(UN News)* — Millions of displaced families across eastern Africa will fall deeper into hunger as food rations dwindle due to humanitarian resources being stretched to the limit as the world grapples with a toxic cocktail of conflict, climate shocks, and COVID-19, UN humanitarians warned on Wednesday [13 April 2022].
Nairobi, Kenya, Apr 13 2022 (IPS)* – Ahmed Bakari’s ill-fated journey to ‘greener pastures’ started with a social media private message from a stranger back in 2017. The message said an international NGO was recruiting teachers and translators to work in Somalia.
Traffickers target unemployed youth in Kenya. While the government is working to combat this crime, COVID-19 impacted their efforts. Here a police officer is in discussion with a community policing committee that works together to combat criminal activities, like trafficking. Credit: Joyce Chimbi/IPS
(UN News)* – The threat of famine is very real in Somalia and South Sudan and urgent action is needed now to avoid a catastrophe, UN humanitarians warned on Tuesday [12 April 2022].
The alert from the World Food Programme (WFP) and Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) followed the latest food security assessments which showed that six million people in Somalia will face acute food insecurity in the coming months, unless the rains come.
(UN News)* — Decrying the erosion of democracy in Brazil, a UN expert has called for authorities to create and maintain a safe environment conducive to the exercise of the rights to peaceful assembly and association.
Mídia Ninja | Brazilian politician and human rights activist Marielle Franco was assassinated in Rio de Janeiro on 14 May 2018.
“I am concerned that in recent years there have been emerging trends limiting the enjoyment of these rights in all areas,” Clément Nyaletsossi Voule said on Monday [11 April 2022] in São Paulo, speaking at the end of a 12-day visit to South America’s largest country.
(UN News)* — The basic rights of older persons need to be protected today, more than ever before, said the UN human rights chief on Monday [11 April 2022], but existing legal safeguards render them, in effect, “invisible”.
Michelle Bachelet was addressing the Working Group on Ageing, at UN Headquarters in New York, the first to do so in person, since it began its “vital role”, in 2011, she said.
JUBA, 9 April 2022 (WFP)* – Food insecurity is likely to rise by seven percent across South Sudan in the coming months, compared to last year, according to a new United Nations report on food security. UN organizations are renewing the call for more humanitarian and livelihoods assistance to stave off looming hunger and enhance resilience.
With oligarchs using their media outlets to promote far-Right presidential candidates, France is being haunted by its own ghosts.
Government capitulations to the far Right have only aided Emmanuel Macron’s opponents | Victor Joly/Abaca Press/Alamy
6 April 2022 (openDemocracy)* — To understand the coming French election, we need to start not with the incumbent president Emmanuel Macron, nor with any of his rival candidates, but with a billionaire called Vincent Bolloré.
Like many oligarchs, he started out by inheriting a family business founded by his ancestors – in this case, in the 1820s.
The war in Ukraine has placed U.S. and NATO policy toward Russia under a spotlight, highlighting how the United States and its allies have expanded NATO right up to Russia’s borders, backed a coup and now a proxy war in Ukraine, imposed waves of economic sanctions, and launched a debilitating trillion-dollar arms race.
The Nation: Hiroshima – It’s time to ban and eliminate nuclear weapons.
The explicit goal is to pressure, weaken and ultimately eliminate Russia, or a Russia-China partnership, as a strategic competitor to U.S. imperial power.
(UN News)* — Twelve years into the war in Syria, thousands of families “remain in the dark” when it comes to the fates of their missing relatives, UN human rights chief Michelle Bachelet told the General Assembly on Friday [8 April 2022].
“The scale of this tragedy is daunting, with people going missing in different contexts, such as during hostilities, displacement or in detention. All too often, this is connected with a range of human rights violations and abuses,” she said, speaking via videolink from Geneva.
Immediate Humanitarian Access, Protection of Communities Key
Nairobi, – Amhara regional security forces and civilian authorities in Ethiopia’s Western Tigray Zone have committed widespread abuses against Tigrayans since November 2020 that amount to war crimes and crimes against humanity, Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch said in a new report released on 6 April 2022.
HUMAN WRONGS WATCH 