MADRID, Nov 3 2021 (IPS)* – Imagine your child, your daughter, being genitally mutilated and, further on, sold or even handed over for free to an older man who will force her to become a child mother, when her body is still far from being formed and thus able to bear with a so early pregnancy.
Globally around 21% of young women were married before their 18th birthday – 650,000,000 girls and women alive today were married as children. Credit: United Nations.
Well, it has been happening and it still happens right now. The victims are as many as a conservative 800 million child-girls.
And this is happening while rich societies are holding intensive debates about the right of adolescents and youngsters to enjoy their freedom of gathering in thousands and get drunk in massive parties in streets and squares without observing any of the most basic measures to prevent COVID19 contagion.
5 November 2021 (UN News)* — Nearly 23 million people, or 55 per cent of the Afghan population, are estimated to be in crisis or experiencing emergency levels of food insecurity between now and March of next year.
UNICEF Iran/Mehdi Sayyari | A mother of six tends to her youngest child in Khorasan Province in Iran.
Speaking to journalists in New York, the Spokesperson for the Secretary-General pointed to reports that isolated clashes and violence affecting civilians and resulting in casualties continued countrywide this week.
In Jalalabad, in Nangarhar Province, gunfire directed at de facto authorities resulted in the deaths of two children on the 1 November.
(UN News)* — The UN barometer of world food prices has surged to a new peak, reaching its highest level since July 2011, the UN Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) announced this Thursday [4 November 2021].
The FAO Food Price Index, which tracks the international prices of a basket of food commodities, is up 3.9 per cent from September, rising for a third consecutive month.
Cereal prices overall increased by 3.2 per cent, with wheat rising five per cent, due to reduced harvests in major exporting nations, including Canada, Russia and the United States. Prices of all other major cereals also increased.
“The Arab word’s a veritable mess. The cosmic leadership deficit, the absence of legitimate institutions, the lack of transparency, disrespect for human rights, abysmal regard for gender equality, and too much conspiratorial thinking make it impossible to come to terms with the magnitude of the problems. In short, this region will remain broken, angry, and dysfunctional until the leaders who purport to take responsibility for governing these unhappy lands get their proverbial acts together. And that’s … well, a generational enterprise at best, and I suspect something that will take a good deal longer.”
— Aaron David Miller (“Where Have all the Arab States Gone” Foreign Policy: 4/14/2015)
UNITED NATIONS, Oct 22 2021 (IPS)* – The British novelist George Orwell’s “1984” characterized a dystopian society where people were restricted from independent thought and were victims of constant surveillance.
Published in 1949, it was a prophecy of the future with the underlying theme: “Big Brother is Watching You”
Credit: UN Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC)
Fast forward to 2021
We are back in “1984” where all our movements are monitored—this time by surveillance cameras planted in New York city streets, expressways, public parks, subways, shopping malls, and parking lots– in violation of personal privacy and civil rights.
3 November 2021 (UNEP)* — The impact of climate change on global peace and security is high on the agenda as world leaders gather at the COP26 UN Climate Change Conference in Glasgow this week.
Photo: Reuters/Muhammad Fuhaid | Belongings on a truck heading to a camp for internally displaced people in Marib, Yemen.
As UN Secretary-General António Guterres said in his landmark state of the planet speech: climate change is one of the biggest dangers to peace. “The fallout of the assault on our planet is impeding our efforts to eliminate poverty and imperiling food security. And it is making our work for peace even more difficult, as the disruptions drive instability, displacement and conflict.”
(UN News)* — All parties involved in the escalating conflict in Ethiopia’s Tigray must stop fighting immediately, or else risk pushing the region’s catastrophic humanitarian situation “over the edge”, the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, Michelle Bachelet, said on Wednesday [3 November 2021].
The UN rights chief’s appeal followed the declaration of a broad state of emergency in Ethiopia, amid reports that Tigrayan forces had made further advances into the neighbouring Amhara region, and other news reports of shelling of the Tigrayan capital Mekelle, by Ethiopian Government forces.
3 November 2021 (UN News)* — The World Health Organization (WHO) on Wednesday approved an eighth vaccine against COVID-19, which follows a slight uptick in new cases globally.
COVAXIN, made by Indian company Bharat Biotech, has received WHO emergency use listing (EUL), meaning it could soon be available to millions worldwide.
The EUL process assesses the quality, safety and efficacy of vaccines and is a prerequisite for their inclusion in the global solidarity initiative, COVAX.
3 November 2021 (UN News)* — Israel’s plan to build thousands of new homes for Jewish settlers in the occupied West Bank and East Jerusalem has drawn strong condemnation from two independent experts appointed by the UN Human Rights Council.
Rafique Gangat | The market in Old City of East Jerusalem.
Settlement expansion “tramples” on human rights law, Special Rapporteurs Michael Lynk and Balakrishnan Rajagopal said in a statement on Wednesday [3 November 2021].
Brexit showed that a few ruthless, well-connected people with big money behind them can change history. Now they’re at it again, and the stakes are even higher
Nigel Farage presents his first show on GB News channel in London | SOPA Images Limited / Alamy Stock Photo
1 November 2021 (openDemocracy)* — If Brexit proved anything, it’s that a handful of people with powerful connections can go a long, long, way.
HUMAN WRONGS WATCH 