31 July 2020 (UNHCR)* – With COVID-19 increasing needs and vulnerabilities of refugees and internally displaced and stateless people, UNHCR, the UN Refugee Agency, is concerned that the impacts of the pandemic are also heightening their risks to trafficking and exploitation. |Español| Français|عربي
31 July 2020 (Wall Street International)* — The US Postal Service is in trouble: according to an article by Prof. Philip F. Rubio, entitled “Save the Postal Service”, published in Atlantic Monthly on April 24, 2020, “The USPS has said that it needs $89 billion in assistance, including $25 billion in grants.”
Republicans realize that they will lose if the 2020 election is fair | Image from Wall Street International.
Republicans realize that they will lose if the 2020 election is fair
Donald Trump’s disastrous handling of the COVID-19 pandemic, combined with the pandemic’s terrible economic effects, have made Republicans unpopular; and this is reflected in recent polls. It seems extremely likely that if large numbers of voters participate in the November election, the Democrats will win.
Trump’s eagerness to ‘bring our boys home’ is leaving the Afghan government with little power to resist the Taliban afterwards.
Goodbye Afghanistan | US Air Force photo by Clay Lancaster. Public domain.
31 July 2020(openDemocracy)* — One of Donald Trump’s main election pledges back in 2016 was to ‘bring our boys home’. Alongside this came criticism of Germany and other NATO states for not paying their way on military spending. He has followed up on both themes this week, by starting to reduce the US presence in Germany, albeit shifting some to Poland and leaving all the mechanisms of a rapid return in place, so that the extent of the ‘back home’ is far from what it appears.
(UN News)* — The World Food Programme (WFP) is urgently seeking more international support to prevent millions of Zimbabweans plunging deeper into hunger. The COVID-19 pandemic has aggravated an already severe hunger crisis in Zimbabwe, UN humanitarians warned on 30 July 2020.
WFP/Claire Nevill | In Harare, Zimbabwe, a single mother of three relies on food assistance from the World Food Programme (WFP) during the COVID-19 pandemic.
(UN News)* — The UN commemorated World Day against Human Trafficking on 30 July 2020 spotlighting the essential – but often overlooked – role of first responders who identify the millions of victims worldwide, helping them secure justice, and rebuild their lives.
“These are the people who work in different sectors – identifying, supporting, counselling and seeking justice for victims of trafficking, and challenging the impunity of the traffickers,” UN Secretary-General António Guterressaid in his message on the Day, which is observed annually each 30 July.
It’s hard to know exactly where the Trump Administration found the inspiration for its newest set of draconian asylum rules. Might it have been a National Geographic special where a giant anaconda encircles its prey, squeezes it to death, and then swallows it whole? Or perhaps a late-night, B-grade horror film in which some evil mastermind drowns his victims by slowly filling a sealed room with water?
Less than a quarter of this year’s $40 billion humanitarian aid appeal has been received to support 250 million vulnerable people, against the backdrop of an estimated $11 trillion coronavirus stimulus for wealthy nations.
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Families wait by the side of the road after fleeing attacks in Burkina Faso. The number of displaced people increased to over half a million last year, and the country is on the brink of a hunger crisis. Photo: Tom Peyre-Costa/NRC.
Samrawit* gazes into the distance as a light breeze ruffles the shawl around her face. She hugs herself tightly as a gust of wind blows in from Lake Mirayi in eastern Rwanda. | Español | Français
29 July 2020 (UNHCR)* — The 20-year-old Eritrean refugee’s current surroundings are peaceful and relaxed – a far cry from the horrors she endured while in captivity in the hands of smugglers in Libya, where she was tortured, beaten and raped for almost two years.
29 July 2020 (United Nations)* — Our world faces many challenges, crises and forces of division — such as poverty, violence, and human rights abuses — among many others — that undermine peace, security, development and social harmony among the world’s peoples.
To confront those crises and challenges, their root causes must be addressed by promoting and defending a shared spirit of human solidarity that takes many forms — the simplest of which is friendship.
To ask whether the United States, the world’s dominant military power, is ‘a failing state’ should cause worldwide anxiety. Such a state, analogous to a wounded animal, is a global menace of unprecedented proportions in the nuclear age.
Richard Falk
Its political leadership is exhibiting a reckless tendency of combining incompetence with extremism. It is also crucial to ascertain at what point a failing state should be written off as ‘a failed state’ for which there is no longer a clear path to redemption.
The November elections will send a strong signal as to whether the United States is failing or has failed.
Even raising these issues suggests how far the United States has fallen during the Trump years, despite already being in sharp decline internationally ever since the Vietnam War, and continuing, despite a few redemptive moves (now renounced), during the Obama presidency.
