'Unseen' News and Views
(UN News)* — Despite decades of progress in closing the gender equality gap, close to nine out of 10 men and women around the world, hold some sort of bias against women, according to new findings published on Thursday [5 March 2020] from the UN Development Programmme (UNDP).
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However, on the main Vancouver Island, 91% of the ancient forest has been felled. Naomi herself recounts her holiday in the area in 2017 when fires were raging and smoke blotted out the blue sky that she and her family had been so looking forward to, illustrating only too graphically the picture she paints in this book.
5 March 2020 (UN Women)* — From the Liberian women’s sex strike paving the way for peace to the Icelandic “Women’s Day Off” demading economic equality to the global impact of the #MeToo movement, history has taught us that change can happen through collective activism.
Change, however, isn’t just about big headline moments, legal victories and international agreements: the way we talk, think, and act every day can create a ripple effect that benefits everyone.
As we usher in the new decade and take stock of global progress on women’s rights, join us, as Generation Equality, in getting to gender equality through these simple everyday actions.
(UN News)* — Twenty-five years after the historic Beijing women’s conference in China – a milestone in advancing equal rights – violence against women and girls is not only common, but widely accepted, a new UN report revealed on Wednesday [4 March 2020].
While there have been remarkable gains for girls in education, little headway has been made to help shape a more equal, less violent environment for them, warned the UN Children’s Fund (UNICEF), together with UN Women and the non-governmental organization Plan International in their report, A New Era for Girls: Taking stock on 25 years of progress.
– This International Women’s Day, 25 years after we first heard it declared that “women’s rights are human rights” at the historic Beijing 1995 Fourth World Conference on Women, we need to take the space and time to reflect on just how far we’ve come – and just how much more work there is to do.
(UN News)* – Humanitarian assistance needs to be scaled up significantly to more than a million people displaced by fighting in northwest Syria, a senior UN aid official said on Monday [2 March 2020], amid reports that children are freezing to death on the Turkish border.
“People are traumatized and frightened and urgently need better access to shelter, food, sanitation, basic health services and protection”, said Kevin Kennedy, Regional Humanitarian Coordinator for the Syria Crisis.
At Irish Congress of Trade Union, Belfast
Mairead Maguire
I would like to thank Eamon McMahon and the Organizers of this event for giving us the opportunity to discuss what I consider to be one of the most important issues of our time, namely, War and Peace and the right for public to be informed what their governments are doing in their name.
Julian Assange, an Australian journalist founder and Editor-in-Chief of WikiLeaks, tried to uphold this right for us all and tell us the truth and for so doing he has been persecuted, demonized, suffered character assassination, and hounded like a criminal, by the USA government and media.
The current US charges against Assange centre on the Afghan War logs and Iraqi War logs, which the Guardian, New York Times and others published, and on the Collateral Murder in Baghdad, video showing an American helicopter crew gunning down civilians and the crew celebrating their murders.
1 March 2020 (Pressenza)* — The pounding and discomposed mobilization of politicians and media against the coronavirus reminds of Peter and the Wolf: what could we ever do to communicate a real emergency, when the climate crisis at the gates will begin to have a serious impact on our lives (as it is already doing on those of millions of other human beings), now that everyone sees that the wolf is not there, or is not a wolf? | Italian
GENEVA, 1 March 2020 (UNAIDS)* – On Zero Discrimination Day, which is commemorated every year on 1 March, UNAIDS is calling for an end to discrimination against women and girls and for equal rights, opportunities and treatment.
Despite progress in some areas, in 2020 coercive practices, discriminatory legislation and gender-based violence are just some of the human rights violations that are continuing to have a disproportionate impact on the lives of women and girls around the world.
UNAIDS is highlighting areas where change is urgently needed: equal participation in political life; human rights and laws that empower; economic justice—equal pay for equal work; ending gender-based violence; provide health care without stigma or barriers; equal and free access to primary and secondary education; and climate justice.
HUMAN WRONGS WATCH 