'Unseen' News and Views
Taiz, YEMEN, 6 December 2023 (UNFPA)* – “One day, when I was returning from fetching water, I collapsed on the road. I was bleeding so badly that I knew I was going to lose my baby.”
Umm Mahra was 31 years old and five months pregnant when she was forced to seek refuge with her family in a remote displacement camp in Taiz, in Yemen’s southwestern highlands.
Conflict had erupted across the country and a crippling drought took hold, exacerbating the situation for millions of people already fleeing for their lives.
(UNCCD)* — Recent drought-related data based on research in the past two years and compiled by the UN point to “an unprecedented emergency on a planetary scale, where the massive impacts of human-induced droughts are only starting to unfold.”
UNCCD
Intentionally Targeting Civilians a War Crime
This residential building in Gaza collapsed after it was targeted in an Israeli airstrike. Photo: Yousef Hammash/NRC
5 December 2023 — “The pulverising of Gaza now ranks amongst the worst assaults on any civilian population in our time and age. Each day we see more dead children and new depths of suffering for the innocent people enduring this hell.
(UN News)* — The past decade has been confirmed the warmest ever recorded, continuing an alarming 30-year trend that the UN weather chief said on Tuesday [] is “unequivocally driven by greenhouse gas emissions from human activities.”
Marked by record breaking land and ocean temperatures, the decade between 2011-2020 saw continued rising concentrations of greenhouse gasses that “turbo charged” dramatic glacier loss and sea-level rise, according to a new report from the UN World Meteorological Organization (WMO).
.
LONDON 5th December 2023: At least 2456 fossil fuel lobbyists have been granted access to the COP28 summit in Dubai, signalling an unprecedented presence at crucial climate talks from representatives of some of the world’s biggest polluters, according to a new analysis from the Kick Big Polluters Out (KBPO) coalition.
(UN News)* — UN Secretary-General António Guterres on Sunday [] sent a strong message to the oil and gas industry: the pledges made at COP28 in Dubai fall well short of what’s needed to meaningfully tackle the climate crisis.
As the fourth day of this year’s UN climate conference got underway, the UN chief stated: “The fossil fuel industry is finally starting to wake up, but the promises made clearly fall short of what is required.”
Credit: Carl Court/Getty Images
(UN News)* — A new report by the UN team combatting desertification reveals alarming trends over the past two years which have resulted in an unprecedented emergency due to human-induced droughts.
The Global Drought Snapshot report, released by the UN Convention to Combat Desertification (UNCCD) on Friday [], coinciding with COP 28, paint a grim picture of the scale of lives and livelihoods lost to droughts.
Ibrahim Thiaw, UNCCD Executive Secretary, emphasized the urgency of the situation. “Unlike other disasters that attract media attention, droughts happen silently, often going unnoticed and failing to provoke an immediate public and political response,” he said.
HUMAN WRONGS WATCH 