Archive for November 19th, 2015

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19/11/2015

‘Indigenous Peoples’ Voices Must Be Heard at Paris Climate Change Conference’

Human Wrongs Watch

19 November 2015 – Indigenous peoples own, occupy or manage up to 65 per cent of the Earth’s land surface, yet they have largely been excluded from national plans prepared for next month’s United Nations climate change conference in Paris, according to the UN Development Programme (UNDP), which is working to address the issue.

UN Photo/Eskinder Debebe (file)

Together with the International Indigenous Peoples’ Forum on Climate Change, UNDP is bringing indigenous leaders and high-level government officials together, often for the first time, to ensure that the priorities of indigenous peoples, whose lands are often seized for intensive greenhouse gas-emitting development, are embedded in national proposals for the conference, widely known as COP21.

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19/11/2015

Settling Israeli-Palestinian Conflict Would Help Curb Terrorism- UN Middle East Envoy

Human Wrongs Watch

Resolving the Israeli-Palestinian conflict would help counter the extremism behind the “abhorrent terrorist attacks” in Paris, Beirut and the Sinai, a senior United Nations official on the Middle East peace process on 19 November 2015 said, referring to last week’s bloody attacks and the downing of a Russian plane in Egypt last month.

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In At Tur, near Al Maqassad hospital in East Jerusalem, one of several roadblocks, placed by Israeli forces in October 2015 in Palestinian neighbourhoods, as the wave of violence across the occupied Palestinian territory and Israel continued. Photo: OCHA

“These tragic events serve to reinforce the reality that the extremism and terrorism that has infected many parts of the Middle East is not constrained by borders,” Special Coordinator on the Middle East Peace Process Nickolay Mladenov told the Security Council in the latest UN update on the situation.

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19/11/2015

Football Associations Publish Little or No Information on Millions of Dollars Received from FIFA

Human Wrongs Watch

New report from Transparency International shows lack of information and transparency in football and highlights corruption risks.

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**Map of the members of FIFA according to their confederation, on the 1st January 2006 (before this date, see this map): | Author: EOZyo | Based on Image:BlankMap-World6,_compact.svg | 19 September 2008 | Wikimedia Commons (Read details at end of article)

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19 November 2015 (Transparency International) – Most of the 209 national Football Associations that make up FIFA, world football’s governing body, publish little or no information on what they do and how they spend their money despite the fact that they received more than $1 million each from FIFA in 2014, according to a new report from Transparency International.

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19/11/2015

World Toilet Day: UN Urges ‘Open, Frank’ Discussion on Importance of Hygiene and Sanitation

Human Wrongs Watch

19 November 2015 – On World Toilet Day, United Nations Secretary General Ban Ki-moon is urging broad action to renew efforts in providing access to adequate sanitation for all and work to comprehensively address the “vicious cycle” connecting poor sanitation and malnutrition, the theme of this year’s observance of the Day.

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Children are using toilet facilities at a shelter in Hakha city, Myanmar, constructed with support from UNICEF. Photo: UNICEF/Kap Za Lyan

“Sanitation is central to human and environmental health as well as to individual opportunity, development and dignity. Yet today, worldwide, one in every three people lacks improved sanitation, and one in every eight practices open defecation,” said Ban Ki-moon in his message on the Day.

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19/11/2015

On World Day, UNESCO Hails Philosophy as ‘Force for Individual and Collective Emancipation’

Human Wrongs Watch

19 November 2015 – Marking World Philosophy Day, the head of the United Nations Organization for Education, Science and Culture (UNESCO) has stressed that sustainability calls for new ways of thinking about ourselves and the planet and as such, “philosophy and all the humanities will be essential.”

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Sculpture “The Thinker” by Auguste Rodin. World Philosophy Day takes place every November. Photo: Hans Andersen | Source: UN News Centre

“The conviction that philosophy can make an essential contribution to human well-being, to addressing complexity, to advancing peace stands at the heart of World Philosophy Day,” UNESCO’s Director-General, Irina Bokova, said in her message for this year’s celebration.

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19/11/2015

The Big – and the Small – ‘Mawlids’ of Egypt

Human Wrongs Watch

Mawlids are festivals, commemorating the anniversary of a saint’s death – or, as Sufis believe, the day a saint was born for the heavens

By Belal Dardar*

19 November 2015 (Middle East Eye) – The mosque is covered with small lights. Loud religious songs play from speakers in every corner as circles of worshippers whirl around, repeating the word madad.

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Lights, music, food and laughter illuminate the streets as Sufi and non-Sufi alike take part in a ‘mawlid’ (MEE/Belal Dardar)

There are simple tents in the streets and alleys around the mosque, full of people sleeping, eating, gathering and chatting.

Street vendors call out to passersby to buy fake jewelry and delicious desserts. Children wait in lines for their turn to get on the swing. It’s just a typical Egyptian Sufi mawlid.

The Arabic word mawlid means simply “anniversary” – the anniversary of a Muslim wali, a saint of sorts, one who serves as a meditator and intercessor in front of God.

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19/11/2015

West’s ‘Fail-Anthropy’: Agri-Corporations Attempt to Hijack COP21

Human Wrongs Watch

By Dr. Vandana Shiva*

17 November 2015 (The Asian Age)* –  ‘One Agriculture’ will starve the world and worsen the refugee crisis. The Gates Foundation, pretending to feed the world, is propagating the very source of half the climate problem.

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Source: FAO

In 2008, before the climate summit in Copenhagen, I wrote the book Soil Not Oil.

It was a time when the intimate connections between climate and agriculture, air and soil were not being recognized in any forum, neither in the negotiations on climate change nor in the climate movement.

As we head into the Conference of the Parties (COP21) in Paris, agri-corporations are attempting to hijack climate talks once again.

Today we are faced with two crises on a planetary scale—climate change and species extinction. Our current modes of production and consumption are contributing to what climate change scientists term anthropogenic emissions—originating from human activity.

If no action is taken to reduce greenhouse gases, we could experience a catastrophic 4C increase in temperature by the end of the century.

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19/11/2015

Latin America to Push for Food Security Laws as a Bloc

Human Wrongs Watch

By Milagros Salazar and Aramis Castro*
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LIMA, 17 November 2015 (IPS) – Lawmakers in the Parliamentary Front Against Hunger in Latin America and the Caribbean decided at a regional meeting to work as a bloc for the passage of laws on food security – an area in which countries in the region have show uneven progress.

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Display of native varieties of potatoes at a food fair during the Sixth Forum of the Parliamentary Front Against Hunger held Nov. 15-17 in Lima. Defending native products forms part of the right to food promoted by the legislators from Latin America and the Caribbean. Credit: Aramís Castro/IPS

The Nov. 15-17 Sixth Forum of the Parliamentary Front Against Hunger (PFH) in Lima, Peru drew more than 60 legislators from 17 countries in the region and guest delegations from parliaments in Africa, Asia and Europe.

The coordinator of the regional Front, Ecuadorean legislator María Augusta Calle, told IPS that the challenge is to “harmonise” the region’s laws to combat poverty and hunger in the world’s most unequal region.

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19/11/2015

The Empire of Fear: Why We Should Answer Terror with Unity

17 November 2015 (RT) – As France is slowly coming to terms with the tragedy which befell its people, looking to make sense of the murderous irrational of terrorism, it is reason I hope which will prevail, as anything short of that will ultimately play in the hands of fascism.
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**In front of restaurants Le Carillon and Le Petit Cambodge on 16 November 2015 | Author: Lpele | Wikimedia Commons

This terror the West is facing today, this evil which rejects the sanctity of life and wishes only to instill fear so that its hordes could better rule and enslave, is one which is devoid of any religious consciousness.

ISIS’s ideology is rooted not in Islam but in Wahhabism, a fascist devolution which was born from the mind of a pseudo-scholar, Muhammad ibn Abdul Wahhab, a tyrant whose sole purpose was to raise an empire of fear in Arabia, right at the heart of Islam to better draw from its religious legitimacy.
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Wahhabism is nothing more than a cult, a heresy rooted in bloodletting, slavery, and violence – an abomination of the mind so revolting that it can only be compared in its madness to Nazism.

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19/11/2015

School Mediation: Problems, And Solutions?

Human Wrongs Watch

By Johan Galtung*

18 November 2015, Alfaz, Spain (TRANSCEND Media Service) –  The world wave of mediation has reached school systems all over; in some countries less, in others more. Like in Spain, as evidenced by this heavily oversubscribed seminar on school mediation. When asked to express what they want to see happen in schools, the most frequent answer was convivencia, living togetherness. In one word, not as a composite concept. Like in Japanese, the one word is kyosei.

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Johan Galtung

What does it mean, concretely? I would interpret it as positive peace at school. Something behavioral: cooperation for mutual and equal benefit.

Equity. Something attitudinal, emotional resonance, I enjoy your joy, I suffer your suffering: Empathy. Harmony.

But the school is a big, holistic place. Not only children, but also adults, teachers and staff. And parents.

Positive togetherness within and between all these four groups? A huge order.

Many simplify this to togetherness among children, and not positive, only less negative. Less bullying, to protect victims–parents demand that–and to use teacher time for teaching, not keeping discipline–the staff demands that. However, it all hangs together.

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