Human Wrongs Watch
By José Ramos-Horta, former President of East Timor *
We urge immediate action to end the crisis in the Tigray Region

'Unseen' News and Views

– Peru’s first round of elections on 11 April saw voters choosing between 18 presidential candidates with no one candidate leading by an impressive margin.
.

Police in Peru used “unnecessary and excessive force” during protests in the capital last November challenging the legitimacy of the interim President, the UN Human Rights Office found, in a January 2021 report. Meanwhile, supporters of socialist Pedro Castillo and conservative Keiko Fujimori took to the streets on Saturday June 19, as tensions rose over the result of the Jun 6 presidential election. Castillo was leading the official count while Fujimori sought to get votes annulled. Credit: Patricio Lagos Bustamante / LaMula.pe via UN News
UNHCR: World leaders must act to reverse the trend of soaring displacement | Español | Français | عربي
Congolese asylum-seekers await health screening in Zombo, near the border between Uganda and the Democratic Republic of Congo, in July 2020. © UNHCR/Rocco Nuri
(UNHCR)* — UNHCR, the UN Refugee Agency, on 18 June 2021 urged world leaders to step up their efforts to foster peace, stability and cooperation in order to halt and begin reversing nearly a decade-long trend of surging displacement driven by violence and persecution.
War, violence and persecution have forced more than 80 million people around the world to flee their homes, leaving everything behind to save themselves and their families.
Refugees must begin their lives anew.
.

But for so many, the pandemic has wiped out their livelihoods, led to stigmatization and vilification and exposed them disproportionately to the virus.
At the same time, refugees once again demonstrated their invaluable contribution to their adoptive societies as essential and frontline workers.
Drought report calls for new management approach

(UN News)* — Innovative measures to address debt are required to help the world’s more than 100 middle-income countries expand their economies and exit the COVID-19 pandemic, UN Secretary-General António Guterres told the General Assembly on Thursday [17 June 2021].

Suicide remains one of the leading causes of death worldwide, according to WHO’s latest estimates, published on in “Suicide worldwide in 2019”.
Every year, more people die as a result of suicide than HIV, malaria or breast cancer ̶ or war and homicide. In 2019, more than 700 000 people died by suicide: one in every 100 deaths, prompting WHO to produce new guidance to help countries improve suicide prevention and care.
(UN News)* — Sexual violence in conflict “reverberates down generations” and threatens both human and international security, the UN chief said on 17 June 2021 in his message for the International Day for the Elimination of Sexual Violence in Conflict.

Already a “cruel tactic of war, torture, terror and repression”, Secretary-General António Guterres pointed to the turmoil caused by the COVID-19 pandemic that “has made it even more difficult to hold perpetrators of sexual violence to account”.
(Milan) – European Union governments have a collective responsibility to protect the lives and rights of people on the move along the central Mediterranean route, Human Rights Watch on 16 June 2021 said.