UN warns: Iraq and her children face humanitarian crisis
UNITED NATIONS (FinalCall.com) - Senior United Nations officials have expressed “deep concern” about the humanitarian situation of an estimated one million people displaced so far in 2014 in Iraq, particularly children, who are reportedly being recruited and used by militias on all sides. “We have received worrisome information that children are taking part in hostilities,” said Leila Zerrougui, the special...
Palestinians gaining support for actions to join international community
By Saeed Shabazz-Staff Writer- UNITED NATIONS (FinalCall.com) - The Palestinian Authority presented UN officials the necessary documents to join 15 international conventions including Geneva Conventions and other important human rights treaties. If granted, it provides ordinary Palestinians with essential legal protections against discrimination or abuses by their own government according to the UN. In global terms, it will also increase...
Criticism of U.S. human rights record voiced during UN review
By Saeed Shabazz -Staff Writer- UNITED NATIONS - The United States met with criticism from human rights activists and analysts during a two-day review by the United Nations Human Rights Committee tasked with studying reports concerning Washington's compliance with the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, a treaty ratified by the U.S. in 1992. The review spotlighted the U.S. domestic human rights...
Fall of Fallujah refocuses U.S. on Iraq
JIM.LOBE WASHINGTON - Two years after the last U.S. combat soldiers left Iraq, the recent takeover of the Western city of Fallujah by the Al-Qaeda-linked Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS) has refocused Washington's attention on a country that it had hoped to put permanently in its rear-view mirror. The administration of U.S. President Barack Obama, which has ruled...
Motherland reality: As simple as drawing lines on a map
(FinalCall.com) - To show students how Africa was divvied up in 1885 by Europeans, I stood in front of my son Equiano's sixth grade class at Germantown Friends School in Philadelphia and armed only with a magic marker, he drew “artificial borders” on a map of Africa, devoid of its current nation states, that was projected from the...
UN sued for cholera, refuses to talk about it
UNITED NATIONS (FinalCall.com) - Haitian activist organizations remained true to their word by filing an early October class action complaint on behalf of five Haitian families who have suffered because a cholera outbreak in the country tied to UN peacekeepers. The suit was filed in the United States District Court Southern District of New York. The defendants in the suit...
South African land redistribution is a ticking time bomb
(FinalCall.com) - With the “stroke” of a pen, passage of the June 19, 1913 Native Land Act legalized atrocities committed against South Africa's indigenous population. Forced off of land Blacks had lived on since time immemorial, the new law gave substance to what Blacks already realized, the majority of South African land was now reserved for Whites. Not only that,...
Israel and the Gulf increasingly nervous over Iran-U.S. detente
JIM.LOBE WASHINGTON - As hopeful, albeit vague, statements about talks in Geneva between Iran and the great powers continued to issue from the Swiss city Oct. 15, foes of détente between Washington and Tehran maintained their own high tempo of work. The government of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and its supporters in the powerful Israel lobby, which exerts its...
Zimbabwe land redistribution a sign for South Africa?
(FinalCall.com) - During a recent speech at the University of South Africa, former President Thabo Mbeki took Western nations to task for mounting an “offensive against Zimbabwe” that he called an indirect attack on the aspirations of all Africans. During his speech, after attending President Robert Mugabe's inauguration in Zimbabwe, he focused on criticisms about the outcome of the...
Netanyahu’s relentless pursuit of Iran
JIM.LOBE Like the proverbial skunk at the garden party, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu used his turn at the podium at the U.N. General Assembly Tuesday to pour scorn on Iran's new president, 96 hours after a smiling Hassan Rouhani departed New York after a momentous four-day stay that raised unprecedented hopes for détente with the United States and...