'Unseen' News and Views – By Baher Kamal & The Like
The United Nations General Assembly affirmed a non-legally binding Global Compact on Refugees on 17 December 2018, marking the latest move by Member States to support the rights of 258 million people on the move worldwide.
An overwhelming number of majority States, 181, voted in favor of adopting the compact, with the United States and Hungary opposing the move. The Dominican Republic, Eritrea and Libya abstained.
Berlin (IOM)* – Today (18/12/2018) IOM’s Missing Migrants Project (MMP) will publish records from hundreds of eyewitness reports of deaths during migration in Africa, bringing the total number of deaths recorded on the continent to 1,386 this year.
An estimated 6,615 deaths during migration reported in Africa in the last five years. Photo: IOM
United Nations* – Throughout human history, migration has been a courageous expression of the individual’s will to overcome adversity and to live a better life.
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Today, globalization, together with advances in communications and transportation, has greatly increased the number of people who have the desire and the capacity to move to other places.
This new era has created challenges and opportunities for societies throughout the world.
It also has served to underscore the clear linkage between migration and development, as well as the opportunities it provides for co-development, that is, the concerted improvement of economic and social conditions at both origin and destination.
Human migration is “a powerful driver of economic growth, dynamism and understanding,” UN Secretary-General António Guterres has said, in his message commemorating International Migrants Day, marked on 18 December.
The UN chief explained that migration allows millions to seek new opportunities that benefit communities of origin and destination alike. However, he pointed out “when poorly regulated, migration can intensify divisions within and between societies, expose people to exploitation and abuse, and undermine faith in government.”
An anti-globalist wave is breaking out around the world. This is perhaps one of the most regressive and absurd things in the world today. There was certain anti-globalism, fruit of the protectionism of several countries, but it was not a threat to the general and irreversible process of globalization.
Leonardo Boff
That wave was adopted for his political platform by Donald J. Trump who, according to Economics Nobel laureate Paul Krugman, is one of most stupid Presidents in North American history.
The same can be said of our recently elected President, the former captain Bolsonaro and his secretaries of State and of Education, deniers of this phenomenon, which only prejudiced and uninformed persons cannot see.
Why is this a senseless blunder? Because it contravenes the logic of an uncontrollable historical process. We have reached a new phase in the history of the Earth and Humanity.
So let’s see: thousands of years ago, human beings, who arose in Africa, (all of us are Africans) began to disperse throughout the vast world, beginning with Eurasia and ending in Oceania.
The crisis of the left around the world has opened up a vacuum for extreme right movements to gain traction and threaten our democracies. How does Boaventura de Sousa Santos make sense of this in Brazil? Español
Why do we not respond to the crises?
Today we are faced with multiple interrelated crises, for example the threat of catastrophic climate change or equally catastrophic thermonuclear war, and the threat of widespread famine. These threats to human existence and to the biosphere demand a prompt and rational response; but because of institutional and cultural inertia, we are failing to take the steps that are necessary to avoid disaster.
John Scales Avery
Only Immediate Climate Action Can Save the Future
Immediate action to halt the extraction of fossil fuels and greatly reduce the emission of CO2 and other greenhouse gasses is needed to save the long-term future of human civilization and the biosphere.
At the opening ceremony of United Nations-sponsored climate talks in Katowice, Poland, Sir David Attenborough said “Right now, we are facing a man-made disaster of global scale. Our greatest threat in thousands of years. Climate change.
To the organizers of the Agora of the Inhabitants of the Earth
Speech by Gorbachev at the Saint-Petersburg State Medical University in January 2015 | Prostokvashino | CC BY-SA 4.0
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Dear friends,
I was pleased and encouraged to learn about your initiative of convening the unprecedented Agora of the Inhabitants of the Earth.
In the present troubled times when many hardly gained achievements of humanity on its road towards peace and security as well as in promoting the social progress are threatened, while the immediate future of the world looks troublesome and uncertain, it is important that all the human beings raise their voice of concern and alert.
Following several sleepless nights, cheers and applause welcomed the COP24 President, Michal Kurtyka, as he opened the conference’s closing plenary meeting, which had been postponed close to a dozen times.
Years ago, the Colombian armed conflict left them with nothing. Today, displaced neighbours in Las Delicias are hosting more than 150 Venezuelans. | Español | Français | عربي
Yuvis and her children are among the 18 Venezuelans Graciela Sanchez hosts under her roof in Cúcuta, Colombia. © UNHCR/Fabio Cuttica
