Archive for ‘Middle East’

24/12/2025

The World’s Right-Handed and Left-Handed Torturers

Human Wrongs Watch

UNITED NATIONS, Dec 23 2025 (IPS)* Jeanne Kirkpatrick, a former U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, once made a highly debatable distinction between “friendly” right-wing “authoritarian” regimes (which were mostly U.S. and Western allies) and “unfriendly” left-wing “totalitarian” dictatorships (which the U.S. abhorred).
 

Tercer Piso. Source Amnesty International

Around the same time, successive U.S. administrations were cozying up to a rash of authoritarian regimes, mostly in the Middle East, widely accused of instituting emergency laws, detaining dissidents, cracking down on the press, torturing political prisoners and rigorously imposing death penalties.

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24/12/2025

New Techniques, Old Problems: Navdanya International’s Report on the Global Deregulation of GMOs

Human Wrongs Watch

By Navdanya International*

Navdanya International has released the report Seeds of Resistance, which documents the global spread of both old and new GMOs and the dismantling of biosafety regulations across continents.

Photo: Manlio Masucci

On November 22, Navdanya International presented this new report for the first time at the international meeting Semillas en Resistencia Global, held at the National Museum of Popular Cultures in Mexico City, together with peasants, Indigenous communities, researchers and activists from Latin America, Africa and Europe.

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23/12/2025

Gaza: Despite Ceasefire, Humanitarians Continue to Receive Reports of Airstrikes, Shelling and Gunfire

Human Wrongs Watch

(UN News)* — Despite the ceasefire in the Gaza Strip, humanitarians continue to receive reports of airstrikes, shelling and gunfire in all five governorates, the United Nations said on Monday []. 

As rain falls over Gaza, children take refuge beneath a disabled fishing boat, one of the few places offering shelter in the overcrowded displacement area.
UN News | As rain falls over Gaza, children take refuge beneath a disabled fishing boat, one of the few places offering shelter in the overcrowded displacement area.

This has resulted in casualties and disruptions to aid operations over the past 24 hours, UN Spokesperson Stéphane Dujarric told journalists at Headquarters, in New York. 

Still, efforts to deliver assistance to the most vulnerable families continue during the cold and wet winter season, although a rescue mission to reach an injured person in Gaza City was denied. 

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22/12/2025

Five of the Past Six Years Have Seen the ‘Most Rapid Glacier Retreat on Record’

Human Wrongs Watch

By the United Nations*

Some 600 glaciers have already disappeared and many more will vanish if temperatures continue to rise.

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Quechua girls admire Andean mountain views on the Ausungate trail. Cusco, Peru

PHOTO:Mark/Adobe Stock

Glaciers, an essential source of life around our mountains

Glaciers, vast reserves of ice and snow found across the planet, are far more than frozen landscapes – they are lifelines for ecosystems and communities, holding around 70 percent of the world’s freshwater.

Their accelerated melting represents not only an environmental crisis but also a humanitarian one, threatening agriculture, clean energy, water security and billions of peoples’ lives.

Their retreat, driven by rising global temperatures, is a stark indicator of the climate crisis.

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22/12/2025

2025: Record Heat, Record Low Sea Ice, Shrinking Glaciers, Unprecedented Extreme Weather Events …

Human Wrongs Watch

18 December 2025 — Record heat, record low sea ice, shrinking glaciers, continued warming of the ocean and unprecedented extreme weather events are just some of the disruptive changes reported that are transforming this once reliably frozen region into a warmer, wetter, and unpredictable world. 

These are the key findings of the Arctic Report Card 2025, authored by 112 scientists from 13 countries. Now in its 20th year, the report documents ongoing trends, record-setting events, and emerging challenges in a region warming far faster than the rest of the planet.  

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22/12/2025

What Is Meditation?

Human Wrongs Watch

By the United Nations*

21/12/2025

Toxic Skies: The Amazon Is Now Breathing Dirtier Air than the World’s Biggest Cities

Human Wrongs Watch

A new Greenpeace International report, Toxic Skies: How Agribusiness is Choking the Amazon, reveals how fires linked to industrial agriculture are turning the forest’s air toxic during the dry season.

The findings are a stark warning that the Amazon’s crisis is not only about trees. It is about the air millions of people breathe, and the health of our shared planet.

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21/12/2025

Vast and Undervalued: Rangelands under Growing Threat

Human Wrongs Watch

By the United Nations Convention to Combat Desertification (UNCCD)*

New evidence shows rangelands are degrading faster than rainforests in some regions, despite bringing multiple benefits and sustaining two billion people 

Bonn/Panama City Stretching from the drylands of Latin America and Africa to the steppes of Central Asia, rangelands underpin food security, climate stability and centuries-old pastoral cultures.

These vast landscapes, covering half the planet, store significant carbon, buffer climate extremes, and regulate water in some of the world’s driest regions.  

Yet, despite their immense value, rangelands remain one of the planet’s most overlooked ecosystems. 

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20/12/2025

Without Big Changes, This Is What the Environment Will Look Like in 2050

Human Wrongs Watch

By the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP)*

Oppressive heat.  Species extinctions.  Pollution-choked skies.

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Courtesy NASA

15 December 2025 — This is the future that awaits the world unless humanity takes dramatic steps to end a series of mushrooming environmental crises, finds a new report from the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP).

The seventh edition of the Global Environment Outlook (GEO-7) offers a stark vision of the decades to come.

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20/12/2025

Women on the Move: FAQs on Migration and Gender

Human Wrongs Watch

By UN Women*

Explore UN Women’s FAQs on how gender affects migration experiences.

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A migrant farmer in Cambodia showing off her rice harvest for photography project. Photo: UN Women Cambodia/Women Migrant Workers participatory photography project

Learn about the unique challenges that migrant women and girls face and how these differ to those men experience, from limited access to information and services to risks like trafficking, exploitation and violence.

What is the difference between migrants, refugees, and asylum seekers?

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