'Unseen' News and Views
ROME, 26 November 2020 (FAO)* — More than three billion people live in agricultural areas with high to very high levels of water shortages and scarcity, and almost half of them face severe constraints. Furthermore, available freshwater resources per person have declined by more than 20 percent over the past two decades globally, underscoring the importance of producing more with less, especially in the agriculture sector, the world’s largest user of water.
– The construction of a five-star hotel in the Chittagong Hill Tracts, Bangladesh, could lead to the forced eviction of the Mro indigenous community from their ancestral lands and destroy “the social, economic, traditional and cultural fabric of the community”, warns Amnesty International.
25 November 2020 (IWGIA)* — Injustice regarding the validity of ancestral knowledge has been one of the many racist practices established by the colony. For five centuries, a systematic attack has persisted, in a bid to bring an end to the creation, conservation and transmission of the knowledge of native peoples.
The world of the Q’eqchí. Photo: AEPDI – Q’eqchi Ombudsman Office
In recent decades, religious fundamentalism has rebooted this symbolic violence to divide Indigenous communities and benefit from the installation of extractive projects and large-scale agricultural monocultures.
26 November 2020 (UNHCR)* –Over 40,000 Ethiopians have fled the Tigray crisis into eastern Sudan, with no sign of a let-up in new arrivals. Many anxiously hope to be reunited with their families.
An Ethiopian refugee holds a child in a shelter at the Um Rakuba camp in Sudan’s eastern Gedaref province. © UNHCR/Ebrahim Hamid
24 November 2020 (UNHCR)* –The number of Ethiopian refugees streaming into eastern Sudan has now surpassed 40,000 since the crisis began, with more than 5,000 women, children and men fleeing the ongoing fighting in the Tigray region over the weekend.
On November 4, 2020, Ethiopian Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed appeared on state television and acknowledged that he ordered the Ethiopian National Defense Forces (ENDF) to commence operations against the Tigray People’s Liberation Front (TPLF) in response to what he described as attacks by TPLF forces on Ethiopian military bases and federal forces in the regional capital of Mekelle, and at other camps in the Tigray region.
(By UN News)* — Israel’s military operations and prolonged closure of Gaza, has caused economic damage of $16.7 billion between 2007 and 2018, driving the poverty rate up almost fourfold compared to what it might have otherwise been, the UN trade and development agency UNCTAD said in a report published on Wednesday [25 November 2020].
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Gaza’s economy was on the verge of collapse, notes the report for the UN General Assembly, entitled “Economic costs of the Israeli occupation for the Palestinian people: The Gaza Strip under closure and restrictions”.
(UN News)* — Lethal cluster munitions are still being used in old and new conflicts around the world, from Syria to Libya, to Nagorno-Karabakh, a UN-backed civil society report said on Wednesday [25 November 2020].
Over the last decade, the hair-trigger devices have caused more than 4,300 recorded casualties in 20 countries, according to the Cluster Munition Monitor 2020, although it said that the true number is likely much higher.
Between August 2010 and July 2020, cluster munitions were deployed in seven countries that have not signed the global disarmament treaty banning them: Cambodia, Libya, South Sudan, Sudan, Syria, Ukraine, and Yemen.
25 November 2020 (UN News)* — Approximately once every minute and 40 seconds, a child or young person under the age of 20 was infected with HIV last year, the UN Children’s Fund (UNICEF) has reported, calling on governments to “protect, sustain and accelerate” efforts to combat childhood HIV.
Covid-19 Pandemic Devastates Mining Communities, Increases Rights Risks
An artisanal miner holds an uncut diamond in her hand in South Africa, October 22, 2019. © 2019 Sumaya Hisham/Reuters
HUMAN WRONGS WATCH 