UNITED NATIONS, New York, 21 March 2022 (UNFPA)* – In 2021, double disaster struck Haiti when Tropical Storm Grace hit the island nation just two days after it was rocked by a 7.2 magnitude earthquake.
As rain lashed the country’s already damaged infrastructure, midwife Jeffthanie Mathurin remembers contraceptive deliveries getting stuck on the roads – presenting a major challenge for women and girls.
“We noticed this catastrophe increased the risk of more women getting pregnant unintentionally,” she told UNFPA. “The poorest people in the country, such as rural women, face the worst consequences of climate change.”
(UN NEWS)*— Water starts wars, puts out fires, and is key to human survival, but ensuring access for all hinges largely on improving cooperation, according to a new flagship UN report published on Tuesday [21 March 2023].
Launched ahead of the UN 2023 Water Conference, the new edition of the UN World Water Development Report focuses on twin themes of partnerships and cooperation. Published by the UN Education, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO), the report highlights collaborative ways actors can work together to overcome common challenges.
“There is an urgent need to establish strong international mechanisms to prevent the global water crisis from spiralling out of control,” said UNESCO Director-General Audrey Azoulay. “Water is our common future, and it is essential to act together to share it equitably and manage it sustainably.”
MADRID, Mar 21 2023 (IPS)* – Shockingly, the human suicidal war on Nature not only continues unabated but is also set to become even more virulent. Just to start with, please be reminded that groundwater accounts for 99% of all liquid freshwater on Earth, according to the 2022 UN World Water Development Report.
“Drop by drop, this precious lifeblood is being poisoned by pollution and drained by vampiric overuse, with water demand expected to exceed supply by 40% by decade’s end” Credit: Bigstock.
And that groundwater already provides half of the volume of water withdrawn for domestic use by the global population, including the drinking water for the vast majority of the rural population who do not get their water delivered to them via public or private supply systems.
MADRID, Mar 17 2023 (IPS)* – Three-quarters of a century ago, the world adopted the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, emphasising that all human beings are born equal in dignity and rights. The 2023 theme of its 75th anniversary focuses on the urgency of combating racism and racial discrimination.
More: nearly a quarter of a century ago, the world adopted in South Africa the Durban Declaration to combat racism, racial discrimination, xenophobia, distrust, intolerance, and hate, globally.
Since then, these “contagious killers” not only continued unabated but are now more spread than ever in all societies, in particular in those under the dominance of the so-called ‘white supremacy.’
In Africa as in the rest of the world, US machinations undermine its goals and bring other nations together as they seek to protect themselves from a desperate empire.
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The US can’t seem to understand that the rest of the world, including Africa, doesn’t like to be pushed around. African nations’ refusal to reinforce US foreign policy in the UN General Assembly is a case in point.
During the Assembly’s February 16 vote on a resolution “deploring” Russia’s action in Ukraine, nearly half the nations who abstained were African, 15 of the 32 , although only 54 of the UN’s 193 member nations are African.
No African nations were on the list of nations introducing the resolution, and two of the seven who voted no—Eritrea and Mali—were African.
“Terrorism and violent extremism cannot and should not be associated with any religion, nationality, civilization, or ethnic group.”
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Hate speech – including online – has become one of the most common ways of spreading divisive rhetoric on a global scale, threatening peace around the world, says UN chief.
MADRID, Mar 13 2023 (IPS)* – Islamophobia is a ‘fear, prejudice and hatred of Muslims that leads to provocation, hostility and intolerance by means of threatening, harassment, abuse, incitement and intimidation of Muslims and non-Muslims, both in the online and offline world.’
Consequently, suspicion, discrimination and ‘outright hatred’ towards Muslims have risen to “epidemic proportions.”
March 13, 2023 — FIFA has been handed a letter supported by over one million petition signatures — and custom-designed football shirts — demanding that it provide compensation to migrant workers who suffered horrific human rights abuses while working on the 2022 football World Cup in Qatar.
The items were delivered to FIFA ahead of the organization’s annual conference on 16 March in Rwanda, where it will come under pressure from some of its own members to remedy these appalling abuses. The one million signatures were collected by Avaaz and Amnesty International in 190 countries.
“This meeting offers another opportunity for FIFA to make amends and establish a firm plan and timetable to directly and quickly recompense workers and their families, who suffered shocking human rights abuses to deliver a World Cup that was built on their sacrifice,” said Steve Cockburn, Amnesty International’s Head of Economic and Social Justice.
(Tunis) – President Kais Saied’s recent attempt to mitigate the serious harm that a speech he made on February 21, 2023, caused Black African migrants, asylum seekers, and refugees in Tunisia does not go far enough, Human Rights Watch said on 10 March 2023.
Measures announced on March 5 fall far short of the steps needed to end a surge in violent assaults, robberies, and vandalism by Tunisian citizens, arbitrary evictions by landlords, and job terminations by employers, that followed Saied’s speech.
(UN News)* — Life-threatening hunger caused by climate shocks, violent insecurity and disease in the Horn of Africa, have left nearly 130,000 people “looking death in the eyes” and nearly 50 million facing crisis levels of food insecurity, the UN World Health Organization (WHO) said on Friday [].
In an appeal for $178 million to support humanitarian assistance across the seven affected countries in the Greater Horn region, veteran WHO worker Liesbeth Aelbrecht warned that the situation was worse than anything she’d seen in more than two decades in Djibouti, Ethiopia, Kenya, Somalia, South Sudan, Sudan and Uganda.
“These 48 million people do include as many as 129,000 who are facing catastrophe; and catastrophe, that means they are facing starvation and literally looking death in the eyes,” Ms. Aelbrecht told journalists in Geneva. Those most at risk, are living in both South Sudan and Somalia.
“The jaws of power are always open to devour, and her arm is always stretched out, if possible, to destroy the freedom of thinking, speaking, and writing.”
John Adams, (1735-1826)
John Scales Avery
The Nuremberg Principles
According to the Nuremberg Principles, the citizens of a country have a responsibility for the crimes that their governments commit. But to prevent these crimes, the people need to have some knowledge of what is going on. Indeed, democracy cannot function at all without this knowledge.
What are we to think when governments make every effort to keep their actions secret from their own citizens? We can only conclude that although they may call themselves democracies, such governments are in fact oligarchies or dictatorships.
At the end of World War I, it was realized that secret treaties had been responsible for its outbreak, and an effort was made to ensure that diplomacy would be more open in the future. Needless to say, these efforts did not succeed, and diplomacy has remained a realm of secrecy.
HUMAN WRONGS WATCH 