justice.
(Source: poutsbl)
Posts tagged human rights
internationalwomensinitiative:
“No girl should be robbed of her childhood, her education and health, and her aspirations. Yet today millions of girls are denied their rights each year when they are married as child brides”, Michelle Bachelet, M.D., Executive Director of UN Women.
According to United Nations…
I know I say this a handful of times, but the UN is doing it right. The UN is fast becoming the place in the world where individuals can speak frankly about very serious problems affecting our world. I go back and forth on Ban Ki-moon and the leadership teams at the UN; but this post, combined with this week’s discussion that GENDER, as a whole, should become an individual priority within the Millennium Development Goals are for your attention. Yes, the same agenda that insists on access to sanitation, clear water, basic education, maternal care, for all by 2015, should include gender development as an individual agenda item.
I agree with the critics, the UN’s mechanism for action is weak, underfunded, undersupported, and at some times, yes, questionable. But international governance is pretty new, people, and we’ve got to start somewhere. We’re not talking about the 400+ year-old nation-state. We’re talking about the idea of an institutional where leaders can meet and discuss issues that construct a barrier to peace.
We cannot agree on action without first allowing the full conversation to take place. The UN is a place for that. And despite a few bumps, most notably the inability of the UN and former Secretary-General Kofi Annan to prevent the 2003 US/UK invasion of Iraq, the UN provides a space where individuals can speak frankly about injustice and have heard their cries for peace.
Filmed by the first women’s filmmaking collective in rural Zambia, Hidden Truth is an intimate portrayal of the effects of domestic violence on women and children in Samfya, a remote region of Northern Zambia.
Please share.
This is why women and children MUST be the focus of all development efforts. This is why we must support the UN MDGs.
(via The Telegraph)
Burma carrying out ‘policy of ethnic cleansing’ against Muslims
Human Rights Watch calls for an international inquiry into the violence in Burma as they release evidence that Burmese security forces organised and stood guard over Buddhist attacks on Muslim settlements before burying scores of bodies in mass graves.
Evidence of official involvement in the massacres that left hundreds dead was gathered by Human Rights Watch researchers at 27 different sites in Arakan State, including at four mass graves dug between June and October last year.
The report released today by Human Rights Watch is the most comprehensive evidence yet that the Burmese government colluded in a wave of ethnic attacks and was released just hours before the EU was due to drop sanctions on the Burmese regime as a reward for reformist pledges at a meeting in Luxembourg on Monday.
“During this period of time, thousands of Arakanese civilians descended on Muslim villages, burned the villages down to the ground, security forces either stood by and watched or directly participated in abuses,” report author Matthew Smith told The Telegraph.
In the worse single massacre of the three month outbreak more than 70 people, including 28 children were hacked to death in a day long massacre at Yan Thei village.
I will reblog until EVERYONE knows.
This is not the buddhist way … ever before. What has happened to this world? Why do buddhist now hate Muslims so much that they would not only kill, but attempt genocide?! I realise this is “ethnic”, and there is land history here … still? Attempting.genocide.
wfp:
Jordan, April 2013
First Photo: Early morning view of the Zaatari refugee camp in Jordan that hosts several hundred thousand Syrian refugees.
Second Photo: Despite the funding shortfall that WFP is facing the organisation is continuing to provide assistance to the Syrian refugees that have left the country. In the Zaatari refugee camp in Jordan WFP is handing our half a million pieces of bread daily as well as other food items in order to sustain the families that are undergoing this dramatic situation.
Last two Photos: Families like this one are grateful to WFP and other organisations for the support that they are receiving every day.
All Photos: WFP/Rein Skullerud
Seeing my (meagre) £42 at work feels good.
Please give to WFP and enjoy the feeling alongside me.
US: Ban Fully Autonomous Weapons
“This policy shows that the United States shares our concern that fully autonomous weapons could endanger civilians in many ways. Humans should never delegate to machines the power to make life-and-death decisions on the battlefield. US policy should lay the basis for a permanent, comprehensive ban on fully autonomous weapons.”
- Steve Goose, Arms Division director at Human Rights Watch
Temporary US restrictions on lethal fully autonomous weapons should be strengthened and made permanent. Fully autonomous weapons, sometimes called “killer robots,” would be able to select and attack targets on their own without any human intervention.
The South Korean SGR-1 sentry robot, a precursor to a fully autonomous weapon, can detect people in the Demilitarized Zone and, if a human grants the command, fire its weapons. The robot is shown here during a test with a surrendering enemy soldier.
© 2007 Getty Images
well there goes that society thing we’ve been working on for … oh about four centuries (Westphalia).
More than five million Syrians have been forced to flee their homes and more than 70,000 have died, including thousands of children. In the name of all those who have suffered, the United Nations top humanitarian officials have joined together to call on governments to find a political solution.
Read and share their joint message: “Enough.”
©UNHCR/A. Branthwaite/Oncupinar refugee camp, Turkey
The hardline Buddhists targeting Sri Lanka’s Muslims
follow up of the day after Thailand and Myanmar
Harrowing, from the Guardian. Very well done.
A must see.
from the Guardian:
Burma has issued a state of emergency in the central city of Meikhtila after three days of ethnic violence between Muslims and Buddhists has left scores dead, forced thousands to flee and left local homes and shops reduced to smoking rubble.
Rioting began on Wednesday in the now ash-covered town, located 360 miles north of the commercial capital Rangoon, after an argument between a Muslim shopkeeper and his Buddhist customers erupted into a street brawl that ended with the death of a Buddhist monk.
Soon after, photos and videos of mobs roaming the streets were circulating online – showing streets littered with burning motorbikes, men armed with sticks and swords destroying property, and buildings set ablaze – with little indication that security forces were putting a stop to it.
Photo credit: Khin Maung Win/AP
Photo: A Cambodian HIV patient holds some of her drug regimen in an MSF HIV ward. Cambodia 2007 © Dieter Telemans
As closed-door talks for the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) Agreement resume in Singapore this week, MSF calls on the U.S. government to end its stall tactics and revise its proposals for what otherwise promises to be the most harmful trade deal ever for access to medicines in developing countries.
The TPP negotiations, which currently involve eleven Asia-Pacific countries, are being conducted in secret, but leaked texts reveal the most aggressive intellectual property (IP) measures ever suggested in a trade deal with developing countries. The U.S. proposals threaten to roll back internationally-agreed public health safeguards and would put in place far-reaching monopoly protections that keep medicine prices high and out of the reach of millions in the Asia-Pacific region.
“Too many people already die needlessly because the medicines they need are too expensive or do not exist, and we cannot stand by as the Trans-Pacific Partnership threatens to further restrict access to medicines in developing countries,” said Dr. Unni Karunakara, International President of MSF. “We are gravely concerned about countries like Thailand, where MSF started treating HIV/AIDS more than a decade ago and then transitioned its programs to local authorities with the confidence that they would be able to continue providing lifesaving treatments. Now Thailand is on the cusp of joining a dangerous deal that could jeopardize its ability to maintain, let alone scale up, vital, life-saving health programs for its people.”
another good reason to oppose the TPP.
Greece must improve detention conditions for migrants – UN experts
A group of United Nations independent experts today stressed that Greece must improve the conditions of detention for migrants and effectively implement recent legislation to enhance screening procedures for asylum-seekers.
“In most detention facilities visited by the Working Group, the conditions fall far below international human rights standards, including in terms of severe overcrowding,” stressed one of the members of the Working Group on Arbitrary Detention, Vladimir Tochilovsky.
See also, Special Rapporteur on racism Mutuma Ruteere says, ‘Spain must make fighting racism and xenophobia a priority’, particularly,
Spanish authorities must show leadership in the fight against racism and xenophobia in the country, an independent United Nations expert said today, adding that, against a backdrop of pervasive unemployment, the Government must ensure vulnerable groups such as immigrants are not blamed for the nation’s economic woes.
photo courtesy of UN News
Independent UN inquiry determines Israeli settlements in serious violation of Geneva convention.
The report states that Israel is committing serious breaches of its obligations under the right to self-determination and under humanitarian law.
…
“In compliance with Article 49 of the Fourth Geneva Convention, Israel must cease all settlement activities without preconditions,” said Christine Chanet, chair of the three-member inquiry.
photo courtesy of UN News, which is also available as a free app that I highly recommend.
A U.S. military judge on Thursday ordered the government to immediately dismantle the monitoring system that let outside censors halt the public broadcast of hearings for the Guantanamo prisoners accused of plotting the September 11 attacks.
“It is the judge that controls the courtroom,” said the judge, Army Colonel James Pohl. “This is the last time … any other third party will be permitted to unilaterally decide that the broadcast should be suspended.”
READ ON: Remove secret censoring system from Guantanamo court, judge orders
I’ve just marked my last exams. No more marking until new term essays. Intellectual political analysis skills drained.
My response to the above: well, that’s a step.
