'Unseen' News and Views
(UN News)* — When Israeli forces in Gaza issue a new displacement order ahead of an incursion into a neighbourhood or city, Palestinian civilians are expected to pack their bags and flee – perhaps for the third, fourth, or tenth time.
Morning after an Israeli attack in Tyre, Lebanon. Credit: Nour
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The residents of southern Lebanon—mothers, fathers, children, and elders—are the ones who face the daily reality of displacement, loss, and uncertainty.
Their homes become coordinates on military maps; their neighborhoods, theaters of “operations.”
(UN News)* — Sexual violence in conflict zones rose sharply in 2024, increasing by a quarter compared to the previous year, the UN reported on Thursday [].
More than 4,600 survivors endured abuses used as weapons of war, torture, terrorism and political repression.
Women and girls made up 92% of victims, but men, boys, people with diverse sexual orientations and gender identities, racial and ethnic minorities – together with some persons with disabilities – were also targeted, ranging in age from one to 75.
– The EU likes to think of itself as a normative power — a community of values, committed to upholding international law, promoting peace, protecting civilians and building a rules-based global order.
These are not just lofty ideals; they are enshrined in EU treaties, declarations and Council conclusions.
Credit: alliance/Anadolu/Moiz Salhi
But when it comes to the brutal, drawn-out destruction of Gaza and the continued illegal occupation of Palestine, these principles seem to have become hollow rhetoric.
Worse, they are being actively undermined by the craven inaction of the EU’s institutions and the blockage of governments like Germany, Italy, Hungary and the Czech Republic.
The European Commission has been shamefully absent as well.
(UN News)* — At least 100 children in Gaza have died from malnutrition and hunger, prompting humanitarians to underscore the need to speed up medical evacuations from the enclave while also allowing more food to enter.
Cuts to a programme that maintained communal facilities for refugees in Cox’s Bazar have meant lost income for families and a more precarious environment in the camps.
Monsoon rains bring flooding to Nayapara refugee camp in Teknaf, eastern Bangladesh, in July 2021. © UNHCR/Amos Halder
(UN Refugee Agency (UNHCR)* — In the hilly terrain of Cox’s Bazar, life for over 1 million Rohingya refugees in the world’s largest and most densely populated refugee camp is always a struggle, but monsoon season brings fresh challenges.
(UN News)* — UN-mandated independent investigators have uncovered “systematic torture” in Myanmar’s military-run detention facilities – including beatings, electric shocks, strangulations and gang rape – a pattern of atrocities which is intensifying across the country.
Plastic garbage is offloaded from a fishing boat on the east coast of China. Credit: UNEP/Justin Jin
– The future plastics treaty is being sold as potentially an environmental breakthrough. But in its current form during this week’s negotiations, it contains a dangerous flaw that must be addressed before the final text is agreed — or it could undercut the world’s most widely ratified health treaty, the WHO Framework Convention on Tobacco Control (FCTC), and hand the tobacco industry the tools to expand its market under the banner of environmental action.
Land degradation and drought are fueling a hidden health crisis – but we still have time to act. When we speak of desertification or drought, we often think of dry rivers, cracked soil and failed harvests.
But there is another, less visible toll – one that strikes deep into the lungs, hearts and daily lives of the world’s most vulnerable people.
A new policy brief from the UNCCD reveals the far-reaching health impacts of land degradation and drought — and it delivers a stark message: the health of the planet and the health of people are inseparable.
Around the world, land is deteriorating at an alarming pace.
Between 2015 and 2019, more than 100 million hectares of productive land were lost each year. That’s an area roughly the size of Egypt — gone annually.
– The accumulation of still growing greenhouse gas emissions (GHG) in an increasingly unequal world is accelerating planetary heating. It is also worsening disparities, especially between the rich and others, both nationally and internationally.
Jomo Kwame Sundaram
Unequal emissions
In our grossly unequal world, international disparities account for two-thirds of overall income inequalities.
National income aggregates and averages can mislead by obscuring significant disparities within countries.
The World Inequality Report argues that GHG emission disparities are mainly due to inequalities within countries.
Meanwhile, GHG emissions continue to grow as their accumulation accelerates planetary heating.
Emissions disparities within nations now account for almost two-thirds of worldwide emissions inequality, nearly doubling from slightly over a third in 1990.
The bottom halves of rich country populations are already at – or close to – the 2030 per capita carbon dioxide equivalent emission targets set by their governments. Yet North America’s wealthiest 10% or decile are the world’s biggest GHG emitters.
HUMAN WRONGS WATCH 