..
WHO officials ‘horrified’ after report blames Congo sex abuse
claims on ‘structural failures’ at UN agency
28 Sep, 2021 16:05
An independent investigation into allegations of sexual abuse perpetrated by World Health Organization (WHO) staff in the Democratic Republic of Congo has criticized the agency for “clear structural failures” over the complaints.
The report focused on allegations of abuses committed by WHO personnel who were hired locally, as well as some of its international staff deployed to the country while the agency was fighting an Ebola outbreak in the DRC between 2018 and 2020.
The investigation interviewed numerous women who said they were subjected to abuse, with the report saying it had established “with certainty” that 21 out of 83 identified alleged perpetrators were WHO workers. The findings come after media reports exposed concerns that senior WHO figures failed to halt harassment or exploitation.
The report, which claimed abuses occurred due to “clear structural failures” and “individual negligence,” left the WHO’s regional director for Africa, Matshidiso Moeti, “humbled, horrified and heartbroken,” she said at a press conference on Tuesday.
Seriously, this stuff has been going on for decades at probably every UN mission in the world. How can you be surprised?
WHO Director General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus described the report as “harrowing,” and said he is “sorry” for the actions of “people employed by the WHO to serve and protect” citizens in the Congo.
Tedros appointed independent investigators to handle complaints raised in October 2020 about the actions of humanitarian officials in the region, which the WHO chief had stated at the time left him “outraged.”
One of the alleged victims, named only as Shekinah, stated following the report’s release that she would like her attacker to “be punished severely, so that it will serve as a lesson to other untouchable doctors of the WHO.”
Sorry, Shekinah, but that's not going to happen. They have to be punished by the country from which they came and most are not interested in finding enough evidence to prosecute one or more of its soldiers.
Julie London, from the Congolese Union of Media Women, which has supported victims of alleged abuse, called for compensation from the UN agency, stating that the “WHO must also think about reparation for the women who were traumatized by the rapes and the dozens of children who were born with unwanted pregnancies as a result of the rapes.”
That should be the least they do. And they should bill the country of origin of the UN employees.
‘Russian virgins & cocaine’: Moscow protests over racy human trafficking
ad from Spanish NGO ‘offering’ teenage girls to passersby
28 Sep, 2021 09:01
© Facebook / Asociación NUEVA VIDA
The Russian Embassy in Madrid has lodged a protest with Spanish officials after a human rights group placed billboards in cities nationwide, apparently listing hardcore drugs and young Russian women for sale as part of a campaign.
The adverts, posted last week to mark World Day Against Trafficking in Persons, feature a restaurant-style whiteboard offering a special dish of “Russian virgins and cocaine.” Other listings include “Katia, 17 years old,” and “Sophia, 20 years old,” for €50 each ($58). Would-be punters are also told that for an extra fee, they can smoke cannabis, snort banned narcotics and dispense with the use of a condom.
The organization that placed the ads, Asociación NUEVA VIDA, describes them as part of efforts to “abolish prostitution,” evidently aiming to shock viewers into supporting an end to the exploitation of trafficked women. Supporters are challenged to find the marketing materials in the street and upload the supposed menu of teenage girls with the caption “do not buy.”
However, the apparent reliance on stereotypes about Russian women has drawn a furious response from the country’s Spanish embassy. In a statement issued on Monday, Moscow’s envoys said that “our compatriots living in Spain are outraged by the PR-stunt from the NGO, sharing online the placement of provocative banners on the street, mentioning Russian girls as part of the campaign to bring attention to the problem of prostitution in the country.”
The diplomats went on to brand the publicity appeal as “inappropriate” and demanded that authorities “take urgent measures to eliminate the posters and prevent further such incidents.”
Along with other former Eastern Bloc nations like Ukraine, which has previously seen the situation declared as a crisis, Russia has faced comparatively high levels of human trafficking in recent years, with citizens promised jobs and a better life elsewhere before being coerced into working to pay back supposed debts to people-smugglers. The Global Slavery Index estimated in 2016 that around 794,000 people live in conditions described as modern slavery within Russia. The year prior, 1,473 individuals were prosecuted for their role in schemes to deprive people of their liberty, and more than 80% were convicted.
However, the issue has also been a point of political contention in recent years. In 2013, Moscow slammed an annual ‘Trafficking in Persons Report’ published by the US State Department, which ranked Russia as among the worst countries in the world for dealing with criminal networks responsible for exploitation. “The authors of the report again used the unacceptable ideological approach that divides nations into rating groups depending on the US State Department’s political sympathies or antipathies,” one Russian human rights official said, decrying the analysis as politically motivated.
New Zealand to abandon forcible removal of ‘at risk’ children
after anger from Maori families
29 Sep, 2021 10:46
The New Zealand government has announced that the removal of ‘at risk’ children from their families will end, after Maori families complained that the process, known as ‘uplifting’, racially discriminates against them.
Speaking on Wednesday, Children’s Minister Kelvin Davis said the government will “end uplifts as we have known them,” accepting all the recommendations made in a report on how to fix the child care and protection system. The process will only be used as an absolute last resort going forward.
Documents on the ministry’s website showed that 1,334 children were taken into care between 2019 and 2020, with around 60% of them from the indigenous Maori community. Maori families had previously complained that the practice racially discriminated against them and furthered a legacy of colonization, referring to children forcibly removed as the “stolen generation.” That phrase is a reference to the Maori split up from their families as children under the Aboriginal assimilation policy.
The decision comes more than a year after New Zealand was accused of “unprecedented breaches of human rights” by the head of a Maori-led inquiry into the country’s child services agency, Naida Glavish.
Glavish’s inquiry was one of several that began in the wake of a protest in 2019 by thousands of Maori people over the Children’s Ministry’s attempt to seize a baby from a mother shortly after birth. At the time, activists had gathered in front of the country’s parliament to demand authorities take their “hands off our tamariki” – the Maori word for children.
Canada has similar problems with social services removing First Nations children from reserves and giving them to white people. This has been going on for 150 years here, but has greatly diminished in recent decades.
Between poverty and the many issues that fell out of the Residential School System, I have many concerns about children growing up in 'at risk' situations. It's is important that they have a chance to grow up in their native culture, but it is also very important that they be safe from abuse.
I hope this works out for New Zealand!
No comments:
Post a Comment