Despite its comprehensive approach to tackling modern forms of slavery, the Government of Belgium must further sharpen its focus on proper victim detection and identification, a United Nations independent expert declared on 26 February 2015.
Forced labour often means unpaid wages, excessively long work hours without rest days, confiscation of ID documents, little freedom of movement, deception, intimidation and physical or sexual violence. ILO/A. Khemka
“Belgium’s multi-disciplinary approach to tackling modern forms of slavery, which brings together various stakeholders at policy and operational level is an example of good practice,” stated Urmila Bhoola, the Special Rapporteur on contemporary forms of slavery, including its causes and its consequences, in a press release.*
“However, potential victims, including children and other vulnerable groups, are not always detected, identified and referred to the appropriate structures, which leaves them susceptible to abuse and exploitation.”
25 February 2015 (Pressenza)— We have almost had a month of coalition government since the elections of the 25th of January. There is no doubt that throughout this period we have heard things that the majority of Greeks wanted to hear, not only in the Greek Parliament but also during the visits of [primer minister Alexis] Tsipras and [finance minister Yanis] Varoufakis to some big European cities and during the meetings of the Eurogroup.
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Source: Pressenza
The huge increase of popularity of those two men, reaching almost 80% approval according to surveys, proves that.
They have spoken of a Europe that supports the voice of its people and not the demands of the markets; they have specifically mentioned the percentages that come from austerity policies in Greece and the deep recession we are experiencing and they have asked for recognition of the demands on which the recent elections were conducted.
The Government of Afghanistan’s efforts to prevent torture and ill-treatment have shown some progress over the last two years but much more remains to be done, the United Nations Assistance Mission in Afghanistan (UNAMA) on 25 February 2015 confirmed as it released its latest report on the treatment of conflict-related detainees in Afghan custody.
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De-miners at work in Afghanistan. Photo: UNAMA/Fraidoon Poya
“UNAMA’s finding that torture of conflict-related detainees persists in spite of Government efforts over 2013-14 to address it is a source of serious concern,” said the UNAMA Human Rights Director, Georgette Gagnon, in a press release. “Continuing impunity for the use of torture allows torture to continue.”*
When leaders and decision makers from across Asia and the Pacific gather next month in Japan to discuss how to reduce disaster risks, their top priority will be to build resilience in a region that saw some 80 million people affected and nearly $60 billion in economic losses incurred by natural disasters last year.
Coping with severe floods in Pakistan. UN Photo/WFP/Amjad Jamal
The report said that more than half of the world’s 226 natural disasters occurred in the Asia and Pacific region last year. And although it was a year without a single large-scale catastrophe caused by an earthquake or tsunami, the region experienced severe storms, cross-border floods and landslides, which accounted for 85 percent of all disasters, it said.
Geneva – European policymakers, healthcare workers, and parents must step up their efforts to vaccinate children against measles amid an ongoing outbreak across the continent, the United Nations World Health Organization (WHO) on 25 February 2015 said, warning that a recent resurgence in the disease threatened Europe’s goal of eliminating measles by the end of 2015.*
Photo: WHO/F. Guerrero
According to UN data, over 22,000 cases of the virus have surfaced across Europe during the 2014 to 2015 biennium with the outbreak spreading to seven countries. This comes despite a 50 per cent drop from 2013 to 2014.
“When we consider that over the past two decades we have seen a reduction of 96 per cent in the number of measles cases in the European region, and that we are just a step away from eliminating the disease, we are taken aback by these numbers,” Dr. Zsuzsanna Jakab, WHO Regional Director for Europe, affirmed in a press release.
