'Unseen' News and Views
By producing soap, treating the sick and shopping for the vulnerable, these refugees from around the world are taking action to fight the coronavirus. | Español | Français | عربي
From health workers to educators, to broadcasters and volunteers, many refugees are finding ways to play a part in fighting the coronavirus pandemic and caring for those who fall ill.© UNHCR
(UN News)* — UN Secretary-General António Guterres has reminded countries of their fundamental obligation to protect the nearly 80 million people worldwide forced to flee their homes due to conflict, persecution and other crises.
In his message to mark World Refugee Day [20 June], the UN chief also praised those nations and communities hosting refugees and internally displaced people, often amid their own economic and security challenges.
“We owe these countries our thanks, our support and our investment,” he said.
19 June 2020 (UN Environment)* — After a five-hour journey by boat and an inland journey on a ranger´s backpack, Diego, the giant tortoise who helped save his species from extinction, finally arrived his native Española Island, in the emblematic Ecuadorian archipelago of Galápagos.
Diego, now over 100 years old, will have the chance to live in the wild after eight decades of residing in a zoo and in a conservation center, where he fathered at least 800 offspring.
18 June 2020 (openDemocracy)* — In August 1619, a ship called the White Lion arrives in Virginia, a year before the Mayflower, the ship that was transporting the first English Puritans. It carries with it the first load of African slaves, captured in West Africa, starting the enslavement of Africans in the North American colonies.
“It reverberates throughout communities and societies, perpetuating cycles of violence and threatening international peace and security”, Secretary-General António Guterres said in his message for the day.
Fifty years ago this year, I published my first book, entitled Rebels in Eden – an exploration of mass political violence in America focusing on the uprisings that had by then incinerated substantial portions of the inner city communities of Los Angeles, New York, Newark, Detroit, Chicago, Baltimore, and Washington, as well as scores of smaller towns and cities.[i]
Richard E. Rubenstein
Those riots were far more destructive than anything experienced in the protests following the recent killings of George Floyd, Breonna Taylor, and Ahmaud Arbery by police and ex-police officers.
The sixties uprisings killed several hundred people (almost all Black civilians), injured more than 12,000, and caused billions of dollars in property damage.
What Hasn’t Changed
Rebels in Eden was reviewed in popular journals like TIME and Newsweek and was widely read, along with a small flood of similar publications. But, what difference did any of this make?
18 June 2020 – Cyclone Amphan, the most powerful to strike in the Bay of Bengal in 20 years, made landfall on the India-Bangladesh coast last month. Amphan ripped off roofs, washed away homes, and flooded farms. Crucially, Bangladesh was able to mitigate impact and save lives because of its robust emergency response system with early warnings and mass-evacuations.
– The world before COVID-19 looks very attractive right now. In light of the disease, mass unemployment and social distancing, a return to pre-pandemic normality seems appealing. Yet we should remember what normal was.
Credit: Marcin Jozwiak on Unsplash
Normal was obtaining 85 per cent of our energy fossil fuels and losing 7 million people a year to air pollution. Normal was careening toward a global temperature rise of over 3.5 C by the end of the century, with island nations facing obliteration. Normal was 1 in 8 species threatened with extinction, continued squeezing of wild spaces into smaller and smaller corners, and the rampant illegal trade in wildlife.
Normal contributed to causing this pandemic.
Unusually high temperatures in Siberia region linked to wildfires, oil spill and moth swarms.
A map showing places warmer (red) or cooler (blue) in May than the long-term average. | Photo: Nasa
HUMAN WRONGS WATCH 