(UN News)* — UN teams and humanitarian partners in Afghanistan are mobilizing in response to devastating windstorms and flash floods that have ravaged eastern regions of the country, resulting in dozens of fatalities and the destruction of hundreds of homes.
KUALA LUMPUR, Malaysia, Jul 24 2024 (IPS)* –– Many low-income countries (LICs) continue to slip further behind the rest of the world. Meanwhile, people in extreme poverty have been increasing again after decades of decline.
Jomo Kwame Sundaram
Falling further behind
World output more than doubled from $36 trillion in 1990 to $87 trillion by 2021 (in constant US dollars), but this growth has not been evenly distributed, causing most LICs to fall further behind.
Many of the world’s poorest economies have had meagre growth since the 1960s. As most developing countries have made progress, income gaps among nations have declined.
(UN News)* —A UN convoy has been hit by “heavy shooting” from Israeli forces at a checkpoint while en route to Gaza City, the United Nations agency for Palestine refugees, UNRWA, said on Monday [].
UNRWA | A displaced Palestinian woman washes clothes in a classroom at shelter run by the UN agency for Palestine refugees, UNRWA, in Khan Younis, southern Gaza.
UNITED NATIONS, Jul 22 2024 (IPS)* ––The Palestinians in Gaza have been victims of a double tragedy: killings by Israel’s mostly American-made weapons and deaths by starvation.
A family cooks a meal in a temporary accommodation in the Al-Aqsa Martyrs Hospital. Credit: UN World Food Programme (WFP)
And now comes a revelation of a new weapon of war: how Israel has been systematically weaponizing water against Palestinians in Gaza, according to a new report from the global human rights organization, Oxfam.
On the outskirts of Lebanon’s second capital, Tripoli, lies a Palestinian refugee camp that is almost as old as their plight itself.
.
UN News/Ezzat El-Ferri | A girl sitting on the steps to her home in the Al Biddawi camp for Palestine refugees in northern Lebanon.
.
()* —The Al Biddawi camp for Palestine refugees was established in 1955 to host many of those who had been forcibly displaced from the Upper Galilee and northern coastal cities during what is known as the Palestinian Nakba, or catastrophe in Arabic.
()* — The entire social fabric of families is unraveling in Haiti as displacement in the country reaches record numbers due largely to insecurity and gang-related violence, according to Abdoulaye Sawadogo, head of the UN’s humanitarian coordination office, OCHA, in the Caribbean island nation.
Climate change is fuelling flooding and other forms of extreme weather, causing fresh displacement and making life even harder for people already uprooted from their homes.
()* —The UN on Thursday [] observed the first International Day of Reflection and Commemoration of the 1995 Genocide in Srebrenica, honouring the memory of 8,000 Bosnian Muslims brutally killed by the Bosnian Serb army.
.
ICTY/Isabella Tan Hui Huang | Items recovered in a warehouse in the former Yugoslavia where men and boys were held, were used as evidence in trials at the ICTY.
.
The incident was the largest massacre in Europe since the Holocaust during World War Two.
(UN News)* — In Gaza, overwhelmed hospitals, soaring temperatures, hunger and a lack of even basic sanitation present an ever more deadly threat to a population under constant attack, UN humanitarians warned on Tuesday [].
UNRWA | Forcibly displaced by Israeli relocation orders, Palestinians take as many belongings as they can, before heading in search of a new place to shelter.
Briefing journalists in Geneva, UN World Health Organization (WHO) spokesperson Tarik Jasarevic said that according to the enclave’s health authorities, 34 people have died of malnutrition and dehydration amid ongoing Israeli bombardment, sparked by Hamas-led terror attacks on 7 October.
(UN News)* —Israel’s order for people to leave Gaza City on Wednesday [] “will only fuel mass suffering for Palestinian families”, many of whom have been displaced multiple times, the UN relief coordination office, OCHA, has warned.