As winter heads into Ireland again we have been seemingly hit by more and more storms in the last couple of years. With storm damage to buildings and homes, leaving people without electric and repair bills that at times can’t be paid for.

Electric is a major component of everyday life and is vital to a basic standard of living. In the media, the storms get hyped up and the damage it inflicts. The pictures are shown for pure entertainment at times.

However what is not shown enough are the people that are deeply affected by it. An elderly person who faces these types of circumstances tend to be ignored in the media. It is a common responsibility that should be highlighted throughout the media.

Simply checking on them, providing help or assistance, even when its only a cup of tea can make a huge difference. There should be a system in place that provides emergency care to people based on priority.

On the other end of the spectrum we have people who are faced with damage to their home. Sometimes its just a small roofing leak but other times its large roof repairs in Dublin. Where does the money come from to help repair it? Insurance company’s are getting more and more difficult to deal with and payment can be protracted.

Schemes need to be set in place to provide support and help given on a case by case basis to people who simply cannot afford the repairs to their roof or are left stranded by their insurance company while they wait for payment.

Thankfully some repair company’s will help and delay taking payment for work. If you or someone you know has this type of problem, don’t be afraid to explain to the roofer the situation. Getting the roof fixed fast can make a huge difference to family’s that simply have no other choice but to continue living in a house that is damaged.

The Socio-Economic Rights and Accountability Project, SERAP, including many Nigerians have demanded the unconditional release of 112 pro-Biafra Imo women who were arrested, detained and remanded in Owerri prison for participating in a peaceful protest to demand the whereabouts of the leader of the Indigenous People of Biafra, IPOB, Nnamdi Kanu. 112 pro-Biafra Imo women who were arrested, detained and remanded in Owerri prison for participating in a peaceful protest to demand the whereabouts of the leader of the Indigenous People of Biafra, IPOB, Nnamdi Kanu. The women were remanded in jail till September 3 by Magistrate S.K Durumba for embarking on a peaceful protest. It was also gathered that one of the women (a pregnant woman) who broke down in the court as a result of the alleged beaten earlier received from the police during the peaceful protest was said to have bled profusely before she was rushed to an undisclosed hospital. However, following their continued remand, the concerned Nigerians who condemned their incarceration called for their unconditional release.

Terming the Human Rights Council as the United Nations? ?greatest failure?, US envoy to the UN Nikki Haley has alleged that the institution has provided cover for the world?s most inhumane regimes as she defended the Trump administration?s decision to withdraw from it.

Last month, the US withdrew from the UN Human Rights Council and condemned its ?shameless hypocrisy? in absolving wrongdoers through silence and falsely condemning those committing no offence, saying America will not take lectures from hypocritical institutions.

In her remarks at a top American think-tank ? The Heritage Foundation ? the Indian-American US Ambassador to the UN alleged that ?more often, the Human Rights Council has provided cover, not condemnation, for the world?s most inhumane regimes. It has been a bully pulpit for human rights violators.?

Alleging that Human Rights Council has been, not a place of conscience, but a place of politics, Ms Haley said the UN body has focused its attention unfairly and relentlessly on Israel.

Meanwhile, it has ignored the misery inflicted by regimes in China, Venezuela, Cuba, and Zimbabwe, she said.

?Judged by how far it has fallen short of its promise, the Human Rights Council is the United Nations? greatest failure,? Ms Haley said.

?It has taken the idea of human dignity ? the idea that is at the center of our national creed and the birthright of every human being ? and it has reduced it to just another instrument of international politics. And that is a great tragedy,? Ms Haley said, noting that she did not come to this conclusion happily, or lightly.

?Many of our friends urged us to stay for the sake of the institution. The United States, they said, provided the last shred of credibility the Council had. But that was precisely why we withdrew,? she said.

The right to speak freely, to associate and worship freely; to determine ones own future; to be equal before the law ? these are sacred rights, she asserted.

?We take these rights seriously ? too seriously to allow them to be cheapened by an institution ? especially one that calls itself the Human Rights Council,? she said.

Asserting that no one should make the mistake of equating membership in the Human Rights Council with the support for human rights, Ms Haley said to this day, the US does more for human rights, both inside the UN and around the world, than any other country. The US will continue to do that.

?We just won?t do it inside a Council that consistently fails the cause of human rights,? she said.

Ms Haley said America?s withdrawal from the Human Rights Council does not mean that it has given up its fight for reform.

?On the contrary, any country willing to work with us to reshape the Council need only ask. Fixing the institutional flaws of the Human Rights Council was, is, and will remain one of the biggest priorities at the UN,? she added.

The United Arab Emirates is facilitating torture, including sexual violence, beatings and electric shocks, in secretive prisons in southern Yemen, a new report from Amnesty International has alleged. Men suspected of belonging to either al-Qaeda or Isis have been forcibly disappeared in detention centres either run by UAE forces or Yemeni militias under their control since the country?s civil war broke out in 2015, the rights watchdog said in a new report published on Thursday.

Amnesty investigated the fate of 51 men swept up in the Arab coalition?s hunt for extremists since March 2016. Families who have formed protest groups to discover the whereabouts of loved ones say hundreds of men in total have been disappeared.

The findings reinforce recent reports from the Associated Press and local protest groups into alleged disappearances and abuses ? including that several activists, journalists and members of the Yemeni Muslim Brotherhood have been detained after terror-related accusations.

The collected evidence amounts to war crimes which should be immediately addressed in an international investigation, Amnesty says. Current and former detainees described widespread horrific treatment such as the use of electric shocks, severe beatings, anal rape with metal poles and being forced to live in cramped conditions.

?I saw things I do not want to see again. In that place, you do not even see the sun? Then one day, they released me at night, they said they had me confused with someone else? ?It was a mistaken identity, sorry?. It was as if they had done nothing after all the suffering I endured from electric shocks,? said one former detainee at a facility in Aden.

?The families of these detainees find themselves in an endless nightmare where their loved ones have been forcibly disappeared by UAE-backed forces,? Amnesty?s crisis response director Tirana Hassan said in a statement.

?When they demand to know where their loved ones are held, or if they are even still alive, their requests are met with silence or intimidation.?

The UAE has publicly denied all allegations of holding or abusing detainees.

?The UAE does not manage or run prisons in Yemen,? the government-run National Media Council said in a statement on Thursday.

?[We believe] that these reports are politically motivated to undermine its efforts as part of the Arab coalition to support the Yemeni government.?

The Emirates and Saudi Arabia are the exiled Yemeni government?s main allies in its fight to regain control of the country from Houthi rebels, who are supported by Iran.

Since last year the UAE has also backed a militia known as the Southern Transitional Council, which seeks renewed independence for southern Yemen, and funded and trained various other local security forces which bypass the central Yemeni government.

?The UAE, operating in shadowy conditions in southern Yemen, appears to have created a parallel security structure outside the law, where egregious violations continue to go unchecked,? said Ms Hassan. The Arab coalition is backed by several western partners, including the UK and US, which also sell Abu Dhabi and Riyadh weapons Amnesty says have caused unnecessary civilian deaths in the brutal three-year-old war.
After the publication of a new AP report into UAE-run prisons in Yemen last month, several missing people have been released. However, Amnesty is calling on the coalition?s anti-terrorism partners to refuse intelligence information that may have been procured through torture, and for an international investigation into abuses which it says in the context of the Yemeni conflict amount to war crimes.

Original article >>> https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/middle-east/yemen-war-crimes-investi...

Residents of Northern Ireland risk losing citizenship rights linked to the Belfast Agreement due to new policies being drafted for Brexit, campaigners have warned.

The 1998 Good Friday peace deal allows those born in Northern Ireland to be British, Irish or both, thereby also providing the rights of citizens of the European Union (EU). But under new Brexit proposals, Northern Ireland residents with Irish citizenship (plus those who identify as British but are entitled to Irish citizenship) risk losing a range of EU rights. These include access to the European Health Insurance Card, access to EU student fee rates, the right to vote for MEPs, plus the right to be joined by non-European Economic Area (EEA) family members.

A Northern Irish-based human rights group, the Committee on the Administration of Justice (CAJ), has now written to European Commission president Jean-Claude Juncker seeking urgent clarification amid concerns that draft policy for Northern Ireland ?departs from the commitments? made by the UK and the EU.

In a practical sense this would render Irish citizens in Northern Ireland as having fewer EU rights than Irish citizens resident in existing third countries. In the correspondence, seen by Belfast journalism website thedetail.tv, the CAJ said it was concerned the commission was departing from the commitments made in the EU-UK Joint Report published in December 2017 to frame the Brexit talks.

The UK and EU would have to commit to a special arrangement to reflect the unique circumstances in Northern Ireland. The CAJ is concerned that the position of the European Commission ?would remove access to almost all EU rights from Irish citizens in Northern Ireland.

It would limit Irish citizens in Northern Ireland to holding mostly ?dormant? EU rights that are only exercisable if the rights holder leaves Northern Ireland and takes up residence in another EU member state.

?In a practical sense this would render Irish citizens in Northern Ireland as having fewer EU rights than Irish citizens resident in existing third countries.?

The CAJ said the commission?s position ?also conflicts with the commitment to protect the [Belfast Agreement] in all its parts?.

In 2017 the Department of Foreign Affairs in Dublin received 82,274 applications from people in Northern Ireland for Irish passports, up from 45,646 in 2012. Wider concerns over the protection of rights in Northern Ireland were highlighted in June, when a joint statement from the Alliance Party, the Green Party, SDLP and Sinn Féin expressed ?profound concern that Brexit will result in further regression on equality and rights?.