Archive for December, 2016

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23/12/2016

“Nigeria’s Megacity, Lagos, Faces ‘Unacceptable’ Water and Sanitation Crisis”

Human Wrongs Watch

A United Nations human rights expert on 22 December 2016 called on the Nigerian Government to increase funding for water and sanitation in next year’s budget to address the needs of 21 million residents of Lagos, the country’s largest city, which continues to grow while access to basic services dwindles.

In Lagos, Nigeria, residents navigate the polluted waters of Makoko, a fishing community mostly made up of structures on stilts above Lagos Lagoon, as smog spreads throughout the canals. Photo: UNICEF/Tanya Bindra

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23/12/2016

UN May End Assistance to 150,000 Humans in Central African Republic

Human Wrongs Watch

22 December 2016 – Due to a lack of funding, the United Nations World Food Programme (WFP) is running a risk of soon needing to halt its aid to 150,000 people in crisis-torn Central African Republic (CAR) who have been displaced by violence.

The World Food Programme (WFP) needs urgent funding to bring vital assistance to 150,000 displaced persons in the Central African Republic (CAR). Photo: WFP West Africa

This year, WFP aimed to support some one million people but only 400,000 received assistance due to funding constraints. Rations have been halved and school meal distributions over the past two months have fallen short of intended goals.

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23/12/2016

UN Allocates THREE Million Dollars to Somalia-Kenya Cross-Border Project for Somali Refugees

Human Wrongs Watch

22 December 2016 – The United Nations Peacebuilding Fund is set to allocate $3 million on a pilot project that will provide peacebuilding and professional skills to Somali refugees volunteering to return from Kenya to Somalia.

Temporary homes are pouring into the overflow area of the Ifo Extension camp in Dadaab, Kenya. Photo: UN OCHA

Announcing the pilot project on Tuesday, the Fund said it will also help refugees settle down, and begin reintegration process into a community.

UN Peacebuilding notes that the project is unique as it reaches across borders and targets the same population, first in asylum in Dadaab, Kenya, and then upon return to Baidoa, Somalia.

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23/12/2016

Stop Worrying about ‘Doing Business’ Ranking

Human Wrongs Watch

By Anis Chowdhury and Jomo Kwame Sundaram*

SYDNEY and KUALA LUMPUR, Dec 22 2016 (IPS) – Without any hint of irony, the World Bank’s most recent Doing Business Report 2017 promises ‘Equal Opportunity for All’. Bangladesh ranked 176th among 190 economies, below civil war-ravaged Iraq and Syria! Bangladesh even slipped two places from 174 in the 2016 ranking and is three places below its 2015 ranking.

Garment workers in Bangladesh. Should Bangladeshis, Malaysians and others worry about their countries’ downward slide in the ‘Doing Business’ ranking? Credit: IPS

Garment workers in Bangladesh. Should Bangladeshis, Malaysians and others worry about their countries’ downward slide in the ‘Doing Business’ ranking? Credit: IPS

Malaysia, too, slipped five places. The Doing Business Report (DBR) 2017 ranked Malaysia at 23, down from 18 in the previous two reports for 2015 and 2016. Incredibly, this had nothing to do with news of the biggest scandal ever in the country’s history.

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22/12/2016

Outgoing UN Chief Yearns for Majority Rule in World Body

Human Wrongs Watch

By Thalif Deen

UNITED NATIONS, Dec 22 2016 (IPS) – As he packs his bags to head home to South Korea, the outgoing UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon has been sharply critical of the decision-making process in the world body – specifically the veto powers in the Security Council and the increasing “consensus” rule in voting – where a single country can defy the rest of the 192 members, particularly on politically and financially sensitive issues.

Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon delivers a keynote address on “The Future of Multilateral Disarmament” at an event hosted by the Centre for Global Affairs (CGA) of New York University (NYU). Credit: UN Photo/Rick Bajornas

Ban Ki-moon delivers a keynote address on “The Future of Multilateral Disarmament” at an event hosted by the Centre for Global Affairs (CGA) of New York University (NYU). Credit: UN Photo/Rick Bajornas

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22/12/2016

2016 Remains on Track to Be Hottest Year on Record

Human Wrongs Watch

21 December 2016 – World Meteorological Organization (WMO)* –  The year 2016 remains on track to be the hottest year on record, with average global temperatures set to break even the records of 2015, according to data covering the first eleven months of the year.
jan-nov

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

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22/12/2016

Majority of Trafficking Victims Are Women and Girls; One-Third Children – UN

Human Wrongs Watch

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.

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22/12/2016

‘Civilians Brave Freezing Temperatures as Aleppo Evacuations Resume’

Human Wrongs Watch

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.

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21/12/2016

Bigotry Seeks Company in the UK

Human Wrongs Watch

By Warwick Historians*

19 December 2016 (openDemocracy)* – We historians at the University of Warwick are very concerned about the racism that is becoming increasingly commonplace over Britain, especially in the aftermath of the Brexit vote.
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800px-warwick_university_buildings_panoramic_-_manufacturing_and_cs_and_maths

 

**Three buildings on the University of Warwick campus;| Author: Mike1024 | public domain | Wikimedia Commons

We are witnessing a profound authoritarian shift in long-established liberal democracies around the world. The recent result of the US election is only the most dramatic illustration of this. But while we have reason to worry about Trump, grave developments are also afoot in Britain.

Since 23 June, this country has experienced one of the greatest upsurges in racism that has happened in our lifetimes. This has affected EU migrants: Poles have been attacked as “vermin”, a Czech and a Polish man were even murdered, while mothers with infants are being assaulted on the street.

This October a Polish shop in Coventry, just over five miles away from Warwick’s Campus, was the victim of an arson attack that many suspect to be racially motivated.

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21/12/2016

The Modern Destruction of Ancient Aleppo

Human Wrongs Watch

By Vithal Rajan*

19 December 2016 – TRANSCEND Media Service – If the English poet, John William Burgon, called Petra ‘half as old as time,’ Aleppo is a lot older. One of the world’s earliest cities, it ended the bronze age by discovering iron ore. A centre of Christianity almost two-thousand years ago, Aleppo sent evangelists as far afield as the western shores of India.

800px-aleppo_citadel_18_-_throne_hall

**Throne Hall of the Citadel of Aleppo, Syria | Author: Bernard Gagnon | This file is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Unported, 2.5 Generic, 2.0 Generic and 1.0 Generic license.

Commerce was the life-blood of the city, and almost till the Suez Canal was built, it was the entrepôt that supplied the riches of the Orient to Europe.

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