Archive for July, 2017

19/07/2017

Children Increasingly Targeted for Murder, Rape in Central African Republic – UNICEF

Human Wrongs Watch

Renewed fighting in the Central African Republic (CAR) is increasingly targeting children, while there are concerns that the humanitarian needs in the country could escalate to levels not seen since the crisis four years ago, United Nations humanitarian officials on 18 July 2017 said.*

A commander of the anti-Balaka militia collects weapons handed in by children released by the group during a release ceremony in in Bambari in the Central African Republic. Photo: UNICEF/ Le Du

19/07/2017

Halting Sexual Exploitation of Children in Tourism, Mission Impossible

Human Wrongs Watch

ROME, Jul 18 2017 (IPS) – While the business sector jumps for joy as the number of tourists grew in 2016 for the seventh consecutive year to reach 1.2 billion, and as the first four months of 2017 have registered 6 per cent increase, the sheer speed, abetted by technology, of an atrocious crime—the sexual exploitation of children in tourism, has, to date, out-paced all attempts to put an end to it.


Source: International Year of Sustainable Tourism for Development 2017

In fact, failure of collective action and a chronic lack of robust data constitute the main challenges to eliminate this crime, underlines the Global Study “Offenders on the Move,” which is the largest pool of information on the issue to date.

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19/07/2017

The Sexualities Revolution

Human Wrongs Watch

By Johan Galtung and Antonio C. S. Rosa

17 July 2017 – TRANSCEND Media Service — Like the feminist revolution, this one may be said to have originated in USA.  The two are related.  There is a long, painful history.  From use and abuse of women, also inside marriage, for male sexual satisfaction only, still going on. To an awakening, realizing that there is female sexuality, maybe a little different, maybe with several orgasms rather than a big one.

galtung_side

Johan Galtung

Kinsey played a major role. Very solid, very empirical, vast, comprehensive, fought by some churches and no doubt by some patriarchs.  But science prevailed.

Before that, another half of humanity, exactly “the other half” in the English sense of lower class, had been accorded another sexuality, but raw, brutal with rape across class and race borders as expression.

unnamed

Antonio C. S. Rosa

Middle-upper class white husbands lived for centuries with a-sexual women whose virtue was threatened by lower class-race males, very fearful that their wives might actually want it.

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19/07/2017

On Nelson Mandela Day, UN Urges Action that Inspires Change for a Better World

Human Wrongs Watch

As the world marks Nelson Mandela International Day, United Nations officials and UN Peace Ambassador Stevie Wonder on 18 July 2016 paid tribute to the South African activist and peacemaker’s tireless efforts to end intolerance and injustice, calling on the international community to follow his guiding example in efforts to build a better world for all.

Nelson Mandela, then Deputy President of the African National Congress of South Africa, raises his fist in the air while addressing the Special Committee Against Apartheid in the General Assembly Hall. UN Photo/P. Sudhakaran

“Nelson Mandela International Day is an opportunity to reflect on the life and work of a legend who embodied the highest values of the United Nations,” said UN Deputy Secretary-General Jan Eliasson at a meeting of the General Assembly at UN Headquarters in New York to mark the Day, which is observed annually on 18 July.

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19/07/2017

East Africa’s Poor Rains: Hunger Worsened, Crops Scorched, Livestock Dead

Human Wrongs Watch

ROME, Jul 19 2017 (IPS) – Poor rains across East Africa have worsened hunger and left crops scorched, pastures dry and thousands of livestock dead, the United Nations food and agriculture agency has warned in a new alert.

Herders collect water with camels at one of the few remaining water points in drought-affected Bandarero village, Moyale County, Kenya. Credit: Rita Maingi/ OCHA

The most affected areas, which received less than half of their normal seasonal rainfall, are central and southern Somalia, South-Eastern Ethiopia, northern and eastern Kenya, northern Tanzania and north-eastern and South-Western Uganda, according to a new alert by the UN Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO).

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17/07/2017

Not Just Numbers: Migrants Tell Their Stories

Human Wrongs Watch

By Baher Kamal* 

ROME, Jul 17 2017 (IPS) – Every single day, print and online media and TV broadcasters show images and footage of migrants and refugees adrift, salvage teams rescuing their corpses–alive or dead, from fragile boats that are often deliberately sunk by human traffickers near the coasts of a given country. Their dramas are counted –and told– quasi exclusively in cold figures.

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Every now and then a reporter talks to a couple of them or interviews some of the tens of humanitarian organisations and groups, mostly to get information about their life conditions in the numerous so called “reception centres” that are often considered rather as “detention centres” installed on both shores of the Mediterranean sea.

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17/07/2017

The Mouse that Roared: How Saudi Arabia Underestimated Qatar

Human Wrongs Watch

By Catherine Shakdam*

9 July 2017 (RT)* — There is a certain irony to the crisis that ails the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC), now that Qatar has been labelled a pariah by Saudi Arabia. Terror aside, this stand-off has potential to reshape the region into a completely new geopolitical entity.
Doha_corniche_view_(2)

**Doha, Qatar | Author: Spetsnaz 1991 | Creative Commons Attribution 2.0 Generic license.

How fast yesterday’s allies become today’s enemies, and those we long held as foes sit together as reliable partners in a time of crisis. I don’t think that many political analysts can claim to have predicted Saudi Arabia’s fall from grace. Yet the writing was on the wall for all to see. Crude, pragmatic and as inevitable as man’s greed before the alluring calls of power.

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17/07/2017

What Is ‘Femonationalism’?

Human Wrongs Watch

Sara Farris recently published a provocative book entitled In the name of women’s rights: the rise of femonationalism.

In it, she examines how right-wing nationalists, neoliberals, and some feminists and women’s equality agencies, all invoke women’s rights to stigmatise Muslim men and advance their own political objectives.

She argues that there is an important political-economic dimension to this seemingly paradoxical intersection.

It’s a timely – but complex – book including case studies from France, Italy and the Netherlands.

I called Farris, who is currently senior lecturer in sociology at Goldsmiths, University of London, to dig further into some of the questions that her book raises.

This is an edited transcript of our conversation.

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17/07/2017

Winning on the World’s Largest Tuna Company and What It Means for the Oceans

Human Wrongs Watch

By Sarah King* 

11 July, 2017 (Greenpeace) — It took two years of relentless campaigning and nearly 700,000 concerned people from around the world, but today we are sharing the good news that together we convinced the world’s largest tuna company to clean up its act!

Greenpeace volunteers label John West tuna cans with "THIS IS NOT JUST TUNA" in a Tesco store to raise awareness of the #JustTuna campaign.Greenpeace volunteers label John West tuna cans with “THIS IS NOT JUST TUNA” in a Tesco store to raise awareness of the #JustTuna campaign.

Tuna giant Thai Union, which owns brands such as John West, Chicken of the Sea, Petit Navire, Mareblu, and Sealect, has committed to a series of changes to its business that will help to protect seafood workers, reduce destructive fishing practices, and increase support for more sustainable fishing.

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17/07/2017

Digitizing Family Planning: The Way of the Future

Human Wrongs Watch

By Stella Paul*

LONDON, Jul 17 2017 (IPS) – Online shopping may have its pros and cons, but when it comes to buying products that have an invisible morality tag, it’s the safest possible option, believes Franklin Paul.

Digitizing SRHR communication: some of the popular mobile phone apps currently used in India by the government and an NGO. Credit: Stella Paul/IPS

Digitizing SRHR communication: some of the popular mobile phone apps currently used in India by the government and an NGO. Credit: Stella Paul/IPS

 

One of India’s most vocal advocates for youth rights to sexual health, education and products, Paul has spent over two years studying and introducing digital technologies to India’s rural youths.

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