6 February 2015
The UN agency tasked with assisting Palestinian refugees across the Middle East announced that a major funding shortfall has forced the suspension of its cash assistance programme that would have helped families in Gaza repair their homes and provide rental subsidies to people left homeless after last year’s conflict.
7 November 2014
The global humanitarian system has reached its limits in dealing with the upward trend in forced displacement due to mounting pressures from conflicts and persecution around the world, the head of the United Nations refugee agency warned, saying it its our ‘collective responsibility’ to bridge the gap.
17 October 2014
Combating the ‘twin plagues’ of Ebola and the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL), while addressing the largest number of forcibly displaced people since World War II amid budget cuts is like ‘being asked to use a boat and bucket to cope with a flood’, the UN’ new human rights chief said. (more…)
16 June 2014
A report from the charity Freedom From Torture (FFT) has raised concern that British aid money may be funding police who are employing rape as a means of state-sanctioned torture against women in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC). The report found that the Congolese police and security staff are systematically raping the female opponents of President Joseph Kabila, after they were imprisoned in state detention facilities. The report is based on medical evidence from 34 female political activists who fled from DRC to the UK. The findings have raised concerns about the British government’s programme to give over GBP 60m to the DRC’s national police and ‘internal security sector’ to enhance its performance and accountability. (more…)
Source: The Guardian | British aid money may unwittingly be funding rape and torture in DR Congo
30 September 2013
In an op-ed in the Jerusalem Post, Eugene Kontorovich explains that the European Union knowingly and purposefully provides substantial direct financial assistance to settlements in Turkish-occupied Northern Cyprus. Kontorovich, professor at Northwestern University School of Law, argues that there is a contradiction between the EU position in regard to the occupied Palestinian territories and occupied territories in Cyprus. Whereas with regard to the former, the EU has stated that international law mandates its guidelines that prevent EU money from benefiting occupied Palestinian territories, with regard to the latter, the EU funds an occupied EU member state, without mentioning any international legal question about such funding.
Source: The Jerusalem Post | How the EU directly funds settlements in occupied territory