Here are
some recent editorials I wrote for The Gulf Today. (Posted for my records):
Help
Somalia
tackle
drought
A severe
drought and worsening food crisis are posing a gargantuan challenge to Somalia
and the country needs all possible assistance to overcome the situation.
Somalia's newly-elected President Mohamed Abdullahi
Mohamed has declared a "national disaster" due to the drought, which
aid agencies say has left some three million people in crisis.
The World Health Organisation (WHO) says Somalia is
at risk of its third famine in 25 years. The last one in 2011 killed some 260,000
people.
According
to WHO Regional Director for the Eastern Mediterranean, Dr Mahmoud Fikri, less
than half of the people in Somalia have access to basic health services.
More
worrisome is the fact that over 400,000 of those people are malnourished children.
In
addition, the drought conditions are causing epidemic-prone diseases to spread.
These include diarrhoea, cholera and
measles. Nearly 5.5 million people are at risk of contracting the waterborne
diseases.
Since
early January, more than 6,000 cases of cholera have been reported, as well as
over 2,500 cases of suspected measles.
Thousands of desperate people are already streaming
into Somalia's capital seeking food and shelter. Refugee camps are overcrowded,
filling them beyond capacity. As many as 7,000 internally-displaced people
checked into one feeding centre recently.
Several people are also forced to walk for many
kilometres despite hunger and lack of energy.
Two consecutive seasons of poor rainfall, more in
some areas, have caused large-scale crop failures and high levels of livestock
deaths, as per the United Nations Office for Humanitarian Coordination.
It is stated that entire villages have lost their crops or
seen their livestock die. The prices of water and locally produced food have
risen dramatically in the recent months.
The UN humanitarian appeal for 2017 for Somalia is
$864 million to provide assistance to 3.9 million people. But additional funds
are needed to cope with the worsening situation, and last month, the UN World
Food Programme requested an additional $26 million plan to respond to the
drought.
The
drought and other shocks have left communities that have already been battered
by decades of conflict with little to no resources to fall back on.
President Mohamed has appealed to the international
community to urgently respond to the calamity in order to help families and
individuals recover from the effects of the drought.
The dire
situation calls for a massive and immediate scale-up of humanitarian assistance
to the country. Time is running out.
Lanka needs to expedite
reconciliation efforts
Reports of abuses, including torture, remain
widespread in Sri Lanka eight years after the end of a decades-long civil war,
according to the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights Zeid Ra'ad Al Hussein.
This is a serious matter that Colombo needs to
address earnestly and urgently.
Sri Lanka's President Maithripala Sirisena swept to
power two years ago promising justice for the minority Tamil community and a
full investigation into alleged atrocities committed under the leadership of
his predecessor.
However, the government has remained to slow in
addressing the wartime crimes.
It may be
recalled that at least 100,000 people died
in the conflict between Tamil separatists and government forces that ended in
2009.
Years of
denials, stalled investigations and reprisals against the family members of
victims have taken their toll.
One
should not also forget the fact that previous domestic investigations failed
primarily because of deep mistrust.
The UN has been pushing for a special court to
investigate allegations that government forces killed up to 40,000 Tamil
civilians in the final months of fighting.
Sirisena had agreed to a UN Human Rights Council
resolution in October 2015 which called for special tribunals and reparations
for victims and gave Sri Lanka 18 months to establish credible investigations.
Shockingly, the deadline lapsed without those
commitments being met.
An earlier UN report had identified patterns of grave
violations strongly indicating that both sides had committed war crimes and
crimes against humanity.
Some of
the details spoke of horrific level of violations and abuses. Among other
abuses, it found that tens of thousands of Sri Lankans remained missing after
decades of conflict, suggesting enforced disappearances had been part of a
systematic policy.
The
report also highlighted indiscriminate shelling, extrajudicial killings,
harrowing accounts of torture and sexual violence, recruitment of children and
other grave crimes.
It is not that the government has taken no efforts
on reconciliation. It did make some positive advances on constitutional and
legal reforms, limited land restitution and symbolic gestures.
Nevertheless, the measures taken so far are
inadequate and lack a sense of urgency.
A
“special hybrid court,” as suggested by UN, would have helped speed up and
strengthen the reconciliation process.
The government and people of Sri Lanka should
prioritise justice alongside reconciliation to ensure that the horrors of the
past are firmly dealt with, never to recur, as UN officials rightly suggest.
N.Korea
continues
to play
with fire
North Korea has fired four ballistic missiles into
the sea off Japan's northwest in yet another action to prove that it does not care about
international opinion.
Pyongyang has been vowing retaliation for quite some
time over huge US-South Korea military drills it sees as a “rehearsal for
invasion.”
Incidentally,
Monday's launch has also come ahead of a
trip to Japan, China and South Korea by new US Secretary of State Rex Tillerson
this month.
Pyongyang test-launched a series of missiles of
various ranges in recent months, including a new intermediate-range missile in
February; it also conducted two nuclear tests last year.
While criticising the latest tests, Pyongyang’s
best friend, China, has also suggested that South Korea and the United States
are partly to blame.
China may be right to some extent, but it also
needs to do more to rein in Pyongyang.
Through a unanimously adopted resolution in
November, the 15-member UN Security Council had reaffirmed that the DPRK should
not conduct any further nuclear tests, launches using ballistic missile
technology, or any other provocation.
The UN sanctions targetted revenue sources for the
country’s nuclear or ballistic missile programmes, with the Council for the
first time imposing a limit on how much coal the DPRK can export per year.
As per the resolution, total exports of coal from
the DPRK to all member states should not exceed $400 million or 7.5 million
metric tonnes annually, whichever is lower, beginning Jan.1, 2017. For the
remainder of this year, the ceiling is $53.4 million, or one million metric
tonnes.
In fact,
the UN Council had been forced to meet on nine occasions last year in emergency
consultations in response to the DPRK’s nuclear tests and ballistic missile
activities.
Shockingly, nothing helped end the provocations.
Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe has stated that
three missiles from the latest North Korean tests landed in the
200-nautical-mile offshore area where Tokyo has sovereign rights for exploring
and exploiting resources. According to him, a fourth missile fell near Japan's
exclusive economic zone.
It's the third time that North Korean missiles have
fallen in the Japanese zone, beginning last August.
The importance of maintaining peace and stability on the
Korean Peninsula should never be underestimated.
Provocative
actions such as launching of the missiles only serve to ignite more tension in
the area. North Korea should fully comply with its international obligations to
denuclearise. There’s no other option.
End discrimination
against Rohingya
It is disappointing that Myanmar's military
continues to defend its crackdown on Rohingya Muslims who have suffered
discrimination and humiliation for too long.
Independent media was barred access to the Rohingya
area of Rakhine since an army crackdown began in October.
What is conveniently forgotten is that the
government cannot expect to conduct a credible investigation by itself.
Human rights groups have repeatedly stated that
satellite photos support their allegations of the mass burning of houses.
UN
Special Rapporteur on the situation of human rights in Myanmar, Yanghee Lee,
who visited Bangladesh where she met members of Myanmar's Rohingya community
has rightly called for urgent action by the government of Myanmar to end the
suffering of the Rohingya population.
She has
revealed that the magnitude of violence that these families witnessed and
experienced is far more extensive than originally speculated.
Yanghee
Lee has recounted several allegations of horrific attacks including the
slitting of some people's throats, indiscriminate shootings, houses being set
alight with people tied up inside and very young children being thrown into the
fire, as well as gang rapes and other sexual violence.
These are
spine-chilling, merciless actions that call for severe punishment to the
perpetrators.
The
Office of the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights earlier issued a flash
report, based on its interviews with the people who fled Myanmar, in which it
documented mass gang-rape, killings, including of babies and young children,
brutal beatings, disappearances and other serious human rights violations by
the country's security forces.
Fears are
also growing for the lives of several thousand children in northwest Myanmar
suffering from severe malnutrition but denied vital aid.
UN
agencies were unable to maintain lifesaving services for more than 3,000
registered children, mostly Rohingya, in two townships of Rakhine state after
the military sealed off the area.
Following
an international outcry, the military allowed the UN to resume limited aid
operations in Buthidaung township in December and last month in Maungdaw North.
But many children originally receiving aid still have not been reached.
“We have
reports of children who died from malnutrition,” Chris Lewa, director of Arakan
Project, an NGO operating for years in northern Rakhine, informed The
Independent newspaper.
Arakan
Project estimates that some 200 people were killed by the military. Other
estimates range up to 1,000.
The
Myanmar government should prevent any further serious human rights violations
and also conduct a thorough and unbiased investigation into incidents that
occurred earlier.
Civilians
bear brunt of
fighting
in Iraq, Syria
More and
more civilians are bearing the brunt of intense
fighting in recent days in Iraq and Syria. Thousands of people have been
displaced, with many left hungry and terrified.
As per the International Organisation for
Migration, the offensive by US-backed Iraqi forces to retake west Mosul from
Daesh terrorists has displaced more than 45,000 people in little more than a
week.
A total of 66,000 people have been displaced by
recent fighting along two fronts in neighbouring Syria's north, according to
the United Nation's humanitarian coordination agency.
This includes nearly 40,000 people from Al Bab city
and nearby Tadef town, as well as 26,000 people from communities to the east of
Al Bab in northern Aleppo province.
More than
1,000 civilians were killed or injured last month alone in Iraq. The latest
figures from the UN Assistance Mission in the country reveal that at least 392
civilians were killed and another 613 were injured in acts of terrorism, violence
and armed conflict.
Families escaping the battle for west Mosul have
arrived in droves at sites for the displaced in the past week.
Unicef
Regional Emergency Adviser Bastien Vigneau has been quoted as saying that some
15,000 children have fled western Mosul over the previous week.
Children
are very scared of the sound of the bombs, which is stated as one of the main
reasons their parents decided to flee. They fled with very little luggage and
in most cases with a bare minimum of clothes. The children and their families
arrived mostly by buses organised by the military.
In Syria, the situation for civilians is similarly
challenging. Long queues of families are still forming in Manbij at checkpoints
leading to the town. Pick-up trucks could be seen with displaced children and
women.
Residents of Syria's second city, under regime
control since December, have been without proper drinking water for 48 days
after terrorists cut the supply.
Since war broke out in Syria in March 2011, more
than half of its pre-war population has been forced to flee their homes.
Aleppo province alone hosts tens of thousands of
displaced Syrians, many in camps near the Turkish border.
Fleeing families face very difficult circumstances
and all steps should be initiated to help alleviate their suffering.
With the number of displaced people increasing by
the day, protecting civilians and helping them at their hour of need should be
top priority for the global community.
