'Unseen' News and Views
5 February 2021 — The United Arab Emirates (UAE) recently announced a plan to extend citizenship opportunities to highly-educated, skilled, or wealthy foreign nationals and their families.
Unfortunately, the country’s citizenship law still leaves out other groups, including children born to Emirati women and foreign fathers, and stateless people.
The International Organization for Migration (IOM) Explores Diaspora’s Engagement in Humanitarian Assistance
Stronger diaspora coordination has the potential for better and more effective humanitarian assistance in countries affected by disasters. Photo: IOM/Muse Mohammed
Washington, DC, 6 February 2021 (IOM)* – Many people, when they consider the contributions of migrants to their countries of origin, think first of remittance flows —the billions of dollars travelling annually between high income, “developed” destination countries to lower income regions in the Global South.
6 February 2021 (UN News)* — The amount of money spent on food and beverages to enjoy, perhaps, the United States’ most high-profile annual sporting event, adds up to more than twice the global budget of the UN’s World Food Programme (WFP), according to the agency.
WFP says Americans spent around $17 billion on food, drinks, party supplies and other paraphernalia to mark the 2020 Super Bowl, the flagship event of the American football season, and in the process consumed a stomach-churning 1.3 billion chicken wings and almost 900 million pints of beer.
6 February 2021 (UN News)* — Two migrants, one young and one old, have been sharing their experiences of migrating to a small town in Costa Rica in Central America.
– All of Erizo’s nightmares are the same. Since his return from the ocean – almost unrecognizable – every bad dream is identical. A wave punches his little boat and throws him into the deep sea where everything is so dark that he can’t even see his own hands.
Rosi Orozco
Even when he swam with all his energy, this 31 year old fisherman was never able to set foot on the mainland and to him, the Mexican Pacific ocean slowly became a grave formed only of water.
When Erizo dies in his nightmare, he wakes up in real life, opening his mouth like a dying fish that desperately tries to gasp some air. Then, he and his wife are on a midnight routine.
Erizo stays in bed while Sandra walks over the sand floor of their home to reach for a glass of water for him. She can do that in total darkness without stumbling because there is barely anything; the furniture in this young couple’s home consists only of a bed, a small TV, a plastic table, two chairs, two hammocks, and a few plastic bags with clothes and shoes.
Voices of Resilience – International Day of Zero Tolerance for Female Genital Mutilation, 6 February
Fatuma, Ethiopia
6 February 2021 (United Nations)* — Female Genital Mutilation (FGM) is a practice rooted in gender inequalities that rests on the shakiest of foundations of faulty beliefs, perceived obligations and inferred expectations, tied together in a durable knot.
(UN News, February 2020)* — “My flesh has been taken away, but I can never give away my heart”; those are the powerful words of resolve from Abida Dawud, one of three women survivors of female genital mutilation, or FGM, from Ethiopia, who have been speaking to the UN Population Fund (UNFPA) about their experiences.
Today, Jan. 6 marks the International Day of Zero Tolerance for Female Genital Mutilation. In commemoration IPS has reissued our piece on FGM/C in India.
Masooma Ranalvi is the founder of WeSpeakOut and has campaigned to end FGM/C.
– Survivors of female genital mutilation or cutting (FGM/C), are determined to share their stories to end this practice – even though they face ostracisation by their communities.
Masooma Ranalvi, an FGM/C survivor and founder of ‘WeSpeakOut’, an organisation committed to eliminating FGM/C or khafd/khafz/khatna explains that FGM/C is practised by various communities in India but is prominently practised among the Dawoodi Bohras.
Girls who undergo female genital mutilation face short-term complications such as severe pain, shock, excessive bleeding, infections, and difficulty in passing urine, as well as long-term consequences for their sexual and reproductive health and mental health.
4 February 2021 — The military coup in Myanmar this week should sound alarm bells in corporate boardrooms around the world. Since Myanmar’s transition from decades of military dictatorship to a civilian government began in 2011, transnational businesses have cautiously reentered the country. But the coup highlights the question company directors should already have been asking: “Is our company directly or indirectly funding the Myanmar military?”
HUMAN WRONGS WATCH 