KUALA LUMPUR, Malaysia, Jan 31 2024 (IPS)* – Contractionary economic trends since 2008 and ‘geopolitical’ conflicts subverting international cooperation have worsened world conditions, especially in the poorest countries, mainly in Africa, leaving their poor worse off.
Jomo Kwame Sundaram
Conditions and prospects are so bad that two well-known globalisation cheerleaders have appealed to rich nations for urgent action.
Former IMF Deputy Managing Director and World Bank Senior Vice-President, Professor Anne Krueger and influential Financial Times columnist Martin Wolf warn ominously of the dire consequences of inaction.
Deepening stagnation Following tepid growth after the 2008 global financial crisis, Covid-19 disrupted supply chains worldwide. Then, post-pandemic recovery was disrupted by wars in Ukraine and then Gaza.
Whose Child is This? Whose child is this? Is this child an Iraqi . . . an Israeli . . . a Chechnyan . . . an Afghani . . . a Kurd . . . a Nigerian? Is she or he English, Indonesian, Spanish, Lebanese, Turkish, Congolese, Bosnian, Persian? Does it matter? Is this child not a daughter or son to each of us?
Photo: Courtesy of Dr. Amer Hosin.
Is this child not a human being born of a union of a man and woman whose intimacy, whose passion, whose very breathe yielded a life that sought only to live . . . to enjoy some moments of laughter and delight, some moments of comfort and calm . . . to make yet another life.
23 January 2024 (UNRWA)* —Women and girls are among the most vulnerable groups in any society. Their vulnerability is typically amplified in times of crisis, such as the displacement of Gaza’s population because of the war.
(UN News)* — Mass evacuation orders issued by the Israeli military to the people of Gaza continue to push them “into ever smaller areas” amid “ever-intensifying violence” in likely violation of international humanitarian law, the UN human rights office, OHCHR, said on Friday [].
The OHCHR warning came nearly four months into the war, which has seen widespread Israeli bombardment of the Gaza Strip in response to Hamas-led attacks on Israeli communities beginning 7 October when some 1,200 people were massacred and more than 250 taken hostage.
(UN News)* —Women and children account for roughly 70 per cent of people killed in the war in Gaza, with two mothers killed every hour since hostilities erupted more than 100 days ago, according to a UN Women report published on Friday [19 January 2024].
The report examines the gendered impact of the conflict, which has left more than 23,000 Palestinians dead, according to Gazan health authorities, about 16,000 of whom are women or children.
(UN News)* — Babies are being “delivered into hell” in Gaza with many others likely dying as a result of conflict with Israel and increasingly dire conditions in the enclave, UN humanitarians warned on Friday [].
Reiterating urgent international calls for a ceasefire, the UN Children’s Fund (UNICEF) reported that there have been nearly 20,000 births since the start of widespread Israeli bombardment in response to Hamas-led attacks in Israel that left some 1,200 dead and approximately 250 taken hostage.
UNITED NATIONS, Jan 15 2024 (IPS)* – The world’s rich are getting progressively richer while the world’s poor continue to be increasingly poorer.
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Credit: Oxfam
In a new report released January 15, Oxfam says the wealth of the world’s five richest men has doubled since 2020 –even as five billion people were made poorer in a “decade of division.”
Principled Diplomacy Critical to Uphold Human Rights Framework
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(New York) – Global leaders have failed to take strong stands to protect human rights during 2023, a year of some of the worst crises and challenges in recent memory, with deadly consequences, Human Rights Watch on 11 January 2024 said in its World Report 2024.
(WMO)*, 12 January 2024 — The World Meteorological Organization (WMO) has officially confirmed that 2023 is the warmest year on record, by a huge margin.
Ed Hawkins Warming Stripes | | Ed Hawkins
The annual average global temperature approached 1.5° Celsius above pre-industrial levels – symbolic because the Paris Agreement on climate change aims to limit the long-term temperature increase (averaged over decades rather than an individual year like 2023) to no more than 1.5° Celsius above pre-industrial levels.
Palestinians arrested in the northern Gaza Strip describe how Israeli soldiers systematically abused civilians and combatants alike, from severe deprivation to brutal physical violence.
5 Jan 2024 – In early December, images circulated worldwide showing dozens of Palestinian men in the city of Beit Lahiya, in the northern Gaza Strip, who were stripped to their underwear, kneeling or sitting hunched over, then blindfolded and put into the back of Israeli military trucks like cattle. The vast majority of these detainees were civilians with no affiliation to Hamas, Israeli security officials later confirmed, and the men were taken away by the army without notifying their families of the detainees’ whereabouts. Some of them never returned.
| Ed Hawkins
HUMAN WRONGS WATCH 