Geneva, 3 April 2018 (IOM)*– IOM, the UN Migration Agency, begins casting a wide net this week to bring forth the talent behind one of the migration world’s enduring art forms: motion pictures. It’s all part of the UN Together campaign to promote diversity worldwide.
IOM – UN Migration Agency
To select a compelling roster of films to be screened at IOM’s December 2018 Global Migration Film Festival (GMFF), the Geneva-based body is calling for submissions of Full-Length Feature and Short Films, in all genres: fiction, documentary, animation, etc.
5 April 2018 (UNRWA)* — When Rana Mahmoud Halabi (33) talks about her comfortable life before the war, her eyes light up. Her husband used to fish for tilapia and carp in the Euphrates river. She would help him clean the catch of the day before he brought it to market.
“Raqqa was a lovely city,” she sighs. The war put an end to all that, forcing her children out of school and her family into debt. UNRWA cash assistance has allowed them to get back on their feet.
03 Aril 2018 (UNHCR)*— It is with regret that UNHCR notes today’s [03 April 2018] cancellation by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of the Israel-UNHCR Agreement of 2nd April on solutions for Eritreans and Sudanese currently in Israel.
**Photo: The entrance to Holot immigration detention center, Negev desert, Israel. | Author: TrickyH | Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 4.0 International license.
The Agreement was the result of discussions over an extended period of time, and reflected a shared effort to find a solution that gave international protection to people arriving in Israel fleeing war or persecution while also meeting the concerns of Israeli host communities.
2 April 2018 (openDemocracy)* — The city councilwoman advocated for the rights of the most oppressed Brazilians. This is why people around the world are mourning and protesting her death.
Marielle Franco in August 2016. Credit: Mídia NINJA/Flickr. [CC-BY-SA-2.0]. Some rights reserved.
The personal information of 87mn users was improperly shared with Cambridge Analytica, the social media giant has said, while also admitting that they “believe most people on Facebook” have had their data misused at some point.
Facebook’s powerful search engine allowed any users to search for accounts by typing an individual’s phone number or email to locate the required person.
While convenient and efficient, the ‘Search and Account Recovery’ function likely also helped “malicious actors” gain access to the personal data of “most” of Facebook’s two billion users, the company has admitted.
In Syria, the mass evacuation of civilians is threatening to leave aid workers “overrun” and “acutely underfunded,” as details emerge of the unparalleled destruction in urban areas like the former ISIL-held city of Raqqa, UN senior adviser Jan Egeland on 4 April 2018 said.
“This is the very wrong time to turn our back on civilians,” he told journalists in Geneva, highlighting that aid projects in Syria are now less than eight per cent funded.
4 April 2018 — A group of United Nations human rights experts have called on the French Government to urgently provide water and sanitation services as well as emergency shelters for migrants and asylum seekers living in “inhumane situation” in areas along the country’s northern coast.
UNICEF/Geai | A boy walks through a migrant camp in Calais, northern France. According to estimates, about 900 migrants and asylum seekers are sheltering in the area, many without toilets or washing facilities.
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According to estimates, over 1,250 migrants and asylum-seekers are living in Calais, Grande-Synthe, Tatinghem, Dieppe and other sites along the coast without adequate shelter and access to drinking water, toilets or washing facilities.
A senior United Nations refugee agency official on 4 April 2018 warned about the “shocking” effects of long-term detention on Australia-bound asylum seekers who are being held on remote Pacific islands.
UNHCR/Vlad Sokhin | An asylum-seeker enters the ‘Regional Processing Centre’ on Manus Island, Papua New Guinea. (file)
Indrika Ratwatte said the situation in Nauru, as well and Manus Island in Papua New Guinea, was as bad as he had seen in his 25-year career.
Both locations have been used to house more than 3,000 men, women and children from Afghanistan, Iran, Syria, Sri Lanka and Myanmar, since Australia implemented its offshore processing policy in 2013.
4 April 2018 — Recalling the life and legacy of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., who was assassinated 50 years ago on 4 April, United Nations Secretary-General António Guterres urged the world to build on the civil rights leader’s work for equality and social justice.
UN Photo | Dr. Martin Luther King and Mrs. King are greeted by Ralph Bunche on a visit to the United Nations in 1964.
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“Dr. King was one of the moral giants of the 20th century. He devoted his life to equality, justice, and non-violent social change,” said the UN chief in a statement attributable to his spokesperson.
