Image: Jonny Goldstein, CC BY 2.0
13 April 2019 (openDemocracy)* — The upsurge of progressive economic proposals over the past few years in the face of austerity, stagnating living standards and rising inequality is inspiring.
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14/04/2019
Impact of High Debt Levels on Least Developed Countries ‘Cannot Be Overstated’
The impact of high levels of debt on development efforts “cannot be overstated”, the head of the United Nations Development Fund (UNDP) told a Ministerial Breakfast Meeting on least development countries (LDCs) on Saturday [13 April 2019].
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13/04/2019
Lebanon: Cooking Meals for Thousands of Storm-Affected Refugees
13/04/2019
Islamophobia in the West
Islamophobia | Photo from Wall Street International.
Islam is often presented as an ‘isolated culture’ with its own distinct features, which are allegedly incompatible with certain values upheld in Western societies.
It is the rise of such a polarizing context that results in growing fear against Muslims, prejudice of other cultures and the ‘us versus them’ paradigm.
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13/04/2019
The World Bank’s Legacy of Environmental Destruction: A Case Study
The World Bank’s support for giant coal fired power plants in India and South Africa illustrate the organisation’s many institutional failings.
Source: Pixabay | Photo from openDemocracy.
12 April 2019 (openDemocracy)* — At any given moment, World Bank policy statements and press releases claim that the organisation has learned from its past mistakes, whether in the environmental, social or anti-corruption areas. But in many cases, the financial legacy of these mistakes is often enormous, and will last for decades.
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13/04/2019
From ‘Dead on the Inside’ to ‘Truly Alive’: Survivor of Genocide against the Tutsi in Rwanda Recounts Her Story
Human Wrongs Watch
“Miraculously I had no machete marks” a survivor of the Genocide against the Tutsi in Rwanda told a solemn United Nations event in New York on Friday [12 April 2019], 25 years on, to remember the systematic killing of more than one million people, over less than three months.*
“Most of the survivors we have today were broken in their bodies and their souls”, Esther Mujawayo-Keiner told those gathered in the General Assembly Hall, to reflect on what UN chief António Guterres referred to as “one of the darkest chapters in recent human history”, which overwhelmingly targeted Tutsi, but also moderate Hutu and others who opposed the genocide.
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12/04/2019
The Jaws of Power – Secrecy versus Democracy
Wikileaks’ Julian Assange removed from the Ecuador embassy | Photo from Wall Street International.
12 April 2019 (Wall Street International)* – According to the Nuremberg Principles, the citizens of a country have a responsibility for the crimes that their governments commit. But to prevent these crimes, the people need to have some knowledge of what is going on. Indeed, democracy cannot function at all without this knowledge.
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12/04/2019
Civil Society, Once the “World’s New Superpower,” Now Battling Against Heavy Odds
Human Wrongs Watch
– A former UN Secretary-General, the late Kofi Annan, once described civil society organizations (CSOs), as “the world’s new superpower” – perhaps ranking behind the US and the former Soviet Union.
But that political glory has continued to diminish over the years– and more so — against the current backdrop of repressive regimes, hard right nationalist governments and far right extremist groups.
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11/04/2019
‘Assange Arrest Exposes Him to Risk of Serious Human Rights Violations,’ If Extradited to the United States – Independent UN Rights Experts
Independent UN rights experts on Thursday [11 April 2019] said the arrest of Wikileaks co-founder Julian Assange by police in the United Kingdom, after the Ecuadorian Government decided to stop granting him asylum in their London embassy, exposed him to “the risk of serious human rights violations”, if extradited to the United States.
HUMAN WRONGS WATCH 