15 May 2021 (openDemocracy)* — Israel is the most powerful state in the Middle East. Its military forces may not match the likes of Egypt or Turkey in numbers, but the might of its training, equipment, technologies and nuclear weapons make it unassailable.
Pakistan restores mangroves for economy and ecosystem benefits
Dan Maisey/Unsplash / 14 May 2021
14 May 2021 (UNEP)* — As Pakistan prepares to host World Environment Day on June 5, ecosystem restoration, which includes critical ecosystems like mangrove forests, will be the focus.
Mr Quershi, who sadly passed away in December 2020, played a key role in the development of mangrove restoration in Pakistan and will be fondly remembered at the event.“He was a magnificent man.
World Food Programme partnerships officer Krystyna Kovalenko offers a glimpse of the south of the country, where thousands of people are starving
Every month, WFP provides food assistance to 750,000 people in Southern Madagascar. Photo: WFP/Krystyna Kovalenko
(WFP)* — The ‘Grand Sud’ in Madagascar looks like something out of a sci-fi film — totally dry, inhabitable and deserted. The land has suffered from several years of consecutive drought. But locals say that this year has been worse than any other.
13 May 2021 (UN News)* — The conflict in Yemen forced Asia El-Sayeed Ali and her family from her home in Aden’s Al Tawahi district, where there was active fighting, in 2015. Today, she works at a health clinic supported by the World Food Programme (WFP), where she cares for children, and their mothers, suffering from malnutrition.
“At the beginning of the war, my children and I were forced to flee our home, and move in with relatives in another part of Aden. The conflict affected all of us: my community, my family, and me. It took many people I was close to. It took away our youth and made our children grow up too soon. .I worked as a nurse from 2003 to 2011, and then I trained in nutrition, specialising in breastfeeding. Since then I have been able to return home to Al Tawahi, to work in the nutrition clinic, and for about eight years I have been working in the malnutrition unit.
UNITED NATIONS, May 14 2021 (IPS)* – The UN Security Council (UNSC), the most powerful political body at the United Nations, has largely remained silent or ineffective in resolving one of the longstanding military conflicts in the Middle East involving Israelis and Palestinians.
Smoke from an airstrike rises over the city of Rafah in southern Gaza Strip. Credit: UNICEF/Eyad El Baba
But, at the same time, several attempts to condemn Israel for its excesses have been thwarted by successive US administrations, which have exercised the veto power in the Security Council to protect a client state whose survival has depended largely on billions of dollars in US economic and military aid, state-of-the-art weapons systems and outright military grants doled out gratis.
(UN News)* — Although the outlook for global growth has improved, the ongoing impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic, as well as inadequate progress on vaccination in poorer countries, are putting recovery at risk, according to the latest UN economic forecast, published on Tuesday [11 May 2021].
UNDP | A woman in Guinea turns her sewing skills into mask-making during the COVID-19 crisis.
.
The World Economic Situation and Prospects (WESP) mid-year report warned widening inequality is threatening global growth, projected at 5.4 per cent this year.
Geneva, 11 May 2021 (WMO)* — The COVID-19 pandemic has exacerbated impacts of extreme weather and climate change in vulnerable countries but also highlighted the need to build resilience against a multitude of hazards through better early warnings and risk information.
Forcible takeovers of homes, brutal suppression of demonstrators, places of worship under assault, identity-based communal violence, indiscriminate rocket attacks, children killed in strikes: what to make of the dizzying headlines out of Israel and Palestine in recent days?
UNITED NATIONS (IPS)* – When the UN’s Beirut-based Economic and Social Commission for Western Asia (ESCWA), released a landmark 2017 report on “apartheid” in Israel, the United Nations disassociated itself with the study and left it to die— unceremoniously and unsung.
Credit: The UN Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East (UNRWA)
According to a March 2017 report in Foreign Policy Journal, both the Israeli and the Trump administrations put “enormous pressure on UN Secretary-General António Guterres to withdraw the report”.
But the head of the ESCWA, Rima Khalaf, refused to withdraw it and resigned from her UN position in protest.
(UN News)* — The UN Secretary-General said he was “gravely concerned” at escalating violence in the Occupied Palestinian Territory on Tuesday [11 May 2021], while the UN rights office, OHCHR, appealed for “a redoubling of efforts to restore calm”, after airstrikes and days of clashes between protesters and Israeli police.
Yahya Arouri | Israeli police gather in Sheikh Jarrah neighborhood in East Jerusalem, where Palestinians are threatened with eviction.
The ongoing violence marks a dramatic escalation of tensions linked to the potential eviction of Palestinian families from East Jerusalem by Israeli settlers and access to one of the most sacred sites in the city, which is a key hub for Islam, Judaism and Christianity.
HUMAN WRONGS WATCH 