'Unseen' News and Views
UN Photo/Pernaca Sudhakaran
Just three days ahead of this year’s Nelson Mandela International Day (18 July), a group of independent United Nations human rights experts condemned reports of escalating violence targeting foreign nationals in South Africa.
New recommendations released by the three agencies offer solutions and alternatives to the continued practice of detaining asylum-seeking, refugee and migrant children across Europe
(UN News)* — Official data published by UN agencies on Friday [15 July 2022] shows the largest sustained decline in childhood vaccination rates in approximately 30 years, with 25 million infants missing out on lifesaving shots.
The figures released by the World Health Organization (WHO) and UN Children’s Fund UNICEF, show the percentage of children who received three doses of the vaccine against diphtheria, tetanus and pertussis (DTP3) – a marker for immunization coverage within and across countries – fell five points between 2019 and 2021, to 81 per cent.
Teenage girls harvest tomatoes on a farm in the state of Sinaloa, in northern Mexico. Credit: Courtesy of Instituto Sinaloense para la Educación de los Adultos (Sinaloa Institute for Adult Education)
For example, of all domestic workers worldwide -overwhelmingly women- up to 94% lack access to the full range of protections, covering medical care, sickness, unemployment, old age, employment injury, family, maternity, invalidity and survivors’ benefits.
Jan Oberg
Let’s look at NATO’s reaction to Russia’s ill-considered and international law-violating military action in Ukraine.
From a conflict-analytical point of view, it is reasonable to say that Russia is responsible for the war but that NATO with it reckless expansion against all promises given to Russia and a series of expert warnings is responsible for the underlying conflict.
It can safely be concluded that the Western/NATO response has moved beyond the proportionality principle, beyond rationality and a realistic image of the world and its own role in it:
NATO leaders express limitless hatred of everything Russia; historically hard and time-unlimited economic sanctions have been imposed – using the illegal method of collective punishment; weapons for an estimated US$ 60-100 billion will be pumped into Ukraine to defeat Russia there.
NATO has added US$ 350 billion in military expenditures since the US-instigated regime change in Kiev in 2014 and, since then, prepared Ukraine for a role in NATO. The 2% goals is now a floor, not a ceiling.
(UN News)* — In addition to tackling COVID and the monkeypox outbreak, the UN health agency has also been keeping a close eye on the puzzling spread of hepatitis in previously healthy children, which has left dozens needing lifesaving liver transplants.
According to a new update on Wednesday [13 July 2022] from the World Health Organization (WHO), 35 countries in five regions of the world have now reported more than 1,010 probable cases of unexplained severe acute hepatitis, or liver inflammation, in youngsters, since the outbreak was first detected on 5 April.
(UN News)* — Rising COVID-19 cases are not only putting further pressure on already stretched health systems and workers but also triggering an “increasing trend of deaths”, World Health Organization (WHO) chief Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus told journalists at the regular weekly press briefing on Tuesday [12 July 2022].
He reported that the Emergency Committee on COVID-19 last Friday concluded that “the virus remains a Public Health Emergency of International Concern”.
The writer is Director, Population Division of the United Nations, Department of Economic and Social Affairs.
School Opens in Weapons Free Zone East of UNMISS”. Credit: UN Photo/Amanda Voisard
– What does a young girl from Juba, in South Sudan, an 8-year-old boy living in the slums of Mumbai, in India, a young mother from the south of Lima, in Peru, and an 83-year-old man enjoying retirement in the suburbs of Stockholm, in Sweden, have in common?
War was always madness, always immoral, always the cause of unspeakable suffering, economic waste and widespread destruction, and always a source of poverty, hate, barbarism and endless cycles of revenge and counter-revenge. A Freely Downloadable Book
Why Does War Persist?
John Scales Avery
War was always madness, always immoral, always the cause of unspeakable suffering, economic waste and widespread destruction, and always a source of poverty, hate, barbarism and endless cycles of revenge and counter-revenge.
It has always been a crime for soldiers to kill people, just as it is a crime for murderers in civil society to kill people. No flag ha ever been wide enough to cover up atrocities.
But today, the development of all-destroying modern weapons has put war completely beyond the bounds of sanity and elementary humanity.
NATO is the US dominated global war machine whose policy is ‘Full Spectrum Dominance.’ Contrary to its claims, NATO is not a defensive organization but an instrument for US world domination to prevent all challenges to its hegemony. It should have been disbanded in 1991 after the dissolution of the Warsaw Pact but instead expanded into fifteen new countries.
Mairead Maguire
Patrick Murphy’s 18 June column in the Irish News entitled ‘Pope’s Comments May Help Avert Global Conflict’ is courageous and challenging.
Courageous in that Ireland (and most of Europe) are caught up in Russia phobia and war propaganda being peddled by our main stream media and military industrial complex.
Murphy quoted Pope Francis as saying that the war was ‘perhaps somehow either provoked or not prevented’. I think this statement hints towards the elephant in the room (NATO/US endless expansion).
The 12 May US Peace Council describes the Ukraine as a US Manufactured Conflict and says, ‘Russia’s military intervention in Ukraine could have been avoided if the US had not relentlessly provoked it.’
HUMAN WRONGS WATCH 