(UN News)* — Central African nations continue to grapple with multidimensional crises, including security threats, extreme weather events and geopolitical tensions, a senior UN official said on Friday [], calling for renewed solidarity with nations in the region.
Abdou Abarry, UN Special Representative for Central Africa, told ambassadors in the Security Council that disasters and extreme weather events displaced more than three million people in the region this year alone.
This has worsened an already fragile socio-economic situation and underscored the need for stronger climate action.
SAN SALVADOR, Dec 10 2024 (IPS)* –Metal mining has a renewed momentum in Central America, encouraged by populist rulers who, in order to soften environmental damage, claim they can develop it in harmony with nature, which is hard to believe. | En español
Representatives of a dozen environmental organisations, united in the Roundtable Against Metal Mining in El Salvador, speak out against Salvadoran president Nayib Bukele’s goal to reopen this industry, banned by law since 2017. Credit: Roundtable Against Metal Mining in El Salvador
Thus, they seek to win the approval of a majority that seems to follow them blindly, but not environmentalists or other social sectors, activists told IPS.
(UN News)* —The UN Secretary-General has expressed concern over the hundreds of Israeli airstrikes against targets in Syria since the overthrow of the Assad regime, calling for the withdrawal of Israeli troops from the demilitarized zone in the strategically important Golan.
In a note to correspondents issued on Thursday [], António Guterres said he was “deeply concerned by the recent and extensive violations of Syria’s sovereignty and territorial integrity.”
(UN News)* — Describing the level of devastation across the Gaza Strip as “absolutely staggering”, the Head of Emergency Communications for the World Food Programme (WFP) has told UN News in an interview that civilians are desperate for lifesaving aid and there’s a growing risk of widespread famine.
Speaking from Gaza, Jonathan Dumont said many people have been displaced multiple times, and that families are living either in tents or in the rubble of collapsed buildings, with no access to electricity or running water.
MADRID, Dec 11 2024 (IPS)* – The available data is self-explanatory: business-prompted human activities have already altered over 70% of the Earth’s lands, with 24 billion tonnes of fertile soil lost due to industrial agriculture, the excessive use of chemicals, overgrazing, deforestation, pollution and other major threats.
Human activity has degraded over 70% of Earth’s land, with 24 billion tonnes of fertile soil lost annually. It takes up to 1,000 years to produce just 2-3 cm of soil. Credit: Busani Bafana/IPS
Border Guards Use Force, Deny Access to Asylum Procedures
(Budapest) – Polish law enforcement is unlawfully, and sometimes violently, forcing people trying to enter the country back to Belaruswithout considering their protection needs, Human Rights Watch said on 10 December 2024.
(UN News)* — Syria’s historic power reset coupled with the highly volatile situation there, has increased basic needs in a country where nearly 17 million people already depended on aid, UN aid teams insisted on Tuesday [].
For those forced to flee the country’s 13-year war, “they are considering how safe Syria is to return to, and how far their rights will be respected before they can make an informed, voluntary decision to return home; they must be given the space to do so without any pressure”, said Shabia Mantoo, a spokesperson from the UN refugee agency, UNHCR.
2 Dec 2024 – Racism is at the core of Western societies complicity in Israeli’s genocide against the Arab Palestinians. That is self-evident.
The United States and Britain are more than accomplices; they are co-belligerents. The behavior of all has been constant over 14 months of graphic depiction day-by-day of atrocities of the most heinous kinds.
Bremmer, Michael
Racism, though, is a multifaceted phenomenon. It encompasses a wide range of attitudes and actions.
They should be parsed as a precondition for analyzing which have been operative in this case, how they shaped policies and interventions, how reconciled with the values of liberal democracies, and how sustained in the face of such glaring criminal abuses of humanity.
(UN News)* — At least 184 people, including 127 elderly men and women, were killed in Haiti’s Wharf Jérémie neighbourhood of Cité Soleil over the weekend, prompting strong condemnation from Secretary-General António Guterres.
According to local reports, the elderly victims were massacred under the orders of a gang leader in the area who consulted a voodoo priest after his son fell ill and died, who pinned the blame for the mystery illness on elders using witchcraft.
CARACAS, Dec 9 2024 (IPS)* – Poverty, while declining in Latin America and the Caribbean so far this century, shows a new face, that of the looming vulnerability of the poor as they become less rural and more urban, the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) says in a new analysis. | En español
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The Altos de Florida neighbourhood in southwest Bogotá shows the shift from rural to urban landscapes. Credit: UNDP
© UNOCHA/Ali Haj Suleiman | A first responder rushes through the aftermath of shelling that targeted hospitals and displaced camps in Idleb, Syria.
© WFP/Jonathan Dumont | People walk on destroyed buildings in Gaza.
HUMAN WRONGS WATCH 