'Unseen' News and Views
On 26 Oct, the New York Times headlined “Keep the Oil’: Trump Revives Charged Slogan for New Syria Troop Mission” and opened by saying that “in recent days, Mr. Trump has settled on Syria’s oil reserves as a new rationale for appearing to reverse course and deploy hundreds of additional troops to the war-ravaged country.”
– Central America is an impoverished region rife with gang violence and human trafficking – the third largest crime industry in the world – as a major source of migrants heading towards the United States.
An older woman panhandles on a street in San Salvador. Criminal trafficking groups take advantage of vulnerable people, such as the destitute, to force them to beg. But in Central America, 80 percent of the victims of trafficking are women and girls, for purposes of sexual exploitation. Credit: Edgardo Ayala/IPS
UN agencies on Friday [8 November 2019] highlighted the dire needs of thousands of unaccompanied and separated children who have arrived in Italy as refugees, lacking the proper support to transition through to adulthood. *
Between 2014 and 2018, around 60,000 of them arrived in Italy by sea, 90 per cent of whom were between the ages of 15 and 17, according to a new report issued by the UN Children’s Fund (UNICEF), UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) and the International Organization for Migration (IOM).
(Greenpeace International)* — It is not news that the Brazilian government has been failing to protect Indigenous lands and Indigenous rights. But due to ever-increasing invasion of their territories by land grabbers, loggers and even drug traffickers, the Indigenous Peoples from several groups in the North and Northeast regions of Brazil decided to take the matter into their own hands.
Paulo Paulino Guajajara, a leader of the Guajajara Indigenous group was ambushed and killed by illegal loggers who invaded his land in Brazil. © Midia Ninja | Photo posted here from Greenpeace International.
For the 28th consecutive year, the UN General Assembly has adopted a resolution calling for an end to the economic, commercial and financial embargo imposed by the United States against Cuba. *
Over 8,200 migrants making the dangerous journey to Europe have been returned instead to Libya where they languish in detention centres..
Photo from IOM.
5 November 2919 (IOM)* — “My parents were both killed years ago. My brother can barely provide for his children. I am a man now, and I have to fight for my survival,” said 18-year old Abdessamad.
Libya remains entangled in a “cycle of violence, atrocities and impunity”, International Criminal Court (ICC) Prosecutor Fatou Bensouda told the UN Security Council on Wednesday [6 November 2019], nearly a decade since the Court began its work in the country *
Greater action is needed to protect the environment during wartime if the world is to realize the goal of a more sustainable future for all people and the planet, the head of the UN Environment Programme (UNEP) warned on Wednesday [6 November 2019]. *
6 November 2019 (UN Environment)* — Eighteen years ago, on 5 November 2001, the United Nations General Assembly declared 6 November the International Day for Preventing the Exploitation of the Environment in War and Armed Conflict.
Image from UN Environment.
Public concern regarding the targeting and use of the environment during wartime first peaked during the Viet Nam War.
Ongoing violence in Cameroon’s northwest and southwest has created a fast-growing humanitarian emergency now affecting some 1.9 million people, a “15-fold increase since 2017”, UN humanitarians said on Tuesday [5 November 2019]. *
HUMAN WRONGS WATCH 