(UN News)* — The head of the UN agency that assists Palestine refugees across the Middle East, UNRWA, on Thursday [] appealed for consistent and sustainable financing to keep its operations running and avert chronic shortfalls.
UNRWA Commissioner General Philippe Lazzarini was speaking at UN Headquarters alongside the Deputy Prime Minister and Foreign Minister of Jordan, Ayman Safadi, following a meeting to support its lifesaving work, which is almost entirely funded by donor contributions.“
It has become absolutely unbearable to deal with a situation where the needs of the Palestine refugees increase, the expectations increase, the region is hit by multiple crises, and at the same time to operate public-like services… with decreasing funding,” he said.
The tension is also fuelling “a feeling of abandonment by the international community”, he warned.
UNITED NATIONS, Sep 21 2023 (IPS)* – Sundus Azza scans the news before she heads home, checking for signs that her 30-minute commute could turn into a four-hour-long slog. Any incident could make travel difficult.
72-year-old Kawthar Ajlouni stands alone in her yard in H2, Hebron, the occupied Palestinian territory. The backdrop reveals a fortified Israeli checkpoint. Amid 645 documented movement obstacles in the West Bank, 80 are here in H2 as of 2023. Isolated due to strict Israeli policies, she is one of 7,000 Palestinians enduring heavy restrictions, while many others have left. The Israeli-declared ‘principle of separation’ (between Palestinians and Israeli settlers) limits their life, generating a coercive environment that risks forcible transfers. Kawthar stays, fearing her home’s conversion into a military post. Credit: OCHA/2023
UNITED NATIONS, Sep 19 2023 (IPS)* – Politically, the United Nations has largely been described as a monumental failure —with little or no progress in resolving some of the world’s past and ongoing military conflicts and civil wars, including Palestine, Western Sahara, Kashmir, and more recently, Ukraine, Yemen, Afghanistan, Syria, Sudan and Myanmar, among others.
Credit: United Nations
Still, to give the devil its due, the UN has made some remarkable progress providing food, shelter and medical care to millions of people caught in military conflicts, including in Ukraine, Sudan, Syria, Libya and Somalia. Has the UN been gradually transformed into a humanitarian aid organization — diplomats without borders?
The military-industrial complex needs enemies. Without them it would wither. Thus, at the end of the Second World War, this vast power complex was faced with a crisis, but it was saved by the discovery of a new enemy: Communism.
John Scales Avery
However, at the end of the Cold War there was another terrible crisis for the military establishment, the arms manufacturers and their supporters in research, government and the mass media.
People spoke of the “peace dividend”, i.e., constructive use of the trillion dollars that the world wastes each year on armaments.
However, just in time, the military-industrial complex was saved from the nightmare of the “peace dividend” by the September 11 attacks on New York and Washington.
(UN News)* — In war-torn Sudan, more than 1,200 children under five have died in camps in the space of four months from a combination of measles and malnutrition, UN humanitarians said on Tuesday [].
According to the UN refugee agency (UNCHR) and the World Health Organization (WHO), the children were refugees living in nine camps in Sudan’s White Nile state.
UN refugee chief Filippo Grandi insisted that the world had “the means and the money” to prevent every one of those deaths.
(UN News)* — The number of children missing out on any schooling has increased by six million, bringing the total to 250 million, according to new figures released on Monday [] by the UN Education, Science, and Cultural Organization (UNESCO).
The increase is partly due to the mass exclusion of women and girls from education in Afghanistan but can also be attributed to broader stagnation in education provision worldwide.
The findings undermine UN Sustainable Development Goal 4, which sets the goal of quality education for all by 2030.
(UN News)* — Over 4.5 billion people worldwide lack coverage for essential health services the UN health agency said on Monday [], underscoring the need for stronger political commitment and increased government investment.
Moreover, two billion face severe financial hardships when paying out-of-pocket for necessary medical treatment, according to a joint World Health Organization (WHO)-World Bank report.
(UN News)* — Record numbers of children are on the move through Latin America and the Caribbean, facing perilous journeys marked by violence, exploitation and abuse, the UN Children’s Fund (UNICEF) warned on Thursday [].
Children in the region driven from their homes by gang violence, instability, poverty and climate change represent around 25 per cent of migrants said UNICEF – almost double the global average of 13 per cent.“
More and more children are on the move, of an increasingly young age, often alone and from diverse countries of origin, including from as far away as Africa and Asia,” said Garry Conille, UNICEF Latin America and the Caribbean Director.
(UN News)* — The world is falling worryingly short in terms of closing the gender gap as part of the 2030 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) warned UN Women on Thursday [].
The new Gender Snapshot report from the UN’s gender equality agency at this midway point towards the SDGs warns that if current trends continue, over 340 million women and girls will be living in poverty by 2030. That represents eight per cent of the female population worldwide.
Close to one in four will experience moderate or severe food insecurity and at the current rate of progress, the next generation of women will still be spending 2.3 more hours per day on unpaid care and domestic work than men.
Geneva, 5 September 2023 (IOM)*– The number of people internally displaced has nearly doubled since the start of the conflict in Sudan according to the latest figures by the International Organization for Migration’s (IOM) Displacement Tracking Matrix (DTM).
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People fleeing the ongoing fighting in Sudan arrive in Chad. Photo: IOM/F. Ada Affana
HUMAN WRONGS WATCH 