'Unseen' News and Views
Persistent reports of grave human rights abuses in Cameroon — including a widely shared video showing the alleged execution of a woman, child and baby — must be investigated by the authorities urgently, UN rights chief Zeid Ra’ad Al Hussein on 25 July 2018.
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Despite major fundraising efforts, UNRWA– the UN agency tasked with providing life-saving support to Palestinian refugees – is facing the “largest ever reduction in funding” in its history which is threatening the very existence of many of its critical assistance programmes.
War has taken its toll on rural areas under Ukrainian government control in Luhansk region. There’s little sign of relief or policy.
Map of the Donbass region within eastern Ukraine. Names of neighbouring oblasts are included. Crimea is hashed to represent the ongoing territorial dispute between Russian and Ukraine. | 13 March 2015 | RGloucester | CC BY-SA 3.0
The armed conflict in Ukraine’s Donbas has divided the region into government- and separatist-controlled areas.
In Luhansk Oblast, the frontline for most of its length is the Siversky Donets River, which is also a historical dividing line.
To the south is the coal-rich Donets Upland, the “true Donbas” that was largely unsettled before industrial development in the 19th century. Today almost all of this territory is part of the unrecognised “Luhansk People’s Republic.”
25 July 2018 (UN Environment)* — Ukraine’s eastern Donbas region is an area with a fairly favourable climate, home to high plant biodiversity. In spring, several species of the feather, sheep fescue, blue, forget-me-nots, and yellow cress grass, blossom in its steppes. It also possesses a wealth of mineral resources which include deposits of rock salt, gypsum, raw cement materials, flux limestone, and dolomite as well as granite and clays.
Photo from UN Environment.
But Donbas is hardly famed for its biodiversity. For years it has been one of the country’s most polluted regions – as toxic waste from nearly two centuries of intensive coal mining, and chemical and metal industries accumulated in its soils.
Inclusive education, economic empowerment and technological innovations were the focus of discussion on 24 July 2018 as world leaders gathered in London for the first-ever United Nations-backed Global Disability Summit.
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UNICEF/Khudr Al-Issa 8 year old girl, who was paralysed by an exploding bomb and lost the use of her legs, sits in a wheelchair next to her 5 year old sister, near their home in east Aleppo, Syrian Arab Republic. 11 December 2017.
Ahead of the Summit, Deputy Secretary-General Amina J. Mohammed cited the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development and a universally-adopted UN Convention as well-established commitments for advancing the rights of persons with disabilities.
“But too often,” she said, “this political commitment has not translated into significant improvements in the lives of the 1.5 billion persons with disabilities across the world.”
As the conflict rages in Yemen, cash transfers are the only source of income for many of the most vulnerable families.
UNICEF Yemen/2018/Rasheed. | Salwa Sadam sits with her two children as they study. Using the money she received from the cash transfers, she was able to buy supplies for her children so they could re-enrol in school.
Yemen, 23 July 2018 (UNICEF)* – The war in Yemen has caused one of the worst humanitarian crises in the world with a devastating toll on the most vulnerable children and families.
As part of its ongoing response with funds and support from the World Bank, UNICEF is delivering unconditional emergency cash transfers to around 1.5 million families, reaching an estimated 9 million people.
Intense diplomatic efforts by the United Nations and Egypt have helped avoid another Israeli-Palestinian war in Gaza that appeared just “minutes away” over the past weekend, a senior UN official on 24 July 2018 said.
“After intense efforts by the United Nations and Egypt, I can report that the situation is calming down, although tensions remain,” Nickolay Mladenov, UN Special Coordinator for the Middle East peace process, told the Security Council via video link from Jerusalem. He said that “last Saturday we were minutes away from another devastating confrontation between Israel and Hamas in Gaza”.
DAYLESFORD, Australia, 25 July 2018 — Given the overwhelming evidence that activist efforts are failing to halt the accelerating rush to extinction precipitated and maintained by dysfunctional human behavior, it is worth reflecting on why this is happening.
The Apotheosis of War (1871) by Vasily Vereshchagin | Public Domain
Of course, you might say that the rush to extinction is being slowed. But is it?
HUMAN WRONGS WATCH 