Deaths and disappearances on the Central Mediterranean route tripled this summer compared to the same period last year
UNICEF/UNI443194/AntonioliOn 26 September 2023, a child and his father, migrants from Tunisia, sit near Italian Red Cross tents at the ‘hotspot’ reception centre on the island of Lampedusa, Italy.
GENEVA/ROME, 29 September 2023 (UNICEF)* – More than 11,600 children crossed the Central Mediterranean Sea to Italy without their parents or legal guardians between January and mid-September 2023. This is an increase of 60 per cent compared to the same period last year, where around 7,200 unaccompanied or separated children made the perilous crossing.
(UN News)* — An estimated 13.4 million babies were born early in 2020, with nearly one million dying from preterm complications, UN agencies and partners said in a new report on Thursday [].
(UN News)* — Senior UN officials on Thursday [] reiterated the call for protection of children and ensuring their rights at all times, as enshrined in international law, and ending impunity for crimes against them.
In 2022, the UN verified 27,180 instances of grave violations targeting children – use in conflict, killing and maiming, rape and sexual violence, abduction, attacks on schools, and denial of humanitarian assistance, said Virgina Gamba, Special Representative of the Secretary General for Children and Armed Conflict.
PORTLAND, USA, Oct 4 2023 (IPS)* – America’s immigration has reached record-breaking levels having weighty consequences domestically and internationally.
The estimated number of foreign-born residents in the United States as of September 2023 is at a historic high of nearly 50 million. Credit: Shutterstock.
Based on the Census Bureau’s 2023 Current Population Survey, the estimated number of foreign-born residents in the United States as of September 2023 is at a historic high of nearly 50 million.
Everyone knows that the United States is the world’s leading military power, with an annual “defense” budget approaching one trillion dollars, considerably more than the arms budgets of the next 144 nations combined.
Richard E. Rubenstein
The U.S. employs more than 3.5 million active military and civilian personnel and maintains more than 750 military bases located in some 80 nations around the world.
The nation’s most profitable and fastest-growing manufacturing sector is the military-industrial complex, which employs more than 4 million workers and supplies approximately 40 percent of the total weaponry used by the world’s armed forces.
In the production and deployment of nuclear weapons, of course, the U.S. is absolutely dominant.
3 October 2023 (UNHCR)* — When a boat crammed with over 500 women, men, and children sank off the coast of the Italian island of Lampedusa 10 years ago, the world said “never again”.
1 October 2023 (UN News)* — For Faustina Torres, from the Bribri indigenous community in Costa Rica, feeling invisible to others is a stinging form of discrimination she has fought against since childhood..
IOM/Gema Cortés | Migrants who pass through Central America to Costa Rica often face discrimination and can be the victims of hate speech.
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“Costa Rican society does not teach us that there are indigenous people in this country,” she said.
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“It is a form of discrimination, making the existence of indigenous peoples invisible.”
(UN News)* — Police and criminal justice systems in the United States require urgent reform to eradicate “systemic racism” against people of African descent, UN-appointed independent rights experts said on Thursday[].
UN News/Daniel Dickinson | A prison in upstate New York.
A new report by UN International experts advancing racial justice and equality in policing, published after an official visit to the country, shows that Black people in the US are three times more likely to be killed by police than if they were White, and 4.5 times more likely to be incarcerated.
India’s Prime Minister Narendra Modi is inflaming hatred of Muslims in India, as the world looks the other way. Hindu hard-liners, one holding a sword, chant slogans against Muslim communities.
Moin Qazi
A darker narrative is starting to define Modi’s India. The government has been systematically oppressing, marginalizing and inciting hatred toward its 220-million Muslim minority.
This campaign has been slowly gathering momentum over the years and has reached new intensity levels today. India is not a healthy democracy.
The poisonous rhetoric is having an effect. Shortly after these speeches, during celebrations commemorating the birth of Lord Rama, multiple attacks took place all over the country.The dangerous provocations continue.
“Tolerant Muslims can be counted on fingers. T. Even that is a tactic. It is to stay in public life with a mask.”
Meanwhile, Modi was praising an extremely Islamophobic new film at a rally ahead of local elections this month.
(UN News)* — The UN Special Coordinator for the Middle East Peace Process on Wednesday [] expressed deep concern over the relentless expansion of Israeli settlements in the occupied West Bank, including East Jerusalem.
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UNICEF/Mouhssine Ennaimi | An Israeli settlement in northern West Bank. (file)
During the last three months, more than 10,000 housing units were advanced, Tor Wennesland told ambassadors at the UN Security Council in New York.
“Settlements further entrench the occupation, fuel violence, impede Palestinian access to their land and resources, and systematically erode the viability of a Palestinian State as part of a two-State solution”, the senior envoy said.
HUMAN WRONGS WATCH 