JUBA/COX’S BAZAR/UNITED NATIONS, 27 May 2019 (UNFPA)* – “My periods are a nightmare,” Nyanjuma Galoth, 20, told UNFPA at a civilian protection camp in South Sudan. “They are very painful, and I can’t get any sanitary products.”
It is a major source of stress, she said. “The days that I am lucky, I get a few sanitary pads from my friends, while other days, I end up using rags to absorb the blood flow.” It is like “a terrible sickness,” she said.
26 May 2019 (Wall Street International)* — Most of America’s wars have been fought by those without the money or power to avoid military service. The Civil War is a dark example of the influence of class and ultimately racism upon the outcome of the conflict.
The Civil War has been characterized as “a rich man’s war and a poor man’s fight.” Poor farmers and just plain folks in the South were antagonistic toward the elite planters and the war itself.
Cox’s Bazar, 24 May 2019 (IOM)* –Bangladesh is boosting efforts to combat human trafficking with a 2018-2022 national plan of action to improve enforcement through better inter-agency coordination, improved training of officers and harmonization of existing laws.
Rohingya refugees living in Cox’s Bazar’s vast, impoverished camps are highly vulnerable to human trafficking. Photo: IOM/Muse Mohammed
The plan, developed with technical support from the International Organization for Migration (IOM), was presented to local officials and counter trafficking specialists at a conference in Cox’s Bazar this week. It follows legislation passed in 2012 to counter human trafficking in this South Asian country of 160 million.
With women leading revolutions in Sudan and Algeria, it is natural to wonder again, will Arab uprisings be finished by women?
.
“I shall dream” | Source: Facebook/Souad Douibi
24 May 2019 (openDemocracy)* — In his famous essay, ‘Algeria Unveiled’, Frantz Fanon (1959, p. 35) writes: ‘The way people clothe themselves, together with the traditions of dress and finery that custom implies, constitutes the most distinctive form of a society’s uniqueness’.
After the failure and abuses of privatization became apparent, public-private partnerships have since been promoted ostensibly to mobilize private finance for the public purpose. In all too many cases, PPPs have socialized costs and losses while ensuring private financial gains.
Jomo Kwame Sundaram
KUALA LUMPUR, Malaysia, May 21 2019 (IPS)* – After the failure and abuses of privatization and contracting-out services from the 1980s, there has been renewed appreciation for the role of the state or government.
Earlier promoters of privatization have taken a step backward, only to take two more forward to instead promote public-private partnerships (PPPs).
PPPs for most purposes
PPPs are essentially long-term contracts, underwritten by government guarantees, with which the private sector builds (and sometimes runs) major infrastructure projects or services traditionally provided by the state, such as hospitals, schools, roads, railways, water, sanitation and energy.
24 April 2019 (Wall Street International)* — Kierkegaard explained the sense of being masked, the use of disguise as something closely linked to the awareness of original sin. The experience of shame, according to him, led to the desire to dress, to hide nakedness. In this sense, for him, the mask was the shame of sin extended to the face itself.
Not accepting sin, not accepting to have failed results from illusion, from pretending not to have failed, not to have fallen, not to have being corrupted by desires and temptations.
Focus on Russian ‘interference’ risks ignoring the growing role of American religious conservatives in fuelling the far-right surge.
Handmaids outside a church in Verona, Italy 2019. | Photo: Federica Delogu. | Photo from openDemocracy.
“The Bible, borders and Brexit” will “make Europe great again”, declared Ed Martin to roaring applause. The Republican pundit who co-wrote ‘The Conservative Case for Trump’ was speaking at a global gathering of religious conservatives in Verona this March. Italy’s deputy prime minister, Matteo Salvini, was a headline speaker.
15 May 2019 (International Work Group for indigenous Affairs – IGWIA)* — The global rush for natural resources is one of the biggest threats against indigenous peoples’ as they often live in remote areas which are still rich on natural resources. Unfortunately, indigenous peoples are increasingly being criminalised – or even killed – when defending their rights.
.
Photo: Putla was 65 years old when she risked everything to stop the invasion of her villages land
In Cambodia, a collective effort and a courageous act by a 75-year-old woman helped the Souy people defend their land against an invading company with ties to the President.
The “boundless energy and optimism” of young Africans is propelling the continent into a new era of sustainable development, alongside new partnerships between the UN and African Union..
UN Photo / Antonio Fiorente | Secretary-General attends an event on digital coding, STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering and Science)– Organized by UN Women. Ethiopia.
In Afghanistan, children suffering from the most serious form of malnutrition may die, unless $7 million in funding is found within weeks, UNICEF said on Friday [24 May 2019].
UNAMA / Fraidoon Poya | A family struggles through a dusty environment in Afghanistan
Speaking in Geneva, UN Children’s Fund spokesperson Christophe Boulierac, likened the humanitarian situation in the war-torn country to “one of the worst disasters on earth”.
And he warned that increased violence and last year’s severe drought have left hundreds of thousands of under-fives, critically vulnerable across the country.
HUMAN WRONGS WATCH 