Day: July 3, 2024

По словам украинского омбудсмена, родственники сопровождали 68 сирот в Германию.

End To Ukraine War – OpEd – Eurasia Review  Eurasia Review

COVID emergency room visits tick up slightly in Virginia  13newsnow.com WVEC

How The Boys Star Laz Alonso Lost 40 Pounds After Covid  Men’s Health

What’s Going Around: Colds, seasonal allergies, asthma flare-ups, bug bites, severe sunburns, COVID, pink eye  WDIV ClickOnDetroit

You Tested Positive for Covid. Can You Still Travel?  The New York Times

New COVID-19 strains are slamming California amid heat, wildfires  SFGATE

United Nations — Haiti’s transitional prime minister assured the international community Wednesday that his violence-plagued nation is at the “dawn of a new era,” and he expressed confidence that a Kenyan-led police mission would help subdue gangs terrorizing the island nation.

“Our country is at a crucial turning point in our history,” Prime Minister Garry Conille told a meeting of the United Nations Security Council on Haiti. “We find ourselves facing a huge challenge but also an excellent opportunity to restore peace and security in our nation.”

He said 12,000 armed gang members are holding Haiti’s population of 12 million people hostage, and he welcomed the arrival on June 25 of the first police contingent from Kenya. It will lead a multination security support mission of about 2,500 police officers expected to deploy to help Haiti’s police stabilize the country.

“We will restore our territory house by house, neighborhood by neighborhood,” Conille said. “This isn’t just a security operation; it is a renaissance of the national spirit.”

Conille, 58, a physician and former UNICEF and international development official, was elected in May by the Presidential Transitional Council to lead the transitional government and took up his post on June 3.

“At this decisive juncture, no project, be it economic or political, can be tackled without addressing the security issue,” he said, acknowledging the many challenges facing the new government.

The latest U.N. report on Haiti, issued last Thursday, says gang intimidation and attacks have displaced 578,000 people, mostly in and around the capital, Port-au-Prince, with the majority fleeing to rural areas in the south and north.

Murders are up significantly. The U.N. political mission in Haiti, known as BINUH, said in the first five months of this year, 3,252 people have been killed — an increase of 800 people over the last five months of 2023. Kidnappings are also high, with nearly 1,000 abductions between January and May 2024.

At least 80% of Port -au-Prince is no longer under the control of the Haitian authorities, and violence is spreading to other parts of the country. The Haitian National Police, or HNP, have been targeted and attacked, and 20 officers have been killed so far this year. Gangs also have demolished three police stations and three prisons.

The humanitarian situation is equally bleak. Nearly 5 million Haitians are in emergency or worse levels of food insecurity, and more than 275,000 children under age 5 are likely to suffer from acute malnutrition by the end of this year.

The United States is the largest funder of the multinational security support force — also known as the MSS — having pledged more than $300 million focused on logistics, equipment and training.

“The Haitian people deserve, at long last, to live in peace — to go to work, school or a house of worship without the threat of violence,” U.S. Ambassador Linda Thomas-Greenfield said in the council.

In helping restore security to Haiti, the MSS will also be helping to create conditions for the holding of credible elections. Haiti hopes to hold them no later than February 2026.

The multinational security support mission has been beset with delays, including court challenges in Kenya and a shortage of funding.

Haiti has been in turmoil since the July 7, 2021, assassination of President Jovenel Moise at his home in the Port-au-Prince suburb of Petion-Ville. Armed gangs now control much of the capital and have spread to other parts of the country, where they have carried out massacres, kidnappings, human trafficking and sexual violence.

GENEVA  — Human rights experts warn Syria’s people are trapped in a society riven by impunity, lawlessness and fragmentation after 13 years of conflict with no end in sight.  

In its latest update to the United Nations Human Rights Council, the three-member Independent International Commission of Inquiry on Syria presented a blistering account of the grim reality facing civilians in a country “with a crumbling economy and a devastating humanitarian situation.” 

“For more than a decade, we have documented extensive human rights violations and war crimes across the Syrian territory by all parties to the conflict,” commission chair Paulo Sergio Pinheiro told the council Wednesday, noting that throughout the prolonged conflict “there has been a consistent disregard for the lives and well-being of the Syrian people with no end in sight.” 

He said appalling cycles of violence continue, as do massacres that “invoke the atrocities committed with impunity during the conflict,” including during the darkest days of Daesh or Islamic State rule. 

Syria’s ambassador to the U.N. in Geneva, Haydar Ali Ahmad, rejected the findings, calling details of the commission’s work “detached from reality.” 

The conflict, which began in March of 2011, has taken a heavy toll on the population. The U.N. says more than 350,000 civilians have been killed and more than 13.5 million people — over 60% of the population — have been displaced. That includes 6.8 million people inside Syria and 5.4 million as refugees in neighboring countries. 

The report says 155,000 Syrians have been detained or forcibly disappeared, a phenomenon that, according to the commission, persists to this day. The report accuses predatory security forces and militias of overseeing criminal fiefdoms while “extorting monetary gain from civilians.” 

“Incommunicado detention and enforced disappearances continue, with families of those unlawfully detained often compelled to pay large sums of money to try to obtain information on the fate of their loved ones,” Pinheiro said. 

The report describes a thriving drug trafficking and smuggling trade in Syria involving both pro- and anti-government factions causing further insecurity. 

The commission says unlawful occupation, confiscation and destruction of the homes, land and property of internally displaced people and refugees continue in a “slow-motion” but steady fashion, thus “further eroding their rights and rendering the prospects of their return home more elusive every day.” 

While the fierce battles of previous years have generally subsided, there continue to be sporadic clashes throughout the country with devastating results.    

“Six foreign armies are engaged militarily in the country,” Pinheiro said. “Adding further complexity to this landscape is the risks posed by the Israel-Palestine conflict and the likelihood for further escalation in Syria and the region.” 

He warns that the long-running conflict and its consequences have become entrenched. “Impunity and lawlessness have shaped a grim reality for all Syrians, with no end in sight. 

“World leaders involved with the conflict in Syria are failing to achieve progress towards a peaceful settlement of the conflict; and they and the Syrian government are failing the Syrian people,” he said. 

The three-member panel noted that efforts by some Arab states last year to normalize relations with Syria and have the country rejoin the League of Arab States have gone nowhere as “no further meaningful concessions were made by the Syrian government.” 

In a bleak assessment of prevailing human rights conditions, the commission finds that “arbitrary detention, enforced disappearance, torture, and death in detention continue while violence and insecurity plague different parts of the country and the economy flat-lines.” 

Given the prevailing situation, the commission says the voluntary return of refugees to Syria is not a viable option and is fraught with danger. It also expresses concern about the forced return of refugees to Syria from neighboring countries of refuge. 

Commission chair Pinheiro said Syrians “are increasingly at risk of deportation and forced return to Syria, where they risk being arrested or disappeared, or returning to find their homes and farms destroyed and no means of livelihood.” 

Ambassador Ahmad took umbrage at the commission’s report, telling the council, “What you have just listened to … does not deserve any comment. There is no point in going into the details of the work of this commission.” 

He chided the council for “engaging in absurd political showoff, which we witnessed in each interactive dialogue with this commission.” 

He accused the council of wasting time and resources in the name of promoting human rights, while aiming “to cover up practices of aggression, occupation, illegal military presence, supporting separatist militias and terrorist groups.” 

All of which, he said, constitute “direct support for these groups and threatens the unity and territorial integrity of the Syrian Arab Republic.”