Top of the Morning: UN Official Warns of Genocide in CAR

Top stories from DAWNS Digest

UN Official Warns of Genocide in CAR

 A senior UN humanitarian official warned of the risk of genocide in Central African Republic without a massive scaling up in the international response to the crisis. “The elements are there, the seeds are there, for a genocide,” John Ging, director of operations for the U.N. Office for Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA), told a news conference in Geneva. “It has all the elements that we have seen elsewhere, in places like Rwanda and Bosnia.” Ging said the country amounted to little more than a territory on a map, without state infrastructure and functioning security forces. He said French and African Union (AU) peacekeepers were having a positive effect but were stretched to their limits. “Central African Republic has to move up the priority list,” he said. “However desperate and alarming the situation might be right now, it can be turned around very quickly.” (Reuters http://yhoo.it/1fBjUMd)

New Report: Doing Nothing About Climate Change Will Be Very, Very Costly

A draft of the new Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change report was leaked…and it’s bad news.“Nations have so dragged their feet in battling climate change that the situation has grown critical and the risk of severe economic disruption is rising, according to a draft United Nations report. Another 15 years of failure to limit carbon emissions could make the problem virtually impossible to solve with current technologies, experts found.” (NYT http://nyti.ms/K7ZigE)