'Unseen' News and Views – By Baher Kamal & The Like
The Values Espoused by Madiba[1] Are Burnt in the Civil Unrest
The cold, wintry South African weather experienced last week was the background setting for the serious, nationwide riots, in the midst of the Third Wave of SARS Cov-2 pandemic, with the Delta variant[2], wreaking havoc amongst the large unvaccinated population of South Africa.
Statue of Mandela Outside the Union Building in Pretoria RSA
Tigrayans who fled the conflict in Ethiopia’s Tigray region stand on a hilltop overlooking Umm Rakouba refugee camp in Qadarif, eastern Sudan, November 26, 2020 © 2020 Nariman El-Mofty/AP Images
30 July 2021 (Human Rights Watch)* — Fighting in Ethiopia’s northern Tigray region is entering its ninth month, and it may intensify after leaders in several of Ethiopia’s regions as well as its capital, Addis Ababa, called on residents, including youth, to mobilize against the Tigray fighters.
Parwana Amiri, 17, lives in the Ritsona camp, near Athens. She has helped organize informal classes for asylum-seeking children in the camp, whose access to public schools was severely limited by local authorities during the 2020-21 school year. © 2021 Human Rights Watch. ©
The price of failing to fund children’s school meals far outweighs the cost of such programmes, World Food Programme (WFP) Executive Director David Beasley said on 28 July 2021.
Conakry (International Organizaion for Migration)* – As a teenager, Mariam Conté’s dream of going to school in France led her down a road to hell.
Nasra suffered from distance, pressure, racism and injustice in a context she thought was safe. In her migratory journey, she was a victim of trafficking. Photo: Sibylle Desjardins / IOM
“I wanted to go to France to continue my education, but I failed to secure the required resources and support,” she says.
“I couldn’t make the journey through regular channels so friends proposed we travel through Libya. We sold an uncle’s vehicle to pay XOF 1,000,000 (EUR 1,500) to a Burkinabé smuggler.”
Life then took a grim turn. Mariam travelled through Algeria and Libya, where she was sequestered under harsh and humiliating conditions. She was trafficked, primarily for prostitution and sexual slavery.
30 July 2021 (UN News)* — A teenage girl who was sold for sex for the price of a few beers as a twelve-year-old, has told the United Nations how she was trafficked between Burundi and Tanzania in East Africa.
Elisabeth (not her real name) is one of the lucky ones. She survived the ordeal and received assistance from IOM to return home to Burundi.
(United Nations)* — Human trafficking is a crime that exploits women, children and men for numerous purposes including forced labour and sex. Since 2003 the UN Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC) has collected information on about 225,000 victims of trafficking detected worldwide.
Globally countries are detecting and reporting more victims and are convicting more traffickers. This can be the result of increased capacity to identify victims and/or an increased number of trafficked victims.
In the midst of a global pandemic, accompanied by rising inequalities and economic devastation, the voices of human trafficking survivors and victims risk being drowned out.
But listening to their stories is more crucial than ever as the COVID-19 crisis increases fragilities and drives up desperation.
As many as 124 million more people have been pushed into extreme poverty by the pandemic, leaving many millions vulnerable to trafficking.
– In 1995, a highly-respected water expert in South Africa, Bill Pitman, in very concise terms illustrated that the country, already battling a growing lack of water then, would likely run out in 25 years if it did not increase its supply.
Credit: UNICEF
Twenty-five years have now passed and the country is thirstier than ever.
The recent water crisis in Cape Town is just one manifestation of the nation’s chronic water scarcity. And there is likely more water trouble ahead.
