'Unseen' News and Views
23 August 2018 – On this 20th anniversary of the International Day for Remembrance of the Slave Trade and its Abolition, the United Nations is inviting the world to reflect on the legacy of slavery and remember to guard against racial prejudices, which continue to fuel everyday discrimination against people of African descent.
A wild female orangutan, Rosa, looks for fruits on a tree at Gunung Palung National Park, a protected area in Kalimantan © Jurnasyanto Sukarno / Greenpeace
The Reppie project will supply Ethiopia’s capital, Addis Abeba, with 30 per cent of its electricity.
Ethiopia launches the waste-to-energy Reppie facility, the first of its kind in Africa. | Photo: @GetachewSS | Photo from teleSUR.
23 Augusto 2018 (ILO)* – Domestic workers are one of the groups most vulnerable to exploitation, violence, harassment, and forced labour. Many women end up being trapped in abusive work situations, taking place behind closed doors, and hence remaining largely unnoticed.
Photo from ILO.
“Every day, she would tell me that I’m crazy and stupid. I couldn’t take that. But since she kept on saying that every day, I got used to it. Whenever they beat me up, I just cried in a corner”, recalls Julia * , a Filipino domestic worker who suffered constant verbal abuse and physical beating for more than a year before daring to run away to the police.
22 August 2018 (UNHCR)* – UNHCR has more than 11,500 staff, most of whom are based in the field. Meet medical doctor Taimur Hasan, who works in public health in Bangladesh.
Taimur Hasan is a UNHCR public health officer in Bangladesh.
© UNHCR/Roger Arnold
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The source of microplastics is generally thought to be well known: most plastic items are not recycled or incinerated when they are discarded.
Plastic waste therefore ends up in landfill or in our rivers and oceans where it gradually breaks down into smaller and smaller pieces and particles.
Microplastics are defined as pieces of plastic 5mm in diameter or less.
United Nations agencies must join forces at the policy level and refuse interference from tobacco companies in their programmes so the destructive impact of tobacco can be effectively addressed and lives can be saved, the head of the UN tobacco control treaty watchdog (WHO FCTC Secretariat) told UN Newson Wednesday [22 August 2018].
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The 67th United Nations Department of Public Information/Non-Governmental Organization (DPI/NGO) Conference kicked off on 22 August 2018 at UN Headquarters in New York, with speeches affirming the importance of multilateralism, closer partnerships between the UN and civil society, and the role that young people have to play.
The refugee crisis in Bangladesh sparked by the mass exodus of people from Myanmar almost a year ago risks creating a “lost generation” of Rohingya children who lack the life skills they will need in future, the United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF) has warned.
Hundreds of thousands of mainly Muslim Rohingya continue to live in cramped and rudimentary camps in Bangladesh’s Cox’s Bazar, after fleeing a military operation in Myanmar that was subsequently likened to “ethnic cleansing” by the UN’s top human rights official, Zeid Ra’ad al Hussein.
Toddlers sit on the top step and their grandmother stands on a landing, inside their partially destroyed home in the Shejaiya neighbourhood of Gaza City. UNICEF/UNI188296/El Baba
Rosemary DiCarlo briefed the 15 ambassadors on developments over the past months, during which there has been an escalation in incidents between Israelis and Palestinians.
HUMAN WRONGS WATCH 