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The U.N. mission will continue to pay its Malian staff members until the end of the year, when it has pledged to leave, according to Fatoumata Kaba, a spokesperson for MINUSMA. However, others who work on limited U.N. contracts, as well as shopkeepers and restaurants that serve the mission, can expect to lose that source of income. The loss will be especially acute in northern conflict-riddled regions like Kidal, Timbuktu, Menaka, and Gao, where U.N. bases employed hundreds of Malian contractors to cook meals, do maintenance work, and to build landing strips and living quarters. “In large parts of northern Mali, there’s often not many economic opportunities, so … contracts in support of the mission actually go a long way,” Arthur Boutellis, a senior adviser at the International Peace Institute, an independent think tank based in New York, said. According to the World Bank, an additional 375,000 Malians fell into extreme poverty between 2019 and 2021, in part due to stagnating wag...

Lawyers representing six young people from Portugal, who are taking 32 countries before the European Court of Human Rights for what they see as government inaction over climate change, said they think that the recent report by the Committee on the Rights of the Child , will reinforce their case. From wildfires in Portugal to fossil fuel projects in the U.S. state of Montana , young plaintiffs have been taking the lead in a burgeoning number of lawsuits seeking more government action on climate change. In the document, the U.N. Committee on the Rights of the Child calls environmental degradation, including the climate crisis, "a form of structural violence against children". It says that states should provide access to justice for children, including through "removing barriers for children to initiate proceedings themselves". "This could definitely strengthen their hand because now there's a fully articulated set of guidance that pulls everything together...

Hundreds of thousands of people are being trafficked by criminal gangs and forced to work in scam centres and other illegal online operations that have sprung up across Southeast Asia in recent years, the United Nations said in a report on Tuesday. The report cited “credible sources” estimating that at least 120,000 people across Myanmar and approximately 100,000 in Cambodia may be trapped in scam operations, with other criminal-owned enterprises in Laos, the Philippines and Thailand ranging from crypto-fraud to online gambling. “People who are coerced into working in these scamming operations endure inhumane treatment while being forced to carry out crimes. They are victims. They are not criminals,” said UN High Commissioner for Human Rights Volker Turk. The UN Human Rights Office report was one of the most detailed of the phenomenon that has intensified since the COVID pandemic, fuelled by the closure of casinos that prompted moves into less regulated areas in Southeast Asia. The f...

As UN Pandemic Talks Resume, Tedros Expresses ‘Concern’ About Slow Pace of Accord Negotiations After a two-week hiatus in negotiations, United Nations (UN) member states this week received a third draft of the Political Declaration being developed for the High-Level Meeting on Pandemic Prevention, Preparedness and Response on 20 September. The declaration was supposed to have been finalised by early August and put under silence procedure but member states failed to agree on a number of clauses and negotiations were interrupted by the northern hemisphere summer holidays. Last week, bilateral meetings resumed and sources told Health Policy Watch that member states finally received an amended draft this week. Slow pandemic accord talks Meanwhile, World Health Organization (WHO) Director-General Dr Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus expressed concern this week about the slow pace of negotiations on the pandemic accord, warning that it may not be completed by the May 2024 deadline. “I’m concerned ...

Unicef says German asylum homes 'not suitable for children' Young refugees in Germany are spending months or even years living in temporary accommodation that is “not suitable for children”, research by Unicef has found. Click here for the original article. One Syrian child reported living in a “container behind a fence” as Germany struggles to put up refugees from the Middle East, Afghanistan and Ukraine . Children said in interviews that their makeshift housing was confined, lacked private spaces, had poor hygiene and that they struggled to get schooling. One girl said: “This is not life.” Unicef said there was a lack of children’s spaces, with communal areas such as kitchens typically used for adults to play card games and people cramped into small bedrooms. Campaigners noted that children’s rights were being contravened and said refugees who had sometimes spent years en route to Germany should be treated the same way as native-born youths. Refugee children talk about “h...

Good to note that besides his many international supporters, some prominent Bangladeshis are also mustering the courage to defend Prof Yunus. Kul https://www.newagebd.net/article/210539/34-citizens-express-concern-for-harassing-prof-yunus 34 citizens express concern for ‘harassing’ prof Yunus Thirty-four eminent citizens on Sunday in a statement expressed concerns alleging that Nobel laureate Professor Muhammad Yunus was a victim of harassment. The statement said... www.newagebd.net

Young people around the world are increasingly taking their governments to court for failing to reduce climate pollution, and on rare occasions, they are winning. This week, their efforts received an endorsement from an independent panel of experts that interprets United Nations human rights law, the Committee on the Rights of the Child. In an expansive 20-page document released Monday, the committee said all countries have a legal obligation to protect children from environmental degradation — including by “regulating business enterprises” — and to allow their underage citizens to seek legal recourse. The committee’s opinion is not legally binding and is therefore impossible to enforce. But it is significant because it is based on a widely recognized international treaty and explicitly recognizes children’s right to go to court to force their government to slow down the climate crisis. That treaty is the Convention on the Rights of the Child, which is considered the most widely rati...

  For the first time, the United Nations Committee on the Rights of the Child has explicitly affirmed the children’s right to a clean, healthy and sustainable environment, issuing a comprehensive interpretation of Member States’ obligations under the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child. This Convention, created in 1989 and ratified by 196 states, outlines universal children’s rights such as the right to life, survival and development, and the right to health. A General Comment provides legal guidance on what these rights imply for a specific topic or area of legislation. The now published “General Comment No. 26 on children’s rights and the environment with a special focus on climate change”, explicitly addresses the climate emergency, the collapse of biodiversity and pervasive pollution, outlining countermeasures to protect the lives and life perspectives of children. Philip Jaffé, member of the United Nations Committee on the Rights of the Child states: “Children worldwide h...

Developed nations, through multilateral development banks (MDBs), will need to pour in about $100-150 billion annually into emerging economies to help them finance the climate transition, Mark Carney, UN special envoy for climate action and finance, said on Saturday. Speaking at the B20 Summit 2023, Carney, who's also the co-chair of GFANZ (The Glasgow Financial Alliance for Net Zero) and chair and head of Transition Investing, Brookfield Asset Management , said that there will be an enormous amount of capital required to finance the climate transition. "We need to focus on transition finance, particularly for the challenging hard-to-abate sectors and the workers and communities associated with these sectors," Carney said. Governments in emerging economies will have an important role to play in creating an enabling ecosystem by establishing regulations, reducing reliance on fossil fuels, increasing renewable energy adoption and encouraging development of carbon market...

Islamic State extremists have almost doubled the territory they control in Mali in less than a year, and their al-Qaida-linked rivals are capitalizing on the deadlock and perceived weakness of armed groups that signed a 2015 peace agreement , United Nations experts said in a new report. The stalled implementation of the peace deal and sustained attacks on communities have offered the IS group and al-Qaida affiliates a chance “to re-enact the 2012 scenario,” they said. That’s the year when a military coup took place in the West African country and rebels in the north formed an Islamic state two months later. The extremist rebels were forced from power in the north with the help of a French-led military operation, but they moved from the arid north to more populated central Mali in 2015 and remain active. In August 2020, Mali’s president was overthrown in a coup that included an army colonel who carried out a second coup and was sworn in as president in June 2021. He developed ties to R...

Gaza's students began their new school term on Sunday, but it is unclear if they will be able to complete the year uninterrupted due to a funding crisis at the United Nations' Palestinian refugee agency. The U.N. Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East (UNRWA) runs 288 schools in the Palestinian territory, among 700 across parts of the Middle East region that it funds alongside 140 medical clinics. But it is short of nearly $200 million needed to pay for staff salaries and keep the services running until the end of 2023. “We haven’t secured all the funding we need to ensure that our schools can remain operational until the end of this year, so we are working on securing the funds needed to keep schools in Gaza open,” said Thomas White, Gaza director of UNRWA's affairs. White said some donor countries would hold discussion about funding for UNRWA in September. "In the event we don’t get the funding, it is 298,000 students who might not be going ...

  Click here for the original article The Guyana Multiple Indicator Cluster Survey (GMICS) 2019-2020 assessment of males and females across Guyana has found that many persons still believe that there are justifiable reasons for males hitting or beating their partners, with lower percentages vindicating actions such as burning food but increasing numbers if that partner believed that they were being cheated on. The survey has only recently been made available. In a country where domestic violence is widespread among its females, the report revealed that males between the ages of 15 to 17 years old represented the highest percentage who said they believed that hitting their partner could be justified. Five reasons cited in the survey: - refusing to have sex - argues with him - burns food - neglects the children - goes out without telling him See  https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/SG.VAW.REAS.ZS?locations=GY

    Welcome to a brief overview of articles that appeared last week on our website. Please don't stop here - be sure to browse the full list of articles that appeared this week.  xunicefnewsandviews.blogspot.com Our Travelers of the Week Into the Midnight Sun: Detlef and Gaby Palm  Readers, get ready for another fantastic photo feature by Detlef, whose adventures to unfamiliar locations keep us enthralled and sometimes, make us envious of the experiences shared. The pictures of the scenic mountains and seas enhance the beauty of nature in the land of the midnight sun and beyond. The lucid narrative and map of the journey is captivating and enticing to even the non-intrepid travel buffs. Our Columnists This Week   Ken Gibbs   Babbles from the Balkans - 4   Nuzhat Shahzadi  Ubering in D.C & Food Trucks, etc   Ramesh Shrestha  Who are refugees? Memoirs Anthony (Tony) Bloomberg:  Trip to Fizi Territory   Toronto Reunion: ...

In summer 2019, our first cruise took us to the North Cape, into the Midnight Sun. ( click on any picture to enlarge )

Horst Max Cerni  commented on  " Into the Midnight Sun: Detlef Palm " 15 hours ago It's always a treat to read your adventurous stories. The Arctic is one of the exotic places I would have liked to experience more. By coincidence, a former UN colleague just took the same cruise - and the weather was incredible - warm and blue skies.     Ken Gibbs  commented on  " Into the Midnight Sun: Detlef Palm " 23 hours ago An interesting rare cabbage on an Oslo pedestrian street - spectacular and grey haired. . . . .    Thomas More Hae(ä)ttenschwiller  commented on  " Into the Midnight Sun: Detlef Palm " Yesterday A beautifully crafted story in its visual presentation, coupled with the content, pace of the narrative and marked by the suggested music in the background. What a wonderful and unexpected pause in my otherwise dull day of chores. Thanks so much for that!     Tad Palac  commented on  " Into the Midnight Sun: Detlef Palm " Yesterday ...