WORLD BRIEFING: May 11, 2024
A United Nations resolution in support of Palestinian membership passed with overwhelming support on Friday, and granted new privileges to the Palestinian Authority in its current capacity as a non-member observer state. The resolution won a resounding majority of 143 votes in favor. Twenty five abstained, and nine nations voted against the text: Czechia, Hungary, Argentina, Micronesia, Nauru, Palau, Papua New Guinea, Israel and the United States. The text, put forward by the United Arab Emirates, calls for the UN’s powerful Security Council – which must rule on Palestinian membership – to “reconsider the matter favourably.” “The State of Palestine is qualified for membership in the United Nations,” it asserts. With emotion running high on Friday, more than 100 national representatives asked to speak about the resolution, with most emphasizing strong support for Palestine - CNN
A State Department report says U.S. weapons might have been used in violating humanitarian law by Israel, but does not make a specific enough finding to trigger punitive action against Israel. - NYT
Canada will allocate 76 million Canadian dollars to strengthen Ukraine's air defense as part of the German initiative, Canadian Defense Minister Blair said.
Gruesome new testimony details one of the worst atrocities of the year-long Sudanese civil war – the large-scale massacre of civilians as they desperately tried to flee an ethnic rampage in Darfur last summer.
Witnesses describe children, still alive, being “piled up and shot” by the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces (RSF) as they attempted to escape the regional capital of El Geneina in June last year during a bout of ethnic violence in which thousands of civilians were killed. Together, the 221 witness statements collated by Human Rights Watch offer the latest evidence that the Arab-led RSF has orchestrated a concerted 12-month campaign of ethnic cleansing against Sudan’s non-Arab Masalit tribe in West Darfur. The United Nations and African Union should, says HRW, urgently impose an arms embargo on Sudan and deploy a mission with a robust police force to Darfur, the sprawling region in the west of the country, to protect civilians. A HRW report published Wednesday calls for sanctions for those ultimately responsible for widespread war crimes, including the West Darfur RSF commander Abdel Rahman Joma’a Barakallah, along with the notorious commander of the RSF, Mohamed “Hemedti” Hamdan Dagalo, and his brother Abdel Raheem. - The Observer
The Media Development Foundation and "Ukrainian Pravda" held an award ceremony for Ukrainian journalists during the journalism conference in Bucha yesterday. The winners were: Anna Kalyuzhna (An Zhulak), BIHUS.Info war correspondent, was awarded for the best war reportage. For the best investigation about Russian war crimes, The Kyiv Independent team was awarded for the film about the kidnapping of Ukrainian children by the Russians, "Children for Putin". In the nomination "For contribution to the development of investigative journalism" Yuriy Nikolov (Yuriy Nikolov), co-founder and editor of the "Our Money" project, was recognized.
