'Unseen' News and Views
8 May 2025 (openDemocracy)* — Since entering office in January, Donald Trump’s repeated threats to seize control of the Panama Canal, a critical passage for global freight traffic, have dominated headlines around the world. | ESPAÑOL
Monitoring in Motion for Migrants in the Darien Gap
8 May 2025 — The Darien jungle on the border between Panama and Colombia is a labyrinth of rivers, filled with wild animals and oppressive, humid heat that envelops everything. It is a transit and destination route for migrants and asylum seekers, where fear, despair, and danger are constant.
It is also the main entry point for people heading towards Canada, Mexico and the United States of America. Yet, the greatest danger does not come from nature itself, but from traffickers and criminals who prey on people on the move.
(UN News)* — Israel’s plan to take control of relief assistance in Gaza would put civilian lives in danger and cause mass displacement while using aid as “bait”, UN humanitarians said on Friday .
(Athens) – Greece faces a media freedom crisis as a result of actions and failures by the Greek government, threatening democracy and the rule of law, Human Rights Watch said in a report released on 8 May 2026.
The 101-page report, “From Bad to Worse: The Deterioration of Media Freedom in Greece,” documents the hostile environment for independent media and journalists since the New Democracy government took office in July 2019, including harassment, intimidation, surveillance, and abusive lawsuits, all of which contribute to self-censorship and chill media freedom.
(UN News)* — Shattered by her husband’s death during the rising tide of gang violence in Haiti last year, Christiana and her six children fled 223 kilometres from their hometown to the city of Mirebalais, where her six-year-old daughter, Leineda, began treatment for malnutrition.
– Since the Western Sahara War in 1975, Sahrawi refugees have resided in a collection of refugee shelters in the Tindouf province of Algeria.
Sahrawi refugees walk near the Awserd Refugee Camp in the Tindouf Province of Algeria. Credit: UN Photo/Evan Schneider
For over 50 years, these communities have struggled to develop self-sufficiency and have been solely dependent on humanitarian aid for survival, marking one of the most protracted refugee crises in the world.
(UN News)* — Thousands of exhausted Sudanese refugees continue to flee fighting in search of safety in neighbouring Chad, aid teams said on Tuesday , as a third day of drone strikes ripped into the city of Port Sudan.
This refrain echoes through centuries of struggle—from the plantations of Saint Domingue to the besieged neighborhoods of Gaza, from the mineral-rich soil of the Congo to the burning plains of Southern Africa.
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Today, as humanity faces mounting climate catastrophe, global inequality, and ethnic cleansing, we must ask: how did we get here?
And how long will we refuse to name the violence for what it is—a crime against humanity – or better a genocide?
— Hunger and Sudan’s horrific war pushed Abdelminime Moussa from his homeland. Sitting in the sand at eastern Chad’s Koursigue refugee camp, the Sudanese father describes how his family fled assailants who surrounded their village in North Darfur, just across the border.
“We had nothing,” Moussa says of their arrival earlier this year at this desolate camp, sprinkled with white tents, thorn trees and not much else. “I manage as best as I can to feed my children.”
Deportations Would be Unlawful, Subject Detainees to Horrific Conditions
(New York) – The United States should not forcibly transfer migrants to Libya, where inhumane detention conditions are well-documented, including torture, ill-treatment, sexual assault, and unlawful killings, Human Rights Watch said today [9 May 2025].
Based on numerous media reports citing US officials, the Trump administration may be poised to imminently deport an unknown number of detained migrants to Libya.
HUMAN WRONGS WATCH 