'Unseen' News and Views
The International Court of Justice in The Hague, Netherlands, August 27, 2018. © 2018 Mike Corder/AP Photo
Lifesaving medical care collapsing under assault in Gaza: World Health Organization.
Fewer than 1-in-10 children in low-income countries have access to child benefits, leaving them vulnerable to disease, education gaps, poor nutrition, poverty and inequality.
GENEVA / NEW YORK (ILO)* –- Globally, 1.4 billion children, aged under 15, lack any form of social protection, leaving them vulnerable to disease, poor nutrition and poverty, according to new data released on 14 February 2024 by the International Labour Organization (ILO), Save the Children and UNICEF.
– Israel continues to defy its strongest backer the US and its western allies in its quest to control the land from the “River to the Sea”, and in the process ethnic cleansing of the Palestinian population.
Anis Chowdhury
Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is determined to push ahead with a ground offensive against Gaza’s southernmost town of Rafah despite mounting warnings from aid agencies and the international community that an assault on Rafah would be a catastrophe.
He also snubbed the US on the latest hostage release and ceasefire deal brokered by Qatar and Egypt. The interim order of the International Court of Justice (ICJ) to take all effective measures to stop “plausible” genocide in Gaza seems irrelevant to Israel.
Josep Borrell, the EU’s foreign policy chief admits that Netanyahu “doesn’t listen to anyone”.
On February 7, 2024, a U.S. drone strike assassinated an Iraqi militia leader, Abu Baqir al-Saadi, in the heart of Baghdad. This was a further U.S. escalation in a major new front in the U.S.-Israeli war on the Middle East, centered on the Israeli genocide in Gaza, but already also including ethnic cleansing in the West Bank, Israeli attacks on Lebanon and Syria, and the U.S. and U.K.’s bombing of Yemen.
Israeli airstrike on an apartment building in Rafah, the last refuge in southern Gaza, Feb 2024. Photo credit: MENAFN
13 February 2024 (OCHA)* — The scenario we have long dreaded is unraveling at alarming speed.
More than half of Gaza’s population – well over 1 million people – are crammed in Rafah, staring death in the face: They have little to eat, hardly any access to medical care, nowhere to sleep, nowhere safe to go.
They, like the entire population of Gaza, are the victims of an assault that is unparalleled in its intensity, brutality and scope. More than 28,000 people – mostly women and children – have been killed across Gaza, according to the Ministry of Health.
– A gathering ‘perfect storm’ – due to various developments, several quite deliberate – now threatens much devastation in the global South, likely to most hurt the poorest and most vulnerable.
Jomo Kwame Sundaram
Globalisation’s protracted decline
The age of globalization had mixed consequences, unevenly incorporating national markets for labour, goods and even some services.
It ended gradually, with the trend far more pronounced following the protracted worldwide stagnation since the 2008 global financial crisis.
Sometimes still referred to as the Great Recession, Western central banks resorted to unconventional monetary policies, mainly ‘quantitative easing’, to keep their economies afloat.
But easier credit enabled more financialization and indebtedness, rather than recovery, let alone sustainable development.
(UN News)* — UN High Commissioner for Human Rights Volker Türk on Monday [12 February 2024] appealed for restraint in the face of an Israeli military incursion in Rafah, warning of the risk of further atrocity crimes in the Gaza war.
© UNRWA | Tents of displaced people in Rafah southern Gaza
Nearly 1.5 million people are now crammed into the southern city on the border with Egypt, and with nowhere further to flee.
‘Terrifying’ situation
A potential full-fledged incursion in Rafah “is terrifying, given the prospect that an extremely high number of civilians, again mostly children and women, will likely be killed and injured,” Mr. Türk warned.
(UN News)* — Children account for around half of the almost two million Gazans who have been forced to leave their homes and search for shelter elsewhere in the Strip, since Israel’s current military operation began. The UN children’s agency, UNICEF, estimates that around 17,000 have been orphaned.
| A five-year-old boy sits on his mattress in a shelter courtyard surrounded by several hundred other displaced people.
UNICEF spokesperson, Jonathan Crickx, visited Gaza in early February. Most of the children he met or spoke to had lost a family member.
Three hundred days of atrocities against the children of Sudan: UNICEF Spokesperson James Elder
GENEVA, 9 February 2024 (UNICEF)* –- “Three hundred days ago, a wave of atrocities were unleashed upon the children of Sudan.
“Here is some of what happened in those 300 days:
“First: the world’s largest displacement of children has been seen in Sudan. Four million children have been displaced. That’s 13,000 children every single day for 300 days. Safety, gone. Worldly possessions, gone. Friends and family members separated or lost. Hope, fading.
HUMAN WRONGS WATCH 