'Unseen' News and Views
Amid reports that some 160 people are feared lost during desperate attempts to cross the Mediterranean this week alone, the United Nations refugee agency on 12 January 2018 called for more action to save lives by offering more resettlement places and safe alternatives for people on the move.
A woman carries her two babies as she disembarks the boat that rescued her while attempting to cross the Mediterranean Sea from Libya to Italy. (file) UNHCR/Francesco Malavolta
10 January 2018 – Two United Nations agencies are teaming up in a major new initiative taking on the herculean task of combatting environmental health risks, which claim an estimated 12.6 million lives a year.*
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Photo: UNEP
UN humanitarian agencies on 11 January 2018 called for more donor funding to reverse a 25 per cent reduction in food or cash assistance for more than 100,000 refugees in Rwanda.
Burundian refugees arriving from a transition camp in Nyanza are processed at Mahama camp in Rwanda’s Eastern Province. (file) Photo: UNHCR/Anthony Karumba
Laying out his vision for concrete steps the world can take in 2018 to maximize the contribution millions of migrants are already making to our societies and to agree a set of actions to ensure that the rights of all migrants are fully respected, United Nations Secretary-General António Guterres on 11 January 2018 said the issue of migration calls for a truly global response.
Migrants wait in line to be registered in Berlin, Germany. Photo: UNICEF/Ashley Gilbertson VII
11 January 2018 (Wall Street International) — The title is that of the song To bee or not to bee, which was composed by the Greek band “Locomondo” to support Greenpeace’s campaign Global Day of Action – Save the Bees!
In fact, in May 2014 around 1.000 Greenpeace volunteers and activists in 110 cities across Europe participated in the European day of action to spotlight the crucial role of bees and other pollinators for our food and agriculture.
Honeybees and wild pollinators play a crucial role in agriculture and food production… however, the current chemical-intensive agriculture model is threatening both, and thereby putting food supply at risk, Greenpeace had already warned a year earlier to the European Day.
IOM* – We met Mamadou, 23, last year at IOM’s transit centre in Niger. Exhausted and traumatized after his journey, Mamadou couldn’t wait to go back to Guinea-Conakry and reunite with his mother. He felt like a disappointment and an embarrassment to her.
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In caring for others, refugees leave traumas behind and gain new friends in ‘sceptical’ Hungary.
Radwa Al Nazer from Damascus (left) and Rita Joy Osazee from Nigeria with 93-year-old Ilona Karpati in the Albert Schweitzer Reformed Elderly Home in Budapest. © UNHCR/Bela Szandelszky
BUDAPEST, Hungary (UNHCR)* – Rita pushes an old man in a wheelchair down the corridor to his bedroom. Radwa lays the table for lunch. Refugees, training to look after the elderly in a Hungarian care home, are proving to be an asset to a society with a mixed record of welcoming asylum seekers.
10 January 2018 – At a special summit at United Nations Headquarters in New York, universities, led by De Montfort University (DMU), spotlighted ideas for practical ways they can use the skills, experience and voluntary power on their campuses to support those in need in their local areas.
‘Together’ summit at UN Headquarters in New York on combating the plight of refugees. UN News/Elizabeth
The United Nations refugee agency on 9 January 2018 appealed to the Israeli Government to not forcibly send Eritrean and Sudanese refugees or asylum seekers to sub-Saharan Africa.
Somali and Eritrean refugees wash at a reception centre at the port of Augusta, Sicily. They had been rescued at sea by the Spanish Coast Guard after setting out from Libya. (file) Photo: UNHCR/Fabio Bucciarelli
HUMAN WRONGS WATCH 