Gaza: Alarm over Israeli moves to deregister NGOs in Strip and West Bank
UN agencies warned on Tuesday that partner organizations in Gaza will have to shut down their operations within weeks, unless Israel withdraws its demand that they provide sensitive data about Palestinian staff.
Without urgent action, most international NGOs could be de-registered by 9 September or sooner, according to UN and partner aid organizations.
This will deny critical assistance to Palestinian NGOs, such as supplies, funding and technical support brought in from outside Gaza.
Already, NGOs which have not registered under the new system are prohibited from sending any supplies into the war-torn Strip.
Meanwhile inside Gaza, at least 20 people were reported killed and dozens more injured in central areas after a convoy of aid trucks overturned.
The incident happened in southern Deir Al-Balah, central Gaza, on Tuesday, according to the local authorities. Further reports indicated that desperate people seeking aid had climbed onto the lorries before the drivers lost control.
According to the UN aid coordination office, OCHA, 90 per cent of aid brought into Gaza since 20 July has been “offloaded by hungry crowds or looted by armed gangs”.
Uganda close to hosting two million people but lacks resources, warns UNHCR
Uganda is preparing to take in its two millionth refugee while lacking the resources needed to provide vulnerable new arrivals with the help they need, UNHCR said on Wednesday.
This critical situation has been created by escalating crises and conflict in Sudan, South Sudan and the Democratic Republic of the Congo.
Today, hundreds of people continue to cross the Ugandan border daily in search of safety and lifesaving aid.
Of the nearly two million refugees in Uganda, more than a million are not even 18, and some 48,000 of these youngsters are on their own.
With more, here’s UN refugee agency spokesperson Eujin Byun:
“We met a lot of children who came alone without their parents and they only dream about going back to school and then they’re going back to their life back home. But the emergency funding is drying up at the moment with this funding crisis that the humanitarian sector is facing. If this trend continues, that emergency funding for Uganda will end in September, meaning that more children will die with the malnutrition, more women and girls will suffer from sexual gender-based violence, meaning that more refugee families will suffer.”
It costs $16 per month to help one refugee in Uganda.
UNHCR said that unless more funding arrives soon, only $5 of assistance will be possible per person.
80 years since Hiroshima, nuclear ban remains top UN disarmament goal
It’s exactly 80 years since Hiroshima was utterly destroyed, when an atomic bomb named Little Boy was dropped on the city by the United States.
In honour of the survivors – who are known as Hibakusha – UN chief António Guterres on Wednesday said that their eternal message of peace will never leave us.
And although the Hiroshima bombing serves as a reminder of why the UN was created in the first place – namely to prevent war – the Secretary-General warned that the danger of nuclear conflict is rising again.
He said that trust is eroding, geopolitical divisions are widening and nuclear weapons have once again become “tools of coercion”.
Commitments to a world free of nuclear weapons must lead to real change, Mr. Guterres insisted, by strengthening the global disarmament regime. In particular, he highlighted the Treaty on Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons and the Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons.
Daniel Johnson, UN News.
