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Resources updated Monday, October 16, 2017

October 16, 2017

UN High Commissioner for Human Rights Zeid Raad Al Hussein

"The United Nations Human Rights Council is pressuring a major Israeli telecommunications company to cease operations in disputed areas of the Jewish state or face a potential designation as a human rights abuser, according to a copy of communications sent by the Human Rights Council that is being viewed as an attempt to blackmail international corporations into boycotting the Jewish state.

The UNHRC recently sent a letter to the CEO of Bezeq, a major Israeli telecoms firm, accusing it of promoting settlement activity in Israel and of providing cellular services to areas that the Council believes are Palestinian territory...

'The UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, Jordanian Prince Zeid Al Hussein, acting in cahoots with the UN Human Rights Council, has been blackmailing companies around the world as part of a UN BDS campaign directed at Israel,' Bayefsky said..."

Israeli Company, Bezeq, Reveals Astonishing UN Blackmail Article

Rohingya refugees in Bangladesh

"The flight of Myanmar's Rohingya to Bangladesh should have come as no surprise to the United Nations.

For more than three years, a chorus of voices from within the U.N. community have warned that the country's minority Muslims faced a grim reckoning that the U.N. was ill prepared to handle and called for pressing the government of Myanmar, which is often referred to as Burma, to halt its abuses...

But at every step of the way these critics have faced fierce resistance from some of the most senior U.N. officials, who feared that publicly shaming Myanmar's rulers would complicate efforts to steer the country through a delicate political transition from military rule to democracy and jeopardize the U.N.'s development and humanitarian relief efforts in the country...

The refugee crisis has its roots in a long history of Burmese discrimination against the Rohingya. But some of the U.N.'s shortcomings in responding to the crisis are self-made: a product of long-standing interagency squabbles over turf and policy, compounded by a bureaucratic decision taken in December 1977 that empowered the U.N. Development Program to appoint the senior U.N. official, or resident coordinator, presiding over most of the international body's duty stations around the world.

As an agency that relies on governments' cooperation to do its work, UNDP has historically shied away from tackling thorny political matters or confronting those governments when they commit abuses, according to the critics. That, they claimed, fed a culture of silence that has pervaded many duty stations, subjecting the U.N. to allegations that it has been complicit in atrocities, from Myanmar to Sri Lanka...

In April, a consultant hired by the U.N. office in Yangon warned in an internal report that it was only a matter of time before a new wave of violence occurred. 'All indications,' the consultant, Richard Horsey, wrote in his confidential report, are that Muslim insurgents would launch an attack on Myanmar security forces in the next six months, triggering a 'heavy-handed and indiscriminate' army assault on the region's long-discriminated-against Rohingya Muslims.

The report, which was obtained by Foreign Policy, was first reported on by the Guardian, which said its distribution within the U.N. was suppressed by [U.N.'s resident coordinator, Renata] Lok-Dessallien..."

For Years, UN Was Warned of Threat to Rohingya in Myanmar Article

The aftermath of the attack in Mogadishu, Somalia

The death toll has risen to 276, with more than 300 people wounded, after a truck bombing in Somalia that the U.S. government condemned Sunday as a "cowardly" attack.

"Such cowardly attacks reinvigorate the commitment of the United States to assist our Somali and African Union partners to combat the scourge of terrorism," the U.S. mission to Somalia said in a statement.

The U.S. military this year has stepped up drone strikes and other efforts this year against the al-Qaida-linked al-Shabab, which is based in Somalia and often targets Mogadishu, the capital.

None of the roughly 400 U.S. troops in Somalia were hurt in the attack, a spokesman for the U.S. Africa Command told Fox News.

The International Committee of the Red Cross said four volunteers with the Somali Red Crescent Society were among the dead.

A statement Sunday said "this figure may rise as there are a number of volunteers still missing."

Hospitals in Mogadishu struggled Sunday to cope with the high number of deaths and injuries, security and medical sources said.

Ambulance sirens echoed across the city a day after the blast as bewildered families wandered in the rubble of buildings, looking for missing relatives.

President Mohamed Abdullahi Mohamed declared three days of mourning and joined thousands of people who responded to a desperate plea by hospitals to donate blood for the wounded victims. "I am appealing all Somali people to come forward and donate," he said.

Many victims died at hospitals from their wounds, said Police Capt. Mohamed Hussein.

Abshir Abdi Ahmed, a senator, announced the number injured, citing doctors at hospitals he has visited in Mogadishu.

Somalia's government has blamed the Al Qaeda-linked al-Shabab extremist group for the attack it called a "national disaster." However, al-Shabab, which often targets high-profile areas of the capital with bombings, had yet to comment.

"They don't care about the lives of Somali people, mothers, fathers and children," Prime Minister Hassan Ali Khaire said. "They have targeted the most populated area in Mogadishu, killing only civilians."

Somalia's information minister, Abdirahman Omar, said the blast was the largest the city had ever seen. "It's a sad day. This how merciless and brutal they are, and we have to unite against them," he said, speaking to the state-run radio station.

Overnight, rescue workers with torch lights searched for any survivors trapped under the rubble of the Safari Hotel, which was largely destroyed. The hotel is close to Somalia's foreign ministry. The blast blew off metal gates and blast walls erected outside the hotel.

At least 276 killed in Somalia's deadliest attack on record Document

Illustrative: A Gazan man looking at a pro-Palestinian post on Facebook on April 7, 2013.

Arab Israeli indicted for social media posts supporting terror Article

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, October 15, 2017

Israel to set up parliamentary probe into foreign gov't funding of "rights" groups Article