(UN News)* — Women and girls of African descent face a “systemic and historical pattern” of racial abuse in the health sector in countries across the world, leaving them at increased risk of death during childbirth, the UN’s sexual and reproductive health agency said on Wednesday [].
“The scourge of racism continues for Black women and girls in the Americas, many of whom are descendants of the victims of enslavement,” Natalia Kanem, Executive Director of the UN Population Fund (UNFPA), said in a news release.
“Too often, Afrodescendent women and girls are abused and mistreated, their needs are not taken seriously, and their families are shattered by the preventable death of a loved one during childbirth. “Justice and equality will only be possible when our healthcare systems see these women and provide them with respectful, compassionate care.”
(UN News)* — The UN’s top human rights official urged respect for religious tolerance on Tuesday []as Member States gathered in Geneva in response to the recent burning of the holy Quran in the Swedish capital.
UNAMA/Barat Ali Batoor | Men pray at a mosque in Afghanistan.
Addressing the Human Rights Council, UN High Commissioner for Human Rights Volker Türk noted that the tome was the “core of faith” for well over one billion Muslims.
Those who had burned the Quran most likely did so “to express contempt and inflame anger”, Mr. Türk said, as he warned that these acts also aimed “to drive wedges between people”, to provoke and transform differences into hatred.
(UN News)* — As conflict continues to rage in Sudan, UN humanitarians expressed alarm on Tuesday [] at a surge in the number of people fleeing across the border to Chad.
From the World Food Programme (WFP), Chad Country Director Pierre Honnorat said that 20,000 people crossed into Chad just last week.
Speaking to journalists via Zoom from the Zabout refugee camp in Goz Beida, Mr. Honnorat described desperate scenes: “We can see that they have suffered, many lost family members, and we don’t even dare ask them, ‘Where are the men?’ The answer from the mothers is often that they were killed. So, you just see many women, many children.”
HUMAN WRONGS WATCH 