(UN News)* — Global crises, conflicts, and the climate emergency are escalating trafficking risks, the UN warned on Sunday [], the World Day against Trafficking in Persons. People lacking legal status, living in poverty and without decent work often become the primary targets of traffickers.
IOM Port of Spain | Venezuelan migrant Manuela Molina (not her real name) was promised a decent job in Trinidad, but minutes after her arrival she was forced into a van and taken to a secret location.
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In his message for the Day, UN chief António Guterres called human trafficking “a heinous violation of fundamental human rights and freedoms.” He said that this crime preys on vulnerability and thrives in times of conflict and instability, with more and more people targeted today.
MALAKAL, South Sudan, 24 July 2023 (UNFPA)* – “My neighbour Rose* travelled with me to Renk, but her three daughters stayed behind in Khartoum. Later she learned they had been gang raped,” said Martha.*
Martha had recently arrived in the port of Malakal, a key transit point for those fleeing the violence in Sudan and crossing into South Sudan. More than 170,000 returnees and refugees have so far arrived in Malakal since the conflict erupted on 15 April, a number that will only increase if the crisis continues.
SYDNEY, Jul 28 2023 (IPS)* – The likelihood of further confrontations remains high following a major Israeli military assault on an impoverished camp of more than 23,500 Palestinian refugees in Jenin in the north of the occupied West Bank earlier this month.
The homes of Palestinians, public buildings, cars, property and service infrastructure were damaged or destroyed during an Israeli military attack on Jenin in the occupied West Bank earlier this month. Photo credit: UNRWA
The landlocked Palestinian territory, located between Israel to the west and Jordan to the east, has been illegally occupied, according to international law, following the invasion by Israel 56 years ago.
An Israeli court has given the go-ahead for the forced eviction of 500 Palestinian Bedouins in the Negev/Naqab region, highlighting the deep discrimination that Palestinian citizens of Israel face under apartheid, Amnesty International said today [July 28, 2023]. In a judgment issued on 27 July, the Beer’sheva Magistrate’s Court said residents of the village of Ras Jrabah must leave their homes, and vacate the lands where their families have lived for decades, by March 2024. They must also pay a fine of 117,000 NIS (approximately 31,700 USD) to cover legal expenses.
The forced evictions are part of the Israeli authorities’ plans to build a new neighbourhood for the city of Dimona, whose inhabitants are mostly Jewish Israelis. Ras Jrabah’s residents will be relocated to an impoverished and segregated Bedouin town nearby.
(UN News)* — Insecurity and violence increased rapidly in the occupied West Bank over the last month, punctuated by one of the most intensive Israeli military operations in nearly two decades, the Security Council heard on Thursday [].
“This deterioration is taking place alongside ongoing unilateral steps that undermine a two-State solution, the absence of a peace process and the continuing economic challenges facing Palestinians and the Palestinian Authority (PA),” said Khaled Khiari, Assistant Secretary-General for Middle East, briefing ambassadors.
The United Kingdom parliament has passed a bill inconsistent with the country’s obligations under international human rights and refugee law that could have profound consequences for people seeking international protection, warned the UN rights chief and the head of refugee agency UNHCR on Tuesday [17 July 2023].
The Illegal Immigration Bill eliminates access to asylum for anyone who arrives “irregularly” in the UK, meaning they passed through a country – however briefly – where they did not face persecution.
(UN News)* — Low women’s empowerment and large gender gaps are commonplace in many parts of the world, the UN’s lead agencies on gender equality and international development said in a new report published on Tuesday [].
Moreover, fewer than one per cent of women and girls globally live in a country with both high women’s empowerment and a small gender gap in areas such as health and education.
(UN News)* — Nearly 200,000 people were displaced by fighting inside Sudan over the past week, the UN reported on Tuesday [], citing new figures released by the International Organization for Migration (IOM).
(UN News)* — Indigenous Peoples have the ancestral wisdom to guide humanity towards a more sustainable use of the Earth’s resources, yet they are systematically discriminated against and excluded, UN rights chief Volker Türk warned on Monday [17 July 2023].
He was speaking in Geneva at the annual meeting on the rights of Indigenous Peoples, referencing in-depth conversations he had had in recent months with Indigenous representatives during missions to Colombia, Ecuador, Venezuela and Kenya.
UNITED NATIONS, Jul 17 2023 (IPS)*– Just after a band of mercenaries tried to oust the government in the Maldives back in 1988, I asked a Maldivian diplomat, using a familiar military catch phrase, about the strength of his country’s “standing army.”
“Standing army?”, the diplomat asked with mock surprise, and remarked perhaps half-jokingly, “We don’t even have a sitting army.”
HUMAN WRONGS WATCH 