'Unseen' News and Views
More than half of Syria’s population, or 12.1 million people, are food-insecure with a further 2.9 million on the brink of food insecurity. Food and fuel prices are at their highest in a decade.
(UN News)* — The UN food agency in Afghanistan announced on Friday [] that a lack of funds has forced deep cuts to life-saving assistance in March for at least four million people.
The World Food Programme (WFP) appealed for urgent funding for its operations in the country, where families are battling crisis after crisis, including growing hunger, since the Taliban takeover of 2021.
Catastrophic hunger could become widespread across Afghanistan, and unless humanitarian support is sustained, hundreds of thousands more people will need assistance to survive, the agency said in an alert.
‘Half of what they need’
Due to funding constraints, at least four million people will receive just half of what they need to get by in March. Ss food stocks have run out before the next harvest is due in May, this is traditionally the most difficult time of the year for rural families, WFP said.
– 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.’
“Terrorism and violent extremism cannot and should not be associated with any religion, nationality, civilization, or ethnic group.”.
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.
– 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.”
These are not the words of this convinced secular journalist, but those of the UN Special Rapporteur on freedom of religion or belief.
The US Aggressive Military-Industrial Complex
John Scales Avery
It appears that the military-industrial complex has complete control of the government of the United States, which recently voted to give the Pentagon roughly a trillion dollars of the taxpayers money. This was done by cutting back on social programs that would have helped poor working families.
Recently Joan Roelofs published a book entitled “The Trillion Dollar Silencer: Why There Is So Little Anti-War Protest in the United States” (Atlanta: Clarity Press, 2022).
In this book, she points out that the U.S. military-industrial complex has located military bases in regions where the local economy is entirely dependent on them.
The vast river of money flowing into the pockets of the military-industrial complex implies that very many people earn their living, directly, or indirectly, from the manufacture or use of weapons.
March 13, 2023 — The Danish Immigration Service has announced that it deems two more areas of government-controlled Syria as “safe” for returns: Tartous and Latakia. In 2019, Damascus and Rif Damascus were also controversially declared “safe”.
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 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.
– It is two months since the World Health Organization declared Uganda free of the most recent Sudan ebolavirus, which killed 55 people.
Uganda used public health measures like screening, testing of temperatures, and isolation of suspected cases to contain the Ebola outbreak. While those measures were successful, scientists warn that another outbreak could occur. Credit: Wambi Michael/IPS
Uganda employed public health measures to end the outbreak. In the absence of vaccines and therapeutics, the threat of the next outbreak looms. Scientists are yet to find answers to questions like who was the first person to be affected? Or the index case, what viral host reservoir did that patient get in contact with?
(UN News)* — A UN independent human rights expert criticized the United States for using extraterritorial jurisdiction to impose sanctions on foreign individuals, in a statement issued on Thursday [].
UN Special Rapporteur Alena Douhan said the practice raises concerns about rights violations, including the right to due process, as enshrined under a decades-old international treaty.
“The United States has for years been imposing sanctions on individuals and entities without national criminal jurisdiction and in the absence of universal jurisdiction,” she said.
“This is a clear violation of due process rights, including the presumption of innocence and fair trial.”
HUMAN WRONGS WATCH 