Archive for ‘Others-USA-Europe-etc.’

27/12/2023

‘Almost 500,000 Returning Afghans in Desperate Need of Food, Shelter and Employment to Survive Winter’

Human Wrongs Watch

By the Norwegian Refugee Council*

14 December 2023 — A group of nine international NGOs operating in Afghanistan urgently calls on the international community and humanitarian donors to increase their support for displaced families who have returned to Afghanistan to ensure their survival during the harsh winter months.
.

Almost three months have passed since Pakistan announced that undocumented foreign nationals must leave the country or face deportation; since then, close to half a million Afghans have crossed the border into Afghanistan.

read more »

26/12/2023

‘Gaza: Forced and Protracted Displacement of Palestinians Would Constitute a Serious Breach of International Law and an Atrocity Crime’

Human Wrongs Watch

Palestinian displaced families in southern Gaza living in tents. Almost 1.7 million Palestinians displaced since the war started. Photo: NRC/Yousef Hammash

26 December 2023 — This concern follows Israel’s forcible transfer of hundreds of thousands of Palestinians within Gaza. Palestinians fear further displacement could lead to a refugee crisis like the catastrophic events of 1948, known in Arabic as the ‘Nakba’.

read more »

24/12/2023

Rise in SIPRI Top 100 Arms Sales Revenue Delayed by Production Challenges and Backlogs

Human Wrongs Watch

By the STOCKHOLM INTERNATIONAL PEACE RESEARCH INSTITUTE (SIPRI)*

(Stockholm) — Revenues from sales of arms and military services by the 100 largest companies in the industry totalled $597 billion in 2022, 3.5 per cent less than 2021 in real terms, even as demand rose sharply, according to new data released today [4 December 2023] by the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI), available at www.sipri.org.
.
High Explosive Ammunition for the 105mm Light gunbeing used during on Exercise Steel Sabre.

Photo: Wikimedia

The decrease was chiefly the result of falling arms revenues among major companies in the United States. Revenues increased substantially in Asia and Oceania and the Middle East.

read more »

24/12/2023

Regenerative Agroecology: The Necessary Solution to Counter Climate Change

Human Wrongs Watch

By Prof. Vandana Shiva | Navdanya International – TRANSCEND Media Service*

The industrial agriculture paradigm, which sees the world as a machine, and not as a self-organized living system, has created devastation on the planet, while contributing significantly to the issue of climate change.

.

.

Navdanya International’s latest graphic report, ‘Regeneration is Life‘, presented at Cop 28 in Dubai, analyzes the actual causes at the root of climate change and highlights the true regenerative solutions against the false solutions proposed by polluters.

read more »

23/12/2023

Dengue Spike Fuels Concerns of Public Health Threat in Previously Untouched Countries: WHO

Human Wrongs Watch

(UN News)* — This year’s surprising spike in dengue infections globally represents a potentially high public health threat, the UN World Health Organization (WHO) said on Friday [22 December 2023]. 

image1170x530cropped

© UNDP/Gwenn Dubourthoumieu | Bed nets protect against mosquitoes that carry diseases like malaria and dengue fever.

The warning came as WHO reported more than five million dengue infections and 5,000 deaths from the disease worldwide this year.

read more »

23/12/2023

World Bank Enables Private Capture of Profits, Public Resources

Human Wrongs Watch

KUALA LUMPUR, Malaysia, Dec 20 2023 (IPS)* The World Bank insists commercial finance is necessary for achieving economic recovery and the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), but does little to ensure profit-hungry commercial finance serves the public interest.

Jomo Kwame Sundaram

By failing to address pressing challenges within their purview, the second-ever Bretton Woods institutions’ (BWIs) annual meetings on the African continent, in Marrakech in October 2023, set the developing world even further back.

The International Monetary and Financial Committee, which oversees the International Monetary Fund (IMF), could not agree, by consensus, on the usual end-of-meeting ministerial communique for ‘geopolitical’ reasons. The Development Committee, which governs the World Bank Group, fared little better.

read more »

22/12/2023

Catastrophic Shortage of Food in Gaza—Starvation as a Weapon of War

Human Wrongs Watch

UNITED NATIONS, Dec 22 2023 (IPS)* As the killings of civilians in Gaza rose to over 20,000, the besieged city—which has been virtually reduced to rubble by Israeli bombardments—is also being ravaged by hunger and starvation.

A-family-cooks-a_

A family cooks a meal in a temporary accommodation in the Al-Aqsa Martyrs Hospital. Credit: WFP

In new estimates released on December 21, the Integrated Food Security Phase Classification (IPC), a global partnership that includes the World Health Organization (WHO), said Gaza is facing “catastrophic levels of food insecurity,” with the risk of famine “increasing each day.”

An unprecedented 93% of the population in Gaza is facing crisis levels of hunger, with insufficient food, and high levels of malnutrition.

read more »

22/12/2023

Injured Patients ‘Waiting to Die’ in Northern Gaza as Last Hospital Shuts Down

Human Wrongs Watch

(UN News)* — There are no functioning hospitals in the north of Gaza and injured patients who need surgery and cannot be moved are “waiting to die”, the UN health agency said on Thursday [], in a plea for a ceasefire to allow more aid into the shattered enclave.

.

A 3-year-old boy, whose house was bombed,  recovers in Nasser hospital after the amputation of part of his right leg.
© UNICEF/Abed Zaqout | A 3-year-old boy, whose house was bombed, recovers in Nasser hospital after the amputation of part of his right leg

The latest grave assessment from the World Health Organization (WHO) came after UN teams reached Al Ahli Arab hospital and Al Shifa hospital on Wednesday, amid reports of intensifying ground operations by Israeli Defense Forces and continuing airstrikes in the Gaza Strip, in response to Hamas’s 7 October terror attacks on southern Israel.

21/12/2023

Thumos, Fire in the Belly and a Taste of Salt

Human Wrongs Watch

By Marilyn Langlois – TRANSCEND Media Service*

Frequently articulated expressions derive from the Greek terms logos and eros, but who has heard of thumos?  Why are the root words of logical reasoning and erotic love so familiar while one that drives us to principled action is virtually unknown?

Marilyn-Langlois-e1508246946670

Marilyn Langlois

In her introductory remarks to the first annual David Ray Griffin lecture on 3 December, 2023, writer and researcher Elizabeth Woodworth highlighted the concept of thumos, which she defined as the inability to tolerate injustice without taking action

She ascribed the term to the late David Ray Griffin, one of the premier intellectuals and courageous truth seekers of our time, whose death a year ago went wholly ignored by major media. 

She suggested that those who exert imperial control would prefer we not pay too much attention to thumos or those who exhibit it.

read more »

21/12/2023

Barely a Drop of Safe Water to Drink in Gaza – UNICEF

Human Wrongs Watch

(UN News)* — As the UN Security Council was slated to meet for a third consecutive day on Wednesday [] in a new push for consensus to pause the fighting in Gaza, the head of the UN Children’s Fund UNICEF warned that without safe water, “many more children” will soon die from disease.

Children in Khan Younis stop to look at the destruction as they go in search for water.
© UNICEF/Eyad El Baba | Children in Khan Younis stop to look at the destruction as they go in search for water.

“Access to sufficient amounts of clean water is a matter of life and death…children in Gaza have barely a drop to drink,” said UNICEF Executive Director Catherine Russell.

“Children and their families are having to use water from unsafe sources that are highly salinated or polluted. Without safe water, many more children will die from deprivation and disease in the coming days.”

read more »