Thailand holds thousands of migrant children in detention each year, causing them physical and emotional harm, Human Rights Watch said in a report released in early September. Child migrants and asylum seekers are unnecessarily held in squalid immigration facilities, suffering in filthy, overcrowded cells without adequate nutrition, education, or exercise space.
Continue reading Thailand: Thousands of Migrant Children Detained
Living in a home without much free space is always a hot topic in Hong Kong. High population density and rising land prices make people moan and groan. However when relating to the slum families in India, those in India are suffering from many other problems apart from having no free space. Currently there are 65 million slum dwellers in India who make a very low income and thus every day have to struggle with desperate living conditions, insecure environment, and very limited healthcare protection and education resources.
Continue reading Let the Hopeless Indian Slum Dwellers Find Hope
People in Hong Kong are no strangers to the fear and devastation caused by an epidemic. In 2003, Hong Kong recorded a total of 1,755 SARS cases which led to 299 deaths, in which 8 were health workers. After a decade, health workers in West Africa are facing life-threatening work environment as they care for Ebola patients. Over 120 health workers in Guinea, Liberia, Nigeria and Sierra Leone have so far died of Ebola, and the infected number has grown by more than double. These are unprecedented figures according to World Health Organization (WHO).
Continue reading Pray for Health Workers as They Fight Ebola in West Africa
Four weeks has passed since the 6.5-magnitude earthquake hit Ludian County in Zhaotong, Yunnan, but many of the victims are still living their lives in the shelters. The post-earthquake rehabilitation is still a long way to complete.
Continue reading Ongoing Earthquake Relief Work in Zhaotong, Yunnan
Samira Said, 27, fled Tikrit with her 20-day old baby for an agricultural shelter area next to the Baharka camp 5km north of Erbil, the capital of the northern semi-autonomous Kurdish region of Iraq, after the militant group ISIS (Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant) took control of Iraq’s second largest city, Mosul.
Our hearts are breaking at the atrocities taking place in Iraq. In the last two months a staggering 850,000 people have fled their homes in terror as Islamic State (IS) fighters have swept across the north of the country. An estimated 10,000 people have lost their lives, most of whom are civilians.
Religious and ethnic minority groups, such as Yazidis (a Kurdish-speaking ethno-religious group), Christians and Turkmen, have been particularly targeted, and many have been subjected to unspeakable brutalities. It’s estimated that one-fourth of Iraq’s Christians have now fled, threatened by IS at best with fines, at worst with forced conversion or death.
Thousands of Iraqis, mainly from the Yazidi community, are currently trapped on Mount Sinjar in northern Iraq by IS fighters after facing similar threats. They are in desperate need of food, water and medical care, and symbolise the plight of so many more Iraqis who are the innocent victims of this crisis.
Between January to July 2014, an estimation of 1.2 million internally displaced persons (IDPs) were seeking shelter in Northern Iraq. They are now suffering from significant secondary displacement due to fierce fightings near IDP locations in Ninewa and Dahuk Provinces. In addition to the current IDP crisis, the government of Kurdistan is also hosting 230,000 refugees from Syria.
Since 2012, Integral Alliance (IA), a global alliance comprising of 19 Christian relief and development agencies, has been providing relief materials, food parcel, medical care and psychosocial care to Syrian refugees. CEDAR is one of the member agencies of Integral Alliance. A member agency of IA is now forming a working team, going to Northern Iraq to assess the situation particularly the need of the suffered communities.
We know that God is a God of love, compassion, power and justice, who is ‘mighty to save’ (Isaiah 63:1). As we struggle to find words to respond in the face of such horror, remember Paul’s words in Romans: ‘We do not know what we ought to pray for, but the Spirit himself intercedes for us through wordless groans.’ (Romans 8:26). [Tearfund, Integral Alliance]
Pray for the suffering Iraq people:
Climate conflict is a popular international development issue in recent years. Different researches over the relation of climate change and conflict arrive at different conclusions. Some say climate change will lead to fight over scarce and valuable resources like water. On the other hand some believe that their link is weak and do not think it’s worth a discussion at all.
Recent researches show that the relationship between climate change and the conflict causing by it is more complex than expected. A deeper understanding of the connection between climate change and conflict requires a careful examination of the drivers of violence and the role of the environment in individuals’ livelihoods. Some scholars point out that the relationship between climate and conflict is closely linked to the economic development of the region that it affects. Climate conflict is most likely seen in rural and non-industrialised regions where a large portion of the population is still dependent on the natural environment for their income and sustenance. In most sub-Saharan African countries, more than two-thirds of the population is employed in agriculture. A change in climate conditions could have negative impacts on the country’s stability.
However, researchers would emphasise that one should not always assume that there is a causal relationship between climate change and conflict. Many other factors such as political exclusion of persecuted minority groups, economic inequalities, and weak central government institutions may play a more important role in conflicts. When scholars enter into an in-depth examination of the causes of conflict, they find that land distribution and rights of access to resources are the most pressing issues that the communities of the conflict regions are facing. The problems are almost entirely determined by local and national government policies. Therefore, governance and resource distribution policies are often the real source of conflict, but their impact is obscured by the climate conflict debate. Leaders of certain African countries blame climate change and drought as reasons of famines and conflict, instead of their corrupt land reallocation policies or political violence against their people.
Scholar thinks that climate conflict debate can easily mislead people into the trap of environmental determinism, i.e. climatic factors define human behaviour and culture. One such supposition is that a society’s cultural norms depend if it is located in a tropical or temperate region. Scholar reminds us not to ascribe too much causal weight to one particular factor but ignore the importance of political and socio-economic conditions and the motive and agency of actors. Many people just believe that in developing countries, violence is one of their first natural reactions to societal change, where collaboration among societies indeed happens more often. [IPS]
Meditation on Scriptures:
This is what I have observed to be good: that it is appropriate for a person to eat, to drink and to find satisfaction in their toilsome labor under the sun during the few days of life God has given them—for this is their lot. Moreover, when God gives someone wealth and possessions, and the ability to enjoy them, to accept their lot and be happy in their toil—this is a gift of God. (Ecclesiastes 5:18,19)
Pray for those places affected by climate change and related conflicts:
