23 June 2018 (UN)* — Although accurate information is limited, it has been estimated that there are some 258 million widows around the world, with over 115 million of them living in deep poverty. Data on women’s status are often not disaggregated by marital status, so at every level of gender statistics, from national to global, widows are not visible.
Hawa, 23, was pregnant when her husband was killed in the fighting in CAR. The rest of her family either died or disappeared. She fled and crossed into Cameroon. “When I arrived I didn’t have anyone,” she said. She received counseling and livelihood training from UN Women at the Safe Centre in the camp. “They sensitized and trained me on how to do a business plan at the camp.” Photo: UN Women/Ryan Brown.
Yet we know that many elderly widows face multiple and intersecting forms of discrimination, based on their gender, age, rural location or disability. Others are still young when they lose their husbands, perhaps as a result of conflict or because they were married as children to a much older man.
Hungarian legislation that criminalizes anyone who supports asylum seekers and other vulnerable individuals is “blatantly xenophobic”, “shameful” and “disgraceful”, the UN human rights chief on 21 June 2018 said.
UNHCR/Béla Szandelszky | Asylum seekers rest in their room in the Debrecen Reception Centre, Hungary. (file)
Commenting on the Hungarian Parliament’s decision to vote in Government proposals on 20 June 2018, Zeid Ra’ad Al Hussein described it as “an attack on fundamental human rights and freedoms”, as it “makes illegal the act of helping those who may be in dire need”.
The loss of a spouse or partner is often devastating, but for many women it is magnified by a “long-term struggle” for basic needs, human rights and dignity, according to UN Women, in a message to mark International Widows’ Day, on 23 June 2018.
UN Women/Ryan Brown | A 38-year-old widow who lost her husband in the Central African Republic war escaped to the Ngam refugee site in the Adamawa region of Cameroon with her five children; one of whom recently died.
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On its website dedicated to the Day, the United Nations calls the abuse of widows and their children “one of the most serious violationsof human rights and obstacles to development today.”
Women’s rights are under threat from a “backlash” of conservatism and fundamentalism around the world, a United Nation panel on 22 June 2018 warned.
UN Women/Bruno Spada | Women in Brazil march for women’s rights.
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“Alarming pushbackshave been progressing across regions of the globe”, through what the Working Group on Discrimination against Women in Law and in Practice described as “alliance of conservative political ideologies and religious fundamentalisms,” in its report to the Human Rights Councilin Geneva.
The United States government decision to end its border policy of forcibly separating migrant children from their parents, does not help thousands of youngsters already in detention, who should be released and reunited with their families, a group of UN human rights experts on 22 June 2018 said.
UNHCR/Markel Redondo | Eduardo, 31, with his daughter Sara at his house in Chiapas, Mexico. Eduardo together with his wife and four daughters, escaped increasing gang violence from El Salvador and have been recognized as refugees in Mexico.
The group of 11 independent Special Rapporteurs, and other experts, insist that the detention of the migrant children – “most” of whom are asylum-seekers from Guatemala, El Salvador and Honduras – inside the US, “severely hampers their development and in some cases, may amount to torture”.
20 June 2018 (Wall Street International)* — In my book Change and Gestalt Psychotherapy, I affirm that conceptualizing behavior as a movement is fundamental to answer human questions, whether experiential or theoretical. From this concept, I draw implications for the human process, its development, its problems, and its treatment.
Being-in-the-world implies changing, moving, and the continuity of change is fundamental, since human development is a continuation of denied theses, affirmed antitheses, syntheses constituting new theses, antitheses, etc.
The Trump administration’s Stephen Miller-inspired immigration policy of coercively tearing children from their parents is rightly receiving a hefty load of criticism, even from some of the more traditional Republicans.
20 June, 2018 (RT)* — Unlike other decisions taken by Donald Trump the announcement that the US is leaving the UN Human Rights Council has a lot of background in the policies adopted by previous administrations, many of which also despised the body.
UN Photo/Elma Okic | A wide view of the Human Rights Council.
Trump has gone a little further than his predecessors but his attitude is not fundamentally different from theirs.
Not only has the US had a long-running dispute with the UN in general, over its budget contribution and the body’s alleged hostility towards Israel, it has also sought to undermine the role of the Human Rights Council in particular, long before Trump was elected.
A former US representative to the UN founded the NGO UN Watch in 1993 to campaign against the UN’s perceived anti-Israeli bias.
20 June 2018 – TRANSCEND Media Service — “Agricultural Terrorism” is a kind of “concept” that one finds when looking at Channel Seven of the settler colonialists (Now on: The settlers), and at some websites of those settlers.
Dr. Walid Salem
The alleged concept describes the Palestinian attacks against the Settlers agricultural lands by burning tires, igniting fires, and the so called “Weaponized Kites” like those flying from Gaza to the South of Israel creating arsons there.
The most important is the “retaliation” proposed and practiced by the settlers, and their Government in Israel.
In this one I would like to discuss a fifth conflict configuration that is effectively ignored by conflict theorists (and virtually everyone else).
This conflict is undoubtedly the most fundamental conflict in human society, because it generates all of the violence humans perpetrate and experience, and yet it is utterly invisible to almost everyone.
In this one I would like to discuss a fifth conflict configuration that is effectively ignored by conflict theorists (and virtually everyone else).