'Unseen' News and Views
23 November 2018 – To bring the voice of the people to the upcoming Climate Change Conference in Poland (known by the shorthand ‘COP 24‘, from 2 to 14 December), the United Nations has launched the ‘People’s Seat’ initiative, calling millions of change advocates worldwide to submit messages for an address that will be delivered to leaders attending the conference, by renowned naturalist Sir David Attenborough.
21 November 2018 (Amnesty International*) — Thousands of digital activists around the world will take part in an innovative new crowdsourcing data project Amnesty International is launching today [21 November 2018], which uses satellite imagery to help plot how the US-led military coalition’s bombings destroyed almost 80% of the Syrian city of Raqqa.
The ruins of the destroyed house where 28 members of the Badran family and five neighbours were killed in a Coalition strike on 20 August 2017 in Raqqa. © Amnesty International
For the first time in a decade, the number of people falling into poverty in rural Latin America and the Caribbean has increased by two million, according to a new United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) report, which called the worrying trend a “historical reversal.”
Presented at the International Conference against US/NATO Military Bases, 16-18 Nov 2018, Dublin, Ireland
Mairead Corrigan Maguire
Dear Friends,
It is good to be here with you all. I would like to thank the organizers for inviting me to address the conference. Firstly I thank you all for your work for peace.
It is good that we will have an opportunity in the next few days to get to know each other and together discuss what kind of a world we want to live in?
There will be many different perspectives on this and the way forward, but let us agree to respect each other and to engage in deep listening and conversation no matter how hard and where the dialogue might take us!
More than 1.3 million children to receive emergency treatment in 2018, but more investment in prevention measures needed to influence trends in 2019 and beyond
Photo from UNICEF.
DAKAR/NEW YORK, 16 November 2018 (UNICEF)* – More than 1.3 million children under five years of age in need of treatment for severe acute malnutrition across six Africa’s Sahel countries are expected to receive care in 2018 – the highest number in at least a decade and a more than 50 per cent increase in the number of severely malnourished children compared to 2017 in Burkina Faso, Chad, Mali, Mauritania, Niger and Senegal.
20 November 2018 (UNHCR)* — Fourteen-year-old Katrina Gómez* could have been safe at school the day two men assaulted her on a public beach of this Colombian coastal city, and raped her. But she and her parents did not know she had that right. | Español | Français
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A young Venezuelan boy interacts with a volunteer at the Hearts Without Borders childcare centre in Bogotá. © UNHCR/Stephen Ferry
DAMASCUS/AMMAN, 16 November 2018 (UNICEF)* – “UNICEF is alarmed by recent reports of up to 30 children who have been killed in recent violence in Al Shafa village, in eastern Syria.
“These reported killings demonstrate that the war on children is far from over in Syria.
Photo from UNICEF.
“In almost eight years of war, the fundamental principle of protection of children has been completely disregarded, with disastrous consequences for children everywhere in Syria.
Migrant and refugee children to face incredible hardships attending schools and accessing education, a new United Nations report released on 20 November 2018 has revealed, highlighting also structural weaknesses in national systems that can sometimes exclude children on the move.
The United States has appropriated and is obligated to spend an estimated $5.9 trillion on the war on terror through Fiscal Year 2019, including direct war and war-related spending and obligations for future spending on post-9/11 war veterans.
This number differs substantially from the Pentagon’s estimates of the costs of the post-9/11 wars because it includes not only war appropriations made to the Department of Defense – spending in the war zones of Iraq, Syria, Afghanistan, Pakistan, and in other places the government designates as sites of “overseas contingency operations,” – but also includes spending across the federal government that is a consequence of these wars.
Specifically, this is war-related spending by the Department of State, past and obligated spending for war veterans’ care, interest on the debt incurred to pay for the wars, and the prevention of and response to terrorism by the Department of Homeland Security.
We Treat Nations as though They Were Individuals
Under the Fourth Geneva Convention, collective punishment is war crime. Article 33 states that “No protected person may be punished for an offense that he or she did not personally commit.”
Countries sanctioned in some form by the US | JojotoRudess |11 March 2015 | CC BY-SA 4.0
At present, we treat nations as though they were persons: We punish entire nations by sanctions, even when only the leaders are guilty, even though the burdens of the sanctions fall most heavily on the poorest and least guilty of the citizens, and even though sanctions often have the effect of uniting the citizens of a country behind the guilty leaders.
HUMAN WRONGS WATCH 