Saturday 20 January 2024

FROM this week’s news ON: human rights and humanitarian aid [Note: Content Warning - links to distressing reports on this topic. Reader discretion is advised]

Note: CONTENT WARNING - some of this content is about upsetting, disturbing or triggering events & attitudes. Seek competent help - including professional - if you need it. Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander readers are advised that linked articles may contains names and/or images of deceased people. READER CAUTION IS RECOMMENDED! For anyone distressed by anything in this post, or for any other reason considering seeking support, resources are available in Australia here, here, and here. In other nations, you will have to do an Internet search using terms such as “mental health support - <your nation>” (which, for instance, may lead to this, this, and this, in the USA, or this, this, and this, in France [biased towards English-language - my apologies]), or perhaps try https://www.befrienders.org/. 

Note: in my “from the news” posts, quotes are shown italicised and blue, my comments are in a different shade of blue, and “good” items are shown in green. I have loosely grouped the posts where such seemed reasonable, but that is subjective (i.e., my opinion - others are free to disagree), and challenging, as some posts belong in multiple “groups”.

From this week’s news on human rights (note: I may continue to add links for a few days, possibly up to a week, after these are published), noting that many issues have probably not made it into the news that I see: 

  • “The New Humanitarian | Rethinking Humanitarianism | How to step aside to promote change”   https://www.thenewhumanitarian.org/podcasts/2024/01/18/rethinking-humanitarianism-western-leaders-how-to-step-aside-promoting-change   “For as long as the international humanitarian sector has existed, its top jobs have been overwhelmingly occupied by white Western men.   And yet, most of the people affected by their decisions come from the global majority.   One, rarely exercised, tactic to address this power differential is for Western leaders to step aside or be willing to turn down coveted top positions in favour of historically marginalised leaders – especially those whose lived experience gives them a better understanding of the very issues international organisations aim to address.”   

 



 

 

  • from WA,   [Content Warning: article links to video of confronting violence]   “CCTV footage shows 16-year-old assaulted by guard during riot inside notorious Unit 18 youth prison”   https://www.abc.net.au/news/2024-01-18/cctv-footage-of-unit-18-assault-casuarina-youth-detention/103299262   the prison guard “claimed at trial he had acted in "self-preservation" because he feared the boy was about to walk into him, but [the] Magistrate _ ruled the "much smaller, younger, handcuffed" boy posed “no threat”.”   The former independent prisons watchdog criticised the actions and the system, noting  “The WA government has twice been found to be unlawfully detaining young people by the state's Supreme Court, ... but without consequence”. He and the guards’ union both consider better training was required. I agree training is required, but actions can be manifestly inappropriate, and those with power need to be held appropriately to account if they abuse their power    


 

My links for activism post may aid any activism you may decide to do on any/all of these. If you do, don’t get too fixated on specific instances of problems - important though they may well be: take a moment to also consider the broader issues these incidents and groups of incidents may suggest/reveal.

 

Assumptions / basis 

In writing this, I have assumed / started from the following: 

  • this blog states quite clearly that it is about political and human rights matters, including lived experience of problems, and thus I will assume readers are reasonable people who have noted the content warning in the post header;

Possible flaws 

Where I can, I will try to highlight possible flaws / issues you should consider:

  • there may be flawed logical arguments in the above: to find out more about such flaws and thinking generally, I recommend Brendan  Myers’ free online course “Clear and Present Thinking”; 
  • I could be wrong - so keep your thinking caps on, and make up your own minds for yourself.

 

If they are of any use of interest, the activism information links from my former news posts are available in this post. 

 

If you appreciated this post, please consider promoting it - there are some links below.

Remember: we need to be more human being rather than human doing, and all misgendering is an act of active transphobia/transmisia that puts trans+ lives at risk & accept that all insistence on the use of “trans” as a descriptor comes with commensurate use of “cis” as a descriptor to prevent “othering”.

Copyright © Kayleen White 2016-2024     NO AI   I do not consent to any machine learning aka Artificial Intelligence (AI), generative AI, large language model, machine learning, chatbot, or other automated analysis, generative process, or replication program to reproduce, mimic, remix, summarise, or otherwise  replicate any part of this post or other posts on this blog via any means. Typo’s may be inserrted deliberately to demonstrate this is not an AI product.     Otherwise, fair and reasonable use is accepted under Creative Commons 4.0 on an Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike basis   https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/4.0/  

 

 

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