The year 2024 will end as one of the most turbulent in recent history, marked by the outbreak of armed conflicts or the virulence of natural disasters, but in the midst of these tragedies a series of political and social advances have emerged that have implied improvements in Human Rights and on which several NGOs and UN agencies want to focus.
“It is clear that 2024 has been a year marked by the bloody conflicts in Gaza, Sudan or Ukraine and it is difficult to see the light after so much suffering,” but Amnesty International spokesperson Ana Gómez emphasizes milestones such as the “hope” that is opening up in Syria after “more than five decades of brutality and repression” at the service of the Al Assad dynasty.
“We have seen how people from all over the world have continued to show that change is possible,” she added, in statements to Europa Press in which she also applauded Gambia’s decision to maintain the criminalisation of female genital mutilation.
UNICEF is also “enormously” pleased by the continuation of this law in the African country, as is the fact that “global efforts” to immunise a greater number of people against preventable diseases are being maintained – these efforts have saved “at least 154 million lives in the last 50 years,” the organisation points out.
Doctors Without Borders (MSF) is also involved in vaccinating 70,000 children against measles in the Democratic Republic of Congo, a country where an unprecedented study has been carried out which has shown that the Ebola vaccine reduces the risk of developing a disease that has affected several African countries for years by 84 percent. In addition, Zimbabwe has been able to escape its last cholera outbreak in 2024.
For her part, Save the Children’s foreign policy officer, Arantxa Oses, welcomes the abolition of child marriage this year in Sierra Leone and Colombia, “a fundamental advance for the protection of girls and adolescents” and which other consulted organizations also have an impact on.
Plan International Spain’s advocacy manager, Julia López, highlights that although “it is still crucial to continue working to raise awareness in society about the devastating consequences” of child marriages, the law that raises the minimum age for marriage in Colombia from 14 to 18 years is “a key advance.”
“Child marriage is a harmful practice that disproportionately affects girls and adolescents and exposes them to pregnancy, school dropouts and abuse, among other risks,” she adds. Now, “it is time for us to build societies in which equal rights are a reality.”
Along these lines, the gender manager at Ayuda en Acción, Marga SanmartÃn Camacho, believes that advances such as those in Colombia imply a “huge” step towards gender equality and the protection of girls, although she admits that “a lot of awareness and work is still needed” to eradicate the scourge forever. She hopes that 2025 will be “a year of further progress” to end “practices that deprive girls of their right to decide about their future.”
POLITICAL AGREEMENTS
World Vision wants to highlight the Global Alliance against Hunger and Poverty launched during the last G20 leaders’ summit in Brazil. An initiative that, as the NGO’s communications director, Eloisa Molina, points out, “aims to take advantage of the political momentum, collective action and mobilize resources to combat hunger and poverty throughout the world.”
“The devastating cycle of hunger and malnutrition continues to ravage the lives of children. It is destroying their future, both in humanitarian and development contexts,” it warns. It is therefore confident that the alliance will allow us to gain speed in meeting the Sustainable Development Goals: “We are doing everything possible and yet progress is very slow.”
In the political sphere, the International Organization for Migration (IOM) also sees room for further progress within its sphere of action and, for example, considers it “powerfully positive” news that countries such as Spain, Belgium, Germany, Australia or Mexico are increasingly betting on labour mobility programmes to attract labour with safe and legal immigration procedures.
This type of programme, the IOM points out, implies a double benefit, both for the people who find work and for the societies that receive them. The organization considers it “important” to recognize the participation of migrants in host communities, as evidenced by a recent study that estimates the contribution of Venezuelan citizens in Peru at 530 million dollars (about 505 million euros).
Por otro lado, desde Save the Children destacan la adopción por parte de la Unión Europea de la hoja de ruta sobre infancia y conflictos armados, destinada a orientar a los Estados miembro y a las diversas instituciones en la mejor manera de proteger a la infancia vÃctima de guerras.
Como recuerda Arantxa Oses, también en un año “dolorosamente marcado” por conflictos armados “ha habido avances significativos que nos llevan a tener esperanza”, un sentir compartido entre un grupo de organizaciones que trabajan en temas humanitarios o de desarrollo en algunos de los contextos más complejos de todo el mundo.
