TANGULBEI, Kenya, 6 April 2018 (UNFPA)* –The morning of 20 August began like any other for Lena Towai, 35. Ms. Towai was in the final days of pregnancy, eagerly awaiting the arrival of her seventh child. Only hours later, her world would be turned upside down: She would face an armed assault, flee into the wilderness, and give birth in the dark, assisted only by a neighbour with a gunshot wound.
(Greenpeace International)* — We write this as two women leading a global campaigning organisation who, like many others, are extremely excited and inspired by the #MeToo movement that is changing and challenging the world around us.
We know that it is in these moments that society can be changed in many ways, and at a speed that no one thought possible. In these moments a new and better normal can arise in our societies.
The world installed a record 98 gigawatts of new solar capacity, far more than the net additions of any other technology – renewable, fossil fuel or nuclear.
Solar power also attracted far more investment, at $160.8 billion, up 18 per cent, than any other technology. It made up 57 per cent of last year’s total for all renewables (excluding large hydro) of $279.8 billion, and it towered above new investment in coal and gas generation capacity, at an estimated $103 billion.
5 April 2018 (openDemocracy)*— Authoritarian capitalism and the prison industrial complex is a two-tiered tyrannical system designed to enslave through mass incarceration.
Parchman Penal Farm. Female prisoners sewing, circa 1930. Flickr/Mississippi Department of Archives and History. Some rights reserved.
More than 60% of women in state prisons in the US have a child under the age of 18.
On any given day, over 2.7 million, or 1 in 28 children have a parent in prison.
By F. Michael Maloof, former Pentagon security analyst*
**In Aleppo, Karm al Jabal. This neighborhood is next to Al Bab and has been under siege for 6 months, 4 March 2013. Credit: Basma | Source: Flickr| Author: Foreign and Commonwealth Office | Open Government Licence v1.0 (OGL).
This indecisiveness has prompted Trump to warm up further with Saudi Arabia, the same country that helped finance and logistically support the rise of jihadist Salafists, including Al-Qaida and Islamic State (IS, formerly ISIS).
Cox’s Bazar, 6 April 2018– IOM, the UN Migration Agency, and the UN Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) are distributing 50,000 vegetable gardening kits to tackle malnutrition and improve the diet of people affected by the Rohingya refugee crisis in Cox’s Bazar, Bangladesh.*
Hamada’s micro gardening kit will improve her family’s diet. Photo: IOM
Almost 700,000 refugees have fled to Cox’s Bazar from Myanmar’s North Rakhine State in the past seven months. Many were already suffering from malnutrition due to poverty and discrimination in Myanmar.
A FRIEND from overseas sent me the recording of a song. An Arab song, with a soft Arab melody, sung by an Arab girls’ choir, accompanied by a flute.
Uri Avnery
It goes like this:
Ahed / You are the promise and the glory / Standing as high as an olive tree / From the cradle to the present / Your honor will not be violated / Palestine has been planted in us / As a dock for every ship / We are the land and you are the water /
You are covered with blond hair / You are as pure as Jerusalem / You taught our generation how the forgotten people should revolt / They thought the Palestinians are afraid of them because they are wearing armor and holding a weapon? / Palestine has been planted in us / As a dock for every ship / Our nation must be united and resist for the freedom of Palestine and the prisoners /
6 April 2018 — The United Nations refugee agency is scaling up its assistance to the rapidly growing number of Venezuelans arriving in Brazil, with daily arrivals averaging 800 in recent days amid the worsening political and socio-economic situation in their country.
UNHCR/Reynesson Damasceno | Venezuelan families sheltering in Simon Bolivar public square in Boa Vista’s city centre. With assistance from UNHCR and national authorities, they have voluntary relocated to the Jardim Floresta shelter.
6 April 2018 — As the world officially remembers the genocidal murder of 800,000 Rwandans in 1994, United Nations leaders warn that ethnic cleansing and mass atrocities continue to blight humanity and call for sharper action to prevent such wholesale violations.
UNICEF/UNI55086/Press | A 14-year-old Rwandan boy from the town of Nyamata, photographed in June 1994, survived the genocidal massacre by hiding under corpses for two days.
Twenty-four years ago, on 7 April, ethnic Hutus in Rwanda began the frenzied slaughter of Tutsis, moderate Hutus and others in what is widely regarded as one of the darkest episodes in recent history.
The head of the World Health Organization (WHO) on 6 April 2018 marked World Health Day, and the agency’s 70th anniversary, with a strong call for universal health coverage, to ensure that all people can get quality health services, where and when they need them, without suffering financial hardship.
“Health is a human right. No one should get sick and die just because they are poor, or because they cannot access the health service they need,” said WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus in his message prior to the Day, which is marked annually on 7 April.
