'Unseen' News and Views – By Baher Kamal & The Like
World Meteorological Organization
Temperatures spiked in the early months of 2016 because of a very strong El Niño event and remained well above the long-term average for the latter part of the year according to the reports from NASA’s Goddard Institute for Space Studies, the US National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, and the European Centre for Medium Range Weather Forecasts
According to a new report from the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC), the vast majority of all human trafficking victims – some 71 per cent – are women and girls and one third are children.
A girl waits with officers from the Haitian Police’s Brigade for the Protection of Minors (BPM) in the city of Ouanaminthe, on the north-eastern border with the Dominican Republic. BPM is a UNICEF partner in combating child trafficking. Photo: UNICEF/Marco Dormino
“Trafficking for sexual exploitation and for forced labour remain the most prominently detected forms, but victims are also being trafficked to be used as beggars, for forced or sham marriages, benefit fraud, or production of pornography,” on 21 December 2016 said UNODC Executive Director Yury Fedotov.
With civilians in war-battered eastern Aleppo braving sub-zero temperatures, evacuations escorted by the Syrian Arab Red Crescent and International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) resumed on 21 December 2016, as the agency estimates that more than 25,000 people have been evacuated from besieged neighbourhoods over the past five days, the United Nations said.
UN teams have been present at the Ramouseh Government checkpoint in Aleppo, Syria, to observe and monitor the evacuations from east Aleppo since 15 December 2016 and are still maintaining a presence. 21 December 2016. Photo: OCHA/MB
Meanwhile in New York, the UN Security Council approved the delivery of humanitarian aid across borders and conflict lines in Syria for another year, adopting a resolution demanding that all parties, in particular the Syrian authorities, immediately comply with their obligations under international law.
HUMAN WRONGS WATCH 