Human Wrongs Watch

‘In too many societies girls still face the double discrimination of being young and being female. They are pulled out of school, married early, and are more likely to be subject to violence.’

They now total 700 million people. By 2050 they will be about two billion or over 20 per cent of the world’s population. Many of them are still vibrant and essential contributors to the development and stability. Yet, they are largely excluded from the wider global and national development agendas.They are the elderly–our parents and grandparents.

Recently independent South Sudan will face chronic food shortages next year due to internal and border insecurity, erratic rains and a huge influx of returnees from the North, UN agencies have warned.

The FAO said a Rapid Crop Assessment carried out in August showed South Sudan was likely to produce 420,000-500,000MT of food this year – half the required amount.

The United Nations urged the international community to take action against mounting threats posed by climate change on the world’s urban areas, warning that climate-related events could force up to 200 million people worldwide to flee their homes by 2050.

The UN High Commissioner for Human Rights says Syrian military and security forces have killed at least 2,700 people; but activists and human rights groups put that number as high as 5,300.

While global spending on weapons is set up to further increase in spite of the economic recession, four major UN agencies and their aid partners have just appealed for $18.3 million to help tens of thousands of refugees who are fleeing into western Ethiopia to escape violence in Sudan’s Blue Nile state.

The United Nations committee entrusted with helping countries tackle terrorism has voiced concern at the close connection between terrorists and transnational organized crime, including the illegal movement of nuclear, chemical, biological and other potentially deadly materials.

In a closed envelope delivered to UN secretary-general with little hope, the Palestinian Authority submitted on September 23rd its demand to the United Nations to recognise Palestine as an independent State, while giving time to the Security Council to consider what it had repeatedly claimed but it will now reject due to the U.S. “veto”:

Twenty aid agencies issued an open letter on 21 September urging the international community to “put people’s lives before politics if [we are] to stand any chance of aiding people suffering from the famine in Somalia”.

While very busy covering French president and British prime minister visits to Libya, and talking about the day when Libyan oil will feed again cars and industries, mainstream media has nearly ignored the continuing killings in Yemen and the growing hunger of which more than 7,5 million Yemenis are victims.