Hanoi, Vietnam (Nobel Women’s Initiative)*— A global delegation of women peacemakers in Hanoi expressed disappointment in the outcome of the second summit between U.S. President Donald Trump and North Korean Chairman Kim Jong Un, but emphasized the importance of continuing to support efforts between the two countries to end seven decades of hostilities and work towards the signing of a peace agreement.
“This is a huge missed opportunity and a disappointment to Koreans waiting 67 years to see a decisive end to the Korean War,” said Christine Ahn, executive director of Women Cross DMZ and a prominent Korea expert.
The second meeting of the week on the situation in Venezuela, took place in the UN Security Council on Thursday [28 February 2019], during which competing resolutions produced by the United States and by Russia were presented. Neither text was adopted as the US draft was vetoed and the Russian draft failing to secure enough votes in favor.
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UN Photo/Evan Schneider | A wide view of the Security Council as members vote on a draft resolution related to the situation in the Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela.
.It was the third Council meeting seeking solutions to Venezuela’s “protracted crisis” since tensions started escalating in January, when Juan Guaidó, head of the country’s National Assembly, challenged the legitimacy of the sitting President, Nicolás Maduro, who has been in power since 2013 and who was sworn in again for a second term, on 10 January.
Dakar, 1 March 2019 (IOM)* – The six-day journey to Spain’s Canary Islands from Dakar, Senegal’s capital, on an agitated sea did not break Moustapha. Nor did hearing what happened to the other five boats departing with his: none of them made it, nor did the hundreds of people they carried.
Imam reading the Quran in Dakar – by Anna Pujol-Mazzini for IOM
“I was lucky enough to succeed, despite all the difficulties: the wind, the cold, the 20-meter waves, all of it,” he says in his home in the fishing town of Thiaroye-sur-Mer, on the outskirts of the Senegalese capital.
By Jon Hall, Policy Specialist at the Human Development Report Office, UNDP*
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28 February 2019 (Human Development Report – UNDP)* — Late last year the World Wide Fund for Nature released their Living Planet Report for 2018. WWF’s estimates were stark: populations of mammals, birds, fish, reptiles, and amphibians have, on average, declined by 60 percent between 1970 and 2014. The Earth is estimated to have lost about half of its shallow water corals in the past 30 years. A fifth of the Amazon has disappeared in just 50 years, and 2018 marked the worst level of deforestation in history.
The key role that young people play in determining the future of migration governance around the world is the focus of the session this year of the International Dialogue on Migration at the UN, convened by the International Organization for Migration (IOM) on Thursday [28 February 2019].
Muse Mohammed/IOM | Accoring to the UN migration agency (IOM), thousands of children are living on the streets of Djibout City. Here. Ethiopian migrant youth wake up on the beach outside the Horn of Africa country’s teeming capital.
An independent UN report into last year’s protests along Gaza’s border fence involving Israeli security forces, that resulted in the shooting deaths of more than 180 Palestinians, concluded on Thursday [28 February 2019] that there are “reasonable grounds” to believe Israel violated international humanitarian law.*
Save the Children/Mohamed N Ali | A 14-year-old boy who was reportedly shot and injured in both legs on 30 March 2018, in Gaza, the day that mass protests began at the border with Israel.
There was “no justification” for Israeli forces to use live rounds, according to a press release issued by the UN Commission of Inquiryinto the 2018 Gaza protests.
— The international community’s chilling complacency towards wide-scale human rights violations in the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) has emboldened governments to commit appalling violations during 2018 by giving them the sense that they need never fear facing justice, said Amnesty International as it published a review of human rights in the region last year.
The report Human rights in the Middle East and North Africa: A review of 2018describes how authorities across the region have unashamedly persisted with ruthless campaigns of repression in order to crush dissent, cracking down on protesters, civil society and political opponents, often with tacit support from powerful allies.
Jamal Khashoggi’s shocking killing in October 2018 sparked an unprecedented global outcry, spurring a Saudi Arabian investigation and even prompting rare action from states such as Denmark and Finland to suspend the supply of arms to Saudi Arabia.
28 February 2019 (Wall Street International)* — Do not panic! This is not about telling you how bank accounts and pension funds have been used to finance the production of nuclear bombs (they call it ‘investment’).
Nor it is about the four dozens of major and minor wars that the so-called “traditional weapons,” which are being manufactured and exported by civilised, democratic countries, continue to systematically fuel.
Joint UNHCR and EU scheme offers Syrian refugees and other children a safe space to learn and play, as part of wider push to get kids out of work and into school. | Español
27 February 2019 (UNHCR)* — On a recent afternoon in a drab neighborhood in the west of Lebanon’s capital, Beirut, a brightly coloured bus pulls up to the side of a street.
A group of children selling chewing gum and tissues to drivers at a busy intersection quickly pack away their wares and gather at the roadside, eagerly waiting to hop on board.
“They call to us here, they tell us to come and play,” says Abed, a 12-year-old refugee from Syria. “We love coming here.” For a few hours, Abed and his friends get the chance to be normal children again, playing and learning away from the dangers of the streets.
27 February 2019 (UN Women)* — Including women’s voices in politics is a starting point of a process to question the privileges and biases that exist, based on gender and social class. It’s a process to break down the patriarchy that frames the construction of this State.
Women account for 53.1 per cent of Parliamentarians in the Plurinational State of Bolivia, the third-highest percentage globally. Adriana Salvatierra, a role model to many, became the fourth woman to be elected as the President of the Senate Chambers of Bolivia this year. The 29-year-old is also the youngest to hold this position in the country, and in Latin America. | Adriana Salvatierra. Photo: UN Women/David Villegas
HUMAN WRONGS WATCH 