AMMAN, 3 January 2019 (UNICEF)* – Children continue to pay the heaviest price due to the escalation in violence in northwest Syria. UNICEF received alarming reports of 80 people killed, including one child.
3 January 2019 – Women and activists have been reflecting on the progress made across the world in 2018 in reducing discrimination and inequalities based on gender and what hopes they have for 2019.
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UN Women/Carlos Rivera | A group of young women graffiti artists painted orange murals in Guatemala City in support of UN Women and the UNiTE campaign to End Violence against Women, December 2018.
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The United Nations gender-focused agency, UN Women, has outlined some of the most urgent issues facing women including human rights, genital mutilation and using sex as a weapon of war.
Stockholm (SIPRI)* — Sales of arms and military services by the world’s largest arms-producing and military services companies—the SIPRI Top 100—totalled $398.2 billion in 2017, according to new international arms industry data released on by the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI).
The F-35 produced by Lockheed Martin. Photo: Flickr/ Forsvarsdepartementet| Photo from SIPRI.
The total for the SIPRI Top 100 in 2017 is 2.5 per cent higher than in 2016 and represents an increase of 44 per cent since 2002 (the first year for which comparable data is available; figures exclude China).
This is the third consecutive year of growth in Top 100 arms sales.
In many ways it is painful to reflect on the year 2018; a year of vital opportunities lost when so much is at stake.
Robert J. Burrowes
Whether politically, militarily, socially, economically, financially or ecologically, humanity took some giant strides backwards while passing up endless opportunities to make a positive difference in our world.
Let me, very briefly, identify some of the more crucial backward steps, starting with the recognition by the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists in January that the year had already started badly when they moved the Doomsday Clock to two minutes to midnight, the closest it has ever been to ‘doomsday’ (and equal to 1953 when the Soviet Union first exploded a thermonuclear weapon matching the US capacity). See ‘It is now two minutes to midnight’.
This change reflected the perilous state of our world, particularly given the renewed threat of nuclear war and the ongoing climate catastrophe.
It didn’t even mention the massive and unrelenting assault on the biosphere (apart from the climate) nor, of course, the ongoing monumental atrocities against fellow human beings.
31 December 2018 (UNHCR)* — UNHCR, the UN Refugee Agency, is appealing to States to urgently offer safe ports and disembarkation to two NGO vessels on the Mediterranean carrying 49 rescued refugees and migrants, including young children.| Français | عربي
NEW YORK, 28 December 2018 (UNICEF)* – The futures of millions of children living in countries affected by armed conflict are at risk, as warring parties continue to commit grave violations against children, and world leaders fail to hold perpetrators accountable – UNICEF said on 27 December 2018.
“Children living in conflict zones around the world have continued to suffer through extreme levels of violence over the past 12 months, and the world has continued to fail them,” said Manuel Fontaine, UNICEF Director of Emergency Programmes.
After uncovering evidence that humanitarian food supplies are being diverted in Yemen’s Houthi-controlled capital, Sana’a, and other parts of the country, the United Nations World Food Programme (WFP) has demanded an immediate end to the practice.
OCHA/ Charlotte Cans | Nine-month-old baby weighing 3 kg is being treated for acute malnutrition in a Sana’a hospital.
“This conduct amounts to the stealing of food from the mouths of hungry people,” WFP Executive Director David Beasley said on 31 December 2018.
Prompted by an increasing number of reports that humanitarian food was on sale in the capital, WFP conducted a survey to discover the misappropriation of those supplies.
Welcome to the murky world of mercenaries and floating armouries…
Additional reporting from Matt Kennard, Timothy Young, Matthew Leger, Susanna Kalaris, Samuel Brownsword, Sean French and Tom Ormson.Detail from G4S Gurkha Services marketing brochure and Queen’s Gallantry Medal, as highlighted by Clare Sambrook.
Yesterday [19 December 2018], an American man was convicted for killing unarmed civilians whilst on patrol in Iraq. But he wasn’t a member of the US Army. When the incident took place, he was working for the company Blackwater.
Last year, United Nations Secretary-General Antonio Guterres issued “a red alert” over a range of dangers confronting the world, which “still persist” as 2019 looms: “These are anxious times for many, and our world is undergoing a stress test,” the UN chief on 28 December 2018 said in his message for the New Year.
UN Photo/Evan Schneider | Secretary-General António Guterres
Last year, United Nations Secretary-General Antonio Guterres issued “a red alert” over a range of dangers confronting the world, which “still persist” as 2019 looms: “These are anxious times for many, and our world is undergoing a stress test,” the UN chief on 28 December 2018 said in his message for the New Year.
He reiterated one of his clarion calls during 2018 over climate change, saying that it was still “running faster than we are,” and that deepening geo-political divisions are making conflicts more difficult to resolve.
Record numbers of people are moving in search of safety and protection, inequality is growing and “people are questioning a world in which a handful of people hold the same wealth as half of humanity,” he said.
Moreover, he stated that intolerance was on the rise while trust is declining.
You can’t understand the Cambridge Analytica scandal until you understand what its parent company does.
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US tanks arriving in Baghdad in 2003, by Technical Sergeant John L. Houghton, Jr., United States Air Force, public domain.
“The Gulf War Did Not Take Place”. This audacious claim was made by the French philosopher Jean Baudrillard in March 1991, only two months after NATO forces had rained explosives on Iraq, shedding the blood of more than a hundred thousand people.
HUMAN WRONGS WATCH 