Human Wrongs Watch

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.

The latest available regional information about labour in the Middle East and North of Africa unveil strongly discouraging facts– youth unemployment rates are among the highest ones in the world, and unemployment rates among young women are two to three times higher than among young men, just to mention some striking examples.

Heavy monsoon rain in southern Pakistan is hitting children and women worst of all. Over 2.5 million children have been affected by new severe floods, and around 1.5 million women of reproductive age are among the now over seven million victims.