BOGOTA, Colombia, Oct 15 2024 (IPS)* – Information manipulation and misinformation are not new phenomena, but they have taken on exaggerated importance, especially with the massive use of social media.
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In Lima, Peru, during a 2021 national demonstration by indigenous women movements. Credit: Felipe Caicedo
11-year-old Abbas was injured by shrapnel near his home in southern Lebanon, fleeing with his family and leaving behind everything
UNICEF2024/Fouad-Choufany/Lebanon
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(UNICEF Lebanon)*11 October 2024 — Abbas, 11 years old, was hit by shrapnel in his hand after a missile struck near his house in the south of Lebanon.
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“I was at home when suddenly a rocket fell near our home. I went out to see what happened, and all of a sudden, I looked at my hand and saw it was covered in blood,” he recounted.
(UN News)* — More than 1.8 million Palestinians in Gaza are experiencing “extremely critical” levels of hunger, with 70 per cent of crop fields destroyed and livelihoods decimated during the ongoing Israeli military offensive, a UN-backed food security assessment released on Thursday [] has revealed.
Figures from the global IPC food security initiative show that 133,000 people – or 6 per cent of the enclave’s population – are already experiencing Phase 5 or “catastrophic” food insecurity.
New York (UNDP)* — A staggering 455 million of the world’s poor live in countries exposed to violent conflict, hindering and even reversing hard-won progress to reduce poverty, according to the latest update of the global Multidimensional Poverty Index (MPI) released on 17 October 2024.
The report includes an in-depth case study on Afghanistan, where 5.3 million more people fell into multidimensional poverty during the turbulent period 2015/16–2022/23. In 2022/23, nearly two-thirds of Afghans were poor. UNDP Afghanistan
During the first seven months of the war, Israel is estimated to have dropped more than 70,000 tons of bombs on Gaza, far surpassing that of Dresden, Hamburg, and London combined during World War II.
Based on reported and estimated mortality, it appears clear that the Palestinian death toll in Gaza is among the highest civilian mortality rates of the 21st century. Credit: WHO
PORTLAND, USA, Oct 17 2024 (IPS)* – Following the 7 October 2023 attack on Israel by Hamas-led militants, Israel’s response has led to unprecedented high mortality levels in the Gaza Strip.
Oxfam and 37 other humanitarian organisations are raising the alarm about the catastrophic situation in Northern Gaza
The Israeli airstrikes destroyed Al Zahra City. Residential towers in the Gaza Strip were turned into rubble during an Israeli airstrike, with at least twenty-five residential towers being targeted. Source of photo:OXFAM: https://www.oxfam.org/en/what-we-do/emergencies/crisis-gaza.
15 October 2024 (OXFAM)* —The Israeli forces’ assault on Gaza has escalated to a horrifying level of atrocity. Northern Gaza is being wiped off the map.
(UN News)* —Deadly Israeli airstrikes hit targets across Lebanon on Wednesday [], prompting renewed condemnation from top UN negotiators and humanitarians, who warned that essential services in the south of the country are close to collapse.
Preventing malnutrition is central to WFP’s strategy – but access and funding pose key roadblocks
Paulema Rodeline nurses 7-month-old Kermissa at a centre for displaced people in Port-au-Prince, Haiti. Photo: WFP/Tanya Birkbeck
(WFP)* —In Gaza, Ikhlas recounts pulling her daughter from the rubble of another bombardment, as she was pregnant with her fourth child. “We escaped death,” she says, speaking from the southern city of Rafah. “We live on whatever aid is distributed.”
(UN News)* — Nearly two million children suffering from severe wasting are at risk of death due to funding shortages for life-saving Ready-to-use-Therapeutic-Food (RUTF) to treat the condition, which is the most dangerous form of malnutrition.
The warning comes from UN children’s agency UNICEF which said levels of severe wasting in children under five remain gravely high in several countries due to conflict, economic shocks and climate crises.
Deadly condition
Severe wasting – also known as severe acute malnutrition – is caused by a lack of nutritious and safe foods and repeated bouts of disease, such as diarrhoea, measles and malaria.
In a world characterized by an unprecedented level of economic development, technological means and financial resources, millions of persons are living in extreme poverty, a moral outrage, according to the UN. Poverty is not solely an economic issue, but rather a multidimensional phenomenon that encompasses a lack of both income and the basic capabilities to live in dignity.
Nearly 1,000 social protection measures introduced by governments across 171 countries, only 18 per cent focused on women’s economic security. Credit: iStock/Down to Earth
HUMAN WRONGS WATCH 