An alarming and “shameful” level of harsh reprisals and intimidation against those who cooperate with the United Nations in an effort to uphold human rights, has been revealed by a new UN report launched on Wednesday 12 September 2018.
Álvaro Navarro/Artículo 66 | Thousands of Nicaraguans have protested since April. More than a hundred people have died in clashes with the authorities. | Photo from UN News–
The Occupied Palestinian Territory now suffers the highest unemployment rate in the world, with incomes and agricultural production going down, the United Nations trade and development agency on 12 September 2018 said, noting that women and young people were worst affected, as the Israeli occupation continues.
.
Ahmed Dalloul/IRIN|Two children read by candle light in Gaza. | Photo from UN News.
“With the blockade now in its eleventh year, the Gaza Strip has been reduced to a humanitarian case of profound suffering and aid dependency,” said the UN Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD), in a news release announcing its findings.
More than 18 million new cases of cancer are expected this year and it’s estimated that 9.6 million people will die from various forms of the disease in 2018, the UN’s International Agency for Research on Cancer (IARC) on 12 September 2018 said.
National Cancer Institute/Bill Branson | Breast self-examination is recommended by doctors as a way of detecting cancer.
According to IARC, a specialized cancer agency of the World Health Organization, the disease is a growing global health threat.
All parties to the seven-year Syria conflict and the States that support them should do “everything in their power” to prevent a full-scale military assault on Idlib, a high-level United Nations-appointed panel of investigators on 12 September 2018 said.
UNHCR/Antwan Chnkdji | A UNHCR camp in northern rural Aleppo for displaced people that fled the violence in Afrin, Syria. 26 July 2018.
“All the other disasters would be minor events compared to what can happen in Idlib,” said Paulo Pinheiro, chair of the Commission of Inquiry on the Syrian Arab Republic.
Peace mediator Johan Galtung gives his analysis of the uprisings in the Arab world as an indicator the era of Western domination in the region is coming to an end. Excerpts from a lecture given in Santa Cruz, California in Feb 2011.
With food deprivation on the rise due to conflict and climate change, more people went hungry in 2017 than at any time in the previous decade, according to the latest edition of the UN’s annual multi-agency flagship report on the State of Food Security and Nutrition in the World.
A full-scale battle for Idlib must be avoided at all costs, the United Nations Secretary-General has stressed, warning that failure to do so would unleash “a humanitarian nightmare unlike any seen in the blood-soaked Syrian conflict” so far.
UNICEF | A seven-year-old child stands in front of her damaged school in IdlIb, Syria. October 2016.
Speaking to the press at UN Headquarters in New York on 11 September 2018 afternoon, Secretary-General António Guterres said that the situation in Idlib is not sustainable and underscored that the presence of terrorist groups sheltering in the enclave cannot be tolerated.
In another manifestation of extreme weather conditions, hurricanes as strong as the Category 4 storm Florence – barreling towards the coast of the Carolinas in the United States – are rarely seen so far north, the United Nation’s weather agency (WMO) on 11 September 2018 confirmed.
WMO/Olga Khoroshunova | By absorbing much of the added heat trapped by atmospheric greenhouse gases, the oceans are delaying some of the impacts of climate change. Photo: WMO/Olga Khoroshunova
Hurricane Florence is ranked as a category 4 hurricane on the Saffir-Simpson Hurricane Wind Scale. According to the US National Hurricane Center, category 4 hurricanes are ranked as major hurricanes, with winds at 130-156 mph (209-251 km/h), and a likelihood of catastrophic damage.
New laws in Hungary, and Government attacks on civil society in the country, fuel “hostility, xenophobia, and discrimination against migrants, asylum seekers, refugees and all those trying to provide them support”, say a team of independent human rights experts mandated by the UN Human Rights Council.
UNHCR/Mark Henley | Hungary’s rstrengthened razor wire border fence along an old railway line – blocking the route to refugees. 14 September 2015.
.
The experts expressed concern in a statement released on 11 September 2018, following the adoption of legislation which the Hungarian Government has named the “Stop Soros” law, imposing further restrictions on the right to seek asylum, and making it practically impossible for asylum seekers to submit asylum claims and regularise their migratory status.
10 September 2018 – A trial run of an innovative system designed to clean up the world’s seas and oceans, founded by UN Environment Programme (UNEP) “Champion of the Earth” laureate Boyan Slat, has set off from San Francisco, in a bid to begin the removal of the so-called Great Pacific Garbage Patch.
The Ocean Cleanup/Pierre Augier | The Ocean Cleanup vessel is aiming to clean up plastic pollution in the Pacific Ocean. It left San Francisco on its first voyage on 8 September 2019.
This huge mass of marine debris, situated in the North Pacific Ocean, halfway between the Californian coast and Hawaii, is estimated by Slat’s Ocean Cleanup organization to measure 1.6 million square kilometres – 3 times the size of France – and contain 1.8 trillion pieces of plastic. That amounts to 250 pieces for every person on the planet.
HUMAN WRONGS WATCH 