Every year on August 29, at the initiative of Kazakhstan, the UN and its Member States mark the International Day against Nuclear Tests. This year, the Day coincides with the 70th anniversary of the first atomic bomb test at the Semipalatinsk test site in Kazakhstan.
UN News/Nargiz Shekinskaya | A view of Semipalatinsk Test Site’s ground zero in Kurchatov, Kazakhstan. Remote Semipalatinsk was once the Soviet Union’s primary testing venue for nuclear weapons.
UN News travelled to the remote, eerily beautiful region, for this report.
30 August 2019 (UN Environment)* — Khatmah thought the hima was lost forever. Decades ago the water in this dry rangeland surrounding her village in north-west Jordan had started to disappear, and it had become little more than a wasteland.
Photo by UNEP / Lisa Murray
“I thought it was pointless trying to regenerate the hima,” Khatmah says, pouring sweet black tea for her guests.
STOCKHOLM / ROME, Aug 29 2019 (IPS)* – The last frontier for utilizing and maybe even exhausting Earth´s natural resources is opening up in the Arctic and some of the world´s wealthiest nations are trying to secure their piece of the cake. Some act openly, others are more secretive – recently one of the competitors entered the game in a remarkably unwieldy manner.
29 August 2019 (IGWIA)* — While the international community is focusing its attention on the advancing fires in Brazil, the reality is that the problem transcends the South American giant and is reflected in the nine Amazonian countries.
Beneath the ashes, the fire has shown (once again), a conflict that specialists have long pointed out: the implementation of a development model based on the extraction of natural resources at the expense of nature.
29 August 2019 (Norwegian Refugee Council)*— Hundreds of displaced families in Iraq are being forced by authorities to leave their camps and transferred back to their areas of origin even if they have nowhere to return or may face possible persecution.
On 28 August 2019, about 600 displaced individuals originally from Hawija, residing in Hammam Al-Alil IDP camp were evicted from the camp by Iraqi authorities. Most of these families in the camps are highly reliant on humanitarian support to survive and cannot return as they don’t have any home to return to. Photo: Tom Peyre-Costa/NRC.
27 August 2019 (Wall Street International)* — Imagine getting endless deliveries that you didn’t order. Imagine a police car pulling into your driveway in the middle of the night, because someone from your mobile number texted and reported a murder or a kidnapping.
Imagine getting unknown phone calls every hour, blocking your flow of work or a peaceful night of sleep. Imagine strangers calling from around the country and come knocking on your door stalking all the time. Imagine losing your job because someone sent a hateful and abusive email to your boss and colleagues
28 August 2019 (World Meteorological Organization)* — Fires that are raging in the Amazon rainforest are compounding the stress on the global climate and environment already unleashed by exceptional fires in the Arctic. There are also widespread fires in parts of tropical Africa.
Satellite imagery shows thousands of fires in Brazil, parts of Peru, Bolivia and Paraguay.
Somalia, 26 August 2019 (IOM)* – It is estimated that there are around 323,000 Internally Displaced People (IDPs) currently in Baidoa, Bay region of Somalia. Drought has been one of the primary causes of displacement. With no water, there is a severe shortage of crops and livestock, leading to loss of livelihoods or even starvation.
The International Organization for Migration (IOM)’s Camp Coordination and Camp Management (CCCM) team interviewed Faduma upon her arrival to Baidoa.
Faduma comes from Tubay village in Bakool region and is a mother of six children. The family has spent their lives as pastoralists who herd animals and tend to small rain-fed farms.
An asylum-seeker allowed to disembark from the Open Arms rescue vessel on the Italian island of Lampedusa recalls the horror of her journey. | Español | Français | عربي
AGRIGENTO, Italy, 23 August 2019 (UNHCR)* – Feven* kept looking at her feet. The 18-year-old’s voice was a whisper amid dozens of asylum seekers at a reception center on the Italian island of Sicily. Memories of her ordeal are still fresh.
28 August 2019 (IGWIA)* — Indigenous peoples in the Amazon rainforest are on the front line of defending themselves and their land from the rapidly spreading fires. A majority of the tens of thousands of fires are happening in Brazil, though fires are also raging in Bolivia where 10,000 km2 of forests (an area the size of Lebanon) have burned, as well as large areas in Paraguay and Peru.
This potential global emergency is yet another example of the ramifications of systematically ignoring and undermining indigenous peoples’ and their rights.
A view of the port of Lampedusa on the Italian island of the same name in the Mediterranean Sea. © UNHCR/Fred Noy
HUMAN WRONGS WATCH 