'Unseen' News and Views
28 January 2021 (UN News)* — The head of the World Health Organization (WHO) vowed on Wednesday [27 January 2021] to “end the scourge of neglected tropical diseases”, which affect more than a billion mainly poor people, and thrive where there is little access to quality health services, clean water, and sanitation.
In 1565, Pieter Bruegel the Elder created “The Massacre of the Innocents,” a provocative masterpiece of religious art. The painting reworks a biblical narrative about King Herod’s order to slaughter all newborn boys in Bethlehem for fear that a messiah had been born there. Bruegel’s painting situates the atrocity in a contemporary setting, a 16th Century Flemish village under attack by heavily armed soldiers.
Depicting multiple episodes of gruesome brutality, Bruegel conveys the terror and grief inflicted on trapped villagers who cannot protect their children. Uncomfortable with the images of child slaughter, the Holy Roman Emperor Rudolph II, after acquiring the painting, ordered another reworking.
A University of Oxford/UNDP initiative, the survey results span 50 countries, which cover more than half of the world’s population.
Forest on the island of Dominica. With 54% support, the conservation of forests was the most popular climate action policy selected by participants in the Peoples’ Climate Vote. It was the world’s largest climate change public poll. Credit: IPS/Alison Kentish
– Between October and December 2020, something was different for people playing popular video games like Words with Friends, Angry Birds and Subway Surfers. Instead of a traditional 30-second ad, gamers across the world were invited to participate in a climate change survey.
Shoes, a ball and a hat caught on a three layered barbed-wire fence at the Fylakio reception and identification centre near the Greek-Turkish border. © UNHCR/Achilleas Zavallis
“UNHCR has received a continuous stream of reports of some European states restricting access to asylum, returning people after they have reached territory or territorial waters, and using violence against them at borders,” said UNHCR’s Assistant High Commissioner for Protection, Gillian Triggs.
“The pushbacks are carried out in a violent and apparently systematic way. Boats carrying refugees are being towed back. People are being rounded-up after they land and then pushed back to sea. Many have reported violence and abuse by state forces.”
27 January 2021 (UN News)* — Heavy rains and floods in north-west Syria has worsened the plight of tens of thousands of internally displaced persons, destroying their tents, food and belongings in the midst of winter, the UN Office for Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) said on Tuesday [26 January 2021].
At least 196 IDP sites in Idlib and Aleppo reportedly sustained damage, with many roads leading to the camps cut off by heavy rains between 14 and 20 January, the Office said in a humanitarian bulletin. At least 67,600 have reportedly been affected, and more than 3,760 tents destroyed,with over 7,720 damaged.
“Thousands of people have been temporarily relocated, many requiring shelter, food, and non-food item support immediately, and in the long term”, OCHA said.
For many years, the elite private members’ club has sustained the outgoing US president. But is it all about to fall apart?
21 January 2021 (openDemocracy)*— As Donald Trump leaves office, the place that has come to symbolise Brand Trump is Mar-a-Lago – his 20-acre, 128-room private members’ club in Palm Beach, Florida. With much of the Trump business empire heavily indebted and losing money, Mar-a-Lago is one of its few genuine cash cows.
According to the Government Accountability Office, the US taxpayer has paid $1m a day for each of the days Trump has spent at Mar-a-Lago.
– Current development fads fetishize data, ostensibly for ‘evidence-based policy-making’: if not measured, it will not matter. So, forget about getting financial resources for your work, programmes and projects, no matter how beneficial, significant or desperately needed.
Jomo Kwame Sundaram
Measure for measure
Agencies, funds, programmes and others lobby and fight for attention by showcasing their own policy agendas, ostensible achievements and potential. Many believe that the more indicators they get endorsed by the ‘international community’, the more financial support they can expect to secure.
Collecting enough national data to properly monitor progress on the Sustainable Development Goals is expensive. Data collection costs, typically borne by the countries themselves, have been estimated at minimally over three times total official development assistance (ODA).
Remember aid declined after the US-Soviet Cold War, and again following the 2008-9 global financial crisis. More recently, much more ODA is earmarked to ‘support’ private investments from donor countries.
The latest analysis of the labour market impact of COVID-19 by the ILO, records massive damage to working time and income, with prospects for a recovery in 2021 slow, uneven and uncertain unless early improvements are supported by human-centred recovery policies.
GENEVA, 25 January 2021 (ILO)* – Tentative signs of recovery are emerging in global labour markets, following unprecedented disruption in 2020 due to the COVID-19 pandemic , according to the latest report from the International Labour Organization.
When a society is deeply troubled, and governed in ways that seem under the influence of dark forces and disinformation becomes part of everyday life, it seems natural that all sorts of explanations will flourish.
Richard Falk
Few of us can handle uncertainty, and so many affirm falsehoods for the sake of achieving a specious clarity about the unknowable, or at least convert uncertainty into congenial forms of certainty, a dynamic that explains the rise of cultist thinking in our time and the spread of extremist versions of religious teachings.
One variant of this phenomenon that has gained salience during the Trump presidency was supposedly pernicious role of the American ‘deep state.’
Trumpists complaining that unelected bureaucrats were subverting the great leader’s agenda while anti-Trumpists were disappointed that this source of influence didn’t find ways to remove such a political imposter given the damage he was doing national self-confidence and to the international rendering of the previously high end American brand. Some asked in exasperated tones ‘why is the deep state asleep?’
26 January 2021 (UNEP)* — People, including children and indigenous communities, are increasingly turning to the courts to compel governments and businesses to respect and accelerate commitments on climate change.
REUTERS/Anushree Fadnavis / 26 Jan 2021
According to a report from the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP), published today [26 January 2021], the number of climate change litigation cases has surged in the last four years and now stands at 1,550 in 38 countries (39 including the courts of the European Union).
As of 1 July 2020, some 1,200 of these cases were filed in the United States and 350 in all other countries combined.
HUMAN WRONGS WATCH 