15 March 2018, Rome/Hanoi – Natural disasters are costing farmers in the developing world billions of dollars each year, with drought emerging as the most destructive in a crowded field of threats that also includes floods, forest fires, storms, plant pests, animal diseases outbreaks, chemical spills and toxic algal blooms.*
Coastal fisherfolk in Tamil Nadu, India, sift through the wreckage of their village following the 2004 Indian Ocean Tsunami. | Photo: FAO/Ami Vitale
Two United Nations relief agencies on 14 March 2018 joined a chorus of international organizations and partners in the quest to end seven years of conflict in Syria, urging warring parties to allow humanitarian access for the delivery of life-saving assistance to those desperately in need.
UNICEF/UN07229/Al Saleh, WFP | On 11 January 2016 in Madaya, Rural Damascus, women and their families wait for permissions to leave the besieged town.
“Every day that goes by without a resolution to this crisis is another day where we have failed the people of Syria,” Jakob Kern, World Food Programme (WFP) Representative and Country Director in Syria, said in a news release.
15 March 2018 — Seven years of relentless conflict has left 13.1 million Syrians in need of humanitarian aid and created one of the largest displacement crises since World War II.
Some 5.3 million have sought refuge in neighbouring countries — Turkey, Lebanon, Jordan, Iraq and Egypt — and 6.1 million are internally displaced within Syria.
With 700 million people worldwide at risk of being displaced by intense water scarcity by 2030, water infrastructure investment must be at least doubled over the next five years, a panel set up by the United Nations and the World Bank on 14 March 2018 recommended.
Imal Hashemi/Taimani Films/World Bank | Child drinks water from a water-pipe. (file) | Source:UN News Centre.
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Making Every Drop Count: An Agenda for Water Action, released by a panel of 11 Heads of State and a Special Advisor, calls for a fundamental shift in the way the world manages water so that the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), particularly Goal 6 on ensuring availability and sustainable management of water and sanitation for all, can be achieved.
14 March 2018 — As fighting in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) has forced 4.5 million people to flee their homes over the past year and left more than 13 million in need of humanitarian assistance, the United Nations Emergency Relief Coordinator has called on the international community to urgently address the crisis.
OCHA/Eve Sabbagh | Woman cooking in Katanika IDP site, where more than 6,000 families have taken refuge fleeing growing interethnic violence in the area. The site is located a few kilometers from Kalemie, the capital of Tanganyika province in the south-east of the Democratic Republic of the Congo.
15 March 2018 (Wall Street International)*— Apologies once more for further annoying you with real facts of life, this time to explain that at least 1 in 2 of our “Planet-mates” human beings do not know what basic health services are all about.
And the fact is that, while politicians in the richest countries appear to be heavily engaged in forcing their tax-payers to forget about public health and pensions funds and to instead shift to the private sector to try to obtain these basic services they have already paid for, more than half of all humans are lacking access to such an essential right.
March 14, 2018 (The Transnational)* — It is now known by virtually everyone who follows the Palestinian struggle that a 16 year old girl, now 17, named Ahed Tamimi, confronted Israeli soldiers on her family’s land shortly after her cousin, Mohammed, was shot in the face with a rubber bullet, causing a coma.
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The video of her actions has gone viral, showing the world a courageous young woman engaging in nonviolent acts of resistance, and then a day later in the middle of the night being arrested in her home and then charged with a series of crimes; as is standard Israeli practice in the arrest of children, Aden was hauled off to an Israeli prison facility out of reach of her family and then denied bail.As has been widely noted, Ahed Tamimi is a heroic victim for those in Palestine and elsewhere who approve of the Palestinian national struggle, and commend such symbolic acts of nonviolent resistance.
12 March 2018 — As #MeToo activists continue to push for political, economic and social equality between the sexes, a key question is being asked: Are marginalized women and girls – ones who are part of indigenous communities, disabled, or part of the lesbian and transgender community – being heard?
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UNICEF/Kate Holt | Sixteen-year-old Fatima and her newborn in a shelter for girls and women who have endured sexual and gender-based violence, in Mogadishu, Somalia.
13 March 2018 (openDemocracy)* –– At the Commission on the Status of Women, commitments to rural women’s empowerment are under threat. Can new, progressive alliances block advances by reactionary delegations?
The last time that the UN’s Commission on the Status of Women (CSW) talks focused on rural women was in 2012, when discussions between member states collapsed amid opposition from some delegations to sexual and reproductive health and rights language.
Since then, CSW agreed conclusions have come at the expense of commitments to sexual rights, and comprehensive sexuality education. Negotiations have become more tortured, and ‘outcome documents’ increasingly banal.
“My new national strategy for space recognizes that space is a war-fighting domain, just like the land, air and sea,” Trump said during a speech to service members in San Diego. “We may even have a Space Force.”
HUMAN WRONGS WATCH 