December 2019 — Page 4 of 14 — Human Rights & Charity

UN chief urges action following execution, abduction of civilians in Nigeria

Media reports indicate that suspected insurgents carried out the attacks on Sunday during an ambush of a humanitarian convoy just outside Maiduguri, capital of Borno state.

UN chief António Guterres has expressed his deepest condolences to the families of the victims while also underlining UN solidarity with the people and Government of Nigeria.

“The Secretary-General recalls that attacks by a party to an armed conflict that target civilians, aid workers, and civilian infrastructure violate international humanitarian law,” said the statement.

“Those responsible for these atrocities must be held accountable. International human rights law and international humanitarian law must be fully respected, and all civilians in Nigeria must be protected.”

Violence increasing

The top UN humanitarian official in Nigeria said he was “horrified” by the reports, though information was still being received.

Antonio José Canhandula, acting UN Humanitarian Coordinator, said reports indicate the attacks took place along the Monguno-Maiduguri Road in northern Borno State, and on another key road link with Yobe State.

He added that aid workers in the region have condemned the incidents and what he described as “the increasing practice” by armed groups of setting up checkpoints targeting civilians.

“It is urgent for the Nigerian authorities to do their utmost to prevent further violence and brutality and to protect the civilian population, including aid workers, from such grave violations of international laws, especially women and children who are among the most vulnerable and are caught up in the violence,” he said in a statement issued on Monday.

The extremist group Boko Haram has been operating in northeastern Nigeria for the past decade, which has forced some seven million people to flee their homes, according to UN estimates.

Mr. Canhandula said more than 36,000 people have been killed since the start of the conflict, roughly half of them civilians, while nine aid workers were killed this year.

He reported that there has been an upsurge in violence, particularly along main roads over the past six months, which has resulted in a deterioration in the humanitarian situation.

This year alone, more than 160,000 people fled their homes for shelter in camps that are already congested, he said.

Amidst uptick in violence and displacement, UN chief calls for ‘immediate cessation of hostilities’ in Syria

In a statement issued on Monday night by his spokesperson, Stephane Dujarric, the UN chief expressed alarm over the scale of the military operation and reported attacks on evacuation routes as civilians try to flee north to safety.

“The Secretary-General reminds all parties of their obligations to protect civilians and ensure freedom of movement”, said Mr. Dujarric.

The military escalation has yielded dozens of civilian casualties and displaced 80,000 citizens, including 30,000 in the last week alone.

“Sustained, unimpeded and safe humanitarian access to civilians, including through the cross-border modality, must be guaranteed” to allow the UN and its humanitarian partners to continue to carry out their critical work in the country’s north, according to the statement.

The Secretary-General also reiterated that there is no military resolution to the Syrian conflict and that the only credible solution is a “UN-facilitated political process” pursuant to Security Council resolution 2254 of 2015, which calls for a ceasefire and a political settlement.

Children bear the brunt

And speaking on behalf of children, the UN Children’s Fund (UNICEF) said on Tuesday that more than 500 were injured or killed in the first nine months of this year, and at least 65 have been killed or injured in December alone.

“Children are bearing the brunt” of the intensifying violence, said Ted Chaiban, UNICEF Regional Director for the Middle East and North Africa.

The upsurge in violence and displacement comes as temperatures around the region plummet, bringing flooding and freezing rain, and pushing thousands of families to flee north.

He flagged intensified violence in the densely populated areas of Ma’arat An-Nu’man, south of Idlib city, and noted that since 11 December, escalating fighting has displaced more than 130,000 people, including over 60,000 children, from southern Idlib, northern Hama and western Aleppo.

“These displacements are adding pressure on generous host communities and on overcrowded camps”, Mr. Chaiban continued. “Many families still have no shelter at all and are sleeping out in the open”.

Nine years into the war, children in Syria continue to experience unspeakable violence, trauma and distress. And those living in camps are exhausted from multiple displacements and being exposed to the cold, illness and, in extreme cases, death.

“Humanitarian access must be sustained to provide life-saving assistance to hundreds of thousands of children everywhere in the northwest and other parts of Syria”, spelled out the UN official.

Echoing the UN chief’s sentiment, UNICEF called on all parties to the conflict to “cease hostilities and put children first once and for all.”

Children must always be protected including in times of conflict – UNICEF

“Children must always be protected including in times of conflict. This is an obligation on all parties to the conflict – not a choice”, he concluded.

Entire towns razed

For its part, the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs Humanitarian (OCHA) underscored that conditions have worsened for the four million women, children and men in north-west Syria, where clashes, shelling and air strikes have taken a devastating toll on people and critical civilian infrastructure.

“Entire towns and villages have been razed to the ground, while dozens of communities have been emptied”, according to OCHA. “Residents in Government-controlled areas have been affected with indiscriminate fire into their areas”.

And making matters even worse, as temperatures drop – some nights falling to zero and below – fuel shortages have emerged as a key challenge, compounded by heavy rains that increase protection, health and other risks.

FROM THE FIELD: Preventing Ethiopia’s trash from going to waste

Hundreds of people have typically collected waste for a living on the site in the Ethiopian capital, Addis Ababa, but it has always been a dangerous occupation due to the threat of trash piles collapsing and the intense heat given off by decomposing rubbish.

Now, UN-Habitat has been working with the city government and Japanese experts, to manage the site in a more secure and sustainable way.

Read more here about how the Fukuoka Method of waste management from Japan has enabled local people to carry on collecting and selling trash.

Guterres stresses need for independent, ‘impartial investigation’ into Saudi journalist Khashoggi’s death

At a press conference at UN Headquarters in New York on Monday, UN Spokesperson Stephane Dujarric, in response to a question, told journalists that an investigation was necessary “to ensure full examination of and accountability for human rights violations committed in the case”.

Back in October 2018, the US-based columnist for the Washington Post went to the Saudi consulate in Turkey to pick up paperwork for his upcoming wedding. That was the last time he was seen, and his body has never been found.

“The Secretary-General also reiterates the UN’s commitment to ensuring freedom of expression and protection of journalists, as well as our longstanding opposition to the death penalty”, Mr. Dujarric continued, recalling “as a matter of principle” that the Organization continues to “stand against the death penalty”.

‘Travesty’ of justice

Meanwhile, on social media, an independent UN expert reacted to the decision of the Riyadh court, saying that the sentencing was “anything but justice” for the 59-year-old journalist.

Agnes Callamard, Special Rapporteur on extrajudicial, summary or arbitrary executions, said in a series of tweets that the trial was a “travesty of investigation, prosecution and justice”.

After the court rejected the findings of an inquiry she had conducted in June, and ruled that the killing was not premeditated, the independent expert tweeted that “a forensic doctor enrolled in the official killing team at least 24 hours before the crime” who discussed “dismemberment two hours before it actually occurred” shows that the murder “also clearly indicates planning”.

Ms. Callamard also noted that the “18 Saudi officials, present on their own in the Saudi consulate in Istanbul for more than 10 days, cleaned up the crime scene,” and stated that this constitued an “obstruction of justice”.

Special Rapporteurs are appointed by the Geneva-based UN Human Rights Council to examine and report back on a specific human rights theme or a country situation. The positions are honorary and the experts are not UN staff, nor are they paid for their work.

FIRST PERSON: Chef’s ‘labour of love’ key ingredient for life in the kitchen

Roseann Rostoker moved to New Orleans in 2010 to open the Red Gravy café. According to some estimates, women make up just 20 per cent of chefs working in the United States.

“I always wanted to run a restaurant since the age of 10-years-old. While other kids were watching Bugs Bunny cartoons on TV, I was watching cooking programmes. When my mom went out to work, I was responsible for watching my younger sister and getting dinner started. I loved that. I could make a brown gravy better than my mother, even though I didn’t really know what I was doing. It got to the point that I was giving her the shopping list, so I could cook dinner.

I knew I wanted to be a chef when I was 14, but my parents did not let me go to cooking school. They said it was no job for a woman. When it was time to go to university, I asked again, but my mom insisted I went to the university where she taught, as I could go for free. We were a blue collar [working class] family and would have had to pay for cooking school.

It’s important for women to be themselves and not what others expect them to be and to believe they will get it right, if not every time, then most times. – Roseann Rostoker

I went to university for a semester and a half and then dropped out. I worked at a newspaper selling classifies ads, got married and then had children and. Once my kids were older, I got my first job as a professional cook in a corporate kitchen. I lied in the entire resumé, I just needed to get my foot in the door. There was a female chef, who maybe wanted to give me a chance and within six months I was her sous-chef, so I pulled it off.

I took five years out of the industry to become a dominatrix in New York but came back to cooking. There will always be a need for restaurants just like funeral homes; people have to eat and people will die. It’s a service industry and although certain aspects of the business may be automated you will always need someone to cook the food, lay the table, pour the wine. Technology is helping in the back office and also in the kitchen with more specialized machines for making, for example, gluten-free soup.

What we do in the kitchen is a labour of love; if I get a bad review, I take it personally. Some days, I wake up and say, “I don’t want to play restaurant today”, but customers don’t care how I feel; they want their meat ball or omelet. My job is to give it to them. But, I do have freedom as I am my own boss.

Listen to a discussion between Roseann Rostoker and Kevin Cassidy, the Director of the ILO’s office for the United States at the Red Gravy :

To run a successful restaurant, you need humility, a sense of humour and patience, because no-one is ever going to do something exactly the way I want it to be done.

Many people still believe that the catering industry is a man’s world, but it is becoming easier as a woman if you run your own business. However, if you are not in charge, you are still at risk of sexual advances and abuse. In my kitchen, I immediately put a stop to any language which I think is inappropriate.

Women bring a different sensibility to cooking as when they cook it is like love, whilst men cook as a critical profession. It’s important for women to be themselves and not what others expect them to be and to believe they will get it right, if not every time, then most times.”

‘Humanity, quiet dignity’ of workers profiled in US-wide photo project

Beneath the brackish water are crawfish, small freshwater crustaceans which resemble lobsters, and before long they will be drawn into the cages, lured by fish scraps.

Heath Leger works for Chez Francois Seafood, a family crawfish business originally set up by his father and now run by his brother. “Today, I’m setting pots to catch the crawfish. Two thousand pots can be set in 120 acres and each pot can hold between three to six pounds, at least in the high season in the spring and early summer.”

Crawfish, says Heath Leger, which are locally referred to as “mud bugs,” did not use to be a delicacy and “only people in the swamp ate them.” But, now 40 years after his father got into the business, it’s a global billion-dollar industry.

Read more here about Heath Leger’s job.

Louisiana produces more than 90 per cent of all crawfish in the United States, and the industry makes more than $300 million annually, creating 7,000 direct and indirect jobs, according to the Louisiana Crawfish Promotion and Research Board.

Dog-dead tired

It’s not an easy job, Heath Leger told UN News as he finished his shift planting pots. “It’s non-stop, sitting in that boat, driving with your feet; you’re doing five things at one time.

It’s hot, there’s mosquitoes, it’s sweating, you’re messing with fish…it will chip away at you. It takes a special kind of person to do this job, it’s not for everyone. If you don’t like getting dirty this is not for you, I tell you that. I’ve seen myself up to my waist in mud already.”

However, there are rewards. “At the end of the day your dog-dead tired but you have a boat full of crawfish. To me it’s about providing a service and satisfying the customer, making someone smile.”

As Heath Leger packs up a catch of crawfish, lunch service is coming to an end at the Italian-flavoured Red Gravy café in New Orleans’ central business district, some 130 miles east of Scott.

The last orders of meatballs and shrimp and grits are being served but crawfish is not on the menu today. Chef and owner Roseann Rostoker takes a seat at a table at the front of the café and is brought tea by a member of her staff. Like Heath Leger, she understands the importance of keeping customers happy.

“What we do in the kitchen is a labour of love; if I get a bad review, I take it personally. Some days, I wake up and say, ‘I don’t want to play restaurant today’, but customers don’t care how I feel; they want their meatball or omelet. My job is to give it to them.”

Read more here about Roseann Rostoker’s job.

Behind the scenes

Both chef and crawfish farmer are working behind the scenes, playing significant but largely invisible roles in providing services to customers who they may never meet. These two American workers are also part of a photography project called “Dignity at Work: The American Experience”, which was launched by the International Labour Organization (ILO) on its 2019 centenary to document the working life of people across the United States.

Kevin Cassidy is the Director of the ILO’s office for the United States. “We wanted to show the humanity and the quiet dignity that people bring to their jobs every day. And we also wanted to make these ‘invisible’ jobs visible. People don’t think about the maintenance schedule of the jet engines on the plane they are flying in, or the conditions of work for the train engineer or the cleanliness of the restrooms at National Parks until there is a problem. There are hundreds of millions of people who get up everyday and are focused on doing a good job but are never recognized and remain invisible in plain sight. We pass them by without realizing they are there or what work means to them or the pride they put into their work.”

The ILO, a specialized United Nations agency, which focuses on advancing social justice and promoting decent work not just in the US but across the world, is leading UN efforts to answer how technology, demographic shifts, globalization and climate change will shape work in the future.

“Work connects us all to reality wherever we are in the world. Work is this unique entry point, this nexus where the social and economic connect. We are all part of the international globalized economy, but we are also all connected as people as families and communities”, the ILO’s Kevin Cassidy told UN News.

“A crawfish farmer is similar to a fisherman, whether that person is in Indonesia, Malaysia or Thailand, so there are people who do the same types of jobs in the US as in other parts of the world. They have the same challenges of being out on the water of trying to catch the fish. So, there is a connection between all these people.”

The project intends to photograph American workers from a wide cross-section of different industries in around 100 cities in 26 US states for the ILO’s Dignity at Work project. And despite the wide array of jobs in which they are engaged, Kevin Cassidy says they all are linked in one way or another.

“The people we have been speaking to are connected to the economy, connected to the community. They have a sense of how the world is changing and have been preparing not only themselves but also their children for those changes.”

Back at the crawfish farm in Scott, Heath Leger says he hopes the legacy created by his father will “carry on for generations”, adding that if his children wanted to go into the business, they could “take it to the next level”. That means spending more time in the office building the business and less time knee-deep in mud.

The 2010 – 2020 UN News Decade in Review, part one

2010: Haiti earthquake

The decade began with an immense disaster in Haiti, already the poorest country in the Western hemisphere. A devastating, 7.0 magnitude earthquake hit the island on January 12, killing hundreds and thousands of people (220,000 according to Haitian Government figures), and causing severe damage to buildings.

A week after the tragedy, the Security Council authorized an increase of 3,500 peacekeepers for Haiti, on top of the 9,000 already in the country, to reinforce MINUSTAH, and help with recovery, reconstruction and stability efforts. As UN Special Envoy for Haiti, former US President Bill Clinton was closely involved with these efforts.

The UN Mission in Haiti, MINUSTAH, did not escape the effects of the quake: the Christopher Hotel, which housed the Mission HQ, collapsed and 102 UN staff died, including the Secretary-General’s Special Representative to Haiti, Hédi Annabi, his deputy Luiz Carlos da Costa and Acting Police Commissioner Doug Coates of the Royal Canadian Mounted Police.

UN staff member found alive after being buried in rubble at mission headquarters at Christopher Hotel in Haiti.

132 UN workers were rescued by international teams , including Jens Kristensen, who managed to survive, despite spending five days trapped under the rubble of the building. Mr. Kristensen, a senior humanitarian worker, had already worked through the 2002 earthquake in Afghanistan, the 1999 quake in Turkey and one in Ecuador in 1987, although this was his closest brush with death. Escaping with little more than a bruise on his upper arm and a scratch on his right hand, Mr. Kristensen was back at work three days after his rescue.

🎥 Look back at some of the other UN-related stories in the 2010 Year in Review

2011: Syria conflict begins

In April 2011, the then Secretary-General, Ban Ki-moon, phoned Syrian President Bashar Al-Assad to tell him that he was “greatly disturbed” by reports of violence in the country, following demonstrations which were part of a broader pro-democracy movement across North Africa and the Middle East that led to the downfall of long-standing regimes in Tunisia and Egypt, which became known as the Arab Spring.

Neither of them could have known that, eight years on, the conflict would still be ongoing, provoking in the meantime a major refugee crisis, hundreds of thousands of civilian deaths, and a major humanitarian disaster: over 5,6 million people have fled Syria since 2011, and some 6,6 million are thought to be displaced within the country, according to the UN refugee agency, UNHCR.

Today, the fighting is far from over, but the UN has been working hard since 2011 to find a political solution to this highly complex conflict. In 2019, UN-brokered talks brought together 150 representatives from the Government, opposition and civil society, for the first face-to-face talks in five years.

Without making any promises that the talks will end the suffering of the Syrian people, the UN Envoy to the country, Geir Pedersen, told the Security Council in November that they could be a “door-opener” to finally providing a solution to the country’s brutal conflict.

🎥 Watch the 2011 Year in Review

2012: Malala becomes ‘the most famous teenager in the world’

From a young age, Pakistani student Malala Yousafzai was known for speaking out in favour of the education of girls, and highlighting the atrocities of the Taliban.

She was born and brought up in the volatile Swat Valley, in the northwest of the country, and came to prominence in 2010, when she featured in a New York Times documentary about her life in the region, as the Pakistani military entered the region and clashed with Taliban fighters.

Whilst taking the bus home from school, in October 2012, Malala, and two other girls, were shot by a Taliban gunman: she was hit in the head by a bullet, but survived and eventually recovered.

The attack made waves around the world, and was widely condemned: on Human Rights Day that year, a special tribute to Malala was held at the Paris headquarters of the UN Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO), pushing for action to ensure every girl’s right to go to school, and to advance girls’ education as an urgent priority.

Malala’s activism and profile have only grown since the assassination attempt. She won several high-profile awards, including the 2014 Nobel Peace Prize (alongside Indian social reformer Kailash Satyarthi), and became a UN Messenger of Peace in 2017, with a special focus on girls’ education.

🎥 More UN-related stories in the the 2012 Year in Review

2013: UN Mission set up to protect civilians in Mali

It’s been called the UN’s ‘most dangerous mission’, where peacekeepers have sustained severe and regular casualties from the activities of armed groups in the north of the country, as they attempt to protect civilians from instability, which includes deadly inter-ethnic clashes.

MINUSMA, the UN Mission in Mali, was established in April 2013, when the Security Council voted to approve a 12’600-strong operation, authorized “to use all necessary means” to stabilize the country; protect the local population, as well as UN staff and cultural artefacts; and ensure the flow of humanitarian aid to those who need it.

The creation of the Mission came in the wake of fighting which broke out in January 2012 between Government forces and Tuareg rebels, leading to the occupation of Northern Mali by radical Islamists.

Shortly after the adoption of the resolution approving the deployment, the then Under-Secretary-General for Peacekeeping Operations, Hervé Ladsous, told journalists in New York that the Mission would help the Malian authorities on the way to “constitutional order, democratic governance and national unity”.

Despite the presence of MINUSMA, the situation in the country is extremely challenging for the Blue Helmets in Mali. In December 2019, a UN human rights expert described the security situation as “critical”, with unprecedented incidents of communal violence and deadly attacks from armed groups: in an interview with UN News, Mbaranga Gasarabwe, the UN Deputy Special Representative in Mali, explained that the Mission is part of a wider effort to contain terror groups in the wider Sahel region, which include Burkina Faso, Chad, Mauritania and Niger, as well as Mali.

🎥 Get an overview of the year’s stories in the 2013 Year in Review

UN relief chief condemns attacks against humanitarian premises in Yemen

Mark Lowcock issued a statement on Monday condemning the attacks, which occurred in Al Dhale’e, located in the south-west of the country.

They were carried out by unknown individuals using rocket-propelled grenades.

“These events represent an alarming escalation in the risks faced by humanitarian workers in Yemen. Twelve organizations have now been forced to suspend aid programmes in Al Dhale’e, which will affect 217,000 local residents. Several organizations are working with local staff to ensure the most essential activities can continue,” he said.

Mr. Lowcock also expressed his continued grave concern over media campaigns in parts of Yemen that spread rumours and incitement against aid operations.

Humanitarians reach more than 12 million people across the country each month, he said, adding that they rely on the authorities to ensure they can operate in safe conditions.

Yemen remains the world’s worst humanitarian crisis.

Nearly five years of fighting between Government forces, backed by a Saudi-led coalition, and rebels means that around 24 million citizens—or roughly 80 per cent of the population—rely on aid relief.

Much work needed to ‘target unacceptable levels’ of racism in Ecuador: UN experts

After visiting the country, the independent UN human rights experts concluded that the Government must step up efforts to enforce the law and implement plans to end racial discrimination suffered by Afro-Ecuadorians and people of African descent.

“People are suffering particularly in their ability to access justice, security, land, clean water, education, healthcare, housing and economic opportunity,” said Ahmed Reid, Working Group Chair, in a statement he presented.

He pointed out that although only 7.2 percent of the population are Afro-Ecuadorians, they constitute 40 per cent of those living in poverty.

Esmeraldas

The Working Group drew particular attention to the province of Esmeraldas, where nearly 70 per cent of the population is of African heritage.

“Esmeraldas is one of the poorest provinces in Ecuador”, said Mr. Reid, noting that 85 per cent of people live below the poverty line, less than a quarter are able to access the most basic services and 15 per cent are illiterate”.

While welcoming the Government’s national initiatives to combat racism, discrimination, xenophobia and intolerance faced by Afro Ecuadorians, the UN experts maintained that “much work remains to be done to target these unacceptable levels of exclusion and poverty”.

Environmental racism

With systematic contamination of the environment and their water supplies, intimidation of their communities, and an insufficient response by the State, the experts lamented that people of African descent are also suffering “environmental racism”.

In conclusion, they said that “the State should not remain indifferent to human rights abuses and violations by extractive industries and other companies”, but instead “end impunity for human rights violations and environmental racism.”

For his part, Ricardo Sunga, one of the human rights experts, praised the progressive provisions of the country’s Constitution that recognized the collective rights of people of African descent.

Independent experts are appointed by the Geneva-based UN Human Rights Council to examine and report back on a specific human rights theme or a country situation. The positions are honorary and the experts are not UN staff, nor are they paid for their work.

The full report and recommendations of their 16 to 20 December visit will be presented to the UN Human Rights Council in September.

Quality immunization and surveillance help stop polio outbreaks in three African countries: WHO

Kenya, Mozambique and Niger curbed different outbreaks of vaccine-derived poliovirus over the past 24 months which affected 14 children.

Although wild poliovirus virus has not been detected in Africa since 2016, roughly 12 countries are currently facing outbreaks of vaccine-derived poliovirus.

“Ending outbreaks in the three countries is proof that response activities along with high quality immunization campaigns and vigilant disease surveillance can stop the remaining outbreaks in the region”, said Dr. Modjirom Ndoutabe, coordinator of WHO-led polio outbreaks Rapid Response Team for the African Region.

“We are strongly encouraged by this achievement and determined in our efforts to see all types of polio eradicated from the continent. It is a demonstration of the commitment by governments, WHO and our partners to ensure that future generations live free of this debilitating virus”.

Polio is a highly infectious viral disease that can lead to paralysis. It mainly affects children under five.

While there is no cure, the disease can be prevented through a simple vaccine.

Polio is transmitted from person-to-person and is spread through contact with infected faeces or, less frequently, through contaminated water or food. The virus enters the body via the mouth and multiplies through the intestines.

“When children are immunized with the oral polio vaccine, the attenuated vaccine virus replicates in their intestines for a short time to build up the needed immunity and is then excreted in faeces into the environment where it can mutate”, WHO explained.

Vaccine-derived polioviruses are rare, the UN agency added. They only emerge in areas where overall immunization is low and that have inadequate sanitation, leading to transmission of the mutated polio virus.

The African countries currently experiencing vaccine-derived polio outbreaks are Angola, Benin, Cameroon, Central African Republic, Chad, Côte d’Ivoire, Democratic Republic of the Congo, Ethiopia, Ghana, Nigeria, Togo and Zambia.

Weak routine vaccination coverage, vaccine refusal and difficulty in accessing some locations, are some of the risk factors behind these outbreaks, according to WHO.

Month: December 2019