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Keywords: United Nations

There are more than 200 results, only the first 200 are displayed here.

  • AUSTRALIA

    Picture is still bleak for people with disability

    • El Gibbs
    • 15 August 2019
    3 Comments

    Disabled people in Australia are being locked up, dying young and living in poverty, because they are disabled, and particularly if they are Aboriginal or Torres Strait Islander. It's been 11 years since Australia ratified the Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities, yet disabled people are far from being equal to non-disabled people.

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  • INTERNATIONAL

    Australia's illogic over Timor and West Papua

    • Pat Walsh
    • 13 August 2019
    8 Comments

    One wonders if the Prime Minister will be aware of the supreme irony of these two events, the lack of logic in Australia's conflicting policies on the fate of the two peoples, and Canberra's flexible approach to the much vaunted international rules based order when it does not serve pragmatic national interests.

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  • RELIGION

    Hiroshima and Transfiguration

    • Andrew Hamilton
    • 13 August 2019
    23 Comments

    One event, recalling the revelation of Jesus' relationship to God, is a feast of light; the other, recalling man's inhumanity to man, speaks of darkness. Both are pointers to possible human futures: one of glory and the other of annihilation. The history of nuclear weapons and recent developments present this choice more starkly.

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  • INTERNATIONAL

    The west's fossil fuels problem is strategic, too

    • Jeff Sparrow
    • 08 July 2019
    5 Comments

    When discussing climate change, it's easy to depict the world's reliance on fossil fuels as primarily a technological problem, to be resolved by new methods for harnessing renewable energies. But that's only part of the story, as the example of Saudi Arabia shows.

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  • INTERNATIONAL

    Drowned children point to larger migrant stories

    • Ramona Wadi
    • 01 July 2019
    4 Comments

    To what extent has society reacted to the deaths of these two children? Awareness stops with the available imagery. Drowned children on western shores are processed differently in our psyche to the children killed in drone attacks, their absence of identity compounded by statistics which dissociate humanity from numbers.

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  • ENVIRONMENT

    'Climate emergency' endangers democracy

    • Jeff Sparrow
    • 21 June 2019
    7 Comments

    Historically, a declaration of emergency, whether in response to war, civil unrest or natural disaster, allows the state to suppress debate to enable a militarised response to an urgent problem. You can see why that might appeal as a solution to the environmental crisis. But addressing climate change requires more democracy, not less.

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  • AUSTRALIA

    Local solutions to global refugee malaise

    • Andrew Hamilton
    • 13 June 2019
    5 Comments

    This year many people will celebrate Refugee Week as a wake. During the recent election the hopes of many people seeking protection and supporting them in different ways were raised by the prospect of a change of government. For those of us who share their pain it is time to reflect more broadly on the situation we now face.

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  • AUSTRALIA

    Youth justice blueprint is in front of our noses

    • Julie Edwards
    • 28 May 2019
    6 Comments

    Almost two years have passed since the youth justice royal commission prompted by the abuses at Darwin's Don Dale youth detention facility. Yet many of its recommendations remain unrealised, largely due to a lack of federal funding support. In the meantime, youth justice has remained at the crossroads in many parts of Australia.

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  • AUSTRALIA

    Sudanese Lost Boy's long walk comes to life

    • Andrew Hamilton
    • 30 April 2019
    5 Comments

    When refugees write accounts of their lives they usually express gratitude to the nation that has received them. A Child Escapes, in which Francis Deng describes his life from Lost Boy of Sudan to refugee in Kenya to bank employee in Australia, is no exception. Left unsaid, but equally important, is the gift he and other immigrants are to Australia.

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  • INTERNATIONAL

    Assange and Ecuador's 'traitor' president

    • Antonio Castillo
    • 29 April 2019
    2 Comments

    Ecuadoreans have a popular expression, hacer la casita — roughly, 'they deceived us by promising something that was not going to be fulfilled'. This is what most Ecuadoreans are feeling now about president Lenín Moreno following his economic shift to the right, and the withdrawal of the asylum granted to Julian Assange by his predecessor.

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  • AUSTRALIA

    This Anzac Day embrace NZ values

    • Andrew Hamilton
    • 17 April 2019
    10 Comments

    The nationalist values purported to be Australian and to have flowed like blood from Anzac Cove will not do. Australians celebrating Anzac Day this year cannot assume that New Zealanders share all the values that are deemed Australian. Indeed, this Anzac Day New Zealanders might recall Australians to its more authentic meanings.

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  • FAITH DOING JUSTICE

    Care for common home in mining disasters

    • Julie Edwards
    • 03 March 2019
    5 Comments

    In January, the tailings dam of a deactivated iron ore mine in Brumadinho, Brazil failed, releasing toxic mud that caused devastation, 117 deaths and intergenerational ecological and economic consequences. It should, and could, have been prevente by the company, Vale, who was also responsible for past tailings dam destruction.

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