peacetime or are we at war with nature?
I was about to head to Lima, when I got a call to come to the Philippines to support our office and its work around Typhoon Hagupit (which means lash). In Lima another round of the UN climate talks are underway to negotiate a global treaty to prevent catastrophic climate change. A truce of sorts with nature.
But these negotiations have been going on far too long, with insufficient urgency and too much behind the scenes, and not so much behind the scenes, interference from the fossil fuel lobby.
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HUMAN WRONGS WATCH 