There are many reasons for opposing Netanyahu’s plan to annex settlements and the occupied Jordan Valley. I would like to focus on the implications of one of its important aspects: the intention to annex territories without granting citizenship to Palestinian residents, placing the discrimination between Jews and non-Jews on legal ground and providing ideological and legal justification for similar discrimination against Jews in other parts of the world.
Amos Gvirtz
Conversely, it can be claimed that Israel already discriminates against its Palestinian citizens. That is true. However, there are almost no apartheid-style discriminatory laws on Israel’s statute book.
Two important laws that sanction discrimination come to my mind in this context: the Law of Return that recognizes the Jewish right of return to Israel while failing to address the Palestinians’ right of return, is a clear example of a discriminatory law; and the new Nation-State Law, spawned by the Israeli right, that enshrines Jewish supremacy over the country’s Palestinian citizens and is part of a trend of openly discriminatory legislation.
Geneva (IOM)* – One of the most neglected protection issues in emergencies is human trafficking. Often viewed as a pre-existing problem and not as a direct consequence of conflict or natural disaster, trafficking remains largely unaddressed during emergencies.
Ethiopian girl at the TAS centre for unaccompanied children IOM/ Mohamed Muse
For traffickers around the world, each disaster signals a sudden availability of potential prey.
The International Organization for Migration (IOM) works in close Partnership with governments and humanitarian partners to address all aspects of counter-trafficking responses – Prevention, Protection, and Prosecution.
(UN News)* — While warring parties agreed to more than 30 action plans, road maps, command orders and other measures to better protect children in 2019 – the highest number in any one year – rape and other forms of sexual violence remain vastly under-reported, including against boys, the leading UN advocate on the issue told the Security Council on 23 June 2020.
UN Photo/Loey Felipe | Virginia Gamba, Special Representative of the Secretary-General for Children and Armed Conflict (file)
Virginia Gamba, the UN Special Representative on Children and Armed Conflict, blamed “the fear of stigma and retaliation, involvement of powerful perpetrators and lack of services for survivors”, all of which discourage children and their families from reporting violations and seeking justice. Over 730 cases of sexual violence were verified during last year.
(UN News)* — Inclusive education should be a “non-negotiable” right for all children, the head of the UN Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) said in a new report launched on 23 June 2020.
Released at the start of what is being heralded as a “decade of action” for education, as the world grapples with the COVID-19 crisis, the 2020 Global Education Monitoring (GEM) Report illuminates how countries are putting diversity at the core of their education systems, with varying degrees of success.
“It has never been more crucial to make education a universal right, and a reality for all”, UNESCO chief Audrey Azoulay said in the report’s foreword.
23 June 2020 (WMO)* — The World Meteorological Organization is seeking to verify a reported new record temperature north of the Arctic Circle of 38° Celsius. This was on 20 June in the Russian town of Verkhoyansk amid a prolonged Siberian heatwave and increase in wildfire activity.
Verkhoyansk, located in the northern part of Republic of Sakha (Yakutia), is in a region of Eastern Siberia which has an extreme very harsh dry continental climate (very cold winter and hot summer).
(IWGIA)*— On 29 May an estimated 20,000 tons of diesel fuel leaked into the soil and natural water system near the city of Norilsk in northern Siberia after a fuel storage tank belonging to a daughter company of Russian nickel and copper giant Nornickel collapsed. A few days later, on 3 June, Russian President Vladimir Putin declared the incident a federal scale disaster.
UNITED NATIONS, Jun 23 2020 (IPS)* – The coronavirus pandemic is beginning to transform the United Nations into an institution far beyond recognition. The Secretariat building has been shut down since mid-March, and the UN campus will continue to remain a ghost town through end July– and perhaps beyond– with nearly 3,000 staffers, delegates and journalists working, mostly from home.
A staff member of the Liberia National Police Anti-Drug Squad reviews the municipal dump outside Monrovia, Liberia, where they are burning nearly 400 kg of marijuana and other drugs that were confiscated between 2011 and 2012. UN Photo/Staton Winter
Supported each year by individuals, communities, and various organizations all over the world, this global observance aims to raise awareness of the major problem that illicit drugs represent to society.
(UN News)*— Without urgent action, COVID-19 will continue to unravel decades of progress across South Asia, destroying the “hopes and futures of an entire generation”, warns a new report released on Tuesday [23 June 2020] by the UN Children’s Fund, UNICEF.
.Lives Upended, notes that the rapidly advancing coronavirus pandemic, expanding across a region that is home to a quarter of the world’s population, is particularly affecting health and educational advances for children.
23 June 2020 (Wall Street International)* — Homo sapiens is the main predator of nature and its peers. For the sake of progress, our species has polluted seas, air, and land, destroyed ancient forests, over-exploited natural resources and is currently doing everything possible to destroy the Amazon basin, one of the main sources of oxygen, that regulates the climate of the region and neutralizes the greenhouse effect.
HUMAN WRONGS WATCH 