16/01/2015
Children growing up in Nigeria’s crisis-riven northeast are in desperate need of protection from relentless violence, on 16 January 2015 said Leila Zerrougui, the United Nations Special Representative for Children and Armed Conflict, as she wrapped up a weeklong visit in the country.
Special Representative for Children and Armed Conflict Leila Zerrougui (3rd left) during a visit to Yola, Nigeria. UN Photo/Andrew Esiebo
On a day when the UN refugee agency has reported a steady stream of people fleeing violence in the region with ‘harrowing tales of killings and destruction,’ a news release from Zerrougui’s Office notes that throughout 2014, the armed conflict in north-eastern Nigeria was one of the world’s deadliest for children.
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16/01/2015
By EurActiv*, 16 January 2015 — Western fighters in Syria and Iraq have found some of their most willing recruits in tiny Belgium, a chilling trend highlighted by the killing of suspected terrorists by police on Thursday (15 January) and which likely has its roots in the despair many feel at home.
C215 mural. Paris, October 2014. [Pop H/Flickr] | Source: EurActiv
Belgian police killed two men who opened fire on them during one of about a dozen raids against an Islamist group that federal prosecutors said was about to launch “terrorist attacks on a grand scale”.
In France, the attack on satirical French newspaper Charlie Hebdo has called the world’s attention to the threat of radicalised Muslims returning from Syria, Iraq or Yemen, an issue which has been erected as an EU priority in the fight against terrorism.
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16/01/2015
By Andre Vltchek*– TRANSCEND Media Service
A hundred years ago, it would have been unimaginable to have a pair of Muslim men enter a cafe or a public transportation vehicle, and then blow themselves up, killing dozens. Or to massacre the staff of a satirical magazine in Paris! Things like that were simply not done.
**By the medieval era most of the countries on the Silk Road were Muslim majority. | Author: Whole_world_-_land_and_oceans_12000.jpg: NASA/Goddard Space Flight Center | Wikimedia Commons
When you read the memoirs of Edward Said, or talk to old men and women in East Jerusalem, it becomes clear that the great part of Palestinian society used to be absolutely secular and moderate. It cared about life, culture, and even fashion, more than about religious dogmas.
The same could be said about many other Muslim societies, including those of Syria, Iraq, Iran, Egypt and Indonesia. Old photos speak for themselves. That is why it is so important to study old images again and again, carefully.
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16/01/2015
15 January 2015 (RT) — Are African lives worth less than the lives of people elsewhere in the world?
Agents of law enforcement and operative services work at the site of an explosion on a trolleybus near Kachinsky Market in Volgograd. (RIA Novosti) | Source: RT
Last week 17 people were killed by terrorists in France. The events were shocking and quite rightly the murders were subject to unequivocal condemnation. At the same time, considerably more people were reported to have been killed by gunmen in Baga, Nigeria, with figures ranging from 150 to over 2,000.
But it’s the French victims who we focus on, showing our solidarity with them by declaring ‘Je suis Charlie’, and holding vigils in Trafalgar Square and elsewhere- while the African victims of violence have – certainly until the last day or so – been ignored.
Even Nigeria‘s own President was keener to condemn the Paris attacks than those in his own country. How can this be right? Surely we should be mourning all victims equally?
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16/01/2015
15 January 2015 (RT)* — A former Guantanamo Bay prison guard and Marine explained in details what makes him believe three problematic detainees were killed at CIA black site in Guantanomo and their death was covered up as a triple suicide.
**Detainees upon arrival at Camp X-Ray | Wikimedia Commons
Army Staff Sergeant Joseph Hickman was on duty at the notorious prison camp when the three men died, and insists the official version of events is “impossible,” he told Vice News.
The three men were Salah Ahmed Al-Salami, 37, from Yemen, Mani Shaman Al-Utaybi, 30, from Saudi Arabia, and Yasser Talal Al-Zahrani, 22, also from Saudi Arabia. None of them had been charged with any crime.
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16/01/2015
‘After fleeing violence in South Sudan, young men find common ground in a traditional Dinka sport.’
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As the match begins, Athong (left) tries to gain the upper hand. | UNHCR/Frederic Noy
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16/01/2015
15 January 2015 – Looking to promote change in how men and boys think and talk about women’s empowerment and gender equality, the United Nations is hosting at its New York Headquarters a two-day high-level “Barbershop” event, which this afternoon focused on initiatives that aim to support non-sexist male attitudes and behaviours between men.
UN Women
The Barbershop Conference aimed at reflecting the casual setting in which men get their hair cut, while delving deeper into gender stereotypes perpetuated by social norms, and helping dispel the fallacy that women and girls cannot be equals in the economic, social or political life.
The event also highlighted that while historically women and girls have led the fight against gender inequality, discrimination and gender-based violence, the recent UN HeforShe initiative encourages men and boys to stand at forefront of the global discourse.
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16/01/2015
The Israeli-Palestinian conflict is now entering uncharted territory as tensions between the two sides escalate and an “ever-widening trust deficit” risks hampering future peace talks, a senior United Nations political official on 15 January 2015 told the Security Council today as he urged Palestinians and Israelis to “plot a course” and work towards a negotiated resolution.*
UNRWA estimates around 17,000 destroyed or damaged homes, rendering 100,000 people homeless in Gaza. Photo: UNRWA Archives/Shareef Sarah
Briefing the Council on the situation in the Middle East, Jens Anders Toyberg-Frandzen, Assistant Secretary-General ad interim for UN Political Affairs, warned that neither the Palestinians nor the Israelis had taken the “challenging steps or made the bold decisions” required to rebuild trust, further reducing the likelihood of a resumption of talks.
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16/01/2015
With the “devastating conflict” in Syria entering its fourth year, the United Nations Secretary-General’s Special Envoy for Syria on 15 January 2015 said that continued fighting in the country is a “disgrace” that has set the country back 40 years.
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Syrian refugees arrive across the border into Jordan. Photo: UNHCR/A. Harper
“It is a true tragedy that people all over Syria continue to be living under constant fear of barrel bombs, mortar attacks, rockets, aerial bombing, car bombs, kidnappings, extrajudicial killings,” said Staffan de Mistura.
“We are starting 2015 with the Syrian conflict being the largest humanitarian crisis since the Second World War.”*
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16/01/2015
As the Syrian civil war continues to rage into its fifth year, large numbers of refugees fleeing the hostilities are steadily slipping into abject poverty due to the breadth of the crisis and “insufficient support” from the international community, the head of the United Nations refugee agency (UNHCR) on 14 January 2015 warned.
Members of a family gather on the floor of their dilapidated apartment in downtown Amman, Jordan. Photo: UNHCR/B. Szandelszky
The agency’s latest study on the plight of those displaced by the conflict, entitled Living in the Shadows, reveals evidence of a “deepening humanitarian crisis” affecting the 150,000 refugees profiled with one in six Syrian refugee households living in abject poverty and two-thirds of refugees across Jordan now living below the poverty line, according to an agency press release.*
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HUMAN WRONGS WATCH 