'Unseen' News and Views – By Baher Kamal & The Like
Trafficked, kept prisoner in Saudi Arabia Wanjiku Njoki was lucky to escape unharmed. She has since found work serving tea for a government parastatal. Credit: Joyce Chimbi/IPS
And this fear is all too familiar for 28-year-old Wanjiku Njoki. The young woman’s whose search for greener pastures in the Gulf landed her in the hands of a physically, mentally, and verbally abusive employer.
In 2018, she travelled to Jeddah in Saudi Arabia.
Tents and makeshift shelters at an IDP camp in Yemen. Credit: UNICEF/Alessio Romenzi
The 2021 Near East and North Africa Regional Overview of Food Security and Nutrition shows that the number of hungry people in the region reached 69 million people in 2020, “triggered by protracted crises, social unrests and exposure to multiple shocks and stresses such as conflicts, poverty, inequality, climate change, scarce natural resources and the economic repercussions associated with the recent COVID-19 pandemic.”
(UN News)* — As the death toll from the recent unrest in Kazakhstan mounts to 164, the UN Office for Human Rights (OHCHR) on Tuesday [11 January 2022] requested “prompt, independent, impartial investigations” into the killings, and whether “unnecessary and disproportionate use of force was made by security forces”.
Close to 10,000 people are now estimated to be held in detention following the riots.
“We understand that the Ministry of Interior has announced that some 9,900 people are in detention as of the 11th of January. Now, this is clearly a huge number,” said OHCHR spokesperson Liz Throssell, briefing reporters at the United Nations in Geneva (UNOG).
View of downtown Nur-Sultan, the capital of Kazakhstan. Credit: World Bank/Shynar Jetpissova
The government initially tried a carrot-and-stick approach to the unrest, but later was pushed to call a state of emergency and ultimately to request military help from former Soviet allies.
Propaganda is most impactful when people don’t think it’s propaganda, and most decisive when it’s censorship you never knew happened. When we imagine that the U.S. military only occasionally and slightly influences U.S. movies, we are extremely badly deceived.
The actual impact is on thousands of movies made, and thousands of others never made. And television shows of every variety.
(UN News)* — The UN and partners launched a more than $5 billion funding appeal for Afghanistan on Tuesday [11 January 2022], in the hope of shoring up collapsing basic services there, which have left 22 million in need of assistance inside the country, and 5.7 million people requiring help beyond its borders.
.
(UN News)* — Amid record global displacement, the UN refugee agency, UNHCR, on Monday [10 January 2022] urged European countries to prioritize the better protection of people fleeing war, conflict and persecution.
UNHCR made the appeal in recommendations to France, which holds the rotating presidency of the Council of the European Union (EU), and the Czech Republic, which assumes the presidency in July.
– There are more under-reported consequences of human activities unmatching the rhythm of Mother Nature. Such is the case, among many others, of the growing salinisation and ‘plastification’ of the world’s soils.
In fact, currently it is estimated that there are more than 833 million hectares of salt-affected soils around the globe (8.7% of the planet). This implies the loss of soil’s capacity to grow food and also increasing impacts on water and the ability to filter pollution.
Soil salinisation and sodification are major soil degradation processes threatening ecosystems and are recognised as being among the most important problems at a global level for agricultural production, food security and sustainability in arid and semi-arid regions, says the UN on occasion of the 2021 World Soil Day.
5 January 2022 (UNEP)* — Greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions – the atmospheric gases responsible for causing global warming and climatic change – are critical to understanding and addressing the climate crisis. Despite an initial dip in global GHG emissions due to COVID-19, the United Nations Environment Programme’s latest Emissions Gap Report (EGR) estimates that emissions rebounded to near-2019 levels in 2021.
HUMAN WRONGS WATCH 