More than one million people in Gaza – half of the population – may not have enough food by June!

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Unless UNRWA secures at least an additional US$ 60 million by June, their ability to continue providing food to more than 1 million Palestine refugees in Gaza, including some 620,000 abject poor – those who cannot cover their basic food needs and who have to survive on US$ 1.6 per day – and nearly 390,000 absolute poor – those who survive on about US$ 3.5 per day – will be severely challenged.

“This is a near ten-fold increase caused by the blockade that lead to the closure of Gaza and its disastrous impact on the local economy, the successive conflicts that razed entire neighborhoods and public infrastructure to the ground, and the ongoing internal Palestinian political crisis that started in 2007 with the arrival of Hamas to power in Gaza,” said Matthias Schmale, Director of UNRWA Operations in Gaza.

Moreover, the tragic death of 195 Palestinians – including 14 students from UNRWA schools and the long-lasting physical and psychological injuries of 29,000 people during the year-long demonstrations known as the Great March of Return – come after three devastating conflicts in Gaza since 2009, which resulted in at least 3790 deaths and more than 17,000 injuries combined.

A report issued by the United Nations in 2017 predicted that Gaza would be unlivable by the year 2020. 

[Read full UNRWA article]

Google offers tech aid to take on humanitarian crises

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Frontier technologies like machine learning and artificial intelligence have revolutionized Google’s business, and now the tech company is looking to share the wealth with those that need it most: people on the front lines of humanitarian crises.

From among 2,600 applicants, 20 winning nonprofits and social enterprises walked away from Google’s AI Impact Challenge with access to a pool of $25 million in funding, expertise from “Googlers,” and a shot to mitigate humanitarian challenges in their local communities.

“We want to see if we can help make the world a better place by bringing the best of Google,” said Jacquelline Fuller, vice president of Google, and president of the company’s humanitarian arm, Google.org. “We look at issues and see where do we think we could have a differential impact. And so some of those areas include economic opportunity, the future of work, thinking about how to bring digital skilling to millions across the globe.”

This year’s winners include the American University of Beirut, which is developing a tool to help Middle Eastern and African farmers save water; Eastern Health of Australia, which uses machine learning to identify patterns in suicide attempts for more effective prevention; and Hand Talk, a startup that is using AI to translate Portuguese into sign language for disadvantaged, deaf Brazilians.

Fuller said the project helps unite tech companies, civil society, and governments to ensure “everyone has access to the benefits of this technology, and that we are applying it to the problems that really matter most to humanity.”

[Cheddar]

Dozens drown as migrant boat capsizes off Tunisia

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At least 65 migrants from sub-Saharan Africa have died after their boat capsized in the Mediterranean off the coast of Tunisia, the UN refugee agency says. Some reports put the number on board higher so the toll could rise. Sixteen people were rescued, UNHCR said in a statement.

About 164 people have died on the route between Libya and Europe in the first four months of 2019, UNHCR figures show.

The Tunisian Navy dispatched a ship as soon as it heard about the incident and came across a fishing boat picking up survivors, a statement from the Tunisian defense ministry said.

Thousands of migrants attempt to cross the Mediterranean to Europe every year, and Libya is a key departure point.  Those who make the journey often travel in poorly maintained and overcrowded ships, and many have died.

[BBC]

The U.S. has slashed its refugee intake. Syrians fleeing war are most affected

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The number of Syrian refugees allowed into the United States in fiscal 2016 was 12,587.

In fiscal 2018, the United States admitted 62.

The drop is largely the result of the Trump administration slashing the total number of refugees allowed into the country each year and because of enhanced screenings for refugees from 11 countries, including Syria.

[Washington Post]

Global neglect of millions in conflict zones branded ‘pitiful’

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Record numbers of people have been forced from their homes by conflict in a crisis that has received “pitiful” international attention, the head of the Norwegian Refugee Council has said.

A total of 41.3 million people were living in a state of internal displacement by the end of 2018 due to violence, researchers for the organization found, with increasing numbers unable to return home for protracted periods. This is a rise of more than a million on the previous year.The number of people forced from their homes but still living in their own country is nearly two-thirds greater than the global total of refugees who have sought shelter abroad.

“Because they haven’t crossed a border, they receive pitiful global attention,” said Jan Egeland, secretary general of the Norwegian Refugee Council. Millions are being “failed by ineffective national governance and insufficient international diplomacy”.

Without huge global investment in disaster preparedness – an unlikely prospect – the numbers of people displaced will continue to rise, said Alexandra Bilak, director of the Norwegian Refugee Council’s internal displacement monitoring center.

Tropical cyclones and monsoon floods caused large numbers of people to be evacuated in the Philippines, China and India. Violence in the Democratic Republic of the Congo and Syria, and tensions between communities in Ethiopia, Cameroon and Nigeria’s Middle Belt region, also drove millions from their homes. Afghanistan, which faced its worst drought for a decade on top of protracted conflict, was among several countries that faced both violence and disaster. More than a million people in Iraq attempted to go home last year only to find that the neighborhoods where they once lived were no longer habitable due to landmines.

[The Guardian]

Polio vaccine now introduced worldwide

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By the end of 2017 Gavi the Vaccine Alliance, backed by The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, Norway and the United Kingdom, had helped more than 75 million children to be immunized against polio with IPV. (Nepal was the first Gavi-supported country to introduce the vaccine in September 2014.) Today, every country worldwide has now introduced the inactivated polio vaccine (IPV)  which protects children against polio.

“Introducing IPV into routine immunization programs is a critical milestone on our journey towards a polio-free world,” said Dr Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, Director-General of the World Health Organization and Chair of the GPEI Polio Oversight Board. “It’s also vital that we use the infrastructure that has built up around polio immunization programs to ensure that all children receive other nationally-recommended vaccines. Achieving universal health coverage means making sure that all children, rich and poor, receive the same protection from vaccine-preventable diseases.”

Polio is a highly contagious viral infection, mainly affecting children under the age of five, which can lead to paralysis or even death. Only three countries – Afghanistan, Nigeria and Pakistan – remain endemic to wild poliovirus. Thanks to global efforts and vaccination, since the beginning of 2019 only fifteen cases of wild poliovirus have been recorded in Pakistan and Afghanistan. Moreover, Nigeria, the third endemic country could be declared polio-free by the end of the year. Polio cases have fallen by 99% since 1988, from an estimated 350,000 cases to 33 reported cases in 2018.

[GAVI Alliance]

European Union nations are living far beyond the Earth’s means

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The European Union’s 28 countries consume the Earth’s resources much faster than they can be renewed, and none of them has sustainable consumption policies, a report released by the World Wide Fund (WWF) and Global Footprint Network on Thursday said.

“The EU uses up almost 20 percent of the Earth’s bio-capacity although it comprises only 7 percent of the world population,” the report said.

“In other words, 2.8 planets would be needed if everyone consumed at the rate of the average EU resident. This is well above the world average which is approximately 1.7 planets,” it said.

“If everybody in the world had the same ecological footprint as an average EU resident – emitting as much carbon, consuming as much food, timber and fibers, and occupying as much built up space – May 10th would be the date by which humanity would have used as much from nature than our planet can renew in a whole year,” the report said.

[Reuters]

Death of two aid workers in Nigeria lamented by UN Humanitarian coordinator

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The United Nations Humanitarian Coordinator in Nigeria, Mr. Edward Kallon, has extended his heartfelt condolences to the families, colleagues and friends of two aid workers who lost their lives in Friday’s attack on a holiday resort 220 kilometers north of Abuja, the capital of Nigeria.

Faye Mooney, a British communications and learning specialist with non-governmental organization Mercy Corps, and Matthew Oguche, a Nigerian training assistant with the International NGO Safety Organization (INSO), were killed when gunmen stormed the resort in Kaduna State, spraying gunfire and reportedly kidnapping three other individuals.

Faye Mooney had been working in Nigeria for nearly two years and was known for her devotion to making a difference and countering hate speech and violence. Matthew Oguche was training not-for-profit partners in personal safety and hostile environment awareness and was passionate about helping others.

[AllAfrica]

Devastating floods leave millions in Iran facing humanitarian crisis

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Two weeks since the storms started, relentless rain and flooding throughout Iran has left some 2 million people facing a humanitarian crisis. The deluge has swamped large swaths of the country, from the mountains in the north down to the Persian gulf in the south.

Twenty-five out of 31 of Iran’s provinces have been affected. Officials say 76 people have been killed so far, with some 150,000 homes partially or completely destroyed. Bridges across the country and miles upon miles of road have been left unusable. Authorities say the estimated bill to repair the damage stands at least $2.5 billion. The country’s agriculture sector, which makes up about 14 percent of Iran’s GDP, has been devastated.

The Red Crescent aid group, the Muslim world’s equivalent to the Red Cross, is working with the government to respond to the disaster.

Hussein and Farideh Abdekhani, an elderly couple whose village was consumed by the floods, told NBC News that the family had lost everything they had worked so hard for. “All we have left are the clothes we are wearing. … We have nothing. I don’t know how we are going to rebuild our lives,” she added.

Nasser, 81, a taxi driver in Khorramabad, the capital of Lorestan province, told NBC News: “I have lived here my whole life and have never seen anything like this.”

[NBC]

Jimmy Carter lectures Trump that US is ‘most warlike nation in history of the world’

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The only U.S. president to complete his term without war, military attack or occupation has called the United States “the most warlike nation in the history of the world.” During his regular Sunday school lesson in his hometown of Plains, Georgia, Jimmy Carter revealed that he had recently spoken with President Donald Trump about China.

Carter, 94, said Trump was worried about China’s growing economy and expressed concern that “China is getting ahead of us.” Carter, who normalized diplomatic relations between Washington and Beijing in 1979, said he told Trump that much of China’s success was due to its peaceful foreign policy.

“Since 1979, do you know how many times China has been at war with anybody?” Carter asked. “None, and we have stayed at war.” Carter then said the U.S. has been at peace for only 16 of its 242 years as a nation. Counting wars, military attacks and military occupations, there have actually only been five years of peace in US history — 1976, the last year of the Gerald Ford administration and 1977-80, the entirety of Carter’s presidency. Carter then referred to the US as “the most warlike nation in the history of the world,” a result, he said, of the US forcing other countries to “adopt our American principles.”

China’s peace dividend has allowed and enhanced its economic growth, Carter said. “How many miles of high-speed railroad do we have in this country?” he asked. China has around 18,000 miles (29,000 km) of high speed rail lines while the US has “wasted, I think, $3 trillion” on military spending. According to a November 2018 study by Brown University’s Watson Institute of International and Public Affairs, the US has spent $5.9 trillion waging war in Iraq, Syria, Afghanistan, Pakistan and other nations since 2001.

The U.S. has also invaded or bombed dozens of countries and supported nearly every single right-wing dictatorship in the world since the end of World War II. It has overthrown or attempted to overthrow dozens of foreign governments since 1949 and has actively sought to crush nearly every single people’s liberation movement over that same period. It has also meddled in scores of elections, in countries that are allies and adversaries alike.

Carter said of U.S. war spending. “China has not wasted a single penny on war, and that’s why they’re ahead of us. In almost every way.”

“And I think the difference is if you take $3 trillion and put it in American infrastructure you’d probably have $2 trillion leftover,” Carter told his congregation. “We’d have high-speed railroad. We’d have bridges that aren’t collapsing, we’d have roads that are maintained properly. Our education system would be as good as that of say South Korea or Hong Kong.”

[telesurenglish.net] Read more on the subject