29 March 2019 (UNRWA)* — One year after the start in Gaza of demonstrations that became known as The Great March of Return (GMR), scores of people, particularly young men, have been left dead and many others injured, as well as in need of long term medical and psychosocial assistance.
With a large protest planned on Saturday [30 March 2019] in Gaza, and border shootings by Israeli security forces which have left nearly 200 Palestinians dead over the past year, the UN’s top humanitarian official in the Occupied Palestinian Territories (oPt), Jamie McGoldrick, on Friday [29 March 2019] called for calm from all sides to prevent further bloodshed.*
.
UNifeed Video | Drone shot, protesters walking towards the Gaza separation fence, with Israel. The anniversary of the “Great March of Return” protests, falls on 30 March, 2019.
29 March 2019 — A new UN data tool created by the United Nations University’s Centre for Policy Research, has revealed that, worldwide, government aid and policy to end modern slavery is not being effectively directed towards the places where the practice is most prevalent.*
ILO/A. Khemka | Forced labour often means unpaid wages, excessively long work hours without rest days, confiscation of ID documents, little freedom of movement, deception, intimidation and physical or sexual violence. ILO/A. Khemka
.
The release of Modern Slavery Data Stories, a series of easily understandable animated graphics, gives detailed pictures of the ways that factors related to modern slavery have changed over time, and comes during a period when over 40 million people are living in slavery, more than ever before in human history.
A United Nations human rights expert said on Thursday [28 March 2019] that Saudi Arabia’s closed-door trials of those it accuses of assassinating the dissident journalist Jamal Khashoggi in Istanbul, have fallen short of international standards, calling instead for public trials of the alleged killers.*
UN Photo/Mark Garten | Press Briefing by Ms. Agnes Callamard, Special Rapporteur on extrajudicial, summary or arbitrary executions
Agnes Callamard, who is leading an independent human rights inquiry into the killing at the Saudi consulate last October, denounced the lack of transparency of Saudi Arabia’s investigation and legal proceedings so far.
20 March 2019(Norwegian Refugee Council)* — “Every day, I heard stories of how people had been killed. I was particularly afraid during those early morning hours when the airstrikes began.” NRC’s education assistant Malka, 26, tells about delivering aid among landmines and airstrikes in her home country of Yemen.
.
“Education is so important, and that’s why we try to support young Yemenis to create a better life for themselves, and a future,” says Malka Mohammed, 26. As an NRC education assistant in southern Yemen, her job is to make sure children living amid conflict can still access school. Photo: Ingrid Prestetun/NRC
The increasing number of natural disasters and dangers linked to climate change, highlighted in a major UN report released on Thursday [28 March 2019], represents “another strong wake-up call” to the world, which must be countered by finding sustainable solutions quickly, UN Secretary-General António Guterres has said.*
MINUSTAH/Logan Abassi | After days of continuous rains parts of Haiti’s north including Cap Haitian suffered serious flooding leaving more than a dozen dead and thousands homeless. (November 2014)
A majority of Security Council members on Wednesday [27 March 2019] stressed the importance of upholding international law regarding the occupied Golan Heights, in the face of the unilateral move by the United States to recognize Israel’s sovereignty over them.*
UN Photo/Eskinder Debebe | Security Council meeting on the situation in the Middle East. 27 March, 2019.
Israel took over the Golan Heights on its northern border with Syria, following the 1967 war, and annexed them in 1981, which the Security Council declared an illegal act.
27 March 2019 (openDemocracy)* — US Christian right ‘fundamentalists’ linked to the Trump administration and Steve Bannon are among a dozen American groups that have poured at least $50 million of ‘dark money’ into Europe over the last decade, openDemocracy can reveal today [27 March 2019].
27 March 2019 (Wall Street International)* — Imagine you are in front of a huge and raging bull charging at you, ready to mow you down and destroy you with full force… until somebody press a red button on a small “control” and stop the bull completely in its action.
Well, it has already been achieved by a scientist at Yale in 2013. It was proved that a bull could be “remote controlled” by placing electrodes into its brain that later reacted to electrical stimulations, literally changing the bull’s behaviors and actions.
History shows that fearmongering has long been a standard tactic used to rally public support and acquiescence for military interventions that are both unwarranted and unwise.
“Voice or no voice, the people can always be brought to the bidding of the leaders. That is easy. All you have to do is tell them they are being attacked and denounce the pacifists for lack of patriotism and exposing the country to danger. It works the same way in any country.” — Nazi propagandist Hermann Goering
It was 16 years ago this month, on March 19, 2003, that U.S. forces began a misguided and illegal “shock and awe” military assault on Iraq. The enormous costs of that invasion and subsequent occupation are all too clear today.
Palestinian demonstrators gather in Khuza’a on the Gaza side of the perimeter fence between Israel and the Gaza Strip during the Great March of Return demonstration on 6 April 2018. © 2018 Photo Courtesy of Mahmoud Bassam
HUMAN WRONGS WATCH 