(UN News)* — Activists working with sea-rescue charities in Italy should not be criminalized, a UN independent human rights expert said on Thursday [], ahead of a trial against crew members from several non-governmental organizations (NGOs).
IOM/Francesco Malavolta (file) | Migrants from the Mediterranean are rescued in the Channel of Sicily, Italy (file).
Preliminary criminal proceedings opened last May in Sicily against 21 people charged with aiding and abetting illegal immigration in connection with several search-and-rescue missions conducted between 2016 and 2017.
Those accused include four crew members of the Iuventa, a former fishing trawler credited with saving some 14,000 migrant lives in the Mediterranean Sea, and human rights activists from other civilian vessels.
(UN News)* — Africa is currently experiencing an exponential rise in cholera cases, amid a global surge in the disease, the World Health Organization (WHO) reported on Thursday [].
Unicef Malawi | Daina Denja takes the cholera vaccine during UNICEF’ cholera vaccine campaign at Misili village in Chikwawa district, Malawi.
Across the continent, cases in January were 30 per cent higher than for the whole of last year.
Most new infections and deaths have occurred in Malawi, which is facing its worst outbreak in 20 years.
10 countries affected
Overall, 10 African countries are affected by cholera. The waterborne disease causes acute watery diarrhoea and can kill within hours but is easily treatable.
Besides Malawi, cases have been reported in neighbouring Mozambique and Zambia, as well as in Burundi, Cameroon, the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) and Nigeria.
(Jerusalem) 2 February 2023 – Israeli authorities’ actions to seal the family homes in the occupied West Bank of two Palestinians suspected of attacks against Israelis amount to collective punishment, a war crime, Human Rights Watch said today.
(UN News)* — Alarmed by the recent killing and injury of many children in Israel and Palestine, the UN Children’s Fund (UNICEF) voiced an appeal to parties on Monday [] to de-escalate tensions and refrain from violence.
Millions of children are at risk from one of the worst climate-induced emergencies in decades.
UNICEF/UN0639249/SewunetA baby rests in a stabilization centre at a hospital in the Afar region of Ethiopia.
Four consecutive seasons of poor rainfall, sharp increases in food prices, and conflict have pushed children and families in the Horn of Africa to the brink of climate change-induced catastrophe.
Exceptional drought across large swathes of Somalia, Ethiopia, Kenya, Eritrea and Djibouti has unleashed hunger, thirst, displacement and death on already vulnerable communities as crops fail and livestock die.
(UN News)* — Almost twelve years into Syria’s devastating civil war, the country remains tattered and deeply divided, facing massive economic hardships, limited political progress and the world’s largest displacement crisis, with 70 per cent of the population now in need of humanitarian aid, senior UN officials told the Security Council on Wednesday [].
“As we move into 2023, the Syrian people remain trapped in a profound humanitarian, political, military, security, economic and human rights crisis of great complexity and almost unimaginable scale,” said Geir Pedersen, UN Special Envoy for Syria.
Outlining recent developments, he reiterated his previous calls for calm on the ground, good faith engagement in Syria’s stalled Constitutional Committee process, and the Security Council’s critical humanitarian support.
(UN News)* — Some 21.6 million people in Yemen – that’s two-thirds of the population – are going to need some kind of humanitarian assistance and protection services during the course of 2023, according to the UN’s Humanitarian Response plan published on Wednesday [].
The UN humanitarian affairs office OCHA is calling for $4.3 billion to reach the 17.3 million most vulnerable people in need, whose lives have been turned upside down because of protracted war, displacement and economic collapse, compounded by recurrent natural disasters.
Yemen’s civil war began in 2014 when Houthi rebels took the capital, Sana’a, forcing the Government to leave, leading to the establishment of a Saudi-led coalition in support of the Government who launched airstrikes on the rebels in early 2015.
The total projected number in need this year has decreased slightly from 23.4 million people in 2022, to 21.6 million in 2023, while the “overall intersectoral target” is down from 17.9 to 17.3 million people.
MADRID, Jan 25 2023 (IPS)* – Gone are those times when catastrophes were measured in terms of human suffering. Now, with an exception: Ukrainians victims of the Russian invasion, everything is calculated in just money.
Billionaire wealth surged in 2022 with rapidly rising food and energy profits. The report shows that 95 food and energy corporations have more than doubled their profits in 2022. Credit: Clae
Following such a solid trend, major financial, business-oriented institutions, like the World Bank, the International Monetary Fund, and the European Central Bank, are now devoted to calculating if and how big the recession will be, ergo, how much money could be won or lost due, of course, to the Ukrainian proxy war.
They, likewise the establishment’s politicians and media, just talk about inflation, stagflation, economic (read financial) slowdown and commerce.
The first Cold War played out between the East and the Western Occident and the East lost with the demise of the Soviet Union and the Warsaw Pact.
Both built – more or less faithfully – on Western mechanical thinking, one on Marx and other socialist/communist philosophers, the other on twisting moral philosopher Adam Smith into a God’s hand individualist utility market prophet and pair him with various types of liberal, parliamentary democracy thinking.
The Soviet and East European system had come to the end of its history, but what about the twin Occidental brother, the US-EU system? The latter had not only survived or ”won,” it had also forced the Soviet Union to spend an unsustainable proportion of its resources on the military.
And now the Second West is destined to follow suit.
(UN News)* — The UN Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East (UNRWA) appealed on Tuesday [] for $1.6 billion to fund core operations this year, as the people it helps face hitting “rock bottom”.
Head of UNRWA, Philippe Lazzarini, told journalists in Geneva that competing global crises, and skyrocketing levels of poverty and unemployment among Palestine refugees, have put immense strain on them – and the agency – which started the year some $70 million in arrears.
“On the one hand we are asked to deliver public-like services to one of the most under-privileged communities in the region. We obviously are a UN agency (and) abide by UN values, but in reality, we are funded like an NGO, meaning that we depend on voluntary funding from Member States.”
HUMAN WRONGS WATCH 