'Unseen' News and Views
PHOTO CREDIT: Mathilde Vu/NRC
3 September 2024 (NRC)* — “As the heads of humanitarian organisations operating in Sudan, we urgently call on the international community to address the immense hunger crisis within the country.
“We cannot be clearer: Sudan is experiencing a starvation crisis of historic proportions. And yet, the silence is deafening. People are dying of hunger, every day, and yet the focus remains on semantic debates and legal definitions.
Abidjan, Cote d’Ivoire, 2 September 2024 (WMO)* — Africa bears an exceptionally heavy burden from climate change and disproportionately high costs for essential climate adaptation. On average, African countries are losing 2-5% of GDP and many are diverting up to 9% of their budgets responding to climate extremes.
In sub-Saharan Africa, the cost of adaptation is estimated to range from US$ 30-50 billion annually over the next decade, or 2-3% of the region’s Gross Domestic Product, says the WMO State of the Climate in Africa 2023 report.
Public Outcry Against ‘The Goat Life’ which Depicts Serious Rights Violations
3 September 2024 — This month, Netflix released “The Goat Life,” a movie centered on the experiences of an Indian migrant worker, Najeeb Muhammed, who worked in Saudi Arabia in the early 1990s and, after being stranded in the desert, was forced to work as a goat herder.
It is based on the 2008 bestselling book, “Goat Days,” which was written by another migrant worker and author under the pen name Benyamin.
Text: Kristine Grønhaug. Photo/video: Richard Ashton. Design: Tove Skjeflo
One day last year, when 12-year-old Salwa was at the market in her hometown in Sudan, the dark shadow of war came over her. And when, a few weeks later, her neighbours’ house was bombed and the children who lived there were killed, she fled.
.
.
.
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Now she is in a transit centre in South Sudan.
But her heart is still beating.
And beating.
()* — Spotlighting crises roiling parts of eastern Africa, the UN deputy chief concluded a regional visit in Adré, Chad, on Friday [], calling for global solidarity to tackle famine in Sudan, flooding and mass displacement while ensuring free-flowing aid for millions trapped in war zones and those fleeing for their lives.
Nairobi, 28 August 2024 – In half the world’s countries one or more types of freshwater ecosystems are degraded, including rivers, lakes and aquifers. River flow has significantly decreased, surface water bodies are shrinking or being lost, ambient water is growing more polluted, and water management is off-track.
()* — The level of the sea globally is rising faster and higher than ever before, creating what the United Nations has described as an “urgent and escalating threat” to people around the world.
© UNICEF/Lasse Bak Mejlvang | Children in the Pacific Ocean island of Tuvalu play at a coastal area protected by sandbags.
The UN Secretary-General António Guterres has been visiting the Pacific Ocean nations, Tonga and Samoa, where sea level rise has been one of the key issues he has been discussing with the communities he has met.
On 25 September, global leaders and experts will gather at the UN to discuss how best to address the threat.
Here’s what you need to know about sea level rise:
(UN News)* — Over 18 million people in Bangladesh have been affected by severe monsoon conditions, with more than 1.2 million families trapped as flash floods submerge vast areas of the country’s east and southeast.
US President Donald Trump (2017-2021) presiding over a meeting of the UN Security Council. Credit: United Nations
And today another specter is haunting– this time at the United Nations — the specter of a second Trump presidency.
(UN News)* — Around 20 villages in eastern Sudan have reportedly been “destroyed”, with 70 impacted overall, after floodwaters burst through a major dam, according to UN humanitarians – adding to the suffering of communities already devastated by the ongoing war between rival militaries.
HUMAN WRONGS WATCH 