'Unseen' News and Views
26 November 2020 (UNHCR)* –Over 40,000 Ethiopians have fled the Tigray crisis into eastern Sudan, with no sign of a let-up in new arrivals. Many anxiously hope to be reunited with their families.
An Ethiopian refugee holds a child in a shelter at the Um Rakuba camp in Sudan’s eastern Gedaref province. © UNHCR/Ebrahim Hamid
24 November 2020 (UNHCR)* –The number of Ethiopian refugees streaming into eastern Sudan has now surpassed 40,000 since the crisis began, with more than 5,000 women, children and men fleeing the ongoing fighting in the Tigray region over the weekend.
On November 4, 2020, Ethiopian Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed appeared on state television and acknowledged that he ordered the Ethiopian National Defense Forces (ENDF) to commence operations against the Tigray People’s Liberation Front (TPLF) in response to what he described as attacks by TPLF forces on Ethiopian military bases and federal forces in the regional capital of Mekelle, and at other camps in the Tigray region.
(By UN News)* — Israel’s military operations and prolonged closure of Gaza, has caused economic damage of $16.7 billion between 2007 and 2018, driving the poverty rate up almost fourfold compared to what it might have otherwise been, the UN trade and development agency UNCTAD said in a report published on Wednesday [25 November 2020].
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Gaza’s economy was on the verge of collapse, notes the report for the UN General Assembly, entitled “Economic costs of the Israeli occupation for the Palestinian people: The Gaza Strip under closure and restrictions”.
25 November 2020 (UN News)* — Approximately once every minute and 40 seconds, a child or young person under the age of 20 was infected with HIV last year, the UN Children’s Fund (UNICEF) has reported, calling on governments to “protect, sustain and accelerate” efforts to combat childhood HIV.
Many of the blazes, which come at the tail end of a devastating fire season, are believed to have been set by farmers eager to clear land and sate the booming global demand for beef and soybeans.
A new United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) report, jointly produced with the International Resource Panel, says that type of unbridled international trade is having a damaging effect not only on rainforests but the entire planet.
– The World Bank has been leading other multilateral development banks (MDBs) and international financial institutions to press developing country governments to ‘de-risk’ infrastructure and other private, especially foreign investments.
Jomo Kwame Sundaram
They promote public-private partnerships (PPPs) supposedly to mobilize more private finance to achieve the Sustainable Development Goals.
PPP advocacy has been stepped up after developing countries’ pleas for better international tax cooperation were blocked at the third United Nations’ Financing for Development conference (FfD3) in Addis Ababa in mid-2015.
Official support for infrastructure PPPs seems stronger than ever. The Bank’s Global Infrastructure Facility (GIF) was set up to coordinate MDBs, private investors and governments promoting PPPs. Meanwhile, the G20 has been trying to modify the mandates of national and international development banks to enable them to initiate infrastructure PPPs with the private sector.
(UN News)* — The Desert Locust crisis which struck the greater Horn of Africa region earlier this year threatening food supplies for millions, could re-escalate as recent strong winds carried mature swarmlets from southern Somalia into eastern and northeastern Kenya, the UN Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) said on Tuesday [24 November 2020].
A gravity-fed, gated irrigation system pulls water from Sebwe River at Mubuku, Uganda ©FAO/Eva Pek20 November 2020 (IWGIA)* — After resisting the policy of forced assimilation enforced during the decades of military rule, today Indigenous peoples of Myanmar are subjected to land dispossession in the name of boosting economic development and implementation of the country’s climate commitments.
Community, part of the Karen people. Photo: Alejandro Parellada
Myanmar, formerly known as Burma, is home to 54 million people, including more than 135 ethnic groups and Indigenous Peoples. Myanmar is thus considered to be one of the most ethnically diverse countries in Southeast Asia.
HUMAN WRONGS WATCH 