The White House reversed course and now says a ceasefire in Lebanon cannot be contingent on a deal in Gaza.
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27 Jun 2024 – Defense Minister Yoav Gallant said Israel was prepared to send Lebanon back to the “Stone Age” with a massive bombing campaign. The White House desperately tries to avert a major war in the Middle East but is not making progress.
After three days of meetings with top officials in Washington, Gallant told reporters that Israel preferred diplomacy but was also willing to utterly destroy Lebanon.
UNITED NATIONS, Jul 3 2024 (IPS)* ––The US gun lobby justifies the unfettered American gun ownership in the US on a misguided premise: Guns don’t kill people, it’s bullets that kill people.
A child watches as bodies are recovered from under the rubble of a house in the Al-Nasr neighborhood, east of the city of Rafah, in the southern Gaza Strip. Credit: UN News/Ziad Taleb
The accusations of genocide and war crimes in Gaza have been directed firstly, at Israel, for the killings of more than 37,700, mostly civilians, and over 86,000 injured, in retaliation for the 1,200 killed by Hamas last October, according to estimates from Gaza health officials, as cited by Cable News Network (CNN) last week.
(UN News)* — With their homes shattered and lives upended by war, civilians in Gaza are clinging to their dignity under the most inhumane conditions, Sigrid Kaag, the UN Senior Humanitarian and Reconstruction Coordinator, said on Tuesday [2 July 2024].
Public services have collapsed and over 1.9 million have now been displaced, she told ambassadors at the Security Council, underscoring the critical need for a full, immediate and complete ceasefire, release of all hostages and unhindered aid across the enclave.
“The war has not merely created a humanitarian crisis, it has unleashed a maelstrom of human misery,” she stated.
The shocking cost of poor storage in the farms of developing countries — and careless shopping in rich ones.
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Sourcing school meals ingredients from local farmers like this one in Cambodia can help reduce food waste. Photo: WFP/Samantha Reinders
– Global hunger isn’t about a lack of food. Right now, the world produces enough food to nourish every child, woman and man on the planet.
But nearly a fifth of all food produced each year is squandered or lost before it can be consumed.
In many rich countries, this food waste happens in the kitchen — when we prepare foods that go uneaten, or leave food to spoil in fridges and kitchen cabinets.
This is a summary of what was said by Andrew Harper, UNHCR Special Advisor on Climate Action – to whom quoted text may be attributed – at today’s press briefing at the Palais des Nations in Geneva.
28 June 2024 (UNHCR)* — Devastating extreme weather events and natural disasters are shattering many refugee and other displaced communities worldwide, worsening their plight and in some cases forcing them to move onwards and start from zero once again.
This is what UNHCR, the UN Refugee Agency, has observed with a series of catastrophic floods, earthquakes, cyclones, storms and heatwaves afflicting refugee and internal displacement settings in Africa, the AmericasLink is external, Asia and beyond.
(UN News)* — Two women from the troubled Carrefour-Feuilles neighborhood in Haiti’s capital Port-au-Prince have shared their traumatic experiences of rape, contracting HIV, and despairing thoughts of suicide, after multiple forced displacements amid widespread gang violence.
Displacements in this Caribbean country have reached record levels, with nearly 600,000 people forced to leave their homes this year – double the number from last year. This makes Haiti the country with the highest number of displacements due to violence.
(UN News)* — On Friday [28 June 2024], at the UN Human Rights Council’s (OHCHR) first panel for the annual full-day discussion on women’s rights, The UN human rights chief Volker Türk told a Human Rights Council panel that it’s time to eliminate laws and practices that contribute to “economic violence” against women and girls.
UN Women/Ryan Brown | Women attend a community meeting in Cameroon.
During his opening statement to the all-day panel dedicated to women and human rights, Mr. Türk said there had been “extraordinary progress” thanks to the worldwide women’s movement.
PORT-AU-PRINCE, Haiti, 26 June 2024 (UNFPA)* -– “One of the biggest problems is insecurity – and the physical and sexual violence that comes with that,” explained Edrish Justilien, 36, a psychologist at the Petite Place Cazeau Hospital in Haiti’s capital Port-au-Prince.
Dr. Justilien spoke to UNFPA, the United Nations sexual and reproductive health agency, about the alarming risks women and girls are grappling with amid the country’s ongoing humanitarian crisis. “Rape cases are what we are seeing most commonly, mostly [committed] by armed gangs.”
()* —Every month, nearly two billion women and girls menstruate, but during times of war and climate disasters, from the conflict in Gaza to the devastation caused by Cyclone Remal in Asia, UN humanitarian teams rush to serve affected communities, providing critical aid, which includes dignity kits.
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UNICEF/Prashanth Vishwanathan | A teacher in India leads an awareness class about menstrual and general hygiene to her students. (file)
What exactly is a dignity kit? On the heels of Menstrual Hygiene Day, marked annually on 28 May, here are five fast facts:
(UN News)* — Over and above the difficulty of actually getting into Gaza, aid teams now face the crushing realization that with a shortage of fuel and dwindling supplies, there is a limit to what they can do to help all those in need, UN aid worker Louise Wateridge told UN News on Friday [28 June 2024].
“You can hear bombardments from the north, the middle and the south… Gaza now really is hell on earth, It’s very hot… Trash is piling up everywhere, people living under plastic sheeting where temperatures soar,” said Ms. Wateridge, a Senior Communications Officer with the UN agency for Palestinian refugees, UNRWA, hours after returning to the shattered enclave since Hamas-led terror attacks and hostage-taking last October sparked the war.
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HUMAN WRONGS WATCH 
