As unrest continues, the UN Children’s agency UNICEF is urging “parties to the conflict in Ethiopia to spare children from the impact of hostilities in the Tigray region.”
In a statement, the Executive Director of the agency, Henrietta Fore, says that “UNICEF is deeply alarmed that the two parties’ threat of a further escalation in the fighting would put their lives and well-being at immediate risk.”
Appeal to halt fighting
“We call upon parties to the conflict,” she says, “to cease the fighting and reach a peaceful settlement. Humanitarian agencies should be allowed urgent, unimpeded and sustained access to all affected areas.”
The Executive Director also expresses her concern at “the safety of hundreds of humanitarian workers” who are still in Mekelle and elsewhere across Tigray. “We call upon all parties to the conflict to take all necessary measures to ensure their protection,” she says.
Malnutrition
At present some 2.3 million children in the Tigray region need humanitarian assistance and cannot be reached due to restricted access and the current breakdown in communications.
UNICEF has expressed alarm at the rates of malnutrition in the region.
Acute malnutrition increased by one-third between 2019 and 2020 mainly due to Desert Locust infestation and Covid-19.
Refuge in Sudan
The Ethiopian Prime Minister announced a military offensive on Nov. 4 against the regional government in Tigray in response to an attack by Tigray forces, and since then tens of thousands of people have fled to neighbouring Sudan.
According to UNICEF, thousands of children – many without parents or relatives – are among those who have sought refuge in camps and registration centres and are at risk. Conditions for these children have been described as extremely difficult.
In its appeal, the specialised UN agency UNAIDS warned that the pandemic has pushed the world’s AIDS response even further off track, and that 2020 targets are being missed.
It urged countries to learn from the lessons of underinvesting in healthcare and to step up global action to end AIDS and other global health emergencies.
Citing new data showing the pandemic’s long-term impact on global HIV response, UNAIDS said that there could be up to nearly 300,000 additional new HIV infections between now and 2022, and up to 148,000 more AIDS-related deaths.
The failure to invest in HIV responses has come at a terrible price Winnie Byanyima, Executive Director of UNAIDS
“The collective failure to invest sufficiently in comprehensive, rights-based, people-centred HIV responses has come at a terrible price,” said Winnie Byanyima, Executive Director of UNAIDS. “Implementing just the most politically palatable programmes will not turn the tide against COVID-19 or end AIDS. To get the global response back on track will require putting people first and tackling the inequalities on which epidemics thrive.”
Although countries in sub-Saharan Africa including Botswana and Eswatini have achieved or even exceeded targets set for 2020, “many more countries are falling way behind”, UNAIDS said in a new report, entitled Prevailing against pandemics by putting people at the centre.
UNAIDS India
A doctor examines a mother and her new born baby in a clinic in India.
Get on track to ending AIDS
The UNAIDS document contains a set of proposed targets for 2025 that are based on the actions of countries that been most successful in overcoming HIV.
Specifically, the goals focus on a high coverage of HIV and reproductive and sexual health services, together with the removal of punitive laws, policies, stigma and discrimination.
“Far greater investments” in pandemic response will be needed along with “bold, ambitious but achievable HIV targets”, UNAIDS said.
“They put people at the centre…the people most at risk and the marginalized,” it added. “Young women and girls, adolescents, sex workers, transgender people, people who inject drugs and gay men and other men who have sex with men.”
If these targets are met, the world will be back on track to ending AIDS as a public health threat by 2030, the agency maintained.
Entitled, “Set Your Captives Free”, the report by the Pontifical Foundation ACN, an international Catholic charity, lists specific cases of Christians detained mainly in Nigeria, Eritrea, Pakistan and China.
It speaks about imprisonment for reasons of conscience, arbitrary detention, unjust trials, inadequate prison conditions, cases of torture and pressure to induce people to abandon the faith.
It was released on Nov. 25 to mark Red Wednesday. During Red Wednesday, many church buildings and monuments are illuminated in red light, a colour associated with martyrdom, to remember those who cannot practice their faith freely throughout the world.
ACN regards the kidnapping of Christians in Nigeria as very serious. Every year more than 220 faithful are kidnapped and unjustly imprisoned by groups of jihadist militiamen. Kidnappings for ransom often result in the killing of Protestant and Catholic priests.
It is the same story in Egypt, where “young Coptic Christian women are kidnapped and forced to marry their non-Christian kidnappers”. In Eritrea, more than a thousand Christian faithful are feared to be unjustly detained.
Asia
In Asia, the scenario is equally alarming. In Pakistan, “there are about a thousand cases of forced conversions of Christian and Hindu girls and young women annually”. In North Korea there are “about 50 thousand Christians in labour camps, that is, almost 50 percent of the total number of prisoners.”
In Myanmar, it is estimated that since 2018, the army has interrogated and arrested 100 pastors and forcibly recruited Christian students. North Korea is said to have “some 50 thousand Christians in labour camps, equivalent to almost 50 per cent of the total number of prisoners.”
Covid-19
“Set Your Captives Free” also underlines the devastating and unprecedented impact that Covid-19 has had on unjust detention.
ACN singles out three key factors that have caused a worsening of the situation. Firstly, the partial or total closure of the law courts and other legal activities delayed the appeal of jailed Christians. Secondly, as religious services moved online due to the lockdown, authoritarian governments have been able to increase surveillance and repression of those found to participate in alleged illegal activities. Lastly, the pandemic provided the persecutors with the opportunity to strike while all the attention was focussed on the coronavirus emergency.
Christians are most persecuted
According to ACN, numerous specialized reports show that Christians are the most targeted religious community in the world.
According to the Pew Research Center, “the unjust detention of Christians, both by states and non-governmental subjects, emerges as a violation of human rights in 143 countries where there is serious harassment.” It also highlights a high number of “minority religious groups affected by unjust detention” and therefore reiterates the need to “act promptly” because religious minorities are increasingly at risk.
Asia Bibi
The ACN opens its report with two symbolic figures of persecution on the grounds of faith. The first is Asia Bibi, the Pakistani Christian woman falsely accused of blasphemy and imprisoned for nine years. She was acquitted in October 2018.
The preface to the ACN report bears her signature. “It is time to tell the truth to those who have the power so that those who, defying the law, detain innocent people are finally brought to justice,” Asia Bibi says in the preface. “It is time for governments to act. It is time to demonstrate in defence of our communities of the faithful, vulnerable, poor and persecuted. We must not stop until the oppressor finally hears our cry: ‘Set Your Captives Free’.”
Father Paolo Dall’Oglio
The second figure that the report, “Set Your Captives Free”, focuses on is Italian Jesuit priest and peace activist, Father Paolo Dall’Oglio, who was kidnapped in Syria on July 29, 2013.
“Few people have dealt with religious freedom as much as he, few have suffered more than him for their convictions,” ACN says.
Father Paolo is one of the five priests, including two bishops, kidnapped by the Daesh (ISIS) in Syria in 2013. Aid to the Church in Need says no one knows where they are detained and whether they are dead or still alive.
Meanwhile, more than 60 per cent of irrigated cropland is water stressed and 11 countries, all in Northern Africa and Asia, need to urgently adopt sound water accounting, clear allocation, modern technologies and to shift to less thirsty crops.
Water math
Although “the inherent characteristics of water make it difficult to manage”, the SOFA report upholds that it “be recognized as an economic good that has a value and a price”.
“At the same time, policy and governance support to ensure efficient, equitable and sustainable access for all is essential”.
Noting that the rural poor can benefit substantially from irrigation, the report recommends that water management plans be “problem-focused and dynamic”.
Despite that water markets selling water rights are relatively rare, SOFA says that when water accounting is well performed, rights well established and beneficiaries and managing institutions participating, regulated water markets can provide equitable allotments while promoting conservation.
“Mejora Foundation awards three prestigious teachers in the 7th Edition of the Religious Freedom Awards”
The Church of Scientology Foundation for the Improvement of Life, Culture and Society, in consultative status with the United Nations since 2019, presented the Religious Freedom Awards, in the form of a Tizona sword, to Prof. Dr. Alejandro Torres, Prof. Dr. Rafael Valencia and Prof. Dr. Catalina Pons-Estel, in an online ceremony attended by Prof. Dr. Mercedes Murillo, Director of Religious Freedom of the Spain‘s Ministry of Presidency (Prime Minister’s Office).
The ceremony, inaugurated by Ivan Arjona, President of the European Office of the Church of Scientology for Public Affairs and Human Rights, and Isabel Ayuso, Secretary General of the Mejora Foundation, began with the viewing of two videos regarding the right to freedom of thought, religion and conscience (one of them based on the works of L. Ron Hubbard‘s book “The Way to Happiness”), as well as a music video by international artists such as Chick Corea with a message of “Spread a Smile and not something else”, very suitable for the times of health crisis that are being experienced worldwide.
Following this, Mercedes Murillo, Director of Religious Liberty for the Ministry of the Presidency, addressed the award winners and attendees at this online ceremony, saying, “Once again this year the Church of Scientology Foundation is presenting its Religious Freedom Awards, a pioneering initiative, and so it is also appropriate for another year to recognize and appreciate this opportunity to bring together people concerned about this right around the world“
Murillo continued by saying “we are meeting this afternoon to present some well-deserved awards to three recognized specialists in this field whom I would like to congratulate” words after which the master of ceremonies went on to present the winners, who personally thanked the Fundación Mejora, of the Church of Scientology, for the award received and for the initiative that seeks to encourage people to promote and defend freedom of conscience .
Isabel Ayuso, Secretary General of Foundation, in her presentation said of these awardees that “they are the heroes of our times”…”they have changed the battleground for the classroom, the swords for the quill… on a real battle for freedom”
Prof. Dr. Alejandro Torres, Universidad Pública de Navarra
The first winner of the celebration was Prof. Dr. Alejandro Torres Gutiérrez, Full Professor of Law at the Public University of Navarra with an incredible production of publications and professor in the field of religious freedom. His publications are focused on the study of the financing and tax system of religious denominations, models of Church-State relations in Spain, Austria, Portugal and France, the status of minorities and multiculturalism in the United States, Canada and Austria. In his acceptance speech he left, among other messages, messages such as “the study of freedom of conscience is still relevant because we should not have fewer rights as a result of being less”… “in a society like ours in which there is still much violence for religious reasons I understand that the study of tolerance is important”… “the protection of diversity is key in a state like ours in which all possible interpretations of the universe have a place as long as they respect the ethical minimum of which we all participate in a democratic society”.
Prof. Rafael Valencia, Universidad de Sevilla
After which, Arjona gave the following Tizona to Prof. Dr. Rafael Valencia Candalija, currently Professor of Ecclesiastical Law at the University of Seville and that in addition to having opened religious diversity in Spain in a practical way to thousands of law students, will soon be publishing a book on Religious Freedom in Football, a pioneering prism in the field. Prof. Valencia said at the ceremony that “there is no prize today for an professor of religious freedom law giving a greater hope and joy as a recognition for protecting religious freedom” … ” we must continue to fight, therefore we must continue to work in defense of religious freedom … for those situations that violate this great right that occupies us and above all, we must continue to seek and continue to establish proposals for a better protection of the good, that is our work, and that should be our mission“.
Prof. Dr. Catalina Pons-Estel, Universtitat Illes Balears
And in this 2020, 40th Anniversary of the Law of Religious Freedom, could not miss an award for Prof. Dr. Catalina Pons-Estel Tugores, from the University of the Balearic Islands, who in addition to teaching this subject since 1997, this year has completed a series of lectures reviewing and commenting on the current Spanish law with the vision of both minor and major religious entities, as well as professionals in the field both scholars and government officials, which she has brought to the general public in addition to classrooms. In her acceptance speech, Prof. Pons-Estel explained that “religious freedom is a very current subject, a subject that is very much alive and close to all citizens” … “although we have all taken for granted the importance of the fundamental right of religious freedom, in these times in which everything seems to be in crisis, it never hurts to remember the importance of these rights that have cost us so much to achieve and guarantee”.
The ceremony was recorded online and can be accessed on the Foundation’s social networks and HERE.
The event also had space for a statement by the Director of Religious Freedom of the Ministry of the Presidency, to remind citizens about the current health situation: “I would like to take this opportunity to recognize the responsibility that all religious entities have had in this situation to limit their various forms of worship and replace them with other ways of providing spiritual care to their faithful … Therefore, I appreciate this task that they have been developing and that has not only maintained the possibility of meeting those who share their beliefs, but also in a difficult situation I know that all have maintained their solidarity activities towards the most vulnerable”.
