'Unseen' News and Views
21 January 2018 – With the crisis in war-ravaged Yemen continuing to deteriorate, United Nations agencies and humanitarian partners have launched a $2.96 billion response plan to reach over 13 million people with lifesaving assistance.
A student stands in the ruins of one of his former classrooms, which was destroyed in June 2015, at the Aal Okab school in Saada, Yemen. Students now attend lessons in UNICEF tents nearby. UNICEF/Clarke for UNOCHA
BRUSSELS, Belgium, 19 January 2018 (UNHCR)* – “Back home people would tell me to change my shoes because they were boys’ shoes,” says 16-year-old Madina from Afghanistan.
UNODC*, 17 January 2018 — A comprehensive understanding of the nature and extent of organized crime is lacking in almost every region of the world. With a view to addressing this challenge, the UN Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC) initiated the development of a framework for measuring and assessing organized crime in the Western Balkans.
Image from UNODC
Measuring progress at the regional and national levels has proved to be a difficult one given the lack of comparable data analysis on the dynamics of organised crime.
At least 13 Syrians, including two children, lost their lives to freezing temperatures in eastern Lebanon as they tried to enter the country from Syria, United Nations humanitarian agencies have reported.
**Photo: Donald Trump Laconia Rally, Laconia, NH by Michael Vadon July 16 2015 | Author: Michael Vadon | Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 4.0 International license.
20 January, 2018 (Greenpeace)* — Not every penguin is up to the challenge of living in the Antarctic, but those that do are a special sort of awesome. Remember, they don’t have the luxury of being able to fly away again if the weather turns bad.
In honour of Penguin Awareness Day today and while we’re in the Antarctic campaigning to protect their home*, here’s our countdown of the most flippering fantastic Antarctic penguins.
Prepare to be impressed.
*And you can join the movement to create the world’s largest protected area and a safe haven for penguins – an Antarctic Ocean Sanctuary.
Gentoo penguin in the Antarctic, 17 Jan 2018
1. Coral reefs
With three quarters of the world’s coral reefs already at risk – due to threats ranging from invasive species to ocean acidification to sunscreen pollution – the time for action is now.
The International Coral Reef Initiative has dubbed 2018 the International Year of the Reef. Things have already kicked off in Fiji, with an announcement from the government of a major new protected site.
More than four million children have been impacted by extreme violence in Iraq, many robbed of their childhood and forced to fight on the frontlines, the United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF) on 19 January 2018 said.
Women and children walk through the debris of buildings and vehicles destroyed during intense fighting as they flee for safe areas in Mosul, Iraq. Photo: UNICEF/Romenzi
HUMAN WRONGS WATCH 