UNICEF’s Appeal: Children in Gaza need life-saving support
UNICEF/UNI521729/El Baba
(UNICEF)* — The escalation of hostilities in the Gaza Strip is having a catastrophic impact on children and families. Children are dying at an alarming rate – thousands have been killed and thousands more injured.
Around 1.7 million people in the Gaza Strip are estimated to have been internally displaced – half of them children. They do not have enough access to water, food, fuel and medicine. Their homes have been destroyed; their families torn apart.
(UN News)* — A senior official with the UN Children’s Fund (UNICEF) has appealed for wider and safer humanitarian access in Gaza, where malnourished babies are slowly dying while the world watches.
“The child deaths we feared are here,” Adele Khodr, UNICEF Regional Director for the Middle East and North Africa, said in a statement issued on Sunday [].
At least 10 children have died from dehydration and malnutrition at Kamal Adwan Hospital in the north in recent days, according to reports.
Ms. Khodr warned that “there are likely more children fighting for their lives” in one of the few remaining hospitals in the enclave, and perhaps even more in the north who cannot access care at all.
(UN News)* — The Gaza conflict “is also a war on women”, who continue to suffer its devastating impacts, the UN agency championing gender equality has said.
WFP/Wissam Nassar | Two women and one child in front of their house of sorts in the heart of Gaza. Apart from their appalling living conditions, Gazan parents find themselves unable to meet their children’s basic needs such as food, health and housing.
UN Women estimated that 9,000 women have been reportedly killed by Israeli forces since the war erupted nearly five months ago. However, the figure is likely to be higher as many more are reported dead under the rubble.
“While this war spares no one, UN Women data shows that it kills and injures women in unprecedented ways,” the agency said in a press release issued late on Friday [].
Libya, 2 FEBRUARY 2024 (IOM)* –– In 2021, Owehidi – a father of three – set out from Bangladesh to Libya, seeking to secure a better income to help his family. He eventually settled in the city of Derna where he worked as a butcher. He was warmly welcomed into the tightly knit and mutually supportive community of Bangladeshi migrant workers.
Bangladeshi migrants board their flight back to Dhaka from Benina International Airport, a return to roots and reunion. Photo: IOM Libya 2023/Mouied Duffani
He was thrilled with this new beginning, seeing it as a step towards a more prosperous life for his family.
(Beirut) – Representatives of two construction companies in Saudi Arabiaannounced recently that migrant workers will get their long overdue unpaid wages, but gaps in the repayment scheme puts the payments at risk, Human Rights Watch said on 29 February 2024.
(UN News)* —The “carnage” in Gaza has left more than 30,000 dead and must end immediately, UN rights chief Volker Türk told the Human Rights Council on Thursday [], after almost five months of constant Israeli bombardment and mass displacement in the enclave, prompted by Hamas-led attacks.
“The war in Gaza must end,” Mr. Türk said, insisting that it was “well past time” for peace, accountability and investigations into the “clear” violations of international humanitarian law and possible war crimes by both sides.
How can I hold the knowledge of unspeakable horrors happening far away and not explode inside?
D.R. Congo
How can I sit in my modest but comfortable home, refrigerator well stocked, knowing what unbearable suffering is being inflicted on my brothers and sisters in the human family and not run raging through the streets screaming Stop! Stop!?
How can I hold the knowledge of my own so-called government, via named and nameless maleficent megalomaniacs, facilitating unspeakable horrors far away and not take the first flight to my nation’s capital and hurl buckets of blood at the White House?
Rafah, GAZA STRIP, 23 February 2024 (UNFPA)* – “It was exhausting – we handled 78 cases in one night.” There are only five beds for deliveries at the Al-Helal Al-Emirati maternity hospital in Rafah, where midwife Samira Hosny Qeshta works.
(UN News)* — If the world is to move away from fossil fuels, we will need to extract far more rare minerals, to power renewable energy sources such as wind turbines and solar plants. However, energy experts point out that mining these minerals can be a dirty process, ravaging the environment, and leading to human rights abuses.
We all know that we’re in the middle of a climate crisis: temperatures are rising, the weather is becoming more extreme, and this is having a negative effect on the economy, the environment, and society in general.
(UN News)* —The concept of “autonomous” cars, moving us all around in an orderly, congestion-free fashion has been around, in various forms, for decades. But, despite some impressive technological advances in recent years, that vision is still some way off.
“Connected vehicles” also raise fears of hacking, and cars being remotely controlled by unscrupulous individuals or organizations.
A good example is the recent movie, Leave the World Behind, which features a scene in which hundreds of electric cars are hacked, causing them to smash into each other on a New York highway.
Nevertheless, the industry is forging ahead with plans to introduce increasing levels of autonomy in the latest car models, and the UN is at the heart of those discussions, which involve governments and the transport industry, aimed at developing international regulations and guidelines governing automated driving.
HUMAN WRONGS WATCH 