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Category: United Nations

  • Sudan in ‘world’s largest humanitarian crisis’ after two years of civil war

    NGOs and UN say country is ‘worse off than ever before’ with wide-scale displacement, hunger and attacks on refugee camps

    Sudan is suffering from the largest humanitarian crisis globally and its civilians are continuing to pay the price for inaction by the international community, NGOs and the UN have said, as the country’s civil war enters its third year.

    Two years to the day since fighting erupted in Khartoum between the Sudanese army and the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces, hundreds of people were feared to have died in RSF attacks on refugee camps in the western Darfur region in the latest apparent atrocity of a war marked by its brutality and wide-scale humanitarian impact.

    Continue reading…

    This post was originally published on Human rights | The Guardian.

  • Should Iran Bend Knee to Donald Trump?

    Former UNSCOM weapons inspector Scott Ritter usually provides excellent analysis of geopolitical events and places them in a morally centered framework. However, in a recent X post, Ritter defends a controversial stance blaming Iran for US and Israeli machinations against Iran.

    Ritter opened, “I have assiduously detailed the nature of the threat perceived by the US that, if unresolved, would necessitate military action, as exclusively revolving around Iran’s nuclear program and, more specifically, that capacity that is excess to its declared peaceful program and, as such, conducive to a nuclear weapons program Iran has admitted is on the threshold of being actualized.”

    Threats perceived by the US. These threats range from North Korea, Viet Nam, Grenada, Panama, Iraq, Libya, Syria, Yemen, Iran, China, and Russia. Question: Which of the aforementioned countries is about to — or ever was about to — attack the US? None. (Al Qaeda is not a country) So why does Ritter imply that military action would be necessitated? Is it a vestige of military indoctrination left over from his time as a marine? In this case, why is Ritter not focused on his own backyard and telling the US to butt out of the Middle East? The US, since it is situated on a continent far removed from Iran, should no more dictate to Iran what its defense posture should be in the region than Iran should dictate what the US’s defense posture should be in the northwestern hemisphere.

    Ritter: “In short, I have argued, the most realistic path forward regarding conflict avoidance would be for Iran to negotiate in good faith regarding the verifiable disposition of its excess nuclear enrichment capability.”

    Ritter places the onus for conflict avoidance on Iran. Why? Is Iran seeking conflict with the US? Is Iran making demands of the US? Is Iran sanctioning the US? Moreover, who gets to decide what is realistic or not? Is what is realistic for the US also realistic for Iran? When determining the path forward, one should be aware of who and what is stirring up conflict. Ritter addresses this when he writes, “Even when Trump alienated Iran with his ‘maximum pressure’ tactics, including an insulting letter to the Supreme Leader that all but eliminated the possibility of direct negotiations between the US and Iran…” But this did not alter Ritter’s stance. Iran must negotiate — again. According to Ritter negotiations are how to solve the crisis, a crisis of the US’s (and Israel’s) making.

    Iran had agreed to a deal — the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) — with the five permanent members of the UN Security Council (China, France, Russia, the United Kingdom, and the United States) and Germany — collectively known as the P5+1 — with the participation of the European Union. The JCPOA came into effect in 2016. During the course of the JCPOA, Iran was in compliance with the deal. Nonetheless, Trump pulled the US out of the deal in 2018.

    Backing out of agreements/deals is nothing new for Trump (or for that matter, the US). For example, Trump pulled out of the Paris Agreement on climate, the Trans-Pacific Partnership on trade, the United Nations cultural organization UNESCO, and the North American Free Trade Agreement, which was subsequently renegotiated under Trump to morph into the U.S.-Mexico-Canada Trade Agreement, which is now imperilled by the Trump administration’s tariff threats, as is the World Trade Organization that regulates international trade.

    Should Iran, therefore, expect adherence to any future agreement signed with the US?

    Ritter insists that he is promoting a reality-based process providing the only viable path toward peace. Many of those who disagree with Ritter’s assertion are lampooned by him as “the digital mob, comprised of new age philosophers, self-styled ‘peace activists’, and a troll class that opposes anything and everything it doesn’t understand (which is most factually-grounded argument), as well as people I had viewed as fellow travelers on a larger journey of conflict avoidance—podcasters, experts and pundits who did more than simply disagree with me (which is, of course, their right and duty as independent thinkers), traversing into the realm of insults and attacks against my intelligence, integrity and character.”

    Ritter continued, “The US-Iran crisis is grounded in the complexities, niceties and formalities of international law as set forth in the nuclear nonproliferation treaty (NPT), which Iran signed in 1970 as a non-nuclear weapons state. The NPT will be at the center of any negotiated settlement.”

    Is it accurate to characterize the crisis as a “US-Iran crisis”? It elides the fact that it is the US imposing a crisis on Iran. More accurately it should be stated as a “US crisis foisted on Iran.”

    Ritter argues, “… the fact remains that this crisis has been triggered by the very capabilities Iran admits to having—stocks of 60% enriched uranium with no link to Iran’s declared peaceful program, and excessive advanced centrifuge-based enrichment capability which leaves Iran days away from possessing sufficient weapons grade high enriched uranium to produce 3-5 nuclear weapons.”

    So, Ritter blames Iran for the crisis. This plays off Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu who has long accused Iran of seeking nukes. But it ignores the situation in India and Pakistan. Although the relations between the two countries are tense, logic dictates that open warring must be avoided lest it lead to mutual nuclear conflagration. And if Iran dismantles its nuclear program? What happened when Libya dismantled its nuclear program? Destruction by the US-led NATO. As A.B. Abrams wrote, Libya paid the price for

    … having ignored direct warnings from both Tehran and Pyongyang not to pursue such a course [of unilaterally disarming], Libya’s leadership would later admit that disarmament, neglected military modernisation, and trust in Western good will proved to be their greatest mistake–leaving their country near defenceless when Western powers launched their offensive in 2011. (Immovable Object: North Korea’s 70 Years at War with American Power, Clarity Press, 2020: p 296)

    And North Korea has existed with a credible deterrence against any attack on it since it acquired nuclear weapons.

    Relevant background to the current crisis imposed on Iran

    1. The year 1953 is a suitable starting point. It was in this year that the US-UK (CIA and MI6) combined to engineer a coup against the democratically elected Iranian government under prime minister Mohammad Mossadegh. Mossadegh had committed the unpardonable sin of nationalizing the British-owned Anglo-Iranian Oil Company.
    1. What to replace the Iranian democracy with? A monarchy. In other words, a dictatorship because monarchs are not elected, they are usually born into power. Thus, Mohammad Reza Pahlavi would rule as the shah of Iran for 26 years protected by his secret police, the SAVAK. Eventually, the shah would be overthrown in the 1979 Iranian Revolution.
    1. In an attempt to force Iran to bend knee to US dictate, the US has imposed sanctions, issued threats, and fomented violence.
    1. Starting sometime after 2010, it is generally agreed among cybersecurity experts and intelligence leaks that the Iranian nuclear program was a target of cyberwarfare by the US and Israel — this in contravention of the United Nations Charter Article 2 (1-4):

    1. The Organization is based on the principle of the sovereign equality of all its Members.

    2. All Members, in order to ensure to all of them the rights and benefits resulting from membership, shall fulfill in good faith the obligations assumed by them in accordance with the present Charter.

    3. All Members shall settle their international disputes by peaceful means in such a manner that international peace and security, and justice, are not endangered.

    4. All Members shall refrain in their international relations from the threat or use of force against the territorial integrity or political independence of any state, or in any other manner inconsistent with the Purposes of the United Nations.

    1. The Stuxnet virus caused significant damage to Iran’s nuclear program, particularly at the Natanz uranium enrichment facility.
    1. Israel and the United States are also accused of being behind the assassinations of several Iranian nuclear scientists over the past decade.
    1. On 3 January 2020, Trump ordered a US drone strike at Baghdad International Airport in Iraq that assassinated Iranian General Qasem Soleimani as well as Soleimani ally Abu Mahdi al-Muhandis, a top Iraqi militia leader.
    1. On 7 October 7 2023, Hamas launched a resistance attack against Israel’s occupation. Since then, Israel has reportedly conducted several covert and overt strikes targeting Iran and its proxies across the region.
    1. Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu has accused Iran of seeking nukes for nearly 30 years, long before Iran reached 60% enrichment in 2021. In Netanyahu’s book Fighting Terrorism (1995) he described Iran as a “rogue state” pursuing nukes to destroy Israel. Given that a fanatical, expansionist Zionist map for Israel, the Oded-Yinon plan, draws a Jewish territory that touches on the Iranian frontier, a debilitated Iran is sought by Israel.

     

    Oded Yinon Plan

    Says Ritter, “This crisis isn’t about Israel or Israel’s own undeclared nuclear weapons capability. It is about Iran’s self-declared status as a threshold nuclear weapons state, something prohibited by the NPT. This is what the negotiations will focus on. And hopefully these negotiations will permit the verifiable dismantling of those aspects of its nuclear program the US (and Israel) find to present an existential threat.”

    Why isn’t it about Israel’s nuclear weapons capability? Why does the US and Ritter get to decide which crisis is preeminent?

    It is important to note that US intelligence has long said that no active Iranian nuclear weapon project exists.

    It is also important to note that Arab states have long supported a Middle East Zone Free of Weapons of Mass Destruction (WMDFZ), particularly nuclear weapons, but Israel and the US oppose it.

    It is also important to note that, in 2021, the U.S. opposed a resolution demanding Israel join the NPT and that the US, in 2018, blocked an Arab-backed IAEA resolution on Israeli nukes. (UN Digital Library. Search: “Middle East WMDFZ”)

    As far as the NPT goes, it must be applied equally to all signatory states. The US as a nuclear-armed nation is bound by Article VI which demands:

    Each of the Parties to the Treaty undertakes to pursue negotiations in good faith on effective measures relating to cessation of the nuclear arms race at an early date and to nuclear disarmament, and on a treaty on general and complete disarmament under strict and effective international control.

    Thus, hopefully negotiations will permit the verifiable dismantling of those aspects of the Iranian, US, and Israeli nuclear programs (as well as the nuclear programs of other nuclear-armed nations) that are found to present an existential threat.

    Ritter warns, “Peace is not guaranteed. But war is unless common sense and fact-based logic wins out over the self-important ignorance of the digital mob and their facilitators.”

    A peaceful solution is not achieved by assertions (i.e., not fact-based logic) or by ad hominem. That critics of Ritter’s stance resort to name-calling demeans them, but to respond likewise to one’s critics also taints the respondent.

    Logic dictates that peace is more-or-less guaranteed if UN member states adhere to the United Nations Charter. The US, Iran, and Israel are UN member states. A balanced and peaceful solution is found in the Purposes and Principles as stipulated in Article 1 (1-4) of the UN Charter:

    The Purposes of the United Nations are:

    1. To maintain international peace and security, and to that end: to take effective collective measures for the prevention and removal of threats to the peace, and for the suppression of acts of aggression or other breaches of the peace, and to bring about by peaceful means, and in conformity with the principles of justice and international law, adjustment or settlement of international disputes or situations which might lead to a breach of the peace;

    2. To develop friendly relations among nations based on respect for the principle of equal rights and self-determination of peoples, and to take other appropriate measures to strengthen universal peace;

    3. To achieve international co-operation in solving international problems of an economic, social, cultural, or humanitarian character, and in promoting and encouraging respect for human rights and for fundamental freedoms for all without distinction as to race, sex, language, or religion; and

    4. To be a centre for harmonizing the actions of nations in the attainment of these common ends.

    It seems that only by refusing to abide by one’s obligations laid out the UN Charter and NPT that war looms larger.

    In Ritter’s reality, the US rules the roost against smaller countries. Is such a reality acceptable?

    It stirs up patriotism, but acquiescence is an affront to national dignity. Ritter will likely respond by asking what god is dignity when you are dead. Fair enough. But in the present crisis, if the US were to attack Iran, then whatever last shred of dignity (is there any last shred of dignity left when a country is supporting the genocide of human beings in Palestine?) that American patriots can cling to will have vanished.

    By placing the blame on Iran for a crisis triggered by destabilizing actions of the US and Israel, Ritter asks for Iran to pay for the violent events set in motion by US Israel. If Iran were to cave to Trump’s threats, they would be sacrificing sovereignty, dignity, and self-defense.

    North Korea continues on. Libya is still reeling from the NATO offensive against it. Iran is faced with a choice.

    The Mexican revolutionary Emiliano Zapata knew his choice well: “I’d rather die on my feet, than live on my knees.”

    The post Should Iran Bend Knee to Donald Trump? first appeared on Dissident Voice.


    This content originally appeared on Dissident Voice and was authored by Kim Petersen.

    This post was originally published on Radio Free.

  • UN Chief Says Israel Has Made Gaza Into “a Killing Field”

    The latest phase of Israel’s genocide in Gaza has made the Strip into “a killing field,” UN Secretary-General António Guterres has warned as Israel is blocking the entry of all humanitarian aid and is continuing its relentless bombardments. “More than an entire month has passed without a drop of aid into Gaza. No food. No fuel. No medicine. No commercial supplies. As aid has dried up…

    Source

    This post was originally published on Latest – Truthout.

  • Killing Paramedics: Israel’s War on Palestinian Health

    It was a massacre. Fifteen emergency workers, butchered in cold blood by personnel from the Israeli Defense Forces in southern Gaza on March 23. It all came to light from a video that the IDF did not intend anyone to see, filmed by Red Crescent paramedic Rifaat Radwan in the last minutes of his life. Caught red handed, the wires and levers of justification, mendacity and qualification began to move.

    The pattern of institutional response is a well-rehearsed one. First came the official claim that the troops only opened fire because the convoy approached them “suspiciously”, enshrouded in darkness, with no headlights or evidence of flashing lights. The movement of the convoy had not, it was said, been cleared and coordinated with the IDF, which had been alerted by operators of an overhead UAV. Soldiers had previously fired on a car containing, according to the Israeli account, three Hamas members. When that vehicle was approached by the ambulances, IDF personnel assumed they were threatened, despite lacking any evidence that the emergency workers were armed. On exiting the vehicles, gunfire ensues. Radwan’s final words: “The Israelis are coming, the Israeli soldiers are coming.”

    Then comes the qualification, the “hand in the cookie jar” retort. With the video now very public, the IDF was forced to admit that they had been mistaken in the initial assessment that the lights of the ambulance convoy had been switched off, blaming it on the sketchy testimony of soldiers. Also evident are clear markings on the vehicles, with the paramedics wearing hi-vis uniforms.

    After being shot, the bodies of the 15 dead workers were unceremoniously buried in sand (“in a brutal and disregarding manner that violates human dignity,” according to the Red Crescent) – supposedly to protect them from the ravages of wildlife – with the vehicles crushed by an armoured D9 bulldozer to clear the road. Allegations have been made that some of the bodies had their hands tied and were shot at close range, suggesting a willingness on the part of the military to conceal their misdeeds. The IDF has countered by claiming that the UN was informed on the location of the bodies.

    The Palestinian Red Crescent society is adamant: the paramedics were shot with the clear intention of slaying them. “We cannot disclose everything we know,” stated Dr. Younis Al-Khatib, president of the Red Crescent in the West Bank, “but I will say that all the martyrs were shot in the upper part of their bodies, with the intent to kill.”

    The IDF, after a breezy inquiry, claimed that it “revealed that the force opened fire due to a sense of threat following a previous exchange of fire in the area. Also, six Hamas terrorists were identified among those killed in the incident.” This hardly dispels the reality that those shot were unarmed and showed no hostile intent. The UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) and Palestinian rescuers have offered a breakdown of those killed: eight staff members from the Red Crescent, six from the Palestinian Civil Defence, and one employee from the UN agency for Palestinian refugees UNRWA.

    The OCHA insists that the first team comprised rescuers rather than Hamas operatives. On being sought by additional paramedic and emergency personnel, they, too, were attacked by the IDF.

    The findings of the probe into the killings were presented on April 7 to the IDF Chief of Staff Lt. Gen. Eyal Zamir by the chief of the Southern Command, Maj. Gen. Yaniv Asor. On doing so, Zamir then ordered that the General Staff Fact-Finding Assessment Mechanism be used to “deepen and complete” the effort. That particular fact-finding body is risibly described as independent, despite being an extension of the IDF. Self-investigation remains a standard norm for allegations of impropriety.

    Since October 7, 2023, the death toll of health workers in the Gaza Strip has been impressively grim, reaching 1,060. Health facilities have been destroyed, with hundreds of attacks launched on health services. The World Health Organization update in February found that a mere 50% of hospitals were partially functional. Primary health care facilities were found to be 41% functional. Medical personnel have been harassed, arbitrarily detained and subjected to mistreatment. A report from Healthcare Workers Watch published in February identified 384 cases of unlawful detention since October 7, 2023, with 339 coming from the Gaza Strip and 45 from the West Bank.

    In the opinion of the UN Special Rapporteur on the situation of human rights in the Palestinian territories since 1967, Francesca Albanese, “This is part of a pattern by Israel to continuously bombard, destroy and fully annihilate the realisation of the right to health in Gaza.”

    The IDF, which claims to be fastidious in observing the canons of international law, continues to dispel such notions in killing civilians and health workers. It also continues to insist that its soldiers could never be guilty of a conscious massacre, culpable for a blatant crime. The bodies of fifteen health workers suggest otherwise.

    The post Killing Paramedics: Israel’s War on Palestinian Health first appeared on Dissident Voice.

    This post was originally published on Dissident Voice.

  • Militarizing The Ledger, Colonizing The Future

    When we begin to examine U.S. hegemony, the Military-Industrial Complex often serves as the shorthand for understanding the entangled relationship between investment capital, militarism, neocolonial extraction, and unipolar power. But to truly unravel this system, we must look deeper into how the Military-Debt Nexus is legitimized—not only through ideological alignment or geopolitical pressure, but through institutional mechanisms such as trade agreements, national accounting rules, and debt-financed militarization. The intersection between military expenditure and global trade is not incidental; it forms the core infrastructure of compliance and control, shaping everything from resource acquisition to sanctions enforcement, all under the veil of economic normalcy.

    The post Militarizing The Ledger, Colonizing The Future appeared first on PopularResistance.Org.

    This post was originally published on PopularResistance.Org.

  • ‘Not an extension of Australia’ – Trump’s tariffs ‘reinforces’ Norfolk Island’s independence hopes

    By Caleb Fotheringham, RNZ Pacific journalist

    Norfolk Island sees its United States tariff as an acknowledgment of independence from Australia.

    Norfolk Island, despite being an Australian territory, has been included on Trump’s tariff list.

    The territory has been given a 29 percent tariff, despite Australia getting only 10 percent.

    It is home to just over 2000 people, sitting between New Zealand and Australia in the South Pacific

    The islands’ Chamber of Commerce said the decision by the US “raises critical questions about Norfolk Island’s international recognition as an independent sovereign nation” and Norfolk Island not being part of Australia.

    “The classification of Norfolk Island as distinct from Australia in this tariff decision reinforces what the Norfolk Island community has long asserted: Norfolk Island is not an extension of Australia.”

    Norfolk Island previously had a significant level of autonomy from Australia, but was absorbed directly into the country’s local government system in 2015.

    Norfolk Islanders angered
    The move angered many Norfolk Island people and inspired a number of campaigns, including appeals to the United Nations and the International Court of Justice, by groups wishing to re-establish a measure of their autonomy, or to sue for independence.

    The Chamber of Commerce has taken the tariff as a chance to reemphasis the islands’ call for independence, including, “restoration of economic rights” and exclusive access to its exclusive economic zone.

    The statement said Norfolk Island is a “sovereign nation [and] must have the ability to engage directly with international trade partners rather than through Australian officials who do not represent Norfolk Island’s interests”.

    Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese told reporters yesterday: “Norfolk Island has got a 29 percent tariff. I’m not quite sure that Norfolk Island, with respect to it, is a trade competitor with the giant economy of the United States.”

    “But that just shows and exemplifies the fact that nowhere on Earth is safe from this.”

    The base tariff of 10 percent is also included for Tokelau, a non-self-governing territory of New Zealand, with a population of only about 1500 people living on the atoll islands.

    Previous tariff announcements by the Trump administration dropped sand into the cogs of international trade
    US President Donald Trump’s global tariffs . . . “raises critical questions about Norfolk Island’s international recognition as an independent sovereign nation.” Image: Getty/The Conversation

    US ‘don’t really understand’, says PANG
    Pacific Network on Globalisation (PANG) deputy coordinator Adam Wolfenden said he did not understand why Norfolk Island and Tokelau were added to the tariff list.

    “I think this reflects the approach that’s been taken, which seems very rushed and very divorced from a common sense approach,” Wolfenden said.

    “The inclusion of these territories, to me, is indicative that they don’t really understand what they’re doing.”

    In the Pacific, Fiji is set to be charged the most at 32 percent.

    Nauru has been slapped with a 30 percent tariff, Vanuatu 22 percent, and other Pacific nations were given the 10 percent base tariff.

    This article is republished under a community partnership agreement with RNZ.


    This content originally appeared on Asia Pacific Report and was authored by APR editor.

    This post was originally published on Radio Free.

  • Evicted PNG settlement fears collective punishment over gang rape and killing

    By Harlyne Joku and BenarNews staff

    Residents of an informal Port Moresby settlement that was razed following the gang rape and murder of a woman by 20 men say they are being unfairly punished by Papua New Guinea authorities over alleged links to the crime.

    Human rights advocates and the UN have condemned the killing but warned the eviction by police has raised serious concerns about collective punishment, violations of national law, police misconduct and governance failures.

    A community spokesman said more than 500 people living at the settlement at the capital’s Baruni rubbish dump were forcibly evicted by the police in response to the killing of 32-year-old Margaret Gabriel on February 15.

    WhatsApp Image 2025-04-01 at 21.44.08.jpeg
    Port Moresby newspapers reported the gang rape and murder by 20 men of 32-year-old Margaret Gabriel . . . “Barbaric”, said the Post-Courier in a banner headline. Image: BenarNews

    Authorities accuse the settlement residents, who are primarily migrants from the Goilala district in Central Province, of harboring some of the men involved in her murder.

    Prime Minister James Marape condemned Gabriel’s death as “inhuman, barbaric” and a “defining moment for our nation to unite against crime, to take a stand against violence”, the day after the attack.

    He assured every effort would be made to prosecute those responsible and his “unwavering support” for the removal of settlements like Baruni, calling them “breeding grounds for criminal elements who terrorise innocent people.”

    Gabriel was one of three women killed in the capital that week.

    Charged with rape, murder
    Four men from Goilala district and two from Enga province, all aged between 18 and 29, appeared in a Port Moresby court on Monday on charges of her rape and murder.

    The case has again put a spotlight again on gender-based violence in PNG and renewed calls for the government to find a long-term solution to Port Moresby’s impoverished settlements.

    Dozens of families, some of whom have lived in the Baruni settlement for more than 40 years, were forced out of their homes on February 22 and are now sleeping under blue tarpaulins at a school sports oval on the outskirts of the capital.

    Spokesman for the evicted Baruni residents, Peter Laiam
    Spokesman for the evicted Baruni residents, Peter Laiam . . . “My people are innocent.” Image: Harlyne Joku/Benar News

    “My people are innocent,” Peter Laiam, a community spokesman and school caretaker, told BenarNews, adding that police continued to harass the community at their new location.

    “They told me I had to move these people out in two weeks’ time or they will shoot us.”

    Laiam said a further six men from the settlement were suspected of involvement in Gabriel’s death, but had not been charged, and the community has fully cooperated with police on the matter, including naming the suspects.

    Authorities however were treating the entire population as “trouble makers,” Laiam added.

    “They also took cash and building materials like corrugated iron roofing for themselves” he said.

    No police response
    Senior police in Port Moresby did not respond to ongoing requests from BenarNews for reaction to the allegations.

    Assistant Commissioner Benjamin Turi last week thanked the evicted settlers for information that led to the arrest of six suspects, The National newspaper reported.

    Police Minister Peter Tsiamalili Junior defended the eviction at Baruni last month, telling EMTV News it was lawful and the settlement was on state-owned land.

    Bare land left after homes in the Baruni settlement village
    Bare land left after homes in the Baruni settlement village were flattened by bulldozers at Port Moresby, PNG. Image: Harlyne Joku/Benar News

    Police used excavators and other heavy machinery to tear down houses at the Baruni settlement, with images showing some buildings on fire.

    Residents say the resettlement site in Laloki lacks adequate water, sanitation and other facilities.

    “They are running out of food,” Laiam said. “Last weekend they were washed out by the rain and their food supplies were finished.”

    Separated from their gardens and unable to sell firewood, the families are surviving on food donations from local authorities, he said.

    Human rights critics
    The evictions have been criticised by human rights advocates, including Peterson Magoola, the UN Women Representative for PNG.

    “We strongly condemn all acts of sexual and gender-based violence and call for justice for the victim,” he said in a statement last month.

    “At the same time, collective punishment, forced evictions, and destruction of homes violate fundamental human rights and disproportionately harm vulnerable members of the community.”

    The evicted families living in tents at Laloki St Paul’s Primary School
    The evicted families living in tents at Laloki St Paul’s Primary School, on the outskirts of Port Moresby, PNG. Image: Harlyne Joku/Benar News

    Melanesian Solidarity, a local nonprofit, called on the government to ensure justice for both the murder victim and displaced families.

    It said the evictions might have contravened international treaties and domestic laws that protect against unlawful property deprivation and mandate proper legal procedures for relocation.

    The Baruni settlement, which is home primarily to migrants from Goilala district, was established with consent on the customary land of the Baruni people during the colonial era, according to Laiam.

    Central Province Governor Rufina Peter defended the evicted settlers on national broadcaster NBC on February 20, and their contribution to the national capital.

    “The Goilala people were here during pre-independence time. They are the ones who were the bucket carriers,” she said.

    ‘Knee jerk’ response
    She also criticised the eviction by police as “knee jerk” and raised human rights concerns.

    The Goilala community in Central Province, 60 miles (100 kilometers) from the capital, was the center of controversy in January when a trophy video of butchered body parts being displayed by a gang went viral, attracted erroneous ‘cannibalism’ reportage by the local media and sparked national and international condemnation.

    The evictions at Baruni have touched off again a complex debate about crime and housing in PNG, the Pacific’s most populous nation.

    Informal settlements have mushroomed in Port Moresby as thousands of people from the countryside migrate to the city in search of employment.

    Critics say the impoverished settlements are unfit for habitation, contribute to the city’s frequent utility shortages, and harbour criminals.

    Mass evictions have been ordered before, but the government has failed to enact any meaningful policies to address their rapid growth across the city.

    While accurate population data is hard to find in PNG, the United Nations Population Fund estimates that the number of people living in Port Moresby is about 513,000.

    Lack basic infrastructure
    At least half of them are thought to live in informal settlements, which lack basic infrastructure like water, electricity and sewerage, according to 2022 research by the PNG National Research Institute.

    A shortage of affordable housing and high rental prices have caused a mismatch between demand and supply.

    Melanesian Solidarity said the government needed to develop a national housing strategy to prevent the rise of informal settlements.

    “This eviction is a wake-up call for the government to implement sustainable urban planning and housing reforms rather than resorting to forced removals,” it said in a statement.

    “We stand with the affected families and demand justice, accountability, and humane solutions for all Papua New Guineans.”

    Stefan Armbruster, Sue Ahearn and Harry Pearl contributed to this story. Republished from BenarNews with permission. However, it is the last report from BenarNews as the editors have announced a “pause” in publication due to the US administration withholding funds.

    This post was originally published on Asia Pacific Report.

  • Israel Bombs UN Clinic, Killing 22, Days After Gaza Medics Found in Mass Grave

    Israeli forces bombed a UN clinic in Gaza serving as a shelter for displaced Palestinians on Wednesday, killing at least 22 people just days after officials discovered 15 first responders who had been executed by Israeli soldiers and buried in a mass grave in Gaza. The military bombed a UN Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees (UNRWA) clinic in Jabalia refugee camp…

    Source

    This post was originally published on Latest – Truthout.

  • Children in Gaza Are So Hungry They’re Drawing Pictures of Food in the Sand

    Palestinian children in Gaza are so hungry that they’re drawing pictures of food in the sand, according to a Gaza reporter, as the population is being starved by the most brutal form of Israel’s aid blockade yet for the past three weeks. “My friend told me today that he keeps watching food videos because he wishes to have a plate of meat or fish. Many children in my neighborhood outside were…

    Source

    This post was originally published on Latest – Truthout.

  • Melting Glaciers Threaten Food And Water Supply For Two Billion People

    Melting glaciers threaten the supply of food and water for billions across the globe, the United Nations warned in its 2025 World Water Development Report: Mountains and Glaciers: Water towers.

    Mountains supply 55 to 60 percent of the planet’s annual freshwater flow, with two billion people reliant on the waters flowing from them.

    “As the world’s water towers, mountains provide life-sustaining fresh water to billions of people and countless ecosystems; their critical role in sustainable development cannot be ignored,” a press release from the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) said.

    The post Melting Glaciers Threaten Food And Water Supply For Two Billion People appeared first on PopularResistance.Org.

    This post was originally published on PopularResistance.Org.

  • Make The World Scared Again: US Threatens United Nations Agencies

    “Are you or have you ever been a member of the Communist Party?” was the key question at the U.S. House Un-American Activities Committee (HUAC) hearings during the 1950s McCarthy era. At the height of the anti-Soviet/Communist fear, HUAC cost thousands of people their jobs and created a powerful chill to freedom of speech and association. A similar chill with global consequences has now come to 2000 U.N. agencies and non-governmental organizations (NGOs) that receive U.S. funding. An Office of Management and Budget questionnaire asks them to describe with whom and how they do business. It has created stupor and confusion here in Geneva as they ponder how to reply.

    The post Make The World Scared Again: US Threatens United Nations Agencies appeared first on PopularResistance.Org.

    This post was originally published on PopularResistance.Org.

  • “Where was the UN?” Asks Freed Israeli Captive. Its Staff Were Busy Being Killed

    Sympathy for Israeli former captive Eli Sharabi must not obscure the bigger picture: he has allowed himself to be recruited to Israel’s propaganda campaign for genocide.

    Israel has found a captive recently released from Gaza willing to regurgitate some of its most nonsensical talking points on the stage of the United Nations. Predictably, those talking points are already being exploited to justify Israel intensifying its slaughter of Palestinian children in Gaza – and further bully the United Nations into even greater timidity.

    Eli Sharabi has every reason to feel aggrieved. After all, he not only spent 490 days in captivity in terrifying conditions before his release last month, but emerged to find his family had been killed during Hamas’ break-out from Gaza on 7 October 2023.

    Nonetheless, sympathy for his plight should not obscure the bigger picture: he has allowed himself to be recruited to the Israeli government’s propaganda campaign for genocide.

    He has echoed Israeli politicians in claiming that Palestinians in Gaza – all 2.3 million of them, apparently – are “involved” in the mistreatment of the Israeli captives. In other words, he has given succour to the Israeli government’s efforts to justify the extermination of Gaza’s entire population, half of whom are children.

    He has also claimed that Hamas stole aid that entered Gaza to eat “like kings”, while he and the captives starved. In other words, he is bolstering the argument of Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu that Israel is justified in blocking food and water to Gaza – a crime against humanity for which Netanyahu is being sought by the International Criminal Court.

    But perhaps most ludicrously of all, Sharabi asks of the two largest bodies involved in humanitarian operations on behalf of the destitute, decimated people of Gaza: “Where was the Red Cross when we [the Israeli captives] needed them? Where was the UN?”

    Sharabi, more than anyone, ought to know the answer to his own question.

    Local staff of the UN and Red Cross – or Red Crescent as it is known in Gaza – have spent the past year and a half living under constant and ferocious air strikes, like everyone else in the enclave. Large numbers have been killed and maimed by the US-supplied bombs Israel has been dropping continuously.

    They have certainly not been idle, as Sharabi suggests. When they have not been killed themselves, they have been dealing with the many tens of thousands of dead and the hundreds of thousands of wounded.

    And all the while, they have been desperately struggling to help feed a population that Israel has spent the past 18 months actively starving through its strict blockade of food and water into the tiny territory.

    The job of the UN and Red Cross has been to save life. That is what they have been doing. Their job is not to go on a wild goose chase, trying to find Israeli captives that Israel itself, with all its technological know-how and military might, has been unable to locate.

    Where was the UN?

    Did Sharabi’s Israeli government handlers – led by Danny Danon, Israel’s ambassador to the UN – forget to explain to him that Israel has formally banned the UN from Gaza? Israel both bars the UN from the enclave, specifically targeting local staff with its weapons, and yet also expects those same staff to track down the Israeli captives held there. How can one even begin to take Israel’s position – or Sharabi’s – seriously?

    Where was the Red Cross?

    Did Sharabi’s Israeli government handlers forget to mention that, also, the Red Cross has not been able to visit a single one of the thousands of Palestinians who have been abducted by Israel from Gaza, including doctors, women and children?

    Unlike the Israeli captives, the location of the Palestinian captives is known. They are being held in what the Israeli human rights group B’Tselem calls “torture camps” inside Israel, where sexual assaults and rapes are commonplace.

    Israel has refused the Red Cross access for a simple reason: because it doesn’t want the world to know what it is doing to Palestinians inside those torture camps. And the western media is complying, barely reporting the horrors unearthed by human rights groups and UN investigators.

    Yes, the Israeli captives have gone through a horrific experience. And their greatest trauma – though Sharabi, unlike his fellow Israeli captives, fails to mention it – was living under Israel’s constant bombs: the equivalent so far of six Hiroshimas. None knew from one day to the next whether they would be vaporised by one of the 2,000lb bombs supplied by the US and dropped all over the enclave.

    It is important to hear Sharabi’s account of his captivity on a stage as visible as the UN’s. But it is equally important for the UN to hear from the thousands of Palestinians abducted by Israel and held in even more horrifying conditions, as repeatedly documented by human rights groups.

    Yet those Palestinian victims, victims of Israeli barbarism, have not been provided with the platform offered to Sharabi. Why? Because Israel gets to decide who speaks at the UN, for both Israelis and Palestinians.

    Unlike Hamas, Israel holds its captives permanently prisoner, even after they have been released from its torture camps. It holds them in a giant open-air concentration camp called Gaza. And they won’t find themselves on a stage at the UN – not unless Israel allows it.

    The post “Where was the UN?” Asks Freed Israeli Captive. Its Staff Were Busy Being Killed first appeared on Dissident Voice.

    This post was originally published on Dissident Voice.

  • Swarbrick pleads for NZ cross-party support for sanctions on Israel

    By Russell Palmer, RNZ News political reporter

    Green Party co-leader Chlöe Swarbrick says the need for Aotearoa New Zealand to impose sanctions against Israel has grown more urgent after airstrikes on Gaza resumed, killing more than 400 people.

    Swarbrick lodged a member’s bill in December and said that with all opposition parties backing it, the support of just six backbench government MPs would mean it could skip the “biscuit tin” and be brought to Parliament for a first reading.

    “I feel as though every other day there is something else which adds urgency, but yes — I think as a result of the most recent round of atrocities and particularly the public focus, attention, energy and effort that is being that has been put on them, that, yes, parliamentarians desperately need to act.

    Swarbrick claimed there were government MPs who were keen to support her bill, saying it was why her party was publicly pushing the numbers needed to get it across the line.

    “We have the most whipped Parliament in the Western world,” she said. “We would hope that parliamentarians would live up to all of those statements that they make about their values and principles when they do their bright-eyed and bushy-tailed maiden speeches.

    “The time is now, people cannot hide behind party lines anymore.

    “I know for a fact that there are government MPs that are keen to support this kaupapa.”

    Standing order allowance
    Standing Order 288 allows MPs who are not ministers or undersecretaries to indicate their support for a member’s bill.

    If at least 61 MPs get behind it, the legislation skips the “biscuit tin” ballot.

    If answered, Swarbrick’s call would be the first time this process is followed.

    Labour confirmed its support for the bill last week.

    A coalition spokesperson said the government’s policy position on the matter remained unchanged, including in response to Swarbrick’s bill.

    New Zealand has consistently advocated for a two-state solution to the Middle East conflict.

    Swarbrick pointed to New Zealand’s support — alongside 123 other countries — of a UN resolution calling for sanctions against those responsible for Israel’s presence in the occupied Palestinian territories, including in relation to settler violence.

    Conditional support
    The government’s support for the resolution was conditional and included several caveats — including that the 12-month timeframe for Israel to withdraw from the occupied territories was “unrealistic”, and noted the resolution went beyond what was initially proposed.

    None of the other 123 countries which supported the resolution have yet brought sanctions against Israel.

    “Unfortunately, in the several months following that resolution in September of last year, our government has done nothing to fulfil that commitment,” Swarbrick said.

    The Ministry of Foreign Affairs’ permanent representative to the UN Carolyn Schwalger in September noted that the Resolution imposed no obligations on New Zealand beyond what already existed under international law, but “New Zealand stands ready to implement any measures adopted by the UN Security Council”.

    New Zealand ambassador to the UN Carolyn Schwalger speaking at the UN General Assembly after voting in favour of a resolution calling for a humanitarian truce in the Israel-Gaza conflict.
    NZ ambassador to the UN Carolyn Schwalger speaking at the UN General Assembly . . . “New Zealand stands ready to implement any measures adopted by the UN Security Council.” Image: Screenshot/UN General Assembly livestream/RNZ

    Prime Minister Christopher Luxon in December said the government had a long-standing position of travel bans on extremist Israeli settlers in the occupied territories, and wanted to see a two-state solution developed.

    Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said its military pressure against Hamas was to secure the release of the remaining hostages taken by Hamas during the October 7 attack, and “this is just the beginning”.

    Israel continues to deny accusations of genocide, war crimes and crimes against humanity.

    South African genocide case against Israel
    However, South Africa has taken a case of genocide against Israel to the International Court of Justice (ICJ) and the trial remains ongoing with 14 countries having confirmed that they are intervening in support of South Africa.

    The attack on Israel in 2023 left 1139 people dead, with about 250 hostages taken.

    UN Secretary General António Guterres said in a tweet he was “outraged” by the Israeli airstrikes.

    “I strongly appeal for the ceasefire to be respected, for unimpeded humanitarian assistance to be re-established and for the remaining hostages to be released unconditionally,” he said.

    This article is republished under a community partnership agreement with RNZ.

    This post was originally published on Asia Pacific Report.

  • New Zealand and Gaza: Confronting and not confronting the unspeakable

    ANALYSIS: By Robert Patman

    New Zealand’s National-led coalition government’s policy on Gaza seems caught between a desire for a two-state diplomatic solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and closer alignment with the US, which supports a Netanyahu government strongly opposed to a Palestinian state

    In the last 17 months, Gaza has been the scene of what Thomas Merton once called the unspeakable — human wrongdoing on a scale and a depth that seems to go beyond the capacity of words to adequately describe.

    The latest Gaza conflict began with a horrific Hamas terrorist attack on Israel on 7 October 2023 that prompted a relentless Israel ground and air offensive in Gaza with full financial, logistical and diplomatic backing from the Biden administration.

    During this period, around 50,000 people – 48,903 Palestinians and 1706 Israelis – have been reported killed in the Gaza conflict, according to the official figures of the Gaza Health Ministry, as well as 166 journalists and media workers, 120 academics,and more than 224 humanitarian aid workers.

    Moreover, a fragile ceasefire between Israel and Hamas, signed in mid-January, seems to be hanging by a thread.

    Israel has resumed its blockade of humanitarian aid to Gaza and cut off electricity after Hamas rejected an Israeli proposal to extend phase 1 of the ceasefire deal (to release more Israeli hostages) without any commitment to implement phase 2 (that envisaged ending the conflict in Gaza and Israel withdrawing its troops from the territory).

    Hamas insists on negotiating phase 2 as signed by both parties in the January ceasefire agreement

    Over the weekend, Israel reportedly launched air-strikes in Gaza and the Trump administration unleashed a wave of attacks on Houthi rebel positions in Yemen after the Houthis warned Israel not to restart the war in Gaza.

    New Zealand and the Gaza conflict
    Although distant in geographic terms, the Gaza crisis represents a major moral and legal challenge to New Zealand’s self-image and its worldview based on the strengthening of an international rules-based order.

    New Zealand’s founding document, the 1840 Treaty of Waitangi, emphasised partnership and cooperation between indigenous Māori and European settlers in nation-building.

    While the aspirations of the Treaty have yet to be fully realised, the credibility of its vision of reconciliation at home depends on New Zealand’s willingness to uphold respect for human rights and the rule of law in the international arena, particularly in states like Israel where tensions persist between the settler population and Palestinians in occupied territories like the West Bank.

    New Zealand’s declaratory stance towards Gaza
    In 2023 and 2024, New Zealand consistently backed calls in the UN General Assembly for humanitarian truces or ceasefires in Gaza. It also joined Australia and Canada in February and July last year to demand an end to hostilities.

    The New Zealand Foreign Minister, Winston Peters, told the General Assembly in April 2024 that the Security Council had failed in its responsibility “to maintain international peace and security”.

    He was right. The Biden administration used its UN Security Council veto four times to perpetuate this brutal onslaught in Gaza for nearly 15 months.

    In addition, Peters has repeatedly said there can be no military resolution of a political problem in Gaza that can only be resolved through affirming the Palestinian right to self-determination within the framework of a two-state solution to the Israeli-Palestinian dispute.

    The limitations of New Zealand’s Gaza approach
    Despite considerable disagreement with Netanyahu’s policy of “mighty vengeance” in Gaza, the National-led coalition government had few qualms about sending a small Defence Force deployment to the Red Sea in January 2024 as part of a US-led coalition effort to counter Houthi rebel attacks on commercial shipping there.

    While such attacks are clearly illegal, they are basically part of the fallout from a prolonged international failure to stop the US-enabled carnage in Gaza.

    In particular, the NZDF’s Red Sea deployment did not sit comfortably with New Zealand’s acceptance in September 2024 of the ICJ’s ruling that Israel’s continued presence in the occupied Palestinian territory (East Jerusalem, the West Bank and Gaza) was “unlawful”.

    At the same time, the National-led coalition government’s silence on US President Donald Trump’s controversial proposal to “own” Gaza, displace two million Palestinian residents and make the territory the “Riviera” of the Middle East was deafening.

    Furthermore, while Wellington announced travel bans on violent Israeli settlers in the West Bank in February 2024, it has had little to say publicly about the Netanyahu government’s plans to annex the West Bank in 2025. Such a development would gravely undermine the two-state solution, violate international law, and further fuel regional tensions.

    New Zealand’s low-key policy
    On balance, the National-led coalition government’s policy towards Gaza appears to be ambivalent and lacking moral and legal clarity in a context in which war crimes have been regularly committed since October 7.

    Peters was absolutely correct to condemn the UNSC for failing to deliver the ceasefire that New Zealand and the overwhelming majority of states in the UN General Assembly had wanted from the first month of this crisis.

    But the New Zealand government has had no words of criticism for the US, which used its power of veto in the UNSC for more than a year to thwart the prospect of a ceasefire and provided blanket support for an Israeli military campaign that killed huge numbers of Palestinian civilians in Gaza.

    By cooperating with the Biden administration against Houthi rebels and adopting a quietly-quietly approach to Trump’s provocative comments on Gaza and his apparent willingness to do whatever it takes to help Israel “to get the job done’, New Zealand has revealed a selective approach to upholding international law and human rights in the desperate conditions facing Gaza

    Professor Robert G. Patman is an Inaugural Sesquicentennial Distinguished Chair and his research interests concern international relations, global security, US foreign policy, great powers, and the Horn of Africa. This article was first published by The Spinoff and is republished here with the author’s permission.


    This content originally appeared on Asia Pacific Report and was authored by APR editor.

    This post was originally published on Radio Free.

  • Guam at decolonisation ‘crossroads’ with resolution on US statehood

    By Mar-Vic Cagurangan in Hagatna, Guam

    Debate on Guam’s future as a US territory has intensified with its legislature due to vote on a non-binding resolution to become a US state amid mounting Pacific geostrategic tensions and expansionist declarations by the Trump administration.

    Located closer to Beijing than Hawai’i, Guam serves as a key US strategic asset, known as the “tip of the spear,” with 10,000 military personnel, an air base for F-35 fighters and B-2 bombers and home port for Virginia-class nuclear submarines.

    The small US territory of 166,000 people is also listed by the UN for decolonisation and last year became an associate member at the Pacific Islands Forum.

    Local Senator William A. Parkinson introduced the resolution to the legislature last Wednesday and called for Guam to be fully integrated into the American union, possibly as the 51st state.

    “We are standing in a moment of history where two great empires are standing face-to-face with each other, about to go to war,” Parkinson said at a press conference on Thursday.

    “We have to be real about what’s going on in this part of the world. We are a tiny island but we are too strategically important to be left alone. Stay with America or do we let ourselves be absorbed by China?”

    His resolution states the decision “must be built upon the informed consent of the people of Guam through a referendum”.

    Trump’s expansionist policies
    Parkinson’s resolution comes as US President Donald Trump advocates territorially expansionist policies, particularly towards the strategically located Danish-ruled autonomous territory of Greenland and America’s northern neighbour, Canada.

    “This one moment in time, this one moment in history, the stars are aligning so that the geopolitics of the United States favour statehood for Guam,” Parkinson said. “This is an opportunity we cannot pass up.”

    Screenshot 2025-03-14 at 1.57.40 AM.png
    Guam Legislature Senator William A. Parkinson holds a press conference after introducing his resolution. BenarNews screenshot APR

    As a territory, Guam residents are American citizens but they cannot vote for the US president and their lone delegate to the Congress has no voting power on the floor.

    The US acquired Guam, along with Puerto Rico, in 1898 after winning the Spanish-American War, and both remain unincorporated territories to this day.

    Independence advocates and representatives from the Guam Commission on Decolonisation regularly testify at the UN’s Decolonisation Committee, where the island has been listed as a Non-Self-Governing Territory since 1946.

    Commission on Decolonisation executive director Melvin Won Pat-Borja said he was not opposed to statehood but is concerned if any decision on Guam’s status was left to the US.

    “Decolonisation is the right of the colonised,” he said while attending Parkinson’s press conference, the Pacific Daily News reported.

    ‘Hands of our coloniser’
    “It’s counterintuitive to say that, ‘we’re seeking a path forward, a path out of this inequity,’ and then turn around and put it right back in the hands of our coloniser.

    “No matter what status any of us prefer, ultimately that is not for any one of us to decide, but it is up to a collective decision that we have to come to, and the only way to do it is via referendum,” he said, reports Kuam News.

    With the geostrategic competition between the US and China in the Pacific, Guam has become increasingly significant in supporting American naval and air operations, especially in the event of a conflict over Taiwan or in the South China Sea.

    The two US bases have seen Guam’s economy become heavily reliant on military investments and tourism.

    The Defence Department holds about 25 percent of Guam’s land and is preparing to spend billions to upgrade the island’s military infrastructure as another 5000 American marines relocate there from Japan’s Okinawa islands.

    Guam is also within range of Chinese and North Korean ballistic missiles and the US has trialed a defence system, with the first tests held in December.

    Governor Lou Leon Guerrero
    Governor Lou Leon Guerrero delivers her “State of the Island” address in Guam on Tuesday . . . “Guam cannot be the linchpin of American security in the Asian-Pacific if nearly 14,000 of our residents are without shelter . . .” Image: Office of the Governor of Guam/Benar News

    The “moment in history” for statehood may also be defined by the Trump administration spending cuts, Guam Governor Lou Leon Guerrero warned in her “state of the island” address on Wednesday.

    Military presence leveraged
    The island has in recent years leveraged the increased military presence to demand federal assistance and the territory’s treasury relies on at least US$0.5 billion in annual funding.

    “Let us be clear about this: Guam cannot be the linchpin of American security in the Asian-Pacific if nearly 14,000 of our residents are without shelter, because housing aid to Guam is cut, or if 36,000 of our people lose access to Medicaid and Medicare coverage keeping them healthy, alive and out of poverty,” Guerrero said.

    Parkinson’s proposed legislative resolution calls for an end to 125-plus years of US colonial uncertainty.

    “The people of Guam, as the rightful stewards of their homeland, must assert their inalienable right to self-determination,” states the resolution, including that there be a “full examination of statehood or enhanced autonomous status for Guam.”

    “Granting Guam equal political status would signal unequivocally that Guam is an integral part of the United States, deterring adversaries who might otherwise perceive Guam as a mere expendable outpost.”

    If adopted by the Guam legislature, the non-binding resolution would be transmitted to the White House.

    A local statute enacted in 2000 for a political status plebiscite on statehood, independence or free association has become bogged down in US courts.

    ‘Reject colonial status quo’
    Neil Weare, a former Guam resident and co-director of Right to Democracy, said the self-determination process must be centred on what the people of Guam want, “not just what’s best for US national security”.

    “Right to Democracy does not take a position on political status, other than to reject the undemocratic and colonial status quo,” Weare said on behalf of the nonprofit organisation that advocates for rights and self-determination in US territories.

    “People can have different views on what is the best solution to this problem, but we should all be in agreement that the continued undemocratic rule of millions of people in US territories is wrong and needs to end.”

    He said the 250th anniversary of the US Declaration of Independence next year can open a new venue for a conversation about key concepts — such as the “consent of the governed” — involving Guam and other US territories.

    Republished from BenarNews with permission.

    This post was originally published on Asia Pacific Report.

  • UN Report: Israel’s Gender-Based Violence in Gaza Amounts to “Genocidal Acts”

    The Israeli military has systematically committed sexual, reproductive, and other gender-based violence in its siege of Gaza, including attacks so horrific that they amount to “genocidal acts” against Palestinians, a new UN report has found. The report by an independent UN human rights commission released Thursday finds that Israel has systematically destroyed Gaza’s sexual and reproductive…

    Source

    This post was originally published on Latest – Truthout.

  • Pacific ‘shock’ as diluted UN women’s declaration ditches reproductive rights

    By Sera Sefeti and Stefan Armbruster of BenarNews

    Pacific delegates have been left “shocked” by the omission of sexual and reproductive health rights from the key declaration of the 69th UN Commission on the Status of Women meeting in New York.

    This year CSW69 will review and assess the implementation of the 1995 Beijing Declaration, the UN’s blueprint for gender equality and rights for women and girls.

    The meeting’s political declaration adopted on Tuesday reaffirmed the UN member states’ commitment to the rights, equality and empowerment of all women and girls.

    It was the product of a month of closed-door negotiations during which a small number of countries, reportedly including the U.S. and Russia, were accused of diluting the declaration’s final text.

    The Beijing Declaration three decades ago mentioned reproductive rights 50 times, unlike this year’s eight-page political declaration.

    “It is shocking. Thirty years after Beijing, not one mention of sexual and reproductive health and rights,” Pacific delegate and women’s advocate Noelene Nabulivou from Fiji told BenarNews.

    “The core of gender justice and human rights lies in the ability to make substantive decisions over one’s body, health and sexual decision making.

    “We knew that in 1995, we know it now, we will not let anyone take SRHR away, we are not going back.”

    Common sentiment
    It is a common sentiment among the about 100 Pacific participants at the largest annual gathering on women’s rights that attracts thousands of delegates from around the world.

    “This is a major omission, especially given the current conditions in several (Pacific) states and the wider pushback and regression on women’s human rights,” Fiji-based DIVA for Equality representative Viva Tatawaqa told BenarNews from New YorK.

    Tatawaqa said that SRHR was included in the second version of the political declaration but was later removed due to “lack of consensus” and “trade-offs in language.”

    “We will not let everyone ignore this omission, whatever reason was given for the trade-off,” she said.

    20250311 UN CSW Guterres EDIT.jpg
    UN Secretary-General António Guterres at the CSW69 town hall meeting with civil society on Tuesday. Image: Evan Schneider/UN Photo/BenarNews

    The Pacific Community’s latest survey of SRHR in the region reported progress had been made but significant challenges remain.

    It highlighted an urgent need to address extreme rates of gender-based violence, low contraceptive use (below 50% in the region), lack of confidentiality in health services and hyperendemic levels of sexually transmitted infections (STIs), which all fall under the SRHR banner.

    Ten Pacific Island countries submitted detailed Beijing+30 National Reports to CSW69.

    Anti-abortion alliance
    Opposition to SRHR has come from 39 countries through their membership of the anti-abortion Geneva Consensus Declaration, an alliance founded in 2020. Their ranks include this year’s CSW69 chair Saudi Arabia, Russia, Hungary, Egypt, Kenya, Indonesia and the U.S. under both Trump administrations, along with predominantly African and Middle East countries.

    “During negotiations, certain states including the USA and Argentina, attempted to challenge even the most basic and accepted terms around gender and gender equality,” Amnesty said in a statement after the declaration.

    “The text comes amid mounting threats to sexual and reproductive rights, including increased efforts, led by conservative groups, to roll back on access to contraception, abortion, comprehensive sexuality education, and gender-affirming care across the world,” adding the termination of USAID had compounded the situation.

    The UN Population Fund (UNFPA) confirmed in February that the US, the UN’s biggest donor, had cut US$377 million in funding for reproductive and sexual health programmes and warned of “devastating impacts.”

    Since coming to office, President Donald Trump has also reinstated the Global Gag Rule, prohibiting foreign recipients of U.S. aid from providing or discussing abortions.

    20250311 UN CSW town hall guterres.jpg
    Meeting between civil society groups and the UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres in the general assembly hall at the 69th session of the Commission on the Status of Women in New York on Tuesday. Image: Evan Schneider/UN Photo/BenarNews

    In his opening address to the CSW69, UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres issued a dire warning on progress on gender equality across the world.

    ‘Poison of patriachy’
    “The poison of patriarchy is back, and it is back with a vengeance, slamming the brakes on action, tearing up progress, and mutating into new and dangerous forms,” he said, without singling out any countries or individuals.

    “The masters of misogyny are gaining strength,” Guterres said, denouncing the “bile” women faced online.

    He warned at the current rate it would take 137 years to lift all women out of poverty, calling on all nations to commit to the “promise of Beijing”.

    The CSW was established days after the inaugural UN meetings in 1946, with a focus on prioritising women’s political, economic and social rights.

    CSW was instrumental in drafting the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, Convention on the Elimination of Discrimination against Women and the Beijing Declaration.

    One of the declaration’s stated goals is to “enhance women’s sexual and reproductive health and education”, the absence of which would have “a profound impact on women and men.”

    The 1995 Beijing Platform for Action identified 12 key areas needing urgent attention — including poverty, education, health, violence — and laid out pathways to achieve change, while noting it would take substantial resources and financing.

    This year’s political declaration came just days after International Women’s Day, when UN Pacific released a joint statement singled out rises in adolescent birth rates and child marriage, exacerbating challenges related to health, education, and long-term well-being of women in the region.

    Gender-based violence
    It also identified the region has among the highest levels of gender-based violence and lowest rates of women’s political representation in the world.

    A comparison of CSW59 in 2015 and the CSW69 political declaration reveal that many of the same challenges, language, and concerns persist.

    Guterres in his address offered “antidote is action” to address the immense gaps.

    Pacific Women Mediators Network coordinator Sharon Bhagwan-Rolls told BenarNews much of that action in the Pacific had been led by women.

    “The inclusion of climate justice and the women, peace, and security agenda in the Beijing+30 Action Plan is a reminder of the intersectional and intergenerational work that has continued,” she said.

    “This work has been forged through women-led networks and coalitions like the Pacific Women Mediators Network and the Pacific Island Feminist Alliance for Climate Justice, which align with the Blue Pacific Strategy and the Revitalised Pacific Leaders Gender Equality Declaration.”

    Republished from BenarNews with permission.

    This post was originally published on Asia Pacific Report.

  • A New UN Report Calls Israel’s Attacks on New Mothers in Gaza “Unprecedented”

    A new report by United Nations experts says Israel has carried out “genocidal acts” against Palestinians in Gaza, including the destruction of women’s healthcare facilities, intended to prevent births, and the use of sexual violence as a strategy of war. This comes as talks on resuscitating the ceasefire deal continue in Qatar and as Israel continues its total blockade of food, fuel…

    Source

    This post was originally published on Latest – Truthout.

  • International Law’s Fight For Relevance

    International law is fighting for relevance. The outcome of this fight is likely to change the entire global political dynamic, which was shaped by World War II and sustained through the selective interpretation of the law by dominant countries.

    In principle, international law should have always been relevant, if not paramount, in governing the relationships among all countries, large and small, to resolve conflicts before they turn into outright wars. It should also have worked to prevent a return to an era of exploitation that allowed Western colonialism to practically enslave the Global South for hundreds of years.

    The post International Law’s Fight For Relevance appeared first on PopularResistance.Org.

    This post was originally published on PopularResistance.Org.

  • 9 in 10 People in Gaza Have No Safe Water Access After Israel’s Power Cut

    Only 1 in 10 people in Gaza have access to safe drinking water after Israel once again cut electricity to the besieged strip on Sunday, plunging the region back into the darkest periods of Israel’s genocide, UN officials have said. UNICEF reported on Monday that water levels are “critical,” with Gaza facing a “severe water shortage” after Israeli Energy Minister Eli Cohen said he had “cut off…

    Source

    This post was originally published on Latest – Truthout.

  • 30th Anniversary Of The Beijing Declaration And Platform For Action

    Thirty years ago, nearly 200 governments and tens of thousands of activists and civil society organisations from around the world gathered in China to hash out a historic global commitment to equal rights and equal opportunities for all women and girls. The Beijing Declaration and Platform for Action (BPfA) was signed by 189 governments at the Fourth World Conference on Women in Beijing, China, held between 4-15 September 1995. It outlined 12 critical areas for action, covering everything from jobs to the environment and political participation, as well as ending gender-based violence and harassment, and provided governments with concrete steps to ensure the actualisation of these goals.

    The post 30th Anniversary Of The Beijing Declaration And Platform For Action appeared first on PopularResistance.Org.

    This post was originally published on PopularResistance.Org.

  • 30th Anniversary Of The Beijing Declaration And Platform For Action

    Thirty years ago, nearly 200 governments and tens of thousands of activists and civil society organisations from around the world gathered in China to hash out a historic global commitment to equal rights and equal opportunities for all women and girls. The Beijing Declaration and Platform for Action (BPfA) was signed by 189 governments at the Fourth World Conference on Women in Beijing, China, held between 4-15 September 1995. It outlined 12 critical areas for action, covering everything from jobs to the environment and political participation, as well as ending gender-based violence and harassment, and provided governments with concrete steps to ensure the actualisation of these goals.

    The post 30th Anniversary Of The Beijing Declaration And Platform For Action appeared first on PopularResistance.Org.

    This post was originally published on PopularResistance.Org.

  • Palestinian Officials Say Israel Has Committed at Least 962 Ceasefire Violations

    Israel has committed nearly 1,000 violations of the Gaza ceasefire agreement since it was first implemented just six weeks ago, Palestinian officials say, including killing over 100 civilians. In a letter sent to the head of the UN Security Council, Palestine’s representative to the UN said Israel committed at least 962 ceasefire violations in the first phase of the agreement — coming to an…

    Source

    This post was originally published on Latest – Truthout.

  • ‘Biased’ UN Report Ignores Victims Of US-Backed Opposition Violence

    Masaya, Nicaragua – Reynaldo Urbina rides his motorbike around the streets of Masaya, Nicaragua, with agility, despite having only one arm. Nearly seven years ago, at the height of a US- supported coup attempt against Nicaragua’s left-wing Sandinista government, Urbina was one of those guarding the city’s municipal warehouse when it was attacked by around 200 armed protestors. Warned of the impending attack, the guards had been ordered to hide their weapons and not resist capture, to minimize casualties.

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    This post was originally published on PopularResistance.Org.

  • “Biased” UN Report on Nicaragua Ignores Victims of US-backed Opposition Violence

    tranque barricade Nicaragua 2018 Matagalpa
    One of scores of violent barricades, or tranques, created around Nicaragua during the 2018 coup attempt

    MASAYA, NICARAGUA – Reynaldo Urbina rides his motorbike around the streets of Masaya, Nicaragua, with agility, despite having only one arm. Nearly seven years ago, at the height of a US- supported coup attempt against Nicaragua’s left-wing Sandinista government, Urbina was one of those guarding the city’s municipal warehouse when it was attacked by around 200 armed protestors. Warned of the impending attack, the guards had been ordered to hide their weapons and not resist capture, to minimize casualties.

    But Urbina was suspected of knowing the whereabouts of the city’s mayor, whom the hooligans sought to assassinate, so they threw him to the ground and smashed his left arm with a rifle butt until it was practically destroyed. Urbina escaped, but his arm could not be saved, and was later amputated.

    Reynaldo Urbina el chele

    Reynaldo Urbina (left) lost his left arm after being tortured by US-backed opposition gangs

    When a team was sent by the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights to Nicaragua to collect evidence on human rights abuses a few weeks later, Urbina was among those offered by the government as a witness. But the team refused to meet him.

    The UN’s 40-page report, issued in August 2018, devotes just five paragraphs to violence by anti-government factions; the rest blames the government and its supporters for practically every other violent incident, including many (like an arson attack on a pro-Sandinista radio station) that were clearly part of the coup attempt.

    Some time after the coup attempt, Nicaragua’s then vice-minister for foreign affairs, Valdrack Jaentschke, described an exchange with Paulo Abrão, who was the Executive Secretary of the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights. The IACHR was another of the bodies which had launched investigations of human rights abuses in 2018. Valdrack had asked Abrão why visiting investigators were not collecting evidence of the severe opposition violence which had taken place. Abrão gave two reasons: that human rights abuses can only be carried out by the state, and that violence by civil society groups is just “common criminality” and therefore not within the investigators’ mandate.

    Israeli regime cutout hosts Nicaraguan regime change operative Maradiaga at UNHRC

    This February 28 this year, when the UN Human Rights Council (UNHRC) held a session on human rights in Nicaragua, a key witness who played a leading role in the coup against Nicaragua’s elected Sandinista government appeared by video to deliver a denunciation of his enemies in Managua.

    He was Felix Maradiaga, a US government-sponsored regime change operative who was one of the main organizers of the coup attempt. As The Grayzone’s Max Blumenthal reported, Maradiaga’s IEEPP think tank had been funded with hundreds of thousands of dollars in support from the National Endowment for Democracy, the regime change arm of the US government.

    In June 2018, the Nicaraguan police charged Maradiaga with overseeing an organized criminal network that murdered several people. Relieved of this charge in a post-coup amnesty in 2019, he was arrested again, this time for treason, in 2021. Released again – this time into exile in the United States – Maradiaga was awarded a major prize from the UNHRC in 2023 as a “human rights defender.”

    Maradiaga’s most recent UNHRC appearance was hosted by by UN Watch, an Israeli regime cutout which maintains a constant presence in Geneva, relentlessly attacking the UN to shield Israel’s system of apartheid. But what interest would an Israel lobby outfit have in backing Nicaragua’s opposition? The motive clearly relates to the Sandinista government’s longstanding support for Palestinian self-determination, a stance which led it to sever diplomatic ties with Israel and bring legal action against Germany in 2024 for assisting Israel’s genocide in the Gaza Strip. (All of Nicaragua’s top opposition figures are vehemently pro-Israel).

    A day before Maradiaga’s appearance, Nicaragua’s government issued a statement accusing the UNHRC of being “a platform for those who are attempting to destabilize Nicaragua and are the perpetrators of numerous murders, abductions, and violations of human rights of the Nicaraguan people.” It went on to announce its “irrevocable” withdrawal from the multilateral body.

    Nicaragua’s patience had run out. Not only was the UNHRC platforming Maradiaga, but they had published a new report on alleged “human rights violations.” The report comes from the so-called “Group of Human Rights Experts on Nicaraguan” (GHREN) set up by the UNHRC in 2022. It supposedly describes human rights in Nicaragua in the period from 2018 onwards, but to anyone who lives in the country (as I do) and witnessed the violent coup attempt that took place in April-July that year, it is an extraordinarily partial and biased document.

    The most egregious bias is the report’s treatment of opposition figures like Maradiaga as victims, not perpetrators. It is true that there have been arrests, imprisonments and the expulsion from the country (with US agreement and facilitation) of many of those arrested. But the GHREN appears never to have asked if they might be guilty of criminal acts. The new report refers disparagingly to government statements “alleging” that 2018’s events were an attempted coup. Instead, according to the GHREN, “legitimate protests” took place and were subject to a “violent and disproportionate crackdown.”

    Yet as The Grayzone reported back in 2019, the real story was very different. Of the official death toll of 253, just 31 were known supporters of the opposition, 48 were probable or actual Sandinista supporters, 22 were police and the majority (152) were members of the public, many of them attacked at armed opposition roadblocks. Simply by omitting the facts that 22 police officers were killed, some after being tortured, and that over 400 police were injured, the GHREN reveals an extraordinary bias which invalidates its report.

    The GHREN members are fully aware of the real story, but they simply choose to ignore it. They quite deliberately feed Washington’s narrative, repeated by its allies and by the corporate media, that what happened in 2018 was a series of peaceful protests, not a violent coup attempt that endangered thousands of Nicaraguans and hit the livelihoods of millions.

    Their first, 300-page report in March 2023 also made little reference to opposition violence, and as result it was strongly criticized in a letter to the UNHRC, organized by the Nicaragua Solidarity Coalition and signed by many prominent human rights experts and by 119 organizations and 573 individuals, and accompanied by a detailed critique of the report. A separate document analyzed their error-strewn case study of Masaya, where I live, referring them to overlooked crimes such as the torture of Reynaldo Urbina. Neither the letter nor the accompanying evidence received any response, but it can be assumed that the “experts” are at least aware of that they were sent.

    When the GHREN produced a second report, in March 2024, another letter of protest was submitted, again receiving no response. This was also signed by human rights experts and a large number of organizations and individuals. It was sent personally to the president of the UNHRC by Alfred de Zayas, Professor of International Law in Geneva and a former UN Independent Expert. According to de Zayas, the report was “methodologically flawed, biased and should never have been published.”

    When there was again no response, a third letter was sent in September 2024, urging the UNHRC to close down the GHREN on the grounds that its reports are incompatible with UN and UNHRC resolutions, do not meet the assignment they were given, and ignored legitimate and detailed evidence submitted. Not surprisingly, there was no reply.

    The intention to ignore these criticisms could hardly be more obvious, despite the GHREN’s claim to exercise “independence, impartiality, objectivity, transparency, integrity.” Or, as the letter from Nicaragua’s foreign minister puts it, the UNHRC (in publishing the GHREN’s work) “violates its own regulations.”

    This is part of a well-established pattern, referred to by Cuban and Venezuelan officials at the UNHRC’s recent session as well as those from Nicaragua, in which the council listens to and records only one side of the story when investigating human rights “violations” by Washington’s enemies. In his book on “the human rights industry,” de Zayas specifically accuses the GHREN of being set up for the purpose of “naming and shaming” the Nicaraguan government, not for objective investigation.

    Instead of answering criticisms, the GHREN cynically repeats an accusation made in its previous reports, that Nicaraguan authorities were given the chance to respond to its allegations but failed to do so. Had they investigated Nicaragua’s reticence, they might have uncovered the Urbina case and several others where the government tried and failed to engage with such exercises.

    Notable among these was the visit in 2018 by an earlier “interdisciplinary group of independent experts” whose similarly error-strewn report, about that year’s violent “Mothers’ Day march,” also showed overwhelming partiality and anti-government bias. Soon after this visit the government made the understandable decision to refuse cooperation with future investigations by multilateral bodies, and later to deny them permission even to enter the country. Its recent withdrawal from the UNHRC itself was a logical last step.

    From Washington’s viewpoint, the GHREN’s new report could hardly have been better timed. Trump’s Secretary of State Marco Rubio had already branded Nicaragua’s government (along with those of Cuba and Venezuela) as “enemies of humanity.” Not only does the report bolster this view, but it even advocates the tightening of sanctions on Nicaragua that Rubio is known to be contemplating.

    The GHREN specifically calls for Nicaragua to be penalized under the regional trade treaty, known as CAFTA, which enables Nicaragua to trade with its Central American neighbors and the US on favorable terms, and is of massive importance for the country’s economy and hence for Nicaraguan livelihoods. The GHREN’s recommendation is in direct conflict with one of the UNHRC’s own resolutions: UNHRC Resolution 48/5 in 2021 states that such sanctions (“unilateral coercive measures”) violate international law and human rights. Rubio said in Costa Rica on February 4 that the trade treaty’s purpose was to “reward democracy.” Visiting Central America’s right-wing governments to drum up support for tightened sanctions, he claimed that Nicaragua “…is not a democracy. It does not function as a democracy.”

    The GHREN’s report, issued just three weeks after Rubio’s visit, suggests that penalties could be applied under CAFTA’s “democratic clause.” Yet the trade treaty does not have such a clause; it only has a passing reference, in its preamble, to “sustaining the rule of law and democracy.” An impartial group of “experts” in international law, such as the GHREN, ought to be aware of the need for precision in their recommendations, and certainly should avoid calling for actions that would be in breach of international law.

    Clearly the GHREN has no such inhibitions. It has provided Rubio with a recommendation that he can use to damage Nicaragua’s economy and harm its working people. Members of Nicaragua’s elite classes, like Felix Maradiaga, will continue to have a voice at international forums; ordinary Nicaraguans whose human rights were permanently damaged in 2018, like Reynaldo Urbina, remain invisible.

    The post “Biased” UN Report on Nicaragua Ignores Victims of US-backed Opposition Violence first appeared on Dissident Voice.

    This post was originally published on Dissident Voice.

  • UN Food Agency Says It Has 2 Weeks of Food Left in Gaza Amid Israeli Blockade

    The UN’s food agency has warned that it will run out of supplies to help feed Palestinians in Gaza in just two weeks if Israel continues its total blockade of food and other necessities, putting the lives of millions of Palestinians at risk. The World Food Programme has said that it only has enough supplies to keep its kitchens and bakeries in Gaza open for the next couple of weeks…

    Source

    This post was originally published on Latest – Truthout.

  • Lawsuit Against Congress Members Over Gaza Genocide Goes International

    What began as one northern California activist’s idea to up the ante on pressure against local congressmen who support Israel’s assault on Gaza has turned into a plan to air the issue in the international arena.

    Retired high school history teacher Seth Donnelly, a resident of Boyes Hot Springs in Sonoma County, California, said he was fed up with his Congress member Mike Thompson, who refused to respond to phone calls, emails, and protests demanding that he stop funding Israel’s genocide in Gaza.

    “I even invited him to speak before a student human rights group at Rancho Cotate High School,” Donnelly said, referring to the school where he taught until recently.

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  • UN human rights chief ‘deeply worried by fundamental shift’ in US

    Volker Türk alarmed at growing power of ‘unelected tech oligarchs’ and warns gender equality is being rolled back

    The UN human rights chief has warned of a “fundamental shift” in the US and sounded the alarm over the growing power of “unelected tech oligarchs”, in a stinging rebuke of Washington weeks into Donald Trump’s presidency.

    Volker Türk said there had been bipartisan support for human rights in the US for decades but said he was “now deeply worried by the fundamental shift in direction that is taking place domestically and internationally”.

    Continue reading…

    This post was originally published on Human rights | The Guardian.

  • Nicaragua Withdraws From United Nations Human Rights Council

    The Nicaraguan government announced its withdrawal from the United Nations Human Rights Council (HRC) in protest against the falsehoods and slanders against the country perpetrated at the institution.

    In a statement issued on Thursday, February 27, the Nicaraguan authorities stated that the UNHRC has become a platform for those who are attempting to destabilize Nicaragua and are the perpetrators of numerous murders, abductions, and violations of human rights of the Nicaraguan people.

    The statement further stressed that the report against the Nicaraguan authorities by the self-styled group of “experts” is evidence of the double standards and politicization of the multilateral mechanisms where human rights are being weaponized.

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  • UN Talks End With Countries Backing Biodiversity Conservation Plan

    The COP16 UN Biodiversity Conference in Rome has ended with a plan for nations to contribute $200 billion a year for the protection of the planet’s biodiversity by 2030, but critics say it’s not enough.

    The countries came to an agreement on how to contribute the funds. The accord also includes a plan for raising $20 billion annually to finance conservation in developing nations starting this year, with the amount rising to $30 billion a year by 2030, reported The Associated Press.

    Following hours of tense discussions, delegates at the conference applauded when the deal was finally reached.

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