Protesters at Aotea Square said the empty dinner-plates were to raise awareness for those going hungry within the warzone.

A dozen police officers watched over the protest on Saturday afternoon, to ensure it was peaceful.

Families, children and iwi attended the protest, with tamariki leading the chant asking for a ceasefire.

As war continues in Gaza, The UN Security Council has called for an immediate ceasefire and international agencies have called on Israel to do more to prevent serious food shortages affecting the population within Gaza.

The Israel-Gaza war began following an attack by the Palestinian group Hamas on southern Israeli killing 1139 civilians, soldiers and police last October 7, with Israel responding with six months of air strikes and ground forces.

The conflict has displaced most of the 2.3 million population of Gaza within its boundaries.

New Zealanders who have tried to send food aid into Gaza say it has been a struggle to get it to its destination.

This article is republished under a community partnership agreement with RNZ.

Article by AsiaPacificReport.nz

Former New Zealand prime minister Helen Clark has joined a chorus of global development and political figures defending the United Nations “lifeline” for more than two million Palestinians in the besieged Gaza Strip enclave.

Declaring New Zealand should stick to its three-year funding agreement with the UN relief agency for Palestinians (UNRWA), Clark joined the pleas by the agency chief executive Philippe Lazzarini — who condemned the US action to suspend funding as “collective punishment” — and Secretary-General António Guterres.

New Zealand is due to fund the agency $1 million this year.

Protesters at an Auckland solidarity rally for Palestine demanding an immediate unconditional ceasefire also condemned the countries suspending UNRWA funding amid reports of serious flooding of Gaza refugee camps.

Suspension of funding by 9 countries to @UNRWA amounts to further collective punishment of besieged #Gaza population. #UNRWA is largest UN humanitarian & development service provider there. Staff accused of crimes have been dismissed. Do donors want relief operation to collapse? https://t.co/xU5jAfqm7T

— Helen Clark (@HelenClarkNZ) January 27, 2024

Other political leaders to voice concerns as eight countries joined the US in announcing they were suspending their funding for UNRWA include Scotland’s First Minister Humza Yousaf and former leader of the UK Labour Party Jeremy Corbyn.

Two countries — Ireland and Norway — declared they they would continue funding the agency and Lazzarini said: “It is shocking to see a suspension of funds to the agency in reaction to allegations against a small group of staff.”

Cuts one day after ICJ ruling
The cuts to funding were announced by the US a day after the International Court of Justice (ICJ) had ordered Israel to take steps to prevent genocidal acts and to punish those who committed such acts in its war on Gaza, and to immediately facilitate aid to the victims of the war.

Israel had alleged that about a dozen of the agency’s 13,000 employees had been involved in the deadly Hamas raid on southern Israel on October 7.

UNRWA is the primary humanitarian agency in #Gaza, with over 2 million people depending on it for their sheer survival.

93% of displaced families in southern governorates of📍#Gaza have reported inadequate food consumption.

People are desperate, hunger stalks everyone. pic.twitter.com/WLr0JYNRb2

— UNRWA (@UNRWA) January 27, 2024

The eight other countries that have joined the US in suspending funding are Australia, Britain, Canada, Germany, Italy, the Netherlands, Switzerland and Finland.

“Serious as allegations around a tiny percentage of now former UNRWA staff may be, this isn’t the time to suspend funding to UN’s largest relief and development agency in Gaza,” said Clark, who is also the former head of the UN Development Programme (UNDP), in a post on social media.

Secretary-General Guterres said in a statement that the UN had taken “swift actions” following the “serious allegations” against UNRWA staff members, terminating most of the suspects and activating an investigation.

“Of the 12 people implicated, nine were immediately identified and terminated by the Commissioner General of UNRWA Philippe Lazzarini, one is confirmed dead, and the identity of the two others is being clarified,” he said.

“Any UN employee involved in acts of terror will be held accountable, including through criminal prosecution.

‘Ready to cooperate’
“The secretariat is ready to cooperate with a competent authority able to prosecute the individuals in line with the secretariat’s normal procedures for such cooperation.

“Meanwhile, 2 million civilians in Gaza depend on critical aid from UNRWA for daily survival, but UNRWA’s current funding will not allow it to meet all requirements to support them in February.”

The day after @ICJ concluded that Israel is plausibly committing Genocide in Gaza, some states decided to defund UNRWA, collectively punishing millions of Palestinians at the most critical time, and most likely violating their obligations under the Genocide Convention. https://t.co/fl32DrDeFs

— Francesca Albanese, UN Special Rapporteur oPt (@FranceskAlbs) January 27, 2024

Francesca Albanese, the UN special rapporteur on the occupied Palestinian territories, said that states cutting funding to UNRWA could be “violating their obligations under the Genocide Convention”.

“The day after the International Court of Justice (ICJ) concluded that Israel is plausibly committing genocide in Gaza, some states decided to defund UNRWA,” Albanese said in a post on social media.

Albanese also described the decision taken by several UNWRA donors as “collectively punishing millions of Palestinians at the most critical time”.

Noting the irony, lawyer and social media content producer Rosy Pirani said in a post on Instagram: “The US stopped funding UNHRA over an unverified claim that some of its employees may have been involved in 10/7, but continues to fund Israel despite actual evidence [before the ICJ] that it is committing genocide.”

Meanwhile, the largest hospital in besieged Khan Younis city remained crippled and faced collapse as Israel’s offensive continued nearby. Doctors described it as a “dangerous situation”.

Footage showed people in the crowded facility being treated on blood-smeared floors as frantic loved ones shouted and jostled. Cats scavenged on a mound of medical waste.

Article by AsiaPacificReport.nz

New Zealand’s Green Party says it will double the Best Start payment from $69 a week to $140 — and it will also make it available for all children under three years.

Greens co-leader Marama Davidson announced the policy today, saying it is part of a “fully costed plan” paid for with a fair tax system.

“One in 10 children are growing up in poverty. For Māori, it is one in five. How is it possible that in a wealthy country like ours, there are thousands of children without enough to eat, a good bed, warm clothes, and decent shoes?,” she asked.

“That is why the Green Party would ensure all families have what they need for these early years, by doubling Best Start from $69 a week, to $140, and make it universal for all children under three years.”

Currently, families can receive the $69 weekly Best Start payment until their baby turns one, no matter the income.

However, they do not get that payment while they are receiving the paid parental leave payment. After the first year, only families earning under $96,295 are eligible to receive the payment until their child turns three.

The doubling of the Best Start payment is part of the Green Party’s Income Guarantee plan.

“This universal payment for the first three years recognises that just like in our older years through superannuation, the very first years of a new baby’s life are a time when every family needs extra support,” Davidson said.

Fairer Working for Families
“Under this plan we’ll also reform Working for Families into a simpler, fairer system.

“This will provide a payment of up to $215 every week for the first child, and $135 a week for every other child, in addition to the Best Start payments.

“With the Green Party in government, we can take action to guarantee every whānau has enough to get by no matter what.

“There is no reason for any child in Aotearoa to go hungry or to live in a damp, cold house. Poverty is a political choice.

“Our plan will provide lasting solutions that will guarantee everyone has what they need to live a good life and cover the essentials — even when times are tough.”

Since 2021, the Labour government has increased the Best Start payment from $60 to $69 a week.

• Monday night’s Newshub-Reid Research poll gave the Greens a boost, rising to 14.2 percent, as the Labour Party dipped slightly to 26.5 percent.

This article is republished under a community partnership agreement with RNZ.

Article by AsiaPacificReport.nz

Living in the Papua New Guinea capital of Port Moresby without a house or a source of income is a death sentence, says Raymond Green.

He highlights the struggles of sleeping in the streets, begging for his daily bread and wandering around aimlessly — living a life of quiet desperation.

His advice: Don’t ever borrow money from someone if you don’t have the means to repay them.

According to Raymond Green, he learnt this lesson the hard way when he had to sell off everything under his name to repay his debt.

“I have absolutely nothing. No house, no wife, no money, no valuables and certainly no food in my stomach as we speak,” he told the PNG Post-Courier.

“My struggles cannot be explained by words.

“Every day I have to keep on moving to survive, begging for scraps of food here and there.

Harassment and bullying
“I enjoy the cold nights, but I just wish it could be more peaceful, as there are always people out there who find happiness in harassing and bullying me,” he says.

“I live in pain, agony and desperation. My past haunts me, and my regrets fill me with sorrow.

“Sometimes I wish life could give me a fresh start, but it sadly does not work that way.”

Green doesn’t mince his words when he expresses his daily struggles of being “homeless” and “poor”.

Something he explains that he could have avoided if he had taken the right path when he was younger.

“My daily living is a constant struggle for survival, and I sometimes feel like I am dead inside,” he says.

‘Ultimately have nothing’
“It’s true, being homeless is practically like being dead because you ultimately have nothing.

“All I own can be seen inside my small bag. Everything I had has been either stolen, lost or destroyed somewhere or somehow.”

He says he is waiting for a one off-payment from a certain office, by which he can then use the money for his retirement.

He says there is a high chance he may never receive this payment.

Raymond Green is one of the many who live under extreme poverty conditions, while continuously fighting to survive in Port Moresby.

Theophiles Singh is a PNG Post-Courier journalist. Republished with permission.

Article by AsiaPacificReport.nz

By Yorlis Luna
From Managua, Nicaragua

I think when many of us look at the world today we feel like we’re watching a science fiction movie: 22 million officially unemployed in the U.S. while analysts say the true figure may be double that^[1],; predictions of the worst economic crisis since the Great Depression of the 1930s; and lines up to 15-hours-long where they are giving away food^[2].

In Ecuador, they give the families of people who die from COVID-19 cardboard coffins^[3], while other victims’ bodies lie in the streets or people’s homes with no one to collect them^[4]. In Brazil^[5], Colombia^[6], and El Salvador^[7] the pots-and-pans protests and demonstrations continue, despite the curfew and militarization because they closed the borders while domestic food production was insufficient, which caused food shortages that raised prices. Hunger has come to the homes and stomachs of the poor.

The World Food Program estimates that in addition to the 820 million people already going hungry in the world, 135 million more will suffer acute food insecurity as a preliminary impact of the health crisis. The main victims are women, infants, and children (UN, 2020). This in turn has major repercussions on health, nutrition, and humanitarian aid, causing larger flows of forced migration, displacement, violence, and social conflict.

In Latin America and the Caribbean there are already 19 million more people suffering from hunger and 37.71 million unemployed. “Model” countries such as the United States and its lackeys in Latin America are now paying the price for shrinking the State, cruelly privatizing basic services (particularly public health), and abandoning small farmers. Meanwhile, the countries continuously demonized as the “Troika of Tyranny,” Venezuela, Cuba, and Nicaragua, are demonstrating their moral superiority and capacity to effectively manage the crisis based on the strengths they have built in the public sector and with more organized and socially conscious societies, disciplined to work for the common good.

This once again reveals the lies, shamelessness, and cynicism of the hegemonic media that are concealing the truth: imperialism in all forms is not only bad, but its worldview continuously fails.

How are we doing in our besieged, slandered, and sanctioned Nicaragua?

I grew up in a Nicaragua that always appeared in public discourse as an object of pity. Its hand stretched out for charity in response to the hunger, extreme poverty, and pain afflicting our people. This was even worse in times of international crisis, such as the disaster created by Hurricane Mitch. I remember it as though it were yesterday. In the public schools, we children would get in line to receive a teaspoon of powdered milk wrapped in a sheet of notebook paper, and see some of our little classmates faint from hunger or simply be unable to pay attention or play outside. Our desk chairs, on which we had to make ourselves comfortable, were made from  cement paving stones. And if you got sick, you were out of luck because there was no place to go for medical assistance.   Not to mention the shoot-outs and nightly battles we heard between the “Come Muertos” and the “Galleros”—the two youth gangs in my neighborhood made up of ill-fed, barefoot boys.

Nowadays, Nicaragua is no longer on maps depicting the tragedy of extreme hunger or hopeless violence like its neighbors Honduras, Guatemala, and El Salvador. However, this fact is deliberately hidden by the corporate media.

Nicaragua is facing a fierce international smear campaign, with lie upon lie told in the world press, while a completely different situation is experienced within the country. In the context of COVID-19, families feel more economic pressure due to the indirect impacts on our open and capitalist economy, but there are also signs of a sense of normalcy, peace, and calm.

Many Latin American countries rushed to impose lockdowns with draconian, but inconsistent, measures: closing working class markets and small businesses, while international supermarket chains remain open in a display of unfair competition^[8] which causes tremendous losses for small producers, merchants, and distributors. In contrast, Nicaragua did not “cut and paste” such policies to handle the health situation. Rather, its approach has been wise, measured, tailored to our context and reality, and appropriate for the number of cases. The focus has been on protecting the peasant and popular economy and the lives of most of the Nicaragua people who live off of it. This is an example of Mariátegui’s maxim: the revolution in Latin American should not be “a copy or imitation… it should be a heroic creation.” To each unique problem, a unique solution.

These decisions are backed by tangible and intangible achievements over 14 years of significant progress in promoting human dignity. This is particularly true for healthcare, with more hospital coverage, diversity and trained personnel. It is also true of education, security, production, and the building of roads in rural areas. And it is sustained by the confidence, tenacity, and daily sacrifice of thousands of Nicaraguan families that struggle on a daily basis to uphold the popular economy. It is sustained by the strength of the community health brigades in which the population merges with the government. And it is sustained by the hundreds of thousands of families of small and medium-sized farmers who are a bastion of production, producing around 80% of the food we Nicaraguans eat^[9] .

Today, thanks to our peasant families and the public policies of the Sandinista government, Nicaragua is no longer on the hunger map. Instead, we are well on the way to food sovereignty because our food production is local and it is distributed in small clusters—even more true if one considers the size of the country. For this reason, there is enough food in Nicaragua at this difficult time, and prices have remained stable or fallen slightly.

The country’s peasant culture, and its talent and capacity to work in harmony with the earth, ensures that the words of President Daniel Ortega last month will remain true: “We will not die of hunger.” The first round of planting is about to start and farm families are lovingly preparing for it. They are getting their seeds ready, putting yokes on the ox teams, and just waiting for the first downpours, the aroma of damp earth, and a good moon to sow the sacred seeds of corn, rice, and beans that will ensure our resistance as a people once again.

Yorlis Gabriela Luna Delgado – Mathematician, popular educator, agroecologist, and researcher. PhD candidate in Ecology and Sustainable Development at the Colegio de la Frontera Sur, ECOSUR, Mexico.

Translation from original version in Spanish, by Jill Clark-Gollub, Assistant Editor/Translator at COHA

Edited by Patricio Zamorano, Co-Director of COHA

References:

World Food Program: “COVID-19 will double the number of people facing food crises unless swift action is taken”, https://www.wfp.org/news/covid-19-will-double-number-people-facing-food-crises-unless-swift-action-taken

End notes

^[1] “Por qué las cifras de desempleo en Estados Unidos pueden ser aún peores y no captan el verdadero impacto del coronavirus en la economía”, https://www.infobae.com/america/eeuu/2020/05/08/por-que-las-cifras-de-desempleo-en-estados-unidos-pueden-ser-aun-peores-y-no-captan-el-verdadero-impacto-del-coronavirus-en-la-economia/

^[2] “El impacto de la pandemia. Millones de personas hacen fila durante horas en Estados Unidos para recibir comida gratis”, ttps://www.clarin.com/viste/millones-personas-hacen-fila-horas-unidos-recibir-comida-gratis_0_wTEnE0a7I.html

^[3] “Ecuador: cardboard coffins distributed amid coronavirus fears, “ https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/apr/05/ecuadorian-city-creates-helpline-for-removal-of-coronavirus-victims

^[4] “Bodies are being left in the streets in an overwhelmed Ecuadorian city,” https://www.cnn.com/2020/04/03/americas/guayaquil-ecuador-overwhelmed-coronavirus-intl/index.html

^[5] “Specter of hunger rises in Brazil as coronavirus wrecks incomes,” https://www.reuters.com/article/us-health-coronavirus-brazil-hunger-feat/specter-of-hunger-rises-in-brazil-as-coronavirus-wrecks-incomes-idUSKCN22320F

^[6] “‘We are hungry’: protests and looting in Colombia as food distribution fails,” https://colombiareports.com/we-are-hungry-protests-and-looting-in-colombia-as-food-distribution-fails/

^[7] “‘We are hungry’: protests and looting in Colombia as food distribution fails,” https://colombiareports.com/we-are-hungry-protests-and-looting-in-colombia-as-food-distribution-fails/

https://www.bbc.com/mundo/noticias-america-latina-52372170

^[8] Several sources: https://heraldodemexico.com.mx/estados/mercados-puebla-cierre-coranavirus-covid-19/

https://www.eluniversal.com.mx/metropoli/cdmx/cierran-tres-mercados-mas-en-azcapotzalco-ante-covid-19

https://www.eleconomista.com.mx/mercados/Walmart-se-beneficia-de-los-embates-del-virus-20200319-0125.html

^[9] “Sector agropecuario ha tenido un crecimiento significativo en los últimos 12 años”, https://www.el19digital.com/articulos/ver/titulo:87126-sector-agropecuario-ha-tenido-un-crecimiento-significativo-en-los-ultimos-12-anos