Date: Tuesday, February 16, 2021
In 2020, even as governments around the world rallied to respond to the COVID-19 pandemic, a large number of countries and their populations continued to face insecurities spurred by violent extremist organizations.
On 23 March 2020, the UN Secretary-General issued an urgent appeal for a global ceasefire to create opportunities for life-saving aid. He stressed on the need to protect the most vulnerable – women and children, people with disabilities and those marginalized and displaced. No less than 180 countries, along with the UN Security Council, civil society groups and millions of citizens endorsed his ceasefire call.
The presence of violent extremist organizations exacerbates existing inequalities, including gender inequalities, and poses a threat to countries struggling to combat the economic and social fallout of the COVID-19 crisis. Safeguarding women’s rights and gender equality in these contexts is urgent.
The world’s first COVID-19 vaccination centre in a refugee camp opened this week in Zaatari Refugee Camp, Jordan, operated by the Jordanian Ministry of Health and supported by UNHCR. UNHCR
Celebrating Love in Zaatari Refugee Camp
Nour has owned a wedding shop in Jordan s Zaatari Camp for three years and with Valentine’s Day approaching she’s helping brides prepare for their big day.
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Courtesy of Sundance Institute
The crop of documentaries that premiere at the Sundance Film Festival is always wide-ranging, both in style and in content. And this year’s selections were no exception, even if the 2021 festival was an unusual one, having largely migrated to digital platforms.
They ran the gamut from dramatic explorations of refugees’ experiences to funny and heartbreaking looks at American high schools to experimental films about technology’s effects on our lives. The world is a wide, wide place, and documentary filmmakers are committed to exploring it, celebrating it, and warning us not to take it for granted.
Abdulghani Alrahmo thought he had a good life in Syria. He spent his days as an electrician, dealing with voltages, chargers and inverters. Alrahmo shared his home in Aleppo, near the Turkish border, with his wife Fatima and six children: Raghad, Rawan, Ahmad, Sami, Ghazal and Osama. [It] was so easy and nice living with family and friends away from complexities of life, he says.
The Syrian war, which started in 2011, upended all of that. We decided to move to Turkey to save my family and also to find treatment for my son [Osama] who has glaucoma [an eye condition], he says.