'Unseen' News and Views
New science suggests that in many places, though, human activity may be drowning out those noises — and having a disorienting and destructive impact on marine animals.
“Scientists have been warning about this for a long time,” said Heidrun Frisch-Nwakanma, who leads underwater noise work at the Convention on the Conservation of Migratory Species of Wild Animals (CMS).
25 April 2022 (UN News)* — The explosive growth of extractive operations around the world often plays out on indigenous people’s lands without their consent, causing irreparable harm to their livelihoods, cultures, languages and lives, speakers told the Permanent Forum on Indigenous Issues on Monday [25 April 2022], as it opened its 2022 session amid calls to respect their free, prior and informed consent on the existential decisions uprooting their communities.
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The worldwide degradation, fragmentation, and destruction of ecosystems are accelerating and generating serious consequences for flora, fauna and human well-being. Credit: Guillermo Flores/IPS
First, CLIMATE CHANGE is certainly the most worrisome threat to human security. The scientific evidence clearly demonstrates that climate change is a threat to the well-being of humans and the planet.
22 April, 2022 (UNEP)* — Elephant tusks, pangolin scales, tiger skins and Indian star tortoises are just some of the wildlife parts and derivatives that have been confiscated at Indian airports, part of a growing trend exploiting airports to traffic illegal wildlife.
Photo: Reuters
With the growth in traveller numbers and increase in efficiency of air travel it has become easier than ever for traffickers to use air travel to move illegal wildlife goods across the globe.
Refugees on the move. Credit: UNHCR/Ivor Pricket
In fact, Hungary, a European Union full member country, has a long record of ‘demonising’ migrants, refugees and asylum seekers.
“At a time when the people of the UK have opened their hearts and homes to Ukrainians, the government is choosing to act with cruelty and rip up their obligations to others fleeing war and persecution” says HRW report. Credit: UNOHCR
In fact, in a short period of time, reports by major human rights organisations have revealed how the US and Europe, in addition to Australia, are increasingly sending migrants, refugees and asylum seekers to other countries, regardless of their human rights records.
Mit Al Korama’s youth (left) spent five months at the warehouse waiting for the trip to Italy (Ahmed Emad is in the middle and Ibrahim Abdullah is on the left). The group (right) during their kidnapping ordeal by Libyan militias. The group were waiting for the ransom to be paid. Credit: Supplied
Some, they heard, returned with a large sum of money and built European-style homes for their families. Others chose to stay in the European Union and encouraged their brothers to do so.
22 April 2022 (UN News)* — International Mother Earth Day is a chance to reflect on how humanity has been treating our planet, and let’s face it: we’ve been poor custodians.
BENTIU, South Sudan, 20 April 2022 (UNFPA)* – “I used to collect firewood, make charcoal, and sell fresh milk to help meet our family’s needs,” Nyachar Gatneay Rial, 38, told UNFPA. “Now I have to sell tea in the local market to earn some money.”
North Americans have been shocked by the death and destruction of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, filling our screens with bombed buildings and dead bodies lying in the street. But the United States and its allies have waged war in country after country for decades, carving swathes of destruction through cities, towns and villages on a far greater scale than has so far disfigured Ukraine.
House bombed by coalition forces in East Mosul, Northern Iraq, 15 March, 2017. Credit: Amnesty International
As we recently reported, the U.S. and its allies have dropped over 337,000 bombs and missiles, or 46 per day, on nine countries since 2001 alone. Senior U.S. Defense Intelligence Agency officers told Newsweek that the first 24 days of Russia’s bombing of Ukraine was less destructive than the first day of U.S. bombing in Iraq in 2003.
HUMAN WRONGS WATCH 