Syria: Vulnerability of Syrian women
Even though the Middle East seems to be more conservative in terms of moral values, dress code etc, it is no strange thing to see Gypsy women standing next to the highway in Lebanon (even in daylight) ready to be picked up by men. Also Gypsy women are pressured to bring in the money as Gypsy men quite often don't work and are not ashamed to send their daughters, or even wives off for prostitution, begging or to dance in nightclubs in other countries. This issue is not limited to Gypsies anymore. Also Syrian women are exposed to prostitution as they suddenly have no means of income. Child brides are becoming more common as parents are forced to 'sacrifice' the one daughter in order for the rest of the family to survive.
Australia: Prayer needed for the G20 agenda
Australia’s G20 presidency runs from 1st December 2013 to 30th November 2014. Hosting the G20 gives Australia a valuable opportunity to influence the global economic agenda and strengthen engagement with the world’s major economies. During the presidency Australia is leading a series of preparatory meetings that will culminate in the November G20 Summit. Earlier this week in Melbourne a pivotal meeting of the world’s Labour and Employment Ministers put the world's 168 million child labourers firmly on the G20's radar. They heard that one in ten of the world's children aged over five are labouring to the detriment of their health, education and their future. The scale of this issue and the complexity of global supply chains, many of which rely on exploitative labour, means a co-ordinated global effort is needed to reduce demand for products made off the back of children living in poverty.
UN evacuates all troops from Golan as Syria fighting worsens
UN peacekeepers withdrew from all of their posts in the Syrian Golan Heights on Monday as regime forces and rebel factions battled for control of the areas adjacent to the Syrian-Israeli border. The UN has called it a ‘deteriorating situation.’ The withdrawal came as rebels gained control of almost the entire Syrian border with Israel a UN spokesperson said. Syrian armed groups posed a ‘direct threat to safety and security.’ Fighting from Syria spilled over into Israel on Monday morning again as a mortar shell struck near the Israeli side of the Quneitra crossing in the Golan Heights. Artillery fire from Syria has landed frequently on the Israeli side of the Golan Heights over the past few weeks. These evacuations mean that there is no longer a 1,200-strong UN force monitoring the buffer zone between Syria and Israel.
Saudi Arabia: Christian prayer group arrested
28 Christians holding a prayer meeting were arrested by Saudi Arabian police last week. They were abducted from the home of an Indian Christian in Khafji, near the Kuwaiti border. They have not been heard from since their arrest. According to Fox News a Saudi government minister claimed to have no knowledge of the arrests, which have been reported in several Saudi news outlets. Arabic-language news site Akhbar-24 said the religious police were tipped off about the house church meeting. There are contradictory reports about the group that has been captured. Some say that just adults were arrested while the Saudi Gazette reported men, women and children were taken. Several Bibles were also confiscated in the raid.
USA: Ready to take the lead in Ebola fight
Ebola could become a major humanitarian crisis if it is not stopped soon enough. Political systems and infrastructures are fragile after years of civil wars. Hospitals and clinics in Guinea, Liberia and Sierra Leone are overwhelmed by what the World Health Organisation is calling the deadliest Ebola outbreak in history. New cases are increasing exponentially, the situation is a dire emergency with unprecedented dimensions of human suffering, men, women and children are just sitting, waiting to die. On Tuesday America promised to send troops, building materials for field hospitals, health care workers, community care kits and badly needed medical supplies. President Obama said, ‘We know how to fight Ebola. We know how to prevent it from spreading. We know how to care for those who contract it. If we take the proper steps we can save lives. But we have to act fast.’
Sierra Leone: Ebola outbreak - British military sent to West Africa
British military engineers and medics are being sent to Sierra Leone to help fight the world's largest-ever outbreak of Ebola. They will set up and run a treatment centre near the capital Freetown. The World Health Organization says that more than 2,000 people have now died in the outbreak in West Africa. Last week the charity Medecins Sans Frontieres called for a global military intervention in the region. It said the global response to the outbreak had been ‘lethally inadequate’ with countries turning their back on West Africa and merely reducing the risk of Ebola arriving on their shores.The UK has announced it will build a centre with 50 beds for people in Sierra Leone and 12 beds for health-care workers who become ill. The proposed site will be surveyed this week with the facility scheduled to be running within eight weeks.
Nigeria: Boko Haram 'seize' Michika in Adamawa state
Nigeria's militant Islamist group Boko Haram has captured the key north-eastern town of Michika, residents say, gaining more territory in its efforts to create an Islamic state. People fled into bushes as gunfire rang out in the town, they added. Boko Haram has changed tactics in recent months by holding on to territory rather than launching hit-and-run attacks. The government called on Nigerians not to lose hope. The military was committed to defending Nigeria's territorial integrity, it said. Soldiers killed 50 militants during a raid on their hideout in the small north-eastern town of Kawuri at the weekend, the army said. Last month, Boko Haram said it had established an Islamic state in areas it controls in north-eastern Nigeria. Michika is a trading centre in Adamawa state not far from the Cameroon border.
Libya: 250,000 people flee fighting as Islamist group takes over
Fighting between rival groups in Libya's main cities has displaced 100,000 people, and caused another 150,000 to flee the country, a United Nations report said today. Numerous human rights abuses, including indiscriminate killing and abductions, took place between May and August, the report issued by the United Nations Support Mission in Libya and the Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights said. Yesterday Islamist-allied group Fajr Libya, or Libyan Dawn, appointed a new government in Tripoli, rivalling the existing government, which was only elected in June. Libyan Dawn took control of the capital on August 24 following intense fighting between rival groups since July 13. They re-convened an assembly of the National General Congress, the interim government that controlled Libya after the toppling of Colonel Muammar Gaddafi in 2011. The elected parliament has fled to Tobruk in the east to escape the fighting.
Somalia: Al-Shabab claims deadly bombing
At least 12 people were killed and 27 others wounded when a suicide bomber rammed a vehicle packed with explosives into an African Union convoy near Afgoy, southwest of the Somali capital Mogadishu, a local governor said. The attack, the latest in a wave of violence, comes exactly one week after a US air strike killed the chief of the al-Qaeda-linked al-Shabab group, prompting threats of retaliation from the group. Speaking to Al Jazeera, al-Shabab's military operations, spokesman claimed responsibility for the attack that took place near the town of Afgoye, about 30km northwest from the capital Mogadishu. Governor Abdukadir Mohamed Sidi said a car packed with explosives hit one of the armoured AU trucks. ‘Twelve civilians in a minibus were killed, and 27 others were wounded,’ he told the AFP news agency.
Syria: IS selling Christian women as ‘spoils of war’
US airstrikes and Kurdish Peshmerga fighters helped rescue thousands of Yazidis stranded on a mountaintop in northern Iraq. But hundreds of Yazidi girls and women were captured by IS during the prolonged ordeal, and are now being sold to IS fighters in Syria, according to the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, a UK-based monitoring group aligned with the opposition in Syria. In the last several weeks, IS has sold about 300 Yazidi women and underage girls they abducted in Iraq, according to the group. Assyrian Christian women have also been sold to IS fighters. These young women are considered ‘slaves of the spoils of war with the infidels,’ the monitoring group reported. The terrorists sold the women for about $1,000 each, after a forced conversion to Islam so that they are ‘eligible’ to marry IS fighters. An Iraqi Christian refugee named Rwaa fled the Christian city of Qaraqosh, and reported to the BBC on August 8 that IS is raping and selling Christian women.