(UN News)* — Twelve years into the war in Syria, thousands of families “remain in the dark” when it comes to the fates of their missing relatives, UN human rights chief Michelle Bachelet told the General Assembly on Friday [8 April 2022].
“The scale of this tragedy is daunting, with people going missing in different contexts, such as during hostilities, displacement or in detention. All too often, this is connected with a range of human rights violations and abuses,” she said, speaking via videolink from Geneva.
Immediate Humanitarian Access, Protection of Communities Key
Nairobi, – Amhara regional security forces and civilian authorities in Ethiopia’s Western Tigray Zone have committed widespread abuses against Tigrayans since November 2020 that amount to war crimes and crimes against humanity, Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch said in a new report released on 6 April 2022.
(UN News)* – An estimated 6.3 million children under five, in six countries in Africa’s Sahel region, will suffer from wasting this year, UN agencies and their partners warned in a publication issued on Wednesday [6 April 2022].
The West and Central Africa Nutrition working group fears at least 900,000 young lives could be at risk across Burkina Faso, Chad, Mali, Mauritania, Niger and Senegal.
They said the number of under fives in the region expected to suffer from global acute malnutrition has never been so high, with a 27 per cent increase expected this year compared to 2021, marking the fifth consecutive year of record highs.
(UN News)* — Thirty years after the siege of Sarajevo, the UN team in Bosnia and Herzegovina reiterated the importance on Wednesday [6 April 2022] of pursuing justice and reparation for victims, survivors and their family members.
UNDP/Mackenzie Knowles-Coursin | People walk through the streets of Sarajevo, Bosnia and Herzegovina (file photo).
The siege began after Bosnia and Herzegovina declared independence in the wake of the dissolution of the former Yugoslavia.
Bosnian Serbs largely opposed independence, while the other two large ethnic groups, Muslim Bosniaks and Croats, favoured the split from Belgrade.
In 2010-2019 average annual global greenhouse gas emissions were at their highest levels in human history, but the rate of growth has slowed. Since 2010, there have been sustained decreases of up to 85% in the costs of solar and wind energy, and batteries.
(UN News)* — An astonishing 99 per cent of the world’s population breathes polluted air that exceeds internationally approved limits, with negative health impacts kicking in at much lower levels than previously thought, UN medical scientists said on Monday[4 April 2022].
ADB/Ariel Javellana | Emissions from coal-fired power plants contribute to air pollution in Ulaanbaatar, Mongolia.
Noting that fossil fuels are responsible for most of the harmful emissions that are linked to acute and chronic sickness, the World Health Organization (WHO) called for tangible steps to curb their use.
The UN agency also urged more governments to take note that it has made significant revisions to its air quality indicators, including for particulate matter – known as PM2.5 – that can enter the bloodstream, along with nitrogen dioxide (NO2), another common urban pollutant and precursor of particulate matter and ozone.
Adam Isacson is Director for Defense Oversight at the Washington Office on Latin America
Migrant encampment in the border town of Reynosa, Tamaulipas, Mexico. Credit: Adam Isacson.
WASHINGTON DC, Apr 5 2022 (IPS)* – “The migrants try to organize themselves to stay safe,” a humanitarian worker told me as we stood near a town square in Reynosa, Mexico, steps away from the U.S. border.
More than 2,000 people from many countries, blocked from asking for asylum in the United States, were packed into this square block, living under tents and tarps, amid port-a-potties and cooking fires. Children were everywhere.
MADRID, Apr 5 2022 (IPS)* – While the world’s top scientists and experts continue their arduous work to finally submit to politicians at the 27th session of the Conference of the Parties (COP 27) in Sharm El-Sheikh, Egypt (7-18 November 2022), a new alert now emerges: the climate crisis has already become the single biggest health threat to humankind.
This year’s World Health Day launched a new warning: more than 13 million deaths around the world each year are due to “avoidable environmental causes”. Credit: Bigstock
But this new alert should be no surprise: it rather constitutes the logic, expected consequence of the more and more intensive pressure of the life-keeping and life-saving natural resources.
UK government ministers want the British Empire’s benefits taught in schools. Don’t let them ignore the death and destruction it inflicted
Gurminder Bhambra as a child with her grandfather, Mohan Singh | Gurminder Bhambra
1 April 2022 (openDemocracy)* — Recent weeks have seen a variety of UK government ministers – from Oliver Dowden to Kemi Badenoch to, most recently, education secretary Nadhim Zahawi – both extol the benefits of British Empire and urge the teaching of those benefits.
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This follows on from the government’s response to the Commission on Race and Ethnic Disparities, which set out the need for a new model curriculum for history which would advise schools on how best to teach these issues.
“No war has the honesty of confessing, ‘I kill to steal.’”
(Image by Rafael Edwards)
4 Apr 2022 – Wars always invoke noble motives. They kill in the name of peace. In the name of God. In the name of civilization. In the name of progress. In the name of democracy…
And just in case, if so many lies are not enough… the mass media are ready to invent imaginary enemies to justify the conversion of the world into a great madhouse and an immense slaughterhouse.
In King Lear, Shakespeare had written that “…in this world, the mad lead the blind…”. And… four centuries afterward, the masters of the world are madmen in love with death.
HUMAN WRONGS WATCH 