'Unseen' News and Views – By Baher Kamal & The Like
– The construction of a five-star hotel in the Chittagong Hill Tracts, Bangladesh, could lead to the forced eviction of the Mro indigenous community from their ancestral lands and destroy “the social, economic, traditional and cultural fabric of the community”, warns Amnesty International.
25 November 2020 (IWGIA)* — Injustice regarding the validity of ancestral knowledge has been one of the many racist practices established by the colony. For five centuries, a systematic attack has persisted, in a bid to bring an end to the creation, conservation and transmission of the knowledge of native peoples.
The world of the Q’eqchí. Photo: AEPDI – Q’eqchi Ombudsman Office
In recent decades, religious fundamentalism has rebooted this symbolic violence to divide Indigenous communities and benefit from the installation of extractive projects and large-scale agricultural monocultures.
(UN News)* — Lethal cluster munitions are still being used in old and new conflicts around the world, from Syria to Libya, to Nagorno-Karabakh, a UN-backed civil society report said on Wednesday [25 November 2020].
Over the last decade, the hair-trigger devices have caused more than 4,300 recorded casualties in 20 countries, according to the Cluster Munition Monitor 2020, although it said that the true number is likely much higher.
Between August 2010 and July 2020, cluster munitions were deployed in seven countries that have not signed the global disarmament treaty banning them: Cambodia, Libya, South Sudan, Sudan, Syria, Ukraine, and Yemen.
25 November 2020 (UN News)* — Approximately once every minute and 40 seconds, a child or young person under the age of 20 was infected with HIV last year, the UN Children’s Fund (UNICEF) has reported, calling on governments to “protect, sustain and accelerate” efforts to combat childhood HIV.
Covid-19 Pandemic Devastates Mining Communities, Increases Rights Risks
An artisanal miner holds an uncut diamond in her hand in South Africa, October 22, 2019. © 2019 Sumaya Hisham/ReutersMany of the blazes, which come at the tail end of a devastating fire season, are believed to have been set by farmers eager to clear land and sate the booming global demand for beef and soybeans.
A new United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) report, jointly produced with the International Resource Panel, says that type of unbridled international trade is having a damaging effect not only on rainforests but the entire planet.
– The World Bank has been leading other multilateral development banks (MDBs) and international financial institutions to press developing country governments to ‘de-risk’ infrastructure and other private, especially foreign investments.
Jomo Kwame Sundaram
They promote public-private partnerships (PPPs) supposedly to mobilize more private finance to achieve the Sustainable Development Goals.
PPP advocacy has been stepped up after developing countries’ pleas for better international tax cooperation were blocked at the third United Nations’ Financing for Development conference (FfD3) in Addis Ababa in mid-2015.
Official support for infrastructure PPPs seems stronger than ever. The Bank’s Global Infrastructure Facility (GIF) was set up to coordinate MDBs, private investors and governments promoting PPPs. Meanwhile, the G20 has been trying to modify the mandates of national and international development banks to enable them to initiate infrastructure PPPs with the private sector.
20 November 2020 (IWGIA)* — After resisting the policy of forced assimilation enforced during the decades of military rule, today Indigenous peoples of Myanmar are subjected to land dispossession in the name of boosting economic development and implementation of the country’s climate commitments.
Community, part of the Karen people. Photo: Alejandro Parellada
Myanmar, formerly known as Burma, is home to 54 million people, including more than 135 ethnic groups and Indigenous Peoples. Myanmar is thus considered to be one of the most ethnically diverse countries in Southeast Asia.
(UN Women)* — “My indigenous community is hardworking, and a place where women have taken leadership roles in the fight to recover ancestral land,” says Luz Angélica Tarapuez, from the municipality of Cumbal, in the department of Nariño, on the Colombian-Ecuadorian border.
She is among 94 indigenous women and farm workers who have attended the training school, ‘Soy Rosita, soy mujer, soy campesina, soy indígena’ [I am Rosita, I am a woman, I am a farmer, I am indigenous].
24 November 2020 (UN Women)* — The UN Secretary-General’s UNiTE by 2030 to End Violence against Women campaign is marking the 16 Days of Activism against Gender-based Violence (25 November to 10 December 2020) under the global theme, “Orange the World: Fund, Respond, Prevent, Collect!“.
UN Women’s Generation Equality campaign is amplifying the call for global action to bridge funding gaps, ensure essential services for survivors of violence during the COVID-19 crisis, focus on prevention, and collection of data that can improve life-saving services for women and girls.
The campaign is part of UN Women’s efforts for Beijing+25 and building up to launch bold new actions and commitments to end violence against women at the Generation Equality Forum in Mexico and France in 2021.
