World News in Brief: Deadly strikes in Ukraine, justice must be served over custody deaths, FIFA urged to challenge law-breaking by Israeli clubs
Russian shelling has hit another apartment block in Ukraine’s second city of Kharkiv, UN aid teams said on Thursday.
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Attacks in the northeast city killed or injured more than 190 people in September alone, said the UN’s top aid coordinator in Ukraine, Matthias Schmale.
“One thought that’s going through my mind is the mental trauma that people suffer from these repeated strikes,” he continued. “In September alone, there were 53 strikes in Kharkiv. That’s not normal. This should never be accepted as normal.”
Kherson strike
The development follows a deadly attack on a market in Kherson city on Tuesday that killed and injured more civilians and another a week ago on a hospital in Sumy, which is also in the northeast of Ukraine.
In a related development, the UN World Food Programme (WFP) announced that it has signed an agreement with the Zaporizhzhia city authorities to support a school meals programme.
The deal means that for the rest of the academic year, the UN agency will provide meals for 14,000 students who study in 71 underground schools in the city.
Justice must be served for people of African descent who died in police custody
The UN’s human rights chief has stressed how important it is for the families of people of African descent who have died in police custody to see justice served.
Volker Türk made the appeal at the Human Rights Council in Geneva during a debate about changes countries should make to prevent excessive use of force and other human rights violations by law enforcement officers.
“Across the globe, the scourge of racism, racial discrimination, xenophobia and related intolerance” still festers, Mr. Türk said.
He demanded justice for seven people from the diaspora whose deaths are emblematic of the need to reform the “institutional, structural and historical root causes of systemic racism”, before naming Luana Barbosa dos Reis Santos, João Pedro Matos Pinto, Hanner García Palomino, Adama Traoré, Kevin Clarke, George Floyd and Breonna Taylor.
No end to discrimination
The UN rights chief listed continuing racial discrimination and abuse across the globe, including in the Americas, where women and girls of African descent experienced “deep disparities” in accessing sexual and reproductive health services resulting in high rates of maternal deaths.
In Australia, Mr. Türk said young South Sudanese Australians have been subjected to racial profiling, racial abuse in public and vilification by the media, while in Brazil, women of African descent have faced particularly high levels of gender-based violence and killings of lesbian, bisexual, transgender and intersex women.
In Europe, some Muslim women of African descent who wear religious dress have reported being the target of offensive gestures, verbal insults and physical attacks, the High Commissioner said, adding that in Libya, migrant women and girls of African descent are at particular risk of violence.
UN experts call on world football body to respect international law over violations in Israel
UN independent experts are calling on the powerful body that governs world football – or soccer – FIFA, to demand respect for international law from Israeli football clubs and their conduct regarding Occupied Palestinian Territory.
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This call comes as many teams in the Israeli Football Association (IFA) have shown racist behaviour towards Palestinian people and players in recent years, according to the seven UN Human Rights Council-appointed experts.
The experts believe this “conduct” should be recognised in the context of Israel’s “unlawful presence” in Palestine. They explained that these acts are in “stark violation of international law” based on an International Court of Justice’s (ICJ) advisory opinion handed down on 19 July this year.
“Legally, this constitutes an act of aggression in violation of jus ad bellum. These are grave breaches of the [Fourth Geneva] Convention and amount to several crimes under the Rome Statute,” the experts said.
‘Non-derogable norms’
The UN experts urge FIFA’s ruling council to examine the matter at a meeting being held in October “to ensure that its decisions are in conformity with non-derogable norms of international law”.
“We remind FIFA that international human rights law, which includes the right to self-determination as well as the prohibition of racial discrimination and apartheid, applies to private international organisations, especially those that have global jurisdiction and mandates such as itself,” they said.
The experts say the football association must ensure human rights are respected and that self-regulation in sports is not harmful to said rights.
They are also asking FIFA to establish and promote zero-tolerance policies which ban discrimination and racism towards Palestinians by clubs and players in Israel.
Independent Special Rapporteurs and working group members are not UN staff, receive no salary for their work and do not represent any government or organization.
