'Unseen' News and Views
Geneva/Cox’s Bazar, 14 March 20214 (IOM)* -– The International Organization for Migration (IOM) is appealing for USD 119 million to support nearly a million Rohingya refugees in the world’s largest refugee settlement in Cox’s Bazar, Bangladesh, and the vulnerable community generously hosting them.
(UN News)* — Records were once again broken for greenhouse gas levels, surface temperatures, ocean heat and acidification, sea level rise, ice cover and glacier retreat, a new global report issued by the UN weather agency (WMO) on Tuesday [] shows.
Heatwaves, floods, droughts, wildfires and rapidly intensifying tropical cyclones caused misery and mayhem, upending everyday life for millions and inflicting many billions of dollars in economic losses, according to the WMO State of the Global Climate 2023 report.
“Sirens are blaring across all major indicators… Some records aren’t just chart-topping, they’re chart-busting. And changes are speeding up,” said UN Secretary-General António Guterres in a video message for the launch.
Real estate events are taking place to auction off Palestinian land to aspiring settlers. Pro-Palestine activists have called protests in response.
Zionist protesters confronting members of Neturei Karta participating in a pro-Palestine protest in Cedarhurst, Long Island.
14 Mar 2024 – “The Great Real Estate Event” has been touring the United States and Canada, exhibiting property for sale on stolen Palestinian land. Each event has been met with mass protests by Palestine solidarity activists, sometimes leading to clashes with Zionist attendees and protesters.
(UN News)* — UN humanitarians reiterated their resolve on Tuesday [] to help the people of Gaza, where increasing numbers of children are on “the brink of death” from acute hunger, caused by five months of intense Israeli bombardment and constant aid access denials.
“What doctors and medical staff are telling us is more and more they are seeing the effects of starvation; they’re seeing newborn babies simply dying because they (are) too low birth weight,” said Dr Margaret Harris from the UN World Health Organization (WHO).
“Increasingly, we’re seeing children that are at the point, brink of death that need refeeding,” the WHO spokesperson told journalists in Geneva, a day after global nutrition experts warned that famine could happen “anytime” in northern Gaza.
(UN News)* — Amid reports that the Israeli military stormed Al-Shifa Hospital in Gaza City on Monday [] in search of Hamas fighters, UN humanitarians warned that new food insecurity data indicates that famine could happen “anytime”.
“Famine is projected to occur anytime between now and May 2024 in the northern governorates,” the UN Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) said, upon publication of a new Integrated Food Security Phase Classification (IPC) report on Gaza.
GENEVA (UN Human Rights)* 18 March 2024 – Twelve months into the armed conflict in Sudan, 24 million children are at risk of a generational catastrophe, and their rights to life, survival, protection, education, health, and development have all been gravely violated, a UN committee said.
(UN News)*, — Efforts are being made in the south of Madagascar to end a traditional but illegal practice in which girls are promised as a wife to older men, sometimes even before they are born.
The arranged marriage typically involves the exchange of a highly prized and culturally important Zebu cow for teenage girls as young as 13 years old.
Now two UN agencies UNICEF and the UN Population Fund (UNFPA) are working together with the local authorities to educate women and also men, through sessions focusing on positive masculinity, about the dangers of the practice and how to treat women as equals.
Prolonged exposure to conflict and deprivation taking a devastating long-term physical and mental toll on generation of children
DAMASCUS/AMMAN 15 March 2024 (UNICEF)* – After thirteen years of conflict in Syria, almost 7.5 million children in the country are in need of humanitarian assistance – more than at any other time during the conflict.
(UN News)* — Amid a rising tide of anti-Muslim hate, top UN officials condemned the scourge on Friday [] as the General Assembly adopted a resolution to push back against it during commemorations marking the International Day to Combat Islamophobia.
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The new resolution, tabled by Pakistan, calls for, among other things, concerted action to fight ongoing violence against Muslims and requests the UN Secretary-General to appoint a special envoy to combat Islamophobia.
The world body created the International Day through a resolution adopted following attacks on two mosques Christchurch, New Zealand, that left 51 people dead on this day in 2019.
Prior to adopting the new resolution, by a vote of 113 in favour to none against, with 44 abstentions, a divided Assembly rejected by a close margin two amendments proposed by a group of European nations.
HUMAN WRONGS WATCH 