Trinity Mount Ministries

Showing posts with label violence. Show all posts
Showing posts with label violence. Show all posts

Thursday, September 3, 2015

Middle East and North Africa unrest has destroyed young dreams, says UNICEF:

Education in nine states across region disrupted by violence and political upheaval, affecting schooling of almost 14 million children, claims agency
 A boy stands outside his school after airstrikes by government forces in the Syrian city of Marea in 2013. Unicef says unrest in the Mena region has affected almost 14 million children. Photograph: AFP/Getty Images

Enduring conflicts and political upheaval across the Middle East and North Africa are stopping almost 14 million children from going to school and shattering “the hopes and dreams” of a generation, according to a new report from the UN children’s agency, Unicef.

The study says the education systems in nine states – Syria, Iraq, Yemen, Libya, the Palestinian territories, Sudan, Jordan, Lebanon and Turkey – are now either directly or indirectly affected by violence.

Of the 13.7 million children currently out of school in the region, 2.7 million are Syrian, 3 million Iraqi, 2 million Libyan, 3.1 million Sudanese and 2.9 million Yemeni.

Bullets banish books in South Sudan as education becomes a casualty of war:

Nearly 9,000 schools in Syria, Iraq, Yemen and Libya can no longer offer classes, some because they have been damaged or destroyed, others because they are being used to house displaced civilians or have been commandeered by warring parties. With schools sometimes deliberately targeted, thousands of teachers have fled and parents are too scared to send their children to continue their education.

The report, entitled Education Under Fire, says that almost a quarter of Syria’s teaching professionals – or about 52,200 teachers and 523 school counsellors – have left their posts since the crisis erupted in 2011.

Over four years of conflict in Syria have also driven more than 4 million people – roughly a sixth of the population – to seek sanctuary in neighbouring countries, where their presence is placing huge strains on resources.

More than 700,000 refugee children in Jordan, Lebanon and Turkey cannot go to school in their host countries because the national education infrastructure simply cannot cope with the increased student population.

Unicef estimates that in Yemen, where six months of fighting have left the country on the verge of collapse, 2.9 million children are not going to school – many of whom were not in education even before the conflict escalated in March. More than 3,500 schools – about a quarter of the total – have been shut down and 600,000 children have not been able to sit their exams. 

The ongoing violence in Libya, meanwhile, has left more than 434,000 people internally displaced and disrupted basic services including education. In the eastern city of Benghazi, enrolment rates have halved and only 65 of the city’s 239 schools are functioning.

Unicef also says that last summer’s war in Gaza has caused “massive destruction to infrastructure including schools – and left deep scars in the psyche of children and their caregivers”.

According to the UN, 281 schools suffered damage during the 51-day conflict and eight were completely destroyed. The destruction meant that nearly half a million children were unable to resume their education for several weeks when the 2014-15 school year began.

War denying millions of children an education:

Equally devastating, if less well covered, is the long-running conflict in Sudan, which has displaced 2.9 million people and left 1.2 million children under the age of five acutely malnourished. The country has also taken in approximately 50,000 refugee children from South Sudan who have fled the violence that has raged in their homeland for the past 20 months.

“The destructive impact of conflict is being felt by children right across the region,” said Peter Salama, regional director for Unicef in the Middle East and North Africa.

“It’s not just the physical damage being done to schools, but the despair felt by a generation of schoolchildren who see their hopes and futures shattered.”

Unicef has repeatedly warned that Syrian children risk becoming a “lost generation” who will be denied the education and opportunities needed to help them rebuild the country if and when the fighting ends. Children and parents caught up in conflict “overwhelmingly” say that education is their number one priority, according to Unicef.

The report urges the international community to increase its funding to enable children in the region to continue their education, arguing that through self-learning, informal education and expanded learning spaces, “children learn even in the most desperate of circumstances”.

The study also calls on host governments, policymakers, the private sector and other partners to help strengthen the national education systems in conflict-hit countries and host communities by expanding learning spaces, recruiting and training teachers and providing learning materials.

Last month, the head of the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) warned that the impact of the Yemen conflict was already comparable to that of the much longer-running war in Syria.

“This is not Syria, which had been a middle-income country five years ago,” said Peter Maurer. “Yemen was poor even before the conflict started.

“From the outside, Yemen after five months of armed conflict looks like Syria after five years of conflict, and this is a very worrying signal.”

On Wednesday, the ICRC said that warring parties in the city of Aleppo were using water and electricity as “weapons of war” and deliberately cutting supplies to its 2 million inhabitants.

“Vital services for the people, such as the water supply, must be kept away from the politics of the Syrian conflict,” said the head of the ICRC delegation in Syria, Marianne Gasser.


 http://www.TrinityMount.Info

Friday, March 8, 2013

Task Force on Research on Violence Against American Indian and Alaska Native Women:

U.S. Department of Justice
Acting Associate Attorney General Tony West Speaks at the Federal Advisory Task Force on Research on Violence Against American Indian and Alaska Native Women Living in Tribal Communities:
Thank you, Bea, for that kind introduction and your leadership on this task force and in our Office on Violence Against Women.

It’s a great privilege to be here and on behalf of all of us at the Department of Justice, I want to thank all of you, for your dedication to addressing violence against Native American women.

We have had a lot to celebrate the last couple days, and yesterday I was proud to witness President Obama sign the reauthorization of the Violence Against Women Act into law.   The reauthorization not only includes the provisions that Vice President Biden fought so hard for 20 years ago to protect all women, but it also includes the critical tribal jurisdiction provisions to help Indian tribes combat violence against Native women.   From the time non-Indians first came to this continent, and right up through the founding of our Nation, Indian tribes routinely exercised authority over all individuals who committed acts of violence on Indian lands.   In 1978, in the Oliphant v. Suquamish Indian Tribe case, the U.S. Supreme Court took that power away, holding that tribes lacked criminal jurisdiction over non-Indians, absent express authorization from Congress.   Last week, thanks largely to your efforts, we got that authorization, and now perpetrators of domestic and dating violence will be held accountable, whether they’re Indian or non-Indian.   And countless Indian women will enjoy safer lives as a result.

I know that no one has fought harder for Native American women than the people in this room and serving on this Task Force, so I congratulate you on this landmark occasion.  

Now, our challenge, our collective challenge, is to make sure that this new law is well implemented.   This is important for at least three reasons.   First, it will benefit public safety.  Second, it will protect the legitimate rights of the accused.   And third, it will maximize our ability to protect this law from challenge.   So we've already begun to meet with tribes to talk about how we can best prepare tribal judicial systems for successful implementation.

This is also a great chapter in our government-to-government relationships.   You and your colleagues raised these issues with Senator Obama when he was running for President in 2008, and you raised it with Justice Department officials in a long series of formal and informal tribal consultations.   And we heard you, and we took action – just as the President promised more than four years ago.   In July 2011, the Department proposed the very language that, with a few tweaks, has now been enacted by Congress.   And every step of the way, we profited from the strength of tribal leaders and Federal officials, working hand in glove, in a true partnership.

Over the last four years, this Administration has cultivated that partnership, and under the leadership of Attorney General Eric Holder, we at the Justice Department have worked hard to strengthen tribal sovereignty and improve tribal safety.   We have established the Office of Tribal Justice as a permanent component within the Justice Department.   We’ve created the Tribal Nations Leadership Council to facilitate consultation and advise the Attorney General on issues critical to tribal governments.   Under the leadership of Leslie Hagen, we’ve launched a National Indian Country Training Initiative, which has trained more than 2,000 criminal-justice professionals.   And we’ve assigned additional federal personnel to investigate and prosecute cases on Indian lands, including a dozen FBI Indian Country Victim Specialists.

So we’ve made some excellent progress.   While we celebrate the past and current successes, we must also look toward the future.   Our work in Indian country is far from over, and if we’re to build on that progress and tackle the uniquely difficult challenges that tribal communities still face, we cannot rest.

We cannot rest as long as crime rates in many tribal communities remain far above the national average.   We cannot rest as long as tribal members suffer disproportionately from violence, property offenses, and other criminal acts.  

As I have stated many times in the past, there is an urgent need for more and better research, evaluation, and data, and the Department is committed to making this happen.  

At the heart of our research efforts is NIJ’s research program on violence against women that will collect information from enrolled American Indian and Alaska Native women living in Indian country and Alaska Native villages.   This is the first comprehensive national research program of its kind.   NIJ’s groundbreaking program of research aims to achieve the mandates outlined in the the 2005 reauthorization of VAWA to decrease the incidence of violent crimes against Indian women; to strengthen the capacity of Indian tribes to exercise their sovereign authority to respond to violent crimes committed against Indian women; and to ensure that perpetrators of violent crimes committed against Indian women are held accountable for their criminal behavior.

Once again, I would like to thank each Task Force member for your participation. Your expertise and insights are invaluable, and this partnership--much like our partnership in the reauthorization of VAWA with critical tribal jurisdiction provisions--has been pivotal to developing, and now, implementing this much needed program of research.







Join Trinity Mount Ministries on Twitter:

Thursday, October 11, 2012

A Comprehensive Anti-Violence Strategy: Reentry, Prevention and Enforcement:

The Justice Blog

A Comprehensive Anti-Violence Strategy: Reentry, Prevention and Enforcement
October 11th, 2012 Posted by 
On October 10th, Deputy Attorney General James M. Cole traveled to Talladega, Ala., where he spoke with members of the Northern Alabama Reentry Council. The Reentry Council was formed in April 2011, with the goal of offering recommendations to create more successful outcomes in the lives of former inmates, as well as improving the security of the communities they return to upon their release. The U.S. Attorney for the Northern District of Alabama, Joyce White Vance, Bureau of Prisons Director Charles Samuels and FCI Talladega Warden John Rathman hosted the Reentry Council meeting which included a group of professionals from across the federal, state and local criminal justice systems.
Each year more than 700,000 individuals exit our state and federal prisons. Currently, two-thirds of all released state prisoners will be rearrested within three years, with half of those returning to prison. Forty percent of former federal prisoners are rearrested or have their supervision revoked within three years after release. The Department of Justice’s Bureau of Justice Statistics estimates that more than $74 billion is spent on state, local and federal prisons each year.  The Department of Justice has made a strong commitment to programs that will assist with reentry, along with prevention and enforcement, as part of our comprehensive Anti-Violence Strategy.
As Deputy Attorney General Cole said:
“The members of this Council have recognized that we can no longer afford the societal and budgetary costs incurred when people cycle in and out of our prisons… As we developed our comprehensive Anti-Violence Strategy we realized that we cannot arrest and prosecute our way out of this devastating problem.  While prosecution is important, we also have to prevent the violence from happening in the first place and one important way to do this is to pay attention to the people incarcerated in our prisons and as they prepare to leave those institutions make sure they are ready to reenter our communities as productive, law abiding members.  In this vein, federal prosecutors are encouraged to think comprehensively about the criminal justice process – to critically examine other ways to improve public safety, beyond traditional enforcement and to place an increased reliance on criminal justice stakeholders and community leaders to help guide and inform these efforts.” 
Deputy Attorney General Cole went on to discuss other efforts that are being made at the Department of Justice, the Bureau of Prisons and at the state level. He highlighted, for example, programs taking place in Alabama through the Reentry Council:
“[T]hrough its working groups, this Council has tackled issues for formerly incarcerated individuals involving housing, transportation, healthcare and rehabilitation, education, job training and access, and community support and reintegration.  The working groups have developed and implemented critical initiatives which are providing measurable results — such as working on the development of a memorandum of understanding between municipal judges to assist formerly incarcerated individuals who are attempting to re-acquire their driver’s licenses.”
Under Attorney General Eric Holder, the department has prioritized effective reentry and reinvestment programs for formerly incarcerated individuals. Since October 2009, the department has awarded more than $200 million Second Chance Act grants to more than 370 state, local and tribal prisoner reentry programs. These grants will help the nearly 10 million individuals that are released from jails and state and federal prisons each year successfully return to communities.  Recently, the Office of Justice Programs announced new awards including a grant to the Alabama Department of Corrections for the Jefferson County Reentry Planning Project.
U.S. Attorney Joyce White Vance noted the impact of the Reentry Council working with the states to take an active role to find solutions to ensure public safety and security.
“The North Alabama Reentry Council has been a collaborative effort among federal and state judges, prosecutors, probation and prisons officials to achieve better outcomes for formerly incarcerated individuals reentering our communities. Our goal in these efforts is to identify and coordinate resources toward enhancing public safety and saving taxpayer dollars. I have been deeply impressed by all the groups in the community who were operating in isolation but came forward and are now working in specific areas that were the worst barriers to successful re-entry.”
In 2011, Attorney General Holder created the Federal Interagency Reentry Council, bringing together 20 federal agencies to tackle the issue of reentry in a comprehensive way. The Department of Justice recognizes that in order to make our country safer, it is important to make sure that rehabilitation and reentry outcomes are a priority. As Deputy Attorney General Cole said:
“Only by working together can we reduce criminal justice spending, protect individuals and their families, prevent new victimizations, and improve the quality of our communities.”
For more information about the Reentry Council and Second Chance Act, visitwww.nationalreentryresourcecenter.org




Join Trinity Mount Ministries on Twitter:

Monday, August 6, 2012

DOJ - Task Force on Children Exposed to Violence:

 Attorney General Eric Holder’s Task Force on Children Exposed to Violence Briefs Congress
August 6th, 2012 Posted by
The following post appears courtesy of Acting Assistant Attorney General for the Office of Justice Programs, Mary Lou Leary
Task Force co-chairs Robert Listenbee, Jr. and Joe Torre, and Melodee Hanes, Acting Administrator, Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention.
Task Force co-chairs Robert Listenbee, Jr. and Joe Torre, and Melodee Hanes, Acting Administrator, Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention.
Over the last year, the Attorney General’s Task Force on Children Exposed to Violence has traveled the country, listening to practitioners, policymakers, academics, concerned citizens, and victims.  Its goal was to find out how violence and abuse are affecting our kids and our communities and to explore what actions we can take to prevent children’s exposure to violence and mitigate its effects.  The problem is an urgent one, one Attorney General Eric Holder says “we can’t afford to ignore.”
On Wednesday, July 25 the Task Force Co-Chairs went to Congress to report on its progress – to a standing-room only crowd of more than 100 people eager to learn how to stop the national epidemic of children’s exposure to violence.
Task force co-chairs Joe Torre, Yankee legend and executive vice president of baseball operations for Major League Baseball, and Robert Listenbee, Jr., chief of the Juvenile Unit of the Defender Association of Philadelphia, led the briefing, describing their comprehensive work since the task force launch in October 2011.  They discussed many lessons learned through four public hearings in Baltimore, Albuquerque, Miami and Detroit and three listening sessions in Anchorage, Oakland and Joint Base Lewis-McChord outside Tacoma, WA.
The variety of sites gave the task force members the big picture of violence in America.  “People think violence is an urban problem, but tribal area statistics are sometimes worse…while rural areas have difficulty getting resources,” noted Co-chair Listenbee. The task force heard personal testimony from 65 people from 27 states and the District of Columbia. These included survivors of violence, young people, social service providers, medical personnel, researchers, practitioners, advocates, tribal and local officials, private foundation representatives, and community residents.
Torre, who established the Joe Torre Safe At Home Foundation to give children relief from violence in their homes, had everyone’s rapt attention when he described the impact of witnessing abuse as a child:
“It took decades before I finally started to talk about the violence in my childhood,” he said. “And as the task force has heard from one person after another, things haven’t changed enough. Every child deserves a safe home, a safe school, and a safe community….They need our help. And we need their help. Children are a part of the solution. Awareness is a part of the solution. Some people think it’s just a part of society that we can’t do anything about. But we can do something about it. It’s our responsibility to take care of our kids. Even if they don’t have the same last name, they’re our kids.”
The Attorney General often says that children’s exposure to violence is not an issue the Department of Justice – or any one agency or organization – can take on alone.  It will take all of us – working together.  And with the momentum we’ve generated through our Defending Childhood Initiative, the information and insights we’ve gained through the Task Force, and the tremendous support and leadership shown by everyone here, I know we will find a way to make America safer for our children.
More information on the Attorney General’s Defending Childhood Initiative and this task force is available at www.justice.gov/defendingchildhood.


POSTED IN: Office of Justice Programs, Office of the Attorney General 

Trinity Mount Ministries







trinitymount@gmail.com