16/04/2015
Beirut — Despite impressive progress in raising school enrollment over the past decade, one in four children and young adolescents in the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) are either out of school or at risk of dropping out, according to the United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF).
Syrian refugee children walking on a street in the Za’atari camp in northern Jordan. Photo: UNICEF/Simon Ingram
“At a time of such change and turmoil, this region simply cannot afford to let 21 million children fall by the wayside,” Maria Calivis, Regional Director for UNICEF MENA, on 15 April said in a statement from Beirut.
“These children must be given the opportunity to acquire the skills they need through education in order to play their part in the region’s transformation,” she added.
According to a joint report released by UNICEF and the UN Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO), a 40 per cent reduction in the number of out-of-school children in the MENA region over the past decade provided hope and opportunities for millions.
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15/04/2015
By Nadezhda Kevorkova*
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15 April 2015 (RT) – At the foot of Al-Aqsa the struggle ensues over every house. If this neighborhood is called Silwan, the Palestinians have a chance of staying. But if it’s named after King David, their chances are nil.
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A view on Al-Aqsa from the Palestinian neighborhood of Silwan (Photo by Nadezhda Kevorkova) | Source: RT
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If you don’t want to know anything about the hard life Palestinians are leading in Jerusalem, you won’t find out even if you visit the Holy Land dozens of times.
Most tourist guides talk about Jerusalem like the Palestinians are not there at all, and if they are, they are nothing but an unfortunate part of the landscape.
But if you do want to find out about how Palestinians live in Jerusalem you needn’t go far: The Silwan neighborhood is right there at the foot of the Al-Aqsa Mosque.
Israel occupied this neighborhood along with the entire Jerusalem in 1967. Israelis call this place the City of David and consider it the oldest part of the city.
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15/04/2015
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Source: ICAN-International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons.
World military spending, while falling for the third year in a row, has levelled off as reductions in the United States and Western Europe were largely matched by increases in Asia and Oceania, the Middle East, Eastern Europe and Africa. Spending in Latin America was virtually level.
US military spending fell by 6.5 per cent* as part of ongoing budget deficit reduction measures; spending has now fallen by 20 per cent since its peak in 2010. However, current US military spending is still 45 per cent higher than in 2001, just before the 11 September terrorist attacks on the USA.
The next three highest spenders—China, Russia and Saudi Arabia—have all substantially increased their military expenditures, with Saudi Arabia’s increase of 17 per cent making it the largest increase of any of the top 15 spenders worldwide.
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15/04/2015
The United Nations refugee agency on 14 April 2015 urged Kenyan authorities to reconsider their decision to shut down within the next three months Dadaab refugee camps, a decision that would require some 350,000 Somalis to return to their country and would cause “extreme” humanitarian consequences.
A group of displaced Somali women residing at the Ifo 2 Refugee Camp in Dadaab, Kenya, which is supported by the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR). UN Photo/Evan Schneider
“Large-scale returns are still not possible in many parts of the country, in particular to South Central Somalia,” spokesperson for the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR), Karin de Gruijl, told journalists in Geneva.*
The Government’s decision was announced this past weekend following the horrific attack at Garissa University in Kenya earlier this month, the agency said, referring to the 2 April assault on the campus for which Somali-based Al-Shabaab claimed responsibility.
According to the UN Security Council, which strongly condemned the attack, dozens were killed, scores injured and many held hostage and others unaccounted for, the vast majority of whom were students.
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15/04/2015
By Johan Galtung*
14 April 2015 TRANSCEND Media Service – Mohandas Gandhi invented the nonviolent approach to basic social change, Satyagraha, in South Africa in the early 20th century; Nelson Mandela presided over the birth of a one person-one vote democracy at the end of the century.
**Nelson Mandela | Author: Library of the London School of Economics and Political Science | Wikimedia Commons
Both were lawyers, trained in English Common Law; good in the sense of a keen consciousness of what is right and wrong, bad in the sense of a court process identifying who is in the wrong rather than solving underlying conflicts, and wrong in the sense of punishing the wrong-doer; violence rather than cooperation.
Both built on the positive side of law–the indelible rights of the people for whom they were fighting by comparing empirical facts with normative rights; immigrant Indians in the case of Gandhi, original inhabitants in South Africa, the Blacks, in the case of Mandela.
Gandhi (1869-1948) did not live to see equality between Indians and whites in South Africa, but in India, his mother-father land; Mandela (1918-2013) did. They won their struggles–but the societies that emerged still suffer from other and major ones.
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14/04/2015
13 April 2015 – A new report released by the United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF) reveals that least 800,000 children have been forced to flee their homes as a result of the conflict in northeast Nigeria between Boko Haram, military forces and civilian self-defence groups.
Aisha pretends to draw at the tip of a pencil painted on a wall mural in a camp for internally displaced people in Yola, the capital of Adamawa. Photo: UNICEF/NYHQ2015-0477/Esiebo
Released a year after 200 girls were abducted in Chibok, UNICEF’s Missing Childhoods reveals that the number of children running for their lives within Nigeria, or crossing over the border to Chad, Niger and Cameroon, has more than doubled in just less than a year.
“The abduction of more than 200 girls in Chibok is only one of endless tragedies being replicated on an epic scale across Nigeria and the region,” says Manuel Fontaine, UNICEF Regional Director for West and Central Africa.
“Scores of girls and boys have gone missing in Nigeria – abducted, recruited by armed groups, attacked, used as weapons, or forced to flee violence. They have the right to get their childhoods back.”
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14/04/2015
Doha, Qatar, 13 April 2015 – With wildlife and forest crimes on the rise, yielding enormous profits for criminal networks, United Nations high-level officials at a major anti-crime meeting under way in Doha, Qatar, stressed the gravity of the scourge, saying that it fuels violence, corrupts supply chains and undermines the rule of law.
An elephant in Ghana. World Bank/Arne Hoel | Source: UN
“Wildlife and forest crime…has the potential, not only to devastate the environment, but also to undermine the social, political and economic well-being of societies, while generating billions of dollars for criminal gangs and sustaining their illicit activities,” General Assembly President Sam Kutesa told a high-level event held as part of the 13th UN Congress on Crime Prevention and Criminal Justice.*
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14/04/2015
By Mairead Maguire, Nobel Peace Laureate*
13 April 2015, TRANSCEND Media Service — On May 24, 2015, which is International Women’s Day for Peace and Disarmament, 30 women peacemakers from 12 countries plan to walk across the demilitarized zone (DMZ) that separates North and South Korea.
This will be an important first step in establishing a peace process and supporting Koreans who are working towards reconciliation and hoping to reunite their families.
Some of the women who will be participating in this historic walk are Nobel Peace Prize laureate Leymah Gbowee, feminist author Gloria Steinem, retired U.S. Army Colonel Ann Wright, Suzuyo Takazato from Okinawa Women Act Against Military Violence, and American filmmaker Abigail Disney.
Last week, the government of North Korea agreed to support the walk, but officials from South Korea have yet to voice a decision. The United Nations Command at the DMZ has said it will facilitate the crossing once the South Korean government gives its approval.
In many countries around the world, women are walking and calling for demilitarization and an end to war. As the DMZ is the most highly militarized border in the world, women peacemakers believe it is only right that they should walk there in solidarity with their Korean sisters, who want to see an end to the 70-year-old conflict and reunite millions of Korean families.
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14/04/2015
The thousands of Palestinian and Syrian refugees trapped in the Yarmouk refugee camp have suffered “untold indignities” amid intensifying hostilities between armed groups in the area, the United Nations agency concerned with the well-being of Palestinian refugees on 13 April 2015 declared.
UNRWA extremely concerned about the safety and protection of Syrian and Palestinian civilians in the Palestinian refugee camp of Yarmouk in Damascus, Syria. Photo: UNRWA/Walla Masoud
“We can all agree that peaceful options for resolving the Yarmouk crisis will provide the optimal solution right now for the protection of the civilians,” Pierre Krähenbühl, Commissioner-General for the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East (UNRWA), said during the second day of his visit to the Syrian capital, Damascus, where Yarmouk is located.*
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12/04/2015
The United Nations agency concerned with the well-being of Palestinian refugees is undertaking an urgent mission to Syria on 11 April 2015, prompted by deepening concerns for the safety and protection of thousands Palestinian and Syrian civilians at Yarmouk refugee camp overrun in recent days by militants.
A mother and child in Yarmouk, Syria. Photo: UNRWA/Taghrid Mohammad
Pierre Krähenbühl, Commissioner-General for the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East (UNRWA), is visiting Yarmouk to get a sense of the situation in the camp, hear from refugees affected by the crisis, and consult with leaders on how to get aid to people in need.
Since 1 April, Yarmouk has been the scene of intense fighting between a number of armed groups, reportedly including elements of the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL), rendering it virtually impossible for civilians to leave.
Among Yarmouk’s 18,000 besieged residents are also 3,500 children, who have been reliant on UNRWA’s intermittent distributions of food and other assistance for over a year.
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HUMAN WRONGS WATCH 