'Unseen' News and Views
The current policy in the United States of of separating “extremely young children” from their asylum-seeker or migrant parents along the country’s southern border “always constitutes a child rights violation”, the UN human rights office, OHCHR, on 5 June 2018 said.
The principal strategy for dealing with extreme poverty in the USA is to “criminalise and stigmatise” those who need assistance, according to a United Nations independent human rights expert, in a statement on 5 June 2018.
Special Rapporteur Philip Alston. UN File Photo/Loey Felipe
That stark assessment of the social divide within one of the world’s wealthiest countries comes from UN Special Rapporteur Philip Alston who will present his latest report to the Human Rights Council later this month.
What you don’t know can’t hurt you. Of all the oft-repeated maxims, this one is perhaps the most dangerous.
Photo from UN Environment.
Many things we didn’t know turned out to hurt us. In the 1930s, consumers were sold on the health benefits of tobacco. We happily used asbestos to flame-proof buildings. We once thought mercury was a great treatment for syphilis.
New Delhi, 5 June 2018 (World Environment Day)* – Released on 5 June 2018, a new report from UN Environment finds a surging momentum in global efforts to address plastic pollution. The first-of-its-kind accounting finds governments are increasing the pace of implementation and the scope of action to curb the use of single-use plastics.
Photo from UN Environment/World Environment Day.
5 June 2018 (World Environment Day)* — Trash is not garbage. This is the motto of one of Peru’s most innovative recycling campaigns, one that has already turned a million plastic bottles into thousands of ponchilas.
Trash is not garbage. This is the motto of one of Peru’s most innovative recycling campaigns, one that has already turned a million plastic bottles into thousands of ponchilas. | Photo from UN Environment.
The world must unite to “beat plastic pollution” United Nations Secretary-General António Guterres said in his message for World Environment Day on Tuesday 5 June 2018, noting that microplastic particles in the ocean, “now outnumber stars in our galaxy”.*
One-in-five adults and 80 per cent adolescents worldwide are not getting enough exercise, according to the World Health Organization (WHO), which on 4 June 2018 launched a new action plan to tackle the situation and promote good health.*
The ILO’s annual report on the situation of workers of the occupied Arab territories calls for dialogue and a joint search for solutions to bring about decent work.
GENEVA, (ILO)* – The unemployment rate in the Occupied Palestinian Territory (OPT) has risen to the world’s highest level, at 27.4 per cent in 2017, says an annual report of the International Labour Organization (ILO), entitled The situation of workers of the occupied Arab territories .
Women and youth are particularly affected. Unemployment rates among Palestinian women are now approaching the 50 per cent mark, with rates for youth not far behind.
Kyoto, 4 Jun 2018 – TRANSCEND Media Service — The world may be losing a peace opportunity in the USA-North Korea conflict. With NK nuclear-tipped missiles capable of reaching mainland USA something close to “balance of power” had been obtained, by many seen as the key to peace via “mutual and balanced” disarmamenteven to “general and complete disarmament” (GCD).
Johan Galtung
Whether this ever happened is unclear. States tend to see “balance” as having more than the other and suspecting that of him.
But something else may happen: distargeting, not aiming at each other.
However, in all these formulas there is an element of equality, of the symmetry that may be a condition for peace. But symmetry is unacceptable to USA.
That state does not see itself as being on an equal footing with anybody in the world, and certainly not with small, even if very powerful, North Korea.
The same applies to “negotiation” as a mutual give-and-take.
HUMAN WRONGS WATCH 
