(UN News)* — During the first half of the year, 289 boys and girls died while crossing the Mediterranean Sea to reach Europe, or double the number compared to the same period in 2022, the UN Children’s Fund (UNICEF) reported on Friday [].
The figure is equivalent to about 11 children dying each week, “far beyond what we hear in news headlines,” Vera Knaus, the agency’s Global Lead on Migration and Displacement, told journalists attending the biweekly UN humanitarian briefing in Geneva.
(UN News)* — The international community must act now to protect future generations from the scourge of conflict-related sexual violence, the UN’s advocate on the issue, Pramila Patten, told the Security Council on Friday [
UN Photo/Marie Frechon (file)
Victims of sexual violence at a shelter in Goma, Democratic Republic of the Congo. UN Photo/Marie Frechon (file)
“Every new wave of warfare brings with it a rising tide of human tragedy, including new waves of war’s oldest, most silenced and least condemned crime,” she said.
The Council meeting to examine implementation of its resolutions on conflict-related sexual violence was convened by the United Kingdom, which holds the rotating presidency this month.
More children continue to fall victims of trafficking from exploitative and discriminative practices. Photo: IOM.
Geneva/ Washington, 5 July 2023 (IOM)* – More than half of child trafficking victims are trafficked within their own country according to new report by the International Organization for Migration (IOM) and François-Xavier Bagnoud Center for Health and Human Rights at Harvard University (FXB).
The report further reveals that in cases of international trafficking children are mostly trafficked to neighbouring, wealthier countries.
Bangladesh authorities are failing to adequately protect Rohingya refugees from surging violence by armed groups and criminal gangs, with layers of barriers to police, legal, and medical assistance.
Authorities have been forcing Rohingya leaders to serve as informants, putting them at grave risk of being abducted or killed, without access to protection.
Dire Dawa, 10 July 2023 (IOM)* – Sixteen-year-old Abel Ahmed* has never been to school. Originally from Dera, Oromia Regional State, North Shoa Zone in Ethiopia, his family could not afford to send him to school. Instead, he was supporting his family’s small-scale farming on their piece of land where they planted sorghum. .
Abel* is a 16-year-old migrant boy who decided to take the Eastern Route for economic reasons. Photo: IOM 2023/Eva Sibanda
“My family has problems with money. I had a plan to go to school but I could not,” he explains.
One month ago, he left home with his peers and friends to look for work, having heard of stories from family members who managed to succeed in finding work in Yemen.
A study by the International Organization for Migration (IOM) reveals that children from Habru, Dire Dawa, Bedeno and Sigmo parts of Oromia in Ethiopia reported having been subjected to forms of child labour, including hazardous work in farms in Yemen.
(UN News)* — The pointe shoes were a testament to unfulfilled hopes. They belonged to a young ballet dancer from Bosnia and Herzegovina whose life was forever changed by the brutal conflict that broke out in the heart of Europe at the end of the 20th century and were on display at the UN Headquarters in New York to educate visitors about the horrors of war and genocide.
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UN News/Hisae Kawamori
Kada Hotić holds photographs of her son, husband, and two brothers, who were lost in the Srebrenica genocide.
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Among the exhibit’s visitors were members of the Mothers of Srebrenica, an association that united thousands of people – mothers, sisters, and wives – who have lost loved ones in the massacre in their city.
(UN News)* — Women and girls of African descent face a “systemic and historical pattern” of racial abuse in the health sector in countries across the world, leaving them at increased risk of death during childbirth, the UN’s sexual and reproductive health agency said on Wednesday [].
“The scourge of racism continues for Black women and girls in the Americas, many of whom are descendants of the victims of enslavement,” Natalia Kanem, Executive Director of the UN Population Fund (UNFPA), said in a news release.
“Too often, Afrodescendent women and girls are abused and mistreated, their needs are not taken seriously, and their families are shattered by the preventable death of a loved one during childbirth. “Justice and equality will only be possible when our healthcare systems see these women and provide them with respectful, compassionate care.”
(UN News)* — The UN’s top human rights official urged respect for religious tolerance on Tuesday []as Member States gathered in Geneva in response to the recent burning of the holy Quran in the Swedish capital.
UNAMA/Barat Ali Batoor | Men pray at a mosque in Afghanistan.
Addressing the Human Rights Council, UN High Commissioner for Human Rights Volker Türk noted that the tome was the “core of faith” for well over one billion Muslims.
Those who had burned the Quran most likely did so “to express contempt and inflame anger”, Mr. Türk said, as he warned that these acts also aimed “to drive wedges between people”, to provoke and transform differences into hatred.
(UN News)* — As conflict continues to rage in Sudan, UN humanitarians expressed alarm on Tuesday [] at a surge in the number of people fleeing across the border to Chad.
From the World Food Programme (WFP), Chad Country Director Pierre Honnorat said that 20,000 people crossed into Chad just last week.
Speaking to journalists via Zoom from the Zabout refugee camp in Goz Beida, Mr. Honnorat described desperate scenes: “We can see that they have suffered, many lost family members, and we don’t even dare ask them, ‘Where are the men?’ The answer from the mothers is often that they were killed. So, you just see many women, many children.”
(UN NEWS)* — Global sea surface temperatures reached a record high in May, June, and July – and the warming El Niño weather pattern is only just getting started – experts at the UN World Meteorological Organization (WMO) said on Monday [].
Unsplash/Rafael Garcin
Global sea surface temperatures were at a record high in May and June 2023.
Alarm bells have been rung at the UN agency in particular because of an “unprecedented peak” in sea surface temperatures in the North Atlantic.
HUMAN WRONGS WATCH 