(All Africa) – United Nations Secretary-General António Guterres today announced the appointment of Leila Zerrougui of Algeria as his Special Representative and Head of the United Nations Stabilization Mission in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (MONUSCO). Ms. Zerrougui succeeds Maman Sidikou of Niger, who completes his assignment in January 2018 and to whom the Secretary-General […]
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(Vogue) – Los niños son los que siempre pagan los platos rotos. “Children always pay for the broken plates.” In my work as a human rights advocate, I often think about this old Spanish proverb. Our conflicts are never a child’s fault, but they are the ones who pay the ultimate price. Two years ago, my frustration […]
(The New York Times) – Zakirullah, a 9-year-old boy, is one of hundreds of Afghan children in prison because their mothers are. Even his dreams seem bound to the cellblock. Link
(The New York Times) – Rahima’s father never wanted her out of his sight. She and her sister were too young, too pretty, too vulnerable to be trusted among the men of her village in western Myanmar, not to mention the soldiers who roamed the region. “My father would beat us if we dared to go out […]
(NewStatesman) – Every morning, afternoon and night, Bassam Hayek obsessively checks WhatsApp. He’s flicking through it as we speak, and when he speaks, images of horror, of conflict brutality and domestic abuse he’s receiving through the messaging service run across his mind, forcing him to pause while he filters what he should say aloud. Link
(UNICEF) – Eastern Ukraine is now one of the most mine-contaminated places on earth, endangering 220,000 children who live, play and go to and from school in areas littered with landmines, unexploded ordnance and other deadly explosive remnants of war, UNICEF warned today. “It is unacceptable that places where children could safely play less than four […]
(Scientific American) – In October 2017 Joy Bishara recounted to United Nations Security Council members her experience of being one of nearly 300 girls abducted in 2014 from a boarding school in Nigeria by the Islamist group Boko Haram. She described to a hushed audience how, after her capture, she jumped from a moving truck and […]
(Time) – It takes about a dozen hours by car to reach Sana’a, the besieged capital of civil war-struck Yemen, from the port city of Aden, at the southern tip of the Arabian Peninsula. You must bypass Taiz, the frontline city where fighting rages between a mosaic of loyalist forces, rebels and al-Qaeda jihadists. You must […]
(AFP) – Jean-De-Dieu was working in the fields in his village of Mamoundioma one day in October when he heard the distant but unmistakeable sound of gunfire. The 48-year-old pastor and farmer abandoned the fields and fled with his wife and their 10 children to Oicha, 25 kilometres (15 miles) away, where they took refuge with […]
(Huffington Post) – “I saw many bad things in the army.” In Canada, an 11-year-old child is normally offered a football or a Frisbee, not an AK-47 and bullets. But Luny’s* boyhood was short lived. At 11 years old, he was recruited into the armed forces in South Sudan, forced to fight for a cause he […]
