Protestors from across Europe are coming to Verona to oppose this year’s ultra-conservative World Congress of Families meeting.
The Italian feminist movement Non Una di Meno in Verona.
| Courtesy of NUDM Verona.
29 March 2019 (openDemocracy)* — Thousands of people – including women from across Europe – are traveling to Verona, Italy to protest the World Congress of Families: a network of US, Russian and other anti-abortion and anti-LGBT rights activists and their political allies.
A United Nations human rights expert said on Thursday [28 March 2019] that Saudi Arabia’s closed-door trials of those it accuses of assassinating the dissident journalist Jamal Khashoggi in Istanbul, have fallen short of international standards, calling instead for public trials of the alleged killers.*
UN Photo/Mark Garten | Press Briefing by Ms. Agnes Callamard, Special Rapporteur on extrajudicial, summary or arbitrary executions
Agnes Callamard, who is leading an independent human rights inquiry into the killing at the Saudi consulate last October, denounced the lack of transparency of Saudi Arabia’s investigation and legal proceedings so far.
28 March 2019 (WMO–World Meteorological Organization)* — The physical signs and socio-economic impacts of climate change are accelerating as record greenhouse gas concentrations drive global temperatures towards increasingly dangerous levels, according to a new report from the World Meteorological Organization.
20 March 2019(Norwegian Refugee Council)* — “Every day, I heard stories of how people had been killed. I was particularly afraid during those early morning hours when the airstrikes began.” NRC’s education assistant Malka, 26, tells about delivering aid among landmines and airstrikes in her home country of Yemen.
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“Education is so important, and that’s why we try to support young Yemenis to create a better life for themselves, and a future,” says Malka Mohammed, 26. As an NRC education assistant in southern Yemen, her job is to make sure children living amid conflict can still access school. Photo: Ingrid Prestetun/NRC
27 Mach 2019 (UN Environment)* — While Member States were adopting a resolution on sustainable infrastructure at the UN Environment Assembly, the Cities Summit reinforced the importance of local action and the need for an integrated approach to urban infrastructure.
The increasing number of natural disasters and dangers linked to climate change, highlighted in a major UN report released on Thursday [28 March 2019], represents “another strong wake-up call” to the world, which must be countered by finding sustainable solutions quickly, UN Secretary-General António Guterres has said.*
MINUSTAH/Logan Abassi | After days of continuous rains parts of Haiti’s north including Cap Haitian suffered serious flooding leaving more than a dozen dead and thousands homeless. (November 2014)
A majority of Security Council members on Wednesday [27 March 2019] stressed the importance of upholding international law regarding the occupied Golan Heights, in the face of the unilateral move by the United States to recognize Israel’s sovereignty over them.*
UN Photo/Eskinder Debebe | Security Council meeting on the situation in the Middle East. 27 March, 2019.
Israel took over the Golan Heights on its northern border with Syria, following the 1967 war, and annexed them in 1981, which the Security Council declared an illegal act.
UNITED NATIONS, Mar 28 2019 (IPS)* – The widespread political repression in countries such as the Philippines, Egypt and Saudi Arabia– and rising right-wing nationalism in the US, Brazil, Italy, India, Poland and Hungary– have increasingly triggered attacks on human rights and civil society organisations (CSOs).
The annual 2019 “State of Civil Society” report released March 27 details a “terrifying picture of fundamental freedoms under serious threat in 111 of the world’s countries”– well over half of all the countries globally.”
27 March 2019 (openDemocracy)* — US Christian right ‘fundamentalists’ linked to the Trump administration and Steve Bannon are among a dozen American groups that have poured at least $50 million of ‘dark money’ into Europe over the last decade, openDemocracy can reveal today [27 March 2019].
MATUNDO, Mozambique/LILONGWE, Malawi, 25 March 2019 (UNFPA)* – Eleven days ago, Tropical Cyclone Idai made landfall in Mozambique then crossed into Zimbabwe, leaving a wide path of destruction across Eastern Africa. By the time the storm struck, communities throughout Malawi and Mozambique were already reeling from days of fatal downpours and flooding. Humanitarian partners are describing the damage as “massive and horrifying.”
The annual 2019 “
HUMAN WRONGS WATCH 