UN Launches $46 Billion Appeal to Respond to Worsening Crises In 2024
As conflicts, climate emergencies and collapsing economies continue to wreak havoc on communities worldwide, the UN on Monday issued an appeal for $46.4 billion for 2024 to help 181 million people facing catastrophic hunger, mass displacement and diseases worldwide.
Launching the Global Humanitarian Overview, Martin Griffiths, UN Emergency Relief Coordinator, praised the heroic efforts of humanitarians but emphasized that international support is falling far short of the escalating needs. We thank all donors for their contributions, which amount to $20 billion so far this year – but that is just a third of what was needed,” he stated. If we cannot provide more help in 2024, people will pay for it with their lives,” he warned.
Tough Decisions: Outlining the objectives that UN humanitarians have set for the coming year, Mr. Griffiths explained that while 300 million people across the world would need assistance, the response would target 181 million of those most in need across 72 countries.
The figure is a significant reduction compared with $57 billion for 2023, reflecting a greater focus on the most urgent needs.
Read more: UN: https://is.gd/xjEap2
Ban on Family Members ‘Will Force Migrant Care Workers Into Poverty’
Preventing overseas care workers from bringing their families to join them in the UK is a dehumanising move that will “sentence workers to destitution”, according to care workers and support organisations.
The policy is one of the measures to slash net migration that were announced by the home secretary James Cleverly this week. His proposals also include increasing the earnings threshold for those who want to bring foreign relatives to the UK, and refusing other types of skilled worker visas to those paid under £38,000.
There are more than 150,000 vacancies for social care workers in the UK. Care is the only industry which will be covered by the ban on family members, leading to criticism that the move is discriminatory.
“It's a distraction [and] does nothing to address the real problem of systemic exploitation,” said Dora-Olivia Vicol, chief executive of the Work Rights Centre, an organisation that supports migrant workers.
Vicol told TBIJ that the design of the visa, where sponsored workers lose their right to remain in the UK if they quit their jobs or are dismissed, prevents them from escaping exploitative conditions. Many workers are worried that if they blow the whistle on poor treatment, they will be fired and have to leave the country, or risk being deported.
Read more: Bureau of Investigative Journalism, https://is.gd/f82BVt
EDM 169: Migrants and Domestic Abuse
That this House notes that domestic abuse can have profound long-term effects on survivors and is concerned that it is very difficult to speak out about domestic abuse and often those that do are subject to further silencing tactics;
is concerned that police forces potentially sharing migrant data with Immigration Enforcement could prevent migrants experiencing domestic abuse from reporting to the police and others due to the fear that they will be treated as an offender themselves and face potential criminalisation, detention and deportation;
is further concerned that many migrants experiencing domestic abuse are left without support due to the No Recourse to Public Funds policy;
believes that everyone experiencing domestic abuse must feel able to report abuse and access justice and safety, and that perpetrators should not be allowed evade justice by using immigration status in order to silence, abuse and control;
and calls on the Government to introduce a firewall between all public services and the Home Office and to scrap the No Recourse to Public Funds policy.
Tabled by Apsana Begum MP, https://is.gd/2HqpV1, 07 December 2023
Put Your MP to Work – Ask Them to Sign EDM 169
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Is the Universal Declaration of Human Rights Still Relevant?
December 10th, 2023, Marked the 75th Anniversary ‘Universal Declaration of Human Rights’
“Does it still matter?” Particularly given the atrocities and other human rights horrors we see happening today.
It matters when we make it matter. A document left to gather dust is of no use to anyone, and to consider it irrelevant would only make it so. We should expect it to matter and never stop demanding that our politicians make it matter. Particularly given the atrocities and other human rights horrors we see happening today – and over the past three quarters of a century.
Humanity is divided over many things and will forever be so.
You may find comfort in your religion, your culture, and your language – these and other elements of yourself that stem from your birth and upbringing. But what are these specifics to others who were born elsewhere and raised differently? Inevitably, they have less meaning for them.
Of course, you can (and should) respect the traditions of others, but you are unlikely to ever feel a part of them, to achieve a complete sense of solidarity with them. You can never fully appreciate how the depth of their attachment to their traditions moves them, just as your traditions will never guide others like they guide you.
In this depth of human diversity, it’s too easy for such things to divide us, and too often ruinously so. If humanity is not then to fall again and again into the barbarity brought on by coarse fears and dark hatreds forever lurking within us, we must ask: what brings us together? What is universal in us?
This is precisely why the Universal Declaration of Human Rights is so important. It touches us more deeply than the superficial differences brought about by birth and geography. There is something that makes us human that is more fundamental than the language we speak or the gods we believe in.
In its 30 articles put to paper in 1948 – in the immediate aftermath of previously unimagined inhumanity – we see 30 rights and freedoms that belong to all of us. These are 30 points we can all surely agree on that speaks, as the Declaration’s preamble says, “of the inherent dignity and of the equal and inalienable rights of all.”
From Article One: “All human beings are born free and equal in dignity and rights.”
From Article Two: “Everyone is entitled to all the rights and freedoms set forth in this Declaration, without distinction of any kind, such as race, colour, sex, language, religion, political or other opinion, national or social origin, property, birth or other status.”
From Article Three: “Everyone has the right to life, liberty and security of person.”
From Article Four: “No one shall be held in slavery or servitude.”
From Article Five: “No one shall be subjected to torture or to cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment.”
And 25 others… These are the basics, of course, but they form the foundation of what we can all agree on, regardless of where we come from and what traditions we were brought up in.
We can all agree on one more thing as well: the Universal Declaration of Human Rights has not yet become, as Eleanor Roosevelt, who chaired its drafting committee, had hoped, “the international Magna Carta of all men everywhere.”
Source: Human Rights Watch, https://www.hrw.org/
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HS Admits Human Rights/Equality Breaches In Botched Detention Centre Evacuation
The Home Secretary has conceded the claims of two former immigration detainees relating to a power outage at Harmondsworth immigration removal centre (IRC), a detention centre next to Heathrow airport. The Home Secretary not only paid both claimants substantial amounts in damages for unlawfully detaining them, but also declared that he had in both cases breached their rights under the Equality Act 2010. A further declaration was made in one case that the Home Secretary had breached the claimant’s rights under Article 3 of the European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR).
This was in the linked cases of R(AK) v SSHD CO/4703/2022 and R(AJ) v SSHD CO/4709/2022 which were heard at the High Court before Mr Justice Lavender on 28 November 2023. The cases had been listed for a three day hearing but the Home Secretary conceded the claims on day one.
Coming on the heels of the damning 19 September 2023 report following a statutory public inquiry into events that took place at Brook House IRC in 2017, one of the Gatwick detention centres, the outcome of this case raises questions as to whether the Home Secretary has learned any lessons from those disturbing events.
Read more: Freemoevement, https://is.gd/levtBC
EDM 177: UK Arms to Israel
That this House notes with deep concern that UK-made military equipment and technology is being used by Israel, including in its most recent bombardment of the occupied Gaza Strip which has resulted in thousands of deaths and injuries;
expresses alarm at reports by the UN Commission of Inquiry on the Occupied Palestinian Territory, Human Rights Watch, Amnesty International and others of violations of international humanitarian law and human rights law by Israel, including apparently unlawful attacks that may amount to war crimes;
further notes that Israel uses military technology and weaponry, including surveillance technology, in the broader repression of Palestinians across Israel and the occupied Palestinian territory;
is therefore alarmed by the granting of and continuation of extant UK licences for export to the Israeli military of arms and arms components including for aircrafts, helicopters, drones, missiles, military technology, armoured vehicles, tanks, ammunition, and small arms;
reminds the Government that under international and domestic law, the UK is required to prevent the transfer of military equipment where there is a clear or overriding risk that such exports might be used to commit or facilitate a serious violation of international humanitarian law or international human rights law, as affirmed by Articles 6 and 7 of the Arms Trade Treaty, and criteria one and two of the UK’s Strategic Export Licensing Criteria;
and therefore calls for the Government to immediately halt all transfers of military equipment and technology, including components, to Israel, and to suspend the issuing of new licences.
Tabled by MPs: Chris Law, Afzal Khan, Tommy Sheppard, Imran Hussain, Zarah Sultana, Kim Johnson
https://is.gd/fw97bY, 07 December 2023
Put Your MP to Work – Ask Them to Sign EDM 177
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Nearly a Million Children Displaced in Gaza
Women and children are bearing the brunt in terms of deaths and injuries as Israeli troops battle Palestinian militants across the enclave, with nowhere safe to go, and aid distribution stymied by war, insufficient access and insufficient supplies crossing into the Strip.
Adele Khodr, UNICEF Regional Director for the Middle East and North Africa, said in a statement on Saturday that Gaza was “the most dangerous place in the world to be a child…Entire neighbourhoods, where children used to play and go to school have been turned into stacks of rubble, with no life in them.”
Staff from the UN children’s agency report that close to one million children have now been forcibly displaced since the cycle of violence began on 7 October. They are now being pushed further and further south into tiny, overcrowded areas without water, food, or protection, putting them at increased risk of respiratory infections and waterborne disease”, warned Ms. Khodr. The restrictions and challenges being placed on the delivery of lifesaving aid going into and across the Gaza Strip are another death sentence for children”. The whole humanitarian system is buckling, particularly under the extreme strain caused by the measures imposed by Israel as it’s offensive continues.
Read more: United Nations, https://is.gd/BNNajf
Crimes Against the Climate: Violence and Deforestation in the Amazon
The fires and clearcutting rampant in the Amazon have stoked global concern about the future of the world’s largest rainforest, which plays a vital role in containing climate change by absorbing the carbon dioxide produced by combustion of fossil fuels. What can get lost in the international debate is that organised crime is a major driver of this environmental destruction.
Organised crime has infiltrated the Amazon basin, seeking land for growing coca, rivers for drug trafficking and veins of gold underground. These groups are endangering the rainforest and the safety of those attempting to defend it. It is imperative that regional governments take protective measures. Curbing the activity of illicit groups in the region is imperative, not just because of the environmental degradation these organisations inflict, but the increasing danger they pose to communities in the region.
Levels of violence in the Amazon are high, even by the standards of Latin America and the Caribbean, a region that, with only 8 per cent of the global population, accounts for 29 per cent of homicides worldwide. Homicide rates in the Amazon, moreover, surpass regional averages. This violence occurs in rural areas and smaller cities that tend to be under the radar of national governments, and is therefore widely overlooked.
Within the Amazon, territories that are host to legal and illegal logging and mining, coca cultivation and drug trafficking suffer both the worst ecological damage and the most violence. These areas often overlap with the ancestral lands of Indigenous peoples, who historically have played a crucial role in safeguarding the rainforest. Not surprisingly, crime rings plundering the Amazon’s bounty have made environmental activists their prime targets. In 2022, one in five killings of land and environmental defenders worldwide took place in the Amazon, with Colombia and Brazil the two most dangerous countries for this work.
The relationship between the escalating climate crisis and violent crime is finally getting the attention it warrants. The 28th UN climate summit, or COP28, in Dubai, United Arab Emirates, features “peace” on its agenda for the first time in this gathering’s history. By examining the interplay of violence and climate in different parts of the immense rainforest – the Amazon basin covers as much territory as India and the European Union combined – states and foreign partners can start to identify ways to protect it and the people who reside there. In three parts of the Amazon, the interplay between crime and environmental exploitation shine through.
Read more: Crisis Group, https://is.gd/lQrC6v
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