Middle East Press On Yemeni Children And Their Silent Death, Gender-Based Violence And Rohingya Genocide: New Age Islam's Selection, 3 December 2020
By New Age Islam Edit
Desk
3 December
2020
• The World Watches Yemeni Children And Their
Silent Death
By Najla M. Shahwan
• The Fight To End Gender-Based Violence Must
Happen On All Levels
By Heba Yosry
• Court Throws Out School Discrimination Suit
As Israel Tests Nationality Law
By Danny Zaken
• Bangladesh’s Support Of Rohingya Genocide
Suit A Welcome Move
By Dr. Azeem Ibrahim
• Georgia’s Unexpected Role In Future Of Middle
East
By Ray Hanania
------
The World Watches Yemeni Children And Their
Silent Death
By Najla M. Shahwan
December
03, 2020
Two Yemeni children search for food from public garbage in Sanaa, Yemen,
Nov. 25, 2020. (AA Photo)
----
Yemeni
mothers are helplessly holding their dying infants and crying silently while
the world is watching. This humanitarian scene has been repeated every minute
since the catastrophic war began ravaging Yemen for more than five years.
In 2015,
Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates (UAE) and their regional and
international proxies intervened militarily in Yemen. That involvement was a
response to the 2014 coup d’etat executed by the Iranian-backed Houthi
militias, who overthrew the legitimate transitional government in the country.
Since then,
the coalition has expanded its military involvement far beyond this original
mandate and exploited control of the air, causing huge infrastructure damage.
Worse, it killed countless civilians and formed militias loyal to its own
governments, thus ignoring the legitimate government on whose behalf it claimed
to be waging the war.
However,
the real victims of this war are innocent civilians and children who have had
to face dire conditions which caused what the United Nations describes as the
world's worst humanitarian crisis in the poorest country in the Middle East.
As a direct
result of the ongoing and often brutal armed conflict during the past five
years, children’s lives in Yemen have been torn apart. Children have faced
daily challenges to both survive the conflict and access enough food, safe
drinking water and basic health care.
The future
for those that survive is uncertain as the number of children who are not
attending school has more than doubled during the past 12 months and now
equates to nearly half of the school-age population.
Many
children have also been psychologically scarred and need significant support to
recover from their experiences and to be able to live normal, productive lives
in the future.
Worsening
each day
A recent
analysis from the Integrated Food Security Phase Classification (IPC), the
global standard for gauging food insecurity, revealed that in some areas in
Yemen, more than one in four children were acutely malnourished. The acute
malnutrition rates among children under 5 years old are the highest ever
recorded in parts of southern Yemen.
This new
analysis puts the number of children suffering from acute malnutrition this
year at 587,573, which is an increase of around 10% since January this year.
Nearly
100,000 children are at risk of death and need urgent treatment.
Although
the IPC analysis looked at southern parts of Yemen, a forthcoming analysis of
northern areas is expected to show equally concerning trends.
UNICEF
spokesperson Marixie Mercado said the most significant increase in southern
areas was a 15.5% rise in children with severe acute malnutrition, a condition
that leaves children around 10 times more likely to die of diseases such as
cholera, diarrhea, malaria or acute respiratory infections, all of which are
common in Yemen.
World Food
Programme (WFP) spokesperson Tomson Phiri said the IPC forecast showed that by
the end of 2020, 40% of the population in the analyzed areas, or about 3.2
million people, would be severely food insecure.
As for the
devastating food price increases, Phiri stated: “In fact, food prices have
skyrocketed and are now on average 140% higher than pre-conflict averages. For
the most vulnerable, even a small increase in food prices is absolutely
devastating.”
Some
families were being displaced for the third or even the fourth time, he said.
“And each
time a family is displaced, their ability to cope, let alone to bounce back, is
severely diminished," he said.
Lise
Grande, the U.N. resident coordinator and humanitarian coordinator in Yemen,
said the U.S. had been warning since July that Yemen was on the brink of a
catastrophic food security crisis.
If the war
doesn’t end now, we are nearing an irreversible situation and risk losing an
entire generation of Yemen’s young children,” she said in a statement.
As for the
response to COVID-19, Yemen has been hampered by limited testing, lack of
health care centers and severe shortages of medical supplies and personal
protective equipment (PPE).
Scores of
health care workers, underpaid or not paid at all and with little or no access
to PPEs, have left their posts, forcing even more health centers to close.
Efforts to
prevent the coronavirus spread and respond to other urgent health needs in
Yemen have been severely hampered by heavy restrictions and obstacles that the
authorities have imposed on international aid agencies and humanitarian
organizations.
The world
watches
Despite the
magnitude of the humanitarian and security crisis, the international response
has to date been wholly inadequate both in terms of funding the humanitarian
response and pushing for a political solution.
Jens
Laerke, the spokesperson for the Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian
Affairs (OCHA), told the Geneva briefing that Yemen needed help.
“We have
been warning for several months now that Yemen was heading towards a cliff. We
are now seeing the first people falling off that cliff," he said.
Laerke
underlined: “Those are the children under 5 years of age. One hundred thousand
of them are at risk of death, we are told. The world can help by supporting the
humanitarian response plan.”
A
staggering 80% of Yemen’s population – over 24 million people – require some
form of humanitarian assistance and protection, including about 12.2 million
children. A total of 230 out of Yemen's 333 districts (69%) are at risk of
famine.
Despite a
difficult operating environment, humanitarians continue to work across Yemen,
responding to the most acute needs. However, funding remains a challenge: As of
mid-October, only $1.4 billion of the $3.2 billion needed in 2020 has been
received.
The U.N.’s
Humanitarian Response Plan was only 56% funded in 2015 while this year it
currently sits at just 12% of the $1.8 billion required to provide assistance
to 13.6 million people most in need.
The
relevant U.N. Security Council (UNSC) resolutions, including No. 2216 (2015)
and No. 2266 (2016), have so far failed to persuade the parties to protect
civilians and civilian infrastructure in accordance with the laws of war.
Furthermore,
influential governments, including some permanent members of the UNSC, have
chosen to support military action, often directly through the approval of arms
sales and the provision of other military support, instead of using their
influence to help find sustainable peace.
The
consequences have been devastating for Yemen’s children for whom the situation
will only get worse unless meaningful action is taken now to end this
devastating conflict.
Today,
Yemeni children are suffering from the actions of the regional powers who
turned their country into an arena for proxy conflicts that have little to do
with the actual needs of the Yemeni people, and the world is watching the worst
humanitarian crisis with indifference.
"We
see a dramatic degradation of the humanitarian situation," U.N. Secretary-General
Antonio Guterres said at a news conference. "And the risk ... of a famine
would probably have had no parallel in recent history, except for the famous
famine in Ethiopia many decades ago."
https://www.dailysabah.com/opinion/op-ed/yemeni-children-and-the-silent-death
-----
The Fight To End Gender-Based Violence Must
Happen On All Levels
By Heba Yosry
02 December
2020
Photo:
Simone D. McCourtie / World Bank
-----
The ongoing
coronavirus pandemic and subsequent lockdowns has born higher rates of domestic
abuse globally and has left many women without support.
In
response, the United Nations Secretary-General has launched a campaign to raise
awareness of the increased number of domestic abuse cases and work toward
ending all forms of gender-based violence, and more specifically to end
violence against women and girls.
But outside
the home, there is a more systemic issue that must be addressed, and if we are
to combat violence against women, it must be done at all levels.
In Doha’s
airport on October 2, women on an outbound flight to Sydney – including 13
Australian citizens – were removed from their flight and were forced to undergo
a vaginal exam after a newborn was found abandoned in the airport’s bathroom.
Women on 10 flights on October 2 were affected by the tests.
For all the
latest headlines follow our Google News channel online or via the app.
Women
weren’t told where they were taken to or what wrong did they do, they were
silently ushered by an armed guard to an ambulance waiting on the tarmac.
Inside the ambulance, women weren’t told why they had been brought there,
instead they were asked to remove their undergarments to be examined.
The
examinations were violating and nonconsensual, and further they failed to
reveal the new mother. And now, the trauma these women experienced will endure.
The victims recently hired a lawyer who was on one of the flights to represent
them in an effort to seek justice. Their lawyer spoke of the psychological
damage the women need to live with and how some of them resorted to therapy to
cope with the incident. To contextualize the level of humiliation these women
encountered, in the UK, the NHS reported that 1 in 3 women in the UK avoid
cervical exams, an important tool for early cancer detection, because the exam
is too embarrassing.
The Qatari
government apologized and promised to investigate the incident after the
Australian government denounced the treatment of its citizens.
In complete
contradiction with the recent incident at Hamad airport, in 2013, sculptures
designed by Damien Hirst depicting embryonic growth inside the uterus were
unveiled and placed in Sidra hospital in Doha. The sculptures seemed to evoke
the Quranic verses from surat Al Mu’minoun verses 12-14 that narrate the
creation of the human being. In Arabic uterus literally translates as Raḥim, a word that is derived from the
divine name Al Raḥeem meaning the Merciful. It is through the divine and merciful qualities
of the womb that new life is created and sustained.
I admired
the celebration of womanhood, and of the creative and procreative abilities
that God has endowed unto the uterus. Didn’t these women deserve some mercy?
But yet
there are those who scorn God’s gift to women.
The second
example is found in the UK. The BBC recently reported the sale of virginity
tests in some UK clinics. The invasive and medically inaccurate tests are being
administered by health professionals who say they have an obligation to their
patients’ wellbeing. Some parents, typically in minority communities, request
that their young girls be subjected to this humiliating violation to prove
their chastity, ensuring that they are “pure” for marriage.
How can
these health workers in the West agree and profit from a blatant human rights
violation? How can the country that brought to the world the Suffragettes who
called for women’s equality and inspired a subsequent global movement of
women’s rights be implicated in such a regressive practice? And why is the
government silent? Does the sexual violation of young girls, even if sanctioned
by the government, make the government look more sympathetic toward it
minorities?
No woman or
girl should be subjected to violence, and the world – from individuals to
governments – must do more to ensure that all forms of gender based violence
and discrimination be completely eradicated. The perpetrator sometimes isn’t an
individual, but a system that enables it, whether it is in a form of the armed
guard standing outside the ambulance or in the form of a medical professional
who checks for the purity and chastity of a young girl, justice for survivors
becomes more elusive.
https://english.alarabiya.net/en/views/news/middle-east/2020/12/02/Fight-to-end-gender-based-violence-must-happen-on-all-levels
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Court Throws Out School Discrimination Suit As
Israel Tests Nationality Law
By Danny Zaken
Dec 2, 2020
Israel’s
2018 nationality law anchored the Jewish character of the state of Israel. It
was first introduced by the Likud and by a few Knesset members of centrist
Kadima in 2011, but many legislators were against it, protesting that it
discriminated against Israel’s Arab and Druze citizens and also Palestinians.
Two years after its adoption, the law continues to evoke bitter debate. In a
recent case concerning Arab-Israeli children living in the Jewish-majority town
of Carmiel in the Galilee, a judge ruled recently on a petition calling for
reimbursing travel to an Arabic-speaking school that the "Jewish character"
of Carmiel must be preserved.
The Carmiel
case illustrates the fears expressed by the law's opponents. They predicted
that it would formalize inequality and discrimination against non-Jewish
minorities, including in matters of housing and places of residence.
During the
year-long legislative process, the original language of the law was toned down.
It no longer said that preference would be given to the creation and support of
developments for Jews, since Israel is the home of the Jewish people. The final
approved version says, “The state views the development of Jewish settlement
[not a reference to the West Bank outposts] as a national value and will act to
encourage and promote its establishment and consolidation.”
Adam Shinar
of the Interdisciplinary Institute in Herzliya concluded that this section of
the law is “not only symbolic, providing a basis for discrimination." He
went on, "The value of settlement could already be found in the
Declaration of Independence and in documents dating from even before the
establishment of the State of Israel. What it says here is that only Jewish
settlement has a value (discriminating against all the non-Jewish communities,
such as the Druze). Does this mean that the state can only establish new
settlements for Jews? Can it limit financial incentives to settle in a specific
area to Jews only? That’s a big question. The priority is promoting settlement
by one group at the expense of other groups. In a state with limited resources,
promotion of one thing will come at the expense of others.”
But there
were other readings of the law. Deputy Attorney General Raz Nizri determined
during a Knesset debate that the clause does not offer any legal or
constitutional basis for the establishment of settlements based exclusively on
the residents’ Jewish nationality. He contended the statement is only symbolic.
Back to the
Carmiel case. On Nov. 30, Judge Yaniv Luzon of the Krayot Magistrate Court used
the same article to throw out a lawsuit brought by two Arab children who live
in the town of Carmiel. The plaintiffs, brothers ages six and ten, sued the
city for the cost of transportation to the faraway schools that they must
attend since there is no Arab-language school in Carmiel proper.
Explaining
his decision against the plaintiffs, the judge wrote, “The construction of an
Arabic-language school or providing transportation for Arab students, wherever
and for whoever wants it, could change the demographic balance and the
character of the city.” Citing the nationality law, the judge said, “The
development of Jewish settlement is therefore a national value, one anchored in
a basic law. It ought to be an appropriate and dominant consideration in the
array of municipal considerations, including for the establishment of schools and
funding transportation.”
Most Arabs
in Israel live in towns and cities that are exclusively Arab. A small number
lives in historically mixed cities such as Haifa, Acre, Jaffa, Ramle and Lod.
Still, a growing number is moving to cities that until recently were
exclusively Jewish. One such city is Carmiel. The town was established in 1964
on land expropriated from nearby Arab towns and villages. The city expanded
over the years, with the explicit intention of bringing Jews to the Galilee,
which then had a growing Arab majority.
Today,
Carmiel is home to some 46,000 residents, including about 2,500 Arabs. Still,
it has no Arabic-language school. Of the more than 500 Arab students in
Carmiel, about 150 attend Jewish schools, while the remainder attend schools
elsewhere. The Ministry of Education does not obligate local authorities to
fund the transportation of students to schools outside of its jurisdiction
unless there is no alternative among the schools in its jurisdiction. Arab
parents claim that the lack of an Arabic-language school is sufficient grounds
to fund transportation for their children, while the municipality claims that
it is not.
“I never
expected to encounter this kind of racism under the protection of the law,”
said Qassem Bakri, the brothers' father. “I fear that this is the first
indication of the consequences of this racist and nationalist law, and a
foreboding indicator of what will happen to Israel’s Arab citizens. The excuse
that this is a Jewish city, as if Carmiel has no other residents. There are
Class A residents and Class B residents. It is the fetid consequence of [Prime
Minister Benjamin] Netanyahu and his nationality law.”
Attorney
Nizar Bakri, who filed the civil suit on behalf of his nephews, said that he
has been an attorney for 12 years. The part of the ruling that cited the
nationality law gave him the shock of his career. “The right to live somewhere
is a basic right. No one should be afraid that their free choice of where to
live will have racist repercussions based on nationality or anything else, for
that matter. Of course, we will consider our next steps and appeal the
decision. We also plan to join the lawsuit against the City of Carmiel and the
Ministry of Education in order to bring about a thorough solution to this issue
for all Arab citizens, and not just individual families,” he said.
On the
other hand, Barak Medina, rector of the Hebrew University and professor of
constitutional law, told Al-Monitor that the ruling is not based on the
nationality law per se. The law was rather an end note tacked on to the ruling
and not integral to the decision.
Next month,
the Supreme Court will hear several cases brought against the nationality law.
Attorney Nariman Shehadeh Zoabi from the Adalah Legal Center for Arab Minority
Rights said that the Carmiel ruling shows how necessary it is to overturn the
nationality law, which grants legitimacy to racist and discriminatory policies.
The Supreme
Court will need to determine whether the attack on equality inherent to the
nationality law is justified by Israel being defined as the state of the Jewish
people.
https://www.al-monitor.com/pulse/originals/2020/12/israel-arabs-benjamin-netanyahu-nationality-law-carmiel.html
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Bangladesh’s Support Of Rohingya Genocide Suit
A Welcome Move
By Dr. Azeem Ibrahim
December
02, 2020
The
International Court of Justice genocide suit against Myanmar on behalf of the
Rohingya, which was initiated by The Gambia, is garnering increasing support
from other nations around the world. An unexpected but very welcome development
in recent days was that Bangladesh has become one of those nations.
At last
week’s summit of the Organization of Islamic Cooperation in Niger, the
government of Bangladesh donated $500,000 to The Gambia’s legal effort on
behalf of the Rohingya — a move that surprised many observers, but which is a
good sign of how Dhaka’s position on the Rohingya situation is evolving.
Bangladesh
has taken in more than 1 million Rohingya refugees who fled the Myanmar army’s
“clearance operations” against their villages in Rakhine state in the 2016-17
period, plus hundreds of thousands more from previous decades and tens of
thousands of new incomers since the height of the crisis. Though the refugee
camps in Bangladesh are secluded and relatively poorly provisioned, Bangladesh
has done extremely well for a country of its limited means to take in and give
refuge and safety to a people fleeing genocide. Its humane response to this
refugee crisis puts to shame the response of most Western countries in recent years.
But one of
the more disappointing aspects of its handling of the situation was that, up
until now, it seemed committed to keeping good relations with the government of
Myanmar that carried out the genocide against the Rohingya in the misguided
hope that it could eventually return the refugees to their ancestral lands. The
Bangladeshi authorities had refrained from strong criticism of Myanmar and put
a lot of time and effort into negotiating for the return of the refugees.
After some
three years of negotiations and successfully signed agreements, however, it
seems that the government of Bangladesh finally understands that Myanmar has
not been negotiating in good faith and has no intention of honoring any of its
side of the deal. After spending half a century trying to expel the Rohingya
from the country of their birth, the authorities in Myanmar were not about to
undo all of that work just because the leaders of Bangladesh were asking
nicely. So now it appears that Dhaka has accepted the reality that bilateral
negotiations with Myanmar will not yield any fruit and is instead shifting its
focus to supporting international legal efforts to force justice upon Myanmar
for its crimes against humanity.
This is
also a very good sign for the well-being of the Rohingya in the short to medium
term. So long as Dhaka was pursuing its bilateral negotiations with Myanmar, it
could pretend, or perhaps they could try to persuade themselves, that the
refugee situation in Cox’s Bazar was a short-term problem that would soon be
resolved. And this left the Rohingya in something of a limbo, while the
Bangladeshi authorities were trying to keep the refugee population isolated
from the indigenous people of Bangladesh.
But now
that the reality of the situation has sunk in and that Dhaka has seemingly
given up its faith in its counterparts in Myanmar, it surely understands that
the Rohingya will remain in Cox’s Bazar in large numbers for a long, long time.
Even if the international community does eventually manage to get the Rohingya
back to their ancestral homelands, it is going to be a very long and arduous
process — it may take at least a generation or two.
So now the
rational calculation for Bangladesh on the best way to interact with the
million-plus Rohingya refugee population must surely change. This means that
more infrastructure will have to be built around Cox’s Bazar to sustain the
large population; it means economic activity will have to be encouraged in the
camps so as to slowly evolve them into a proper city; and it means it would be
beneficial for economic relationships between the camps and the rest of the
country to develop, so that the Rohingya people become an increasingly
self-sufficient community and even actively contribute to Bangladesh. If they
will be allowed to, the Rohingya can become an asset to Bangladesh. And what
better way for the Rohingya to thank their hosts for their kindness and
humanity?
------
Dr. Azeem Ibrahim is a director at the Centre
for Global Policy in Washington, DC.
https://www.arabnews.com/node/1771631
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Georgia’s Unexpected Role In Future Of Middle
East
By Ray Hanania
December
02, 2020
Although it
is clear that Democrat Joe Biden easily defeated Republican Donald Trump in
last month’s US presidential election, the fight to control the Senate remains
undecided, with the results of the two final seats in the state of Georgia
still outstanding.
If the
Democrats win January’s Georgia runoffs, Biden will have the power to implement
policies that impact everything from domestic American issues to the Middle
East. If they lose, however, Biden will be forced to rely on directives that
have limited impact on existing laws, while also reversing Donald Trump’s
executive orders. The direction of the country could remain in limbo and its
Middle East policies will be the subject of more heated rhetoric and fierce
debate, plus only short-term changes.
After last
month’s election, Democrats control 222 seats in the House of Representatives
and Republicans 206, nine more than prior to the vote but not enough to
undermine the Democratic Party’s control of the House. In the Senate, however,
what happens in Georgia’s two runoffs will determine whether or not Biden will
have the power to implement his agenda or be forced to do what Trump has
largely done and run the country by issuing limited-power executive orders.
Republican
incumbents Sen. David Perdue and Sen. Kelly Loeffler each failed to win more
than 50 percent of the votes cast on Nov. 3. This means they will face runoffs
against their respective Democrat challengers Jon Ossoff and Raphael Warnock on
Jan. 5.
The
Democrats currently hold 48 of the Senate’s 100 seats, with the Republicans on
50. If the Democrats can win the runoffs in Georgia, it will create a 50-50
split, with any tied votes being broken by the ballot cast by Vice President
Kamala Harris, effectively giving Biden control. Without control of both the
House and the Senate, Biden will face the same partisan divisions that held
Trump back.
When Trump
campaigned for president in 2016, the issue of executive orders was a major
topic. Trump harshly criticized President Barack Obama for issuing them rather
than getting laws passed by Congress. During his eight years in the White
House, Obama issued 276 executive orders to circumvent the paralysis caused by
the House and Senate being controlled by different parties. Trump asserted that
Obama lacked the skills to bring Democrats and Republicans together.
However,
Trump later found himself in the same situation and was unable to get
Democratic support for his agenda, so he was forced to run the government by
issuing executive orders. He has so far issued 195 of them, with many more
expected before he leaves office on Jan. 20.
The passage
of a law is the most effective way to change policies in America, but that
requires a simple majority in favor in both the House and the Senate. Some
laws, like those changing taxation, require a supermajority. This is why the
Georgia races are so important.
What does
an executive order do if a law cannot be passed? Basically, it gives the
president the power to direct federal government offices to withhold services.
For example, although Trump planned to repeal the Affordable Care Act passed by
the Obama administration — aka “Obamacare” — his inability to pass a law forced
him to issue an executive order that only weakened the national healthcare
legislation, rather than killed it off.
Another
executive order issued by Trump placed a temporary ban on entry to the US for
citizens of seven nations: Syria, Iraq, Iran, Libya, Somalia, Sudan and Yemen.
Trump was also able to block the distribution of funds to the Palestinians and
close the Palestinian Liberation Organization’s office in Washington.
In January
this year, Trump unilaterally authorized the drone strike assassination of top
Iranian Quds Force commander Qassem Soleimani.
Without
control of both houses of Congress, Biden will not be able to pass new laws on
immigration or healthcare or make substantive decisions on the Middle East or
any other major issue in his platform. How the Biden administration moves
forward on all of those issues will come down to the Georgia runoffs and
individuals whose names have, until now, had little to do with the fate of the
Middle East.
-----
Ray Hanania is an award-winning former Chicago
City Hall political reporter and columnist.
https://www.arabnews.com/node/1771651
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