'Unseen' News and Views
The first-ever Global Refugee Forum concluded in Geneva on Wednesday [18 December 2019] with more than 770 pledges of support, covering areas such as protection, employment, and education, for refugees and the communities which have taken them in. .
As “policies shaped more by fear than fact” have caused untold suffering to migrants, the UN Secretary-General is urging countries to realize the goals of a global agreement that promotes enhanced international cooperation on migration. (*).
António Guterres issued the charge in his message for International Migrants Day, observed annually on 18 December.
UNRWA | The UN Special Coordinator for Middle East Peace addressed the Security Council on Wednesday, asking for more funding for the occupied territories. About 76 per cent of funds requested for the Humanitarian Response Plan (HRP) for 2020 target the Gaza enclave.
DAYLESFORD, Australia, 18 December 2019 — At the beginning of the nineteenth century, it is estimated that the total number of passenger pigeons in the United States was about three billion birds.
Robert J. Burrowes
The bird was immensely abundant, as illustrated by this passage written by the famous ornithologist, naturalist and painter John James Audubon:
‘I dismounted, seated myself on an eminence, and began to mark with my pencil, making a dot for every flock that passed. In a short time finding the task which I had undertaken impracticable, as the birds poured in countless multitudes, I rose, and counting the dots then put down, found that 163 had been made in twenty-one minutes. I traveled on, and still met more the farther I proceeded. The air was literally filled with Pigeons; the light of noon-day was obscured as by an eclipse, the dung fell in spots, not unlike melting flakes of snow; and the continued buzz of wings had a tendency to lull my senses to repose… Before sunset I reached Louisville, distance from Hardensburgh fifty-five miles. The Pigeons were still passing in undiminished numbers, and continued to do so for three days in succession.’ See ‘Passenger Pigeon’.
10 December 2019 (Wall Street International)* — As William Nordhaus illustrated in his Nobel award address in December last year, the free-rider problem is particularly severe for climate change. Those who do nothing ride free, while those who undertake costly reductions pay dearly. If an important player does not go along, the others could establish a climate club with penalties in the form of tariffs for the free rider.
French President Emmanuel Macron holds a press conference at the end of the European Council summit in Brussels, Belgium, 13 December 2019. [EPA-EFE/JULIEN WARNAND Like many countries in the world, Australia had several indigenous peoples, often called aboriginals or tribes, living in this subcontinent.
St Patrick’s Cathedral
Again, as in other countries, these peoples were conquered, crushed and their cultures, cuisines, knowledge systems destroyed.
These peoples have become extinct except for a few stray tribes who still exist in small numbers and who are difficult to see in most places.
One such place is called Toowoomba about 150 km from the modern city Brisbane located in the province of Queensland on the eastern coast of the country.
This place is beautiful, peaceful, serene, full of gardens, and open areas. As they say in Toowoomba, it has pleasant weather on one day and perfect the next.
– Appearing before 17 judges of the International Court of Justice (ICJ) in The Hague, Aung San Suu Kyi, the de facto civilian leader of Myanmar, became a public apologist for the military government of Myanmar which has long been accused of genocide and forcing over 730,000 Rohingya Muslims to flee to neighboring Bangladesh since a 2017 crackdown.
International Court of Justice in The Hague. Credit: United Nations
HUMAN WRONGS WATCH 