'Unseen' News and Views – By Baher Kamal & The Like
Among the issues discussed at the WHS was how the humanitarian sector could improve protection of civilians from violence. Jan Egelend, who heads the Norwegian Refugee Council and is also the Special Advisor to Staffan de Mistura, the UN Special Envoy for Syria, said that the international community needs to “blacklist” any group or Government that bombs civilians and civilian targets. Pictured, Baharka IDP camp in northern Iraq. Photo: OCHA/Brandon Bateman
– The World Humanitarian Summit (WHS) held in Istanbul on May 23-24, managed to send a strong wake-up call to the world about the unprecedented human suffering now in course, but failed to achieve the objective of attracting the massive funds needed to alleviate the humanitarian drama, as none of the leaders of the Group 7 of the richest courtiers nor of the five permanent members of the UN Security Council attended, with the exception of the German Chancellor Angela Merkel.
UN secretary General Ban Ki-moon. Credit: United Nations
At the summit’s closing session, while recalling that the WHS achieved its main objective of addressing the conscious of the world towards the growing human drama, both Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan and the UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon expressed strong “disappointment” on the absence of leaders of the most powerful countries.
Though they reiterated their appeal for solidarity to rescue the most vulnerable people on Earth–130 million victims of conflicts and natural disasters and growing, none of them could hold out or offer any hope soon.
A Maternity ward in Port Loko, Sierra Leone. Credit: Mohamed Fofanah/IPS.
Arthur Erken, Director of the Division of Communications and Strategic Partnerships at UNFPA, told IPS some key donors are reducing contributions not only to UNFPA but also to the entire international development community.
Others have indicated their cuts are partially motivated by the cost related to integrating refugees into their host communities, he added.
A family living in this tent in Baghdad, Iraq, explains that the camp and the tents were not ready for winter. Credit: WFP/Mohammed Al Bahbahani
In fact, while the United Nations reports that the international community spends today around 25 billion dollars to provide live-saving assistance to 125 million people devastated by wars and natural disasters, the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI). estimates world’s military expenditure in 2015 was over 1.6 trillion dollars.
– A new spectre is haunting the world. It is not the spectre of communism, as Marx’s Manifesto famously proclaimed. It is the spectre of fear, which has increasingly become the rationale behind politics. And, as the old proverb says, fear is not a good counselor.
Let us take, for example, the last elections in the Philippines. In a country where the of memory of the Marcos dictatorship are still relatively recent (Marcos was forced by a popular revolution to quit in 1986), people have elected by a large margin as their president Rodrigo Duterte, who made his campaign motto: “Let us kill them all”.
He was referring to criminals, thieves, drug dealers and others whom he prosecuted using paramilitary gangs, when he was mayor of Davao City.
In his campaign, he said that once president he would kill some of them himself. The outgoing President, Benigno S. Aquino III, tried to stop him, saying that was tantamount to return to the dictatorship of Ferdinando Marcos. He asked the other candidates to unite to defeat Duterte, but nobody agreed.
Despite strong economic growth, the Philippines still has a high level of poverty and unemployment, a raging war in the southern part of the country against insurgents and kidnapping gangs.
Afghanistan is both a fragile country and a least developed country. Credit: Ashfaq Yusufzai/IPS
The UN Population Fund (UNFPA) published a report this week ahead of a UN meeting to review progress made in developing countries over the past five years. Known as the midterm review of the Istanbul Programme of Action (IPoA) the meeting will take place in Turkey on 27 to 29 May.
Sudanese refugee children protest against food ration cuts at Touloum refugee camp in Chad | Credit: IRIN
“Let us not underestimate the gravity of what lies before us in these coming days: A once in a generation opportunity to set in motion an ambitious and far-reaching agenda to change the way that we alleviate, and most importantly prevent, the suffering of the world’s most vulnerable people,” O’Brien added to IPS.
HUMAN WRONGS WATCH 