'Unseen' News and Views
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.
Gaps in Repayment Program; Wage Theft Still Rampant
(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.
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.
© Ian Maddox | A Tesla car in “autopilot” mode
“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.
Suspension comes as UN agencies join call for safe humanitarian access and new analysis confirms worst fears.
A family who fled Sabra for Deir El Balah cook bread outside a leaky tent with ingredients supplied by WFP. They have barely any clothes or water and share one mattress between eight people. Photo: WFP/Ali Jadallah
(WFP)*, 21 February 2024 — Hungry, thirsty and weak, more and more Gazans are falling sick, according to a report published this week.
At least 90 per cent of children aged under 5 are affected by one or more infectious diseases, with 70 percent having had diarrhoea in the past two weeks, according to analysis from the Global Nutrition Cluster. read more »
— “Here are the choices: ethnic cleansing, apartheid or genocide,” said Palestine’s foreign minister at the opening of public hearings at the International Court of Justice (ICJ) this week, with a record 52 States and three international organizations providing comments and presentations on a case based on the UN General Assembly’s request for an advisory opinion on legal consequences arising from Israel’s policies and practices in Occupied Palestinian Territory.
Filed before the ongoing four-month-old war in Gaza began, the case has triggered heated commentary even before the court’s president, Judge Nawaf Salam, opened the hearings. This recap provides snapshots of the first days of hearings, from 19 to 21 February. The hearings will close on 26 February. Israel chose not to participate.
Killings, Removals, Other Abuses Threaten Rights; Bold Policy Response Needed
© 2024 Brian Stauffer for Human Rights Watch
HUMAN WRONGS WATCH 