WORLD - The African Mirror

Oct

13

2024

What lies ahead for the UN’s new relief chief

WORLD

This story was originally published by The New Humanitarian.By Will Worley and Irwin Loy When Tom Fletcher begins his new job in the coming weeks, the UN’s freshly announced relief chief will face sky-high expectations to get a grip on spiralling crises, re-energise support for emergency aid, and transform a sprawling system that’s stretched to its limits. No pressure at all, in other words. After months of delay, the UN announced this week that Fletcher would fill the top humanitarian job in the global aid system – officially, his full job title is under-secretary general for humanitarian affairs and emergency…

Oct

12

2024

By The African Mirror

UNHCR: Decade of action against statelessness brings big gains but further action needed

WORLD

MORE than half a million people around the world who were living in the shadows, deprived of their right to nationality, have now acquired citizenship since the inception a decade ago of the #IBelong campaign, according to a new report on statelessness released today by UNHCR, the UN Refugee Agency. A major human rights violation, statelessness deprives individuals of basic legal rights, leaving them politically and economically marginalized, unable to access critical services like health and education, discriminated against and particularly vulnerable to exploitation and abuse. UNHCR launched the campaign in October 2014 to mobilize international action to resolve the scourge of…

Oct

12

2024

By KRISTY SIEGFRIED

Former Syrian refugee brings healing and recovery to trauma survivors

WORLD

JIN Davod’s first thought on being jolted out of her sleep before dawn on 6 February 2023, was that a bomb, like the ones that had narrowly missed her and her family in Syria nine years earlier, was about to fall on their apartment building in Şanlıurfa, southern Türkiye. Within seconds, she realized it was not a bomb but an earthquake and that she, her parents and three younger siblings needed to get out of the building as quickly as possible. “My father was trying to open the door, but it was shaking so much that he couldn’t turn the…

Oct

11

2024

By CHARLIE DUNMORE and ELISABET DIAZ SANMARTIN

Brazilian nun who champions refugees wins UNHCR’s Nansen Award

WORLD

WHEN asked how a farmer’s daughter who became a Catholic nun ended up as one of Brazil’s most influential refugee advocates, Sister Rosita Milesi, 79, offers a simple answer: determination. “I have always been a very determined person, ever since childhood. If I take something on, I will turn the world upside down to make it happen,” she said on a sultry afternoon in the northern Brazilian city of Boa Vista, where the organization she leads – the Migration and Human Rights Institute (IMDH) – supports refugees and migrants from neighbouring Venezuela and other countries. For her decades-long commitment to…

Oct

11

2024

By MONICA VAZQUEZ and EUGENIA CIURCA

Moldovans honoured for their warm welcome to refugees from Ukraine

WORLD

WITHIN hours of Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine on 24 February 2022, tens of thousands of terrified families boarded trains and formed convoys of cars heading west to escape the war. At the border, mothers and children bid tearful farewells to husbands and fathers, who remained behind, before stepping into an uncertain future. As these scenes unfolded at the Palanca border crossing between Ukraine and its smallest neighbour, Moldova, Moldovan citizens were already mobilizing to help the arriving refugees. Donations of food, warm clothes and blankets began pouring to the border, people arrived in private vehicles to offer transportation, and…

Oct

11

2024

By MEL LEONOR BARCLAY

A campus shooting spurred her political awakening. Her whole family followed

WORLD

ADRIANA Grijalva was getting ready to head to class at the University of Arizona in the fall of 2022 when she got a text message from her cousin telling her to stay put. The cousin, who works in maintenance at the university, had watched law enforcement descend on campus and reached out to make sure she was safe. A former student had just shot a professor 11 times, killing him. Grijalva, who was just a few weeks into her first year of college, immediately thought of her sister, who also attended the university. Her stepdad, a music teacher, and her…

Oct

10

2024

By The African Mirror

Haiti gang attack kills at least 70, displaces 6,000

WORLD

MORE than 6,000 people were displaced from their homes after a gang attack on 3 October in the central region of Artibonite killed at least 70 people – including three infants – and left dozens wounded. Members of the Gran Grif gang stormed into the small town of Pont-Sondé – about 100 kilometres from the capital, Port-au-Prince – with automatic rifles, dragging people from their homes, executing many of them, and setting houses and vehicles on fire. The massacre is yet another sign of the catastrophic deterioration of security in Haiti, where the deployment of some 400 Kenyan police and…

Oct

10

2024

By SHEFALI LUTHRA

Florida is trying to block a TV ad about a woman with cancer who got an abortion

WORLD

THE Florida Department of Health is making an unprecedented legal effort to stop a local TV station from airing an advertisement in support of an abortion rights ballot measure. The ad features a pregnant woman who was diagnosed with stage four brain cancer and says the law would have prevented her from having an abortion, even though the procedure was necessary for her to undergo chemotherapy. State health departments typically do not weigh in on electoral issues. The move is part of a broader effort by the state’s Republican leaders, including Gov. Ron DeSantis, to leverage public resources to fight against the…

Oct

09

2024

By MOHAMED SOULAIMANE AL-ASTAL

‘We’re all next’: One year of covering Israel’s war in Gaza

WORLD

This story was originally published by The New Humanitarian.By Mohamed Soulaimane al-Astal “IN this war, my son, we’re all next. We are just built to keep on trying to skip our turn,” Naeema al-Ashour, 62, told me in August. I first met al-Ashour in June when I interviewed her for an article for The New Humanitarian about how Palestinians in the Gaza Strip feel about the global debate over whether there is a famine in the enclave as we live with the day-to-day reality of not having enough to eat. I saw her several times after that. The final time…

Oct

09

2024

By JOSHUA COLLINS

Rising Cauca violence shows the scale of Colombia’s peacebuilding challenge

WORLD

This story was originally published by The New Humanitarian.By Joshua Collins ON 17 September, fighters from Colombia’s largest remaining rebel group, the National Liberation Army (ELN), fired rockets from the back of a truck into a military base in Puerto Jordán in eastern Colombia. The incident, which killed three soldiers and wounded at least two dozen more, was the latest in a string of attacks on oil infrastructure and on police and military installations that have rocked the country since the ceasefire between the ELN and the government broke down in August. It was also a devastating blow to leftist President Gustavo Petro’s ambitious…