Creating new perspectives since 2009
Items by Henriette Johansen
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Lebanon hits out on behalf of Gaza; UNIFIL urges restraint
This week, Lebanon’s border with Israel has seen escalating unrest agitated by the current aggression against Gaza. On Tuesday, Israel unleashed an artillery salvo on the outskirts of villages near the southern port city of Tyre. Inhabitants reported that the shelling took place around the Palestinian refugee camp of Rashidieh,…
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The girl refugee: Bride business and Palestinian-Syrian mothers on love, education and stateless struggles
Last week, Facebook banned “Syrian refugees for marriage”, a page that had had numerous complaints about its abusive message. Promoting the capitalisation of vulnerable Syrian refugee girls and their desperate families, such online gateways for contracted, candid sexual exploitation and trafficking of very young girls have led to tragic consequences.…
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North Lebanon on the verge of war
Sectarian strife, catalysed by chronic national marginalisation, severe economic and infrastructural decline and state negligence are all combining to push the once-prosperous commercial hub of Tripoli in north Lebanon to the brink of war. This lethal concoction, arguably reflective of the general state of affairs in Lebanon, was the focus…
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Finally, international steps to bring Syrian war criminals to justice
On April 15, 2014, France plans to arrange an informal confidential gathering of Security Council members (a so-called “Arria-formula” meeting) in order to consider a report on the mass use of torture in Syrian detention centres that went viral earlier this year. MEMO spoke to the former chief prosecutor of…
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International communities’ response to the world’s largest refugee crisis
Last month top UN officials warned that Syrians are expected to surpass Afghans as the world’s largest refugee population. Going into the fourth year of the bloody revolution-turned-war, an influx of almost one million Syrians have sought refuge in neighbouring Lebanon. The situation was recently deemed a “serious threat” by…
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Extreme donor and media ‘fatigue’ demands new ways to respond to and represent the growing refugee crisis
As media institutions and NGOs are faced with a growing de-sensitisation regarding the Syrian revolution, which has turned into a vicious war, new methods are put into practice. Do they reveal some underlying imperialist paradigm of racism and irresponsibility which is saying, “Just because it is not happening here doesn’t…
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Palestinian cries fall on deaf ears
Thousands of people are besieged in the two square kilometre Yarmouk camp. Filippo Grandi, the Commissioner-General of the UN Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East (UNRWA), visited the war-torn district this week. He reported a lack of aid, access and most of all international leadership…
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Syria’s art in exile is roaring
A Scream, a child in his eternal sleep, chains, passports with countless stamps, car wrecks, bombed-out buildings and numerous small models of corpses glued on to an empty canvas. Many Syrian artists are affected profoundly by the evils of their war-stricken homeland. MEMO met up with a range of them…
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The body as the battlefield: victims of Syria’s brutal war strategy
The United Nations has released a new report documenting the evidence that children in Syria have been subject to grave sexual abuses in government detention, recruited to fight with the opposition, tortured and used as human shields. Abuse of children in Syria is a central theme of the war ravaging…
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Syria’s war cultivates a state policy to torture women and children
The systematic use of torture in Syria is practiced in the dark. The world is aware of its existence only through anecdotes, reporting that represents the tip of the iceberg. Detention facilities and prisons across the country are responsible for grave human rights violations including forced disappearances and a range…
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Syrian refugee children: A Lost Generation
As the Syrian crisis now approaches its fourth year, there is an entire generation of children being shaped by violence, displacement and a constant absence of prospects for their future. Five million children are already affected by the war; school systems in refugee-host countries like Lebanon and Jordan report extreme…
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The Palestinian community: divided and ruled
Six of the nine Palestinian refugee camps in Syria have become battlegrounds between armed opposition groups and government forces. As a consequence of this, thousands of civilians are trapped, experiencing grave rights violations, deprivation of food and lack of medicine; their misery is used as a tool in a dreadful…
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A humanitarian tragedy for Syrian refugees
Over the last year, the number of Syrian refugees has doubled five times over. Two weeks ago, the UN launched its largest appeal for a single humanitarian emergency ever, faced by the urgency of at least 2.3 million Syrian refugees in need of humanitarian assistance, in addition to the millions…
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Influx of Syrian refugees highlights ongoing Palestinian struggles in Lebanon
Harsh winter storms hit the Levant this week, affecting millions of refugees. Emergency relief supplies and services, such as shelters, sanitation, health care and food, are now completely inaccessible to the hundreds of thousands of people living in areas besieged by the Syrian government. Basic needs are also curtailed by…
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Lebanon launches new campaign to combat violence against refugee women and children
The number of refugees in Lebanon has now reached 25 per cent of the total population. 78 per cent of the ever-increasing number or Syrian refugees, who currently number around 824,000, are women and children. 79,000 refugees coming from Syria are still awaiting registration at the borders. According to a…
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Finally, international steps to bring Syrian war criminals to justice
On April 15, 2014, France plans to arrange an informal confidential gathering of Security Council members (a so-called “Arria-formula” meeting) in order to consider a report on the mass use of torture in Syrian detention centres that went viral earlier this year. MEMO spoke to the former chief prosecutor of…
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UN Roundtable: Palestine should trust the International Community
Earlier this year, Amnesty International reported about the ‘Trigger-happy’ Israel’s excessive use of force on Palestinians in the West Bank. Deputy Director of the organisation in the MENA region, Said Bou Madouha sent a letter to the Palestinian Authority, saying that amongst other things, the “Illegal use of excessive and…
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Syrian Elections: despite ‘gaining ground’, has Bashar Al-Assad effectively banned his own candidacy?
The ten-day registration period for presidential candidates in Syria has come to an end. Bashar Al-Assad was the last of seven to register their candidacy at the Supreme Court for the country’s highest office. As the regime’s armed forces advance on the ground and UN regulations and advice is subdued,…
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Israel’s absurd war rhetoric
Israel’s outrageous attacks on the Palestinians in Gaza are now resonating internationally, gradually wiping out all hopes for humanity. As I write, the death toll has hit 1361 innocent souls and social media is buzzing with the very public disgrace of the Israel “Defence” Forces. The world watches as UNRWA…
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Do Arab states really engage with human rights?
With growing demands for “bread, freedom and social justice” across the Arab Spring countries, many have started to question the status of human rights in the region and, more specifically, whether Arab states actually have any engagement with them in any meaningful way. Brutal clamp-downs and massacres by state security…
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Protecting the creative voices of the Arab Uprising
Last week rapper Ahmed Ben Ahmed was released after three weeks in prison. The Tunisian artist, aka Klay BBJ, was originally sentenced to 21 months in prison for ‘insulting the police’ in one of his protest songs at a concert in the resort of Hammamet. According to Freemuse, a music…
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Lebanon’s black market in refugee organs
Today kidneys are sold in Beirut for 1 million Lebanese Pounds; that’s around $670, a very tempting sum for desperate Syrian refugees. Three years down the line of the conflict in their own country, Syrians in neighbouring Lebanon are exploited in many ways; they are especially vulnerable to the illegal…
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Migrants take care of Israel’s elderly and in return are exploited as “infiltrators”
Today is the second day of a three-day strike in Israel with some 30,000 African asylum seekers protesting against detention and demanding refugee status. The furore rolled up yesterday as Israel approved an amendment in its detention policy two weeks ago, which enables the authorities to detain migrants, refugees and…