UN Under-Secretary-General for Humanitarian Affairs Jan Egeland Aug. 30 criticized Israel’s heavy use of cluster bombs in the last three days of the war with Hizbollah, describing their use as “immoral” and warning that up to 100,000 deadly bomblets still lie unexploded across vast areas of southern Lebanon where they are maiming and killing people every day. He also said that around a quarter of a million Lebanese were unable to return because of the devastation or for fear of injury caused by these and other unexploded ordnance. “What’s shocking and I would say to me, completely immoral, is that 90 percent of the cluster bomb strikes occurred in the last 72 hours of the conflict when we knew there would be a resolution,” he told reporters in New York.
The UNHCR is urging the world’s rich countries to provide more resettlement opportunities for those who have been forced to flee their homes across borders. “Refugees are victims, not a threat,” said UN High Commissioner for Refugees Antonio Guterres during a tour of the Thai government’s Tham Hin camp for Karen refugees. “They have been victims of conflict and persecution and sometimes they may be victims again if security concerns do not take into account their real situation.” More than 140,000 Karen refugees, who fled conflicts in their home country of Myanmar (Burma), live in nine camps along the Thai-Myanmar border.
Twenty-five percent of global tuberculosis cases occur in Africa although the continent’s population comprises only 11 percent of the world’s total, the UN Secretary-General’s Special Envoy to Stop Tuberculosis (TB), Jorge Sampaio, has said, urging aid donors to increase their support for projects to combat the disease. “Eliminating TB as a public health problem in Africa is an endless battle. The main point is that TB and poverty are closely linked and form a vicious cycle,” Sampaio told reporters in Addis Ababa, where he was attending the UN World Health Organization’s (WHO) African regional committee meeting.
