UNITED NATIONS, Feb 14 2025 (IPS)* – When some of the world’s “authoritarian and repressive regimes” were elected as members of the UN Human Rights Council (HRC) –including Cuba, China, Russia, Kazakhstan and the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) — a US Congressman Dana Rohrabacher infamously remarked:
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“The inmates have taken over the asylum, I don’t plan to give the lunatics any more American tax dollars to play with.”
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The UN General Assembly votes to suspend the rights of the membership of the Russian Federation in the Human Rights Council during an Emergency Special Session on Ukraine. April 2022. Credit: UN Photo/Manuel Elías
(UN News)* — The World Health Organization (WHO) has expressed deep concern over the impact of US funding cuts on critical global health initiatives, warning they pose a direct threat to public health efforts worldwide.
In a media briefing on Tuesday [], WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus highlighted the consequences of funding suspensions, including disruptions to HIV treatment, setbacks in polio eradication and limited resources for responding to mpox epidemics in Africa.
UNITED NATIONS, Feb 13 2025 (IPS)* – The Trump administration’s decision to dismantle the US Agency for International Development (USAID), the US government’s primary channel for humanitarian aid and disaster relief, is expected to have a devastating impact on the world’s developing nations.
The 2025 Budget Request, under the former Biden administration, amounted to a staggering $58.8 billion in US foreign aid for this year.
The proposed aid included funding to fully support the US priorities and commitments made at the U.S.-Africa Leader’s Summit in May last year.
The request also fulfills Biden’s pledge made at the U.S.-hosted Seventh Replenishment of the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis, and Malaria to match $1 for every $2 contributed by other donors by providing $1.2 billion to the Global Fund.
11 February 2025, Nairobi –The International Organization for Migration (IOM) and 45 humanitarian and development partners are appealing for USD 81 million to provide lifesaving humanitarian assistance to over one million migrants — including women and children — and the communities that host them in Djibouti, Ethiopia, Somalia, the Republic of Tanzania, Kenya and Yemen.
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Migrants crossing the desert in Obok, Djibouti. Hundreds of thousands of migrants embark each year on dangerous irregular journeys primarily from Ethiopia and Somalia. Photo by IOM 2022/Alexander Bee
(UN News)* — Thousands of people affected by the fighting in the eastern Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) are leaving displacement sites in and around Goma for safer areas, the UN humanitarian affairs office OCHA reported on .
UN News | A man carries water in a camp for displaced people in Goma, in the eastern Democratic Republic of the Congo.
Last month, M23 rebels captured the city – the largest in the region and capital of North Kivu province. Nearly 3,000 people have reportedly been killed and 2,880 injured.
OCHA Spokesperson Jens Laerke said more than 110,000 displaced people have left sites in Goma and have started to move to villages in the Masisi, Rutshuru and Nyiragongo territories.
(UN News)* — The forced displacement of Palestinian communities in the northern part of the West Bank is escalating at an alarming pace, the UN agency that assists Palestine refugees UNRWA warned on .
Several refugee camps are nearly empty after Israeli forces launched Operation Iron Wall on 21 January, making it the longest operation in the West Bank since the second intifada, according to the agency.
HARARE, Zimbabwe, Feb 11 2025 (IPS)* – Many in the West, of the political right and left, now deny imperialism. For Josef Schumpeter, empires were pre-capitalist atavisms that would not survive the spread of capitalism. But even the conservative Economist notes President Trump’s revival of this US legacy.
Jomo Kwame Sundaram
Economic liberalism challenged
Major liberal economic thinkers of the 19th century noted capitalism was undermining economic liberalism.
John Stuart Mill and others acknowledged the difficulties of keeping capitalism competitive.
In 2014, billionaire Peter Thiel declared competition is for losers.
According to Elon Musk, USAID, the US chief foreign aid agency, “deserves to die.” Why? Because it is “a viper’s nest of radical-left Marxists who hate America.”
Richard E. Rubenstein
What planet does this strange fellow live on? I AM a radical-left Marxist professor – one who happens to love the USA–and for more than forty years I have been criticizing USAID for not being radical or leftist at all.
What the irate oligarch means by “Marxist” is anyone’s guess.
(UN News)* — Two mass graves likely containing the bodies of migrants have been discovered in Libya, highlighting the ongoing, deadly dangers facing vulnerable people fleeing conflict and poverty, the UN migration agency, IOM said on .
Nineteen bodies were discovered in Jakharrah, around 400 km south of the coastal city of Benghazi, while at least 30 more were found in a mass grave in the Alkufra desert in the southeast. It is believed the second grave may contain as many as 70 bodies.
(UN News)* — The civilian death toll in Sudan has surged dramatically, with at least 275 people killed between 31 January and 5 February, the UN human rights office, OHCHR, reported on Friday.[].
The 2025 Budget Request, under the former Biden administration, amounted to a staggering $58.8 billion in US foreign aid for this year.
HUMAN WRONGS WATCH 