(UN News)* — In 2024, the UN will once again be at the heart of international efforts to tackle the world’s most urgent challenges, from bolstering the global economy, to supporting climate action and keeping the peace in conflict hotspots.
Whilst we can’t predict what will be making the headlines, we do know that the UN will make full use of its unique convening power, to bring together leaders and decision-makers in the hope of making the world a more peaceful, equitable and prosperous place for all.
(UN News)* —The outbreak of conflict seven months ago in Sudan has led to “a convergence of a worsening humanitarian calamity and a catastrophic human rights crisis”, according to a senior UN official, and the restive region of Darfur has been particularly badly affected.
Close to nine million people need humanitarian assistance and reports suggest that some 4,000 people have been targeted and killed because of their ethnicity.
(UN News)* — In Gaza, at least 100,000 displaced people have poured into Rafah in recent days, UN humanitarians said on Friday [], worsening already dire conditions in the southernmost part of the enclave.
“A traumatized and exhausted population” is being “crammed into a smaller and smaller sliver of land,” UN emergency relief chief Martin Griffiths warned on social platform X on Friday.
But serious obstacles persist to bringing more aid to those in need amid relentless Israeli bombardment and intense fighting on the ground.
(UN News)* — The UN refugee agency, UNHCR, has appealed for action in the wake of a mob attack against refugees in Banda Aceh, Indonesia, on Wednesday [].
Unsplash/Appai | Jakarta, Indonesia’s capital.
Hundreds of young people stormed a building basement where scores of Rohingya refugees were sheltered, according to media reports.
The Rohingya are a mainly Muslim community who have fled waves of persecution in Myanmar, a predominantly Buddhist country.
Nearly one million are living in camps in Bangladesh and more than 1,000 have arrived in Indonesia by boat in recent months.
UNHCR issued a statement saying it was “deeply disturbed to see a mob attack on a site sheltering vulnerable refugee families.”
In a region scarred by years of wars and displacement, climate change and water scarcity have become yet another threat for fragile contexts in Middle East and North Africa.
Dried reeds in the marshes of southern Iraq. Photo: Fareed Baram/NRC
In this region, populations’ ability to cope with the impacts of climate change is limited, thereby aggravating their overall vulnerability.
(UN News)* —Aid missions to supply Gaza have become increasingly difficult amid reports of continued heavy bombing of the Strip overnight by the Israeli military and intense clashes “in most areas” with Hamas fighters, UN humanitarians warned on Wednesday [].
Locations in the north and south of the enclave were hit as Israeli ground forces also reportedly pushed into central areas, along with the firing of rockets by Palestinian armed groups into Israel, prompting concerns from the UN agency for Palestinian refugees, UNRWA, about the safety of civilians uprooted time and again.
Overwhelmed medics in Gaza on Tuesday [] continued to try to save victims of missile strikes including attacks near refugee camps in the centre of the devastated enclave that have reportedly killed well over 100 people, the UN health agency said.
UN News/Ziad Taleb | Nuseirat school in central Gaza which is run by the UN agency for Palestinians UNRWA and is now a shelter for thousands of displaced people.
World Health Organization (WHO) Emergency Medical Teams coordinator Sean Casey said that “100-plus patients” had been brought into Al-Aqsa Hospital on Monday in the space of 30 minutes, following reported blasts, including near Al-Maghazi refugee camp.
All of them needed urgent treatment for serious wounds, the WHO official told UN News, while “about 100” more lifeless bodies were brought into the hospital at around the same time.
The Norwegian Refugee Council (NRC) warns that any attempts by Israel to deport and permanently displace Palestinians within and from Gaza would constitute a serious breach of international law and an atrocity crime.
.
Palestinian displaced families in southern Gaza living in tents. Almost 1.7 million Palestinians displaced since the war started. Photo: NRC/Yousef Hammash
26 December 2023 — This concern follows Israel’s forcible transfer of hundreds of thousands of Palestinians within Gaza. Palestinians fear further displacement could lead to a refugee crisis like the catastrophic events of 1948, known in Arabic as the ‘Nakba’.
(Stockholm) — Revenues from sales of arms and military services by the 100 largest companies in the industry totalled $597 billion in 2022, 3.5 per cent less than 2021 in real terms, even as demand rose sharply, according to new data released today [4 December 2023] by the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI), available at www.sipri.org.
.
Photo: Wikimedia
The decrease was chiefly the result of falling arms revenues among major companies in the United States. Revenues increased substantially in Asia and Oceania and the Middle East.
KUALA LUMPUR, Malaysia, Dec 20 2023 (IPS)* –The World Bank insists commercial finance is necessary for achieving economic recovery and the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), but does little to ensure profit-hungry commercial finance serves the public interest.
Jomo Kwame Sundaram
By failing to address pressing challenges within their purview, the second-ever Bretton Woods institutions’ (BWIs) annual meetings on the African continent, in Marrakech in October 2023, set the developing world even further back.
The International Monetary and Financial Committee, which oversees the International Monetary Fund (IMF), could not agree, by consensus, on the usual end-of-meeting ministerial communique for ‘geopolitical’ reasons. The Development Committee, which governs the World Bank Group, fared little better.
HUMAN WRONGS WATCH 