Eligible Countries: Countries with citizens from a minority group
To Be Taken At (Country): Geneva, Switzerland
About the Award: Launched in 2005, the Minorities Fellowship Programme (MFP) is OHCHR’s most comprehensive training programme for human rights and minority rights defenders belonging to national or ethnic, religious and linguistic minorities.
At the end of the MFP, the fellows should have a general knowledge of the United Nations system, international human rights instruments and mechanisms in general and those relevant to minorities in particular. Fellows should also be capable of further training their communities/organizations.
The Programme further serves as an opportunity for human rights activists working towards the protection and promotion of minority rights to expand their partners’ base. They do this by building a strategic dialogue with fellow activists from across the globe, the United Nations, and relevant Geneva-based NGOs, amongst other partners.
The Programme is offered in three linguistic components: English, Russian, and Arabic.
The MFP takes place in Geneva, Switzerland. Fellows are entitled to:
a return ticket (economy class) from the country of residence to Geneva;
basic health insurance for the duration of the Programme; and
a stipend to cover modest accommodation and other living expenses for the duration of the Programme.
Type: Fellowship
Eligibility: The candidate must belong to a national, ethnic, linguistic or religious minority group (persons who do not belong to a minority group will not be taken into consideration, even if they have close links with minority communities and/or organizations).
Number of Awards: Not specified
Value of Award: The Programme is offered in three linguistic components: English, Russian, and Arabic.
The MFP takes place in Geneva, Switzerland. Fellows are entitled to:
a return ticket (economy class) from the country of residence to Geneva;
basic health insurance for the duration of the Programme; and
a stipend to cover modest accommodation and other living expenses for the duration of the Programme.
How to Apply: Fellowship application forms are available in English | Russian | Arabic.
Both parts I and II of the application form must be filled in and signed. In addition, application forms need to be accompanied by an official recommendation letter from the nominating organization or community. Fellowship applications will only be taken into consideration if they are fully completed.
Interested candidates should submit their application indicating “Application to the 2024 Minorities Fellowship Programme” as subject either by e-mail* to ohchr-fellowship@un.org or by post to:
Mr. Morse Caoagas Flores Coordinator, Indigenous & Minorities Fellowship Programmes Indigenous Peoples and Minorities Section Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights 48, Avenue Giuseppe-Motta, Office 2-05 CH-1211 Geneva 10, Switzerland
*E-mailed applications must be signed, scanned and submitted as a single PDF file. Any questions pertaining to the Minorities Fellowship Programme can be directed to the addresses mentioned above.
Please note that applications received after the closing date will not be considered.
Application Deadline: 14th December 2023 16.00 (GMT)
Offered annually? Yes
EligibleCountries: Bangladesh Belize Botswana Cameroon Dominica Eswatini Fiji Gabon Ghana Grenada Guyana India Jamaica Kenya Kiribati Lesotho Malawi Malaysia Maldives Mauritius Montserrat Mozambique Namibia Nauru Nigeria Pakistan Papua New Guinea Rwanda Saint Helena Saint Lucia Saint Vincent and The Grenadines Samoa Sierra Leone Solomon Islands South Africa Sri Lanka Tanzania The Gambia Togo Tonga Tuvalu Uganda Vanuatu Zambia
To be taken at (country): Various UK Universities. Download CSS prospectus 2024 below for full list of participating universities and respective deadlines.
Applicants may find the following resources useful when researching their choices of institution and course of study in the UK:
Study UK – British Council website, with guidance for international students and a course and institution search.
Steps to Postgraduate Study – a guide to asking the right questions about taught postgraduate study in the UK.
Postgrad.com – information for postgraduate students, with a course search
Prospects – information on postgraduate study in the UK.
UCAS Postgraduate – guidance on how to find and apply for a postgraduate course.
Discover Uni – the official website for comparing UK higher education course data.
UKCISA (UK Council for International Student Affairs) – advice for international students on choosing a course of study.
The CSC is not responsible for the content of external sites.
Accepted Subject Areas: Commonwealth Shared Scholarship scheme is for taught Master’s courses only. All courses undertaken must be demonstrably relevant to the economic, social or technological development of the candidate’s home country.
About Scholarship: The Commonwealth Shared Scholarships, set up by the Department for International Development (DFID) in 1986, represents a unique partnership between the United Kingdom government and UK universities. More than 3,500 students from developing Commonwealth countries have been awarded Shared Scholarships.
UK universities have offered to support the scholarships by contributing the stipend for the students from their own resources, or those which the university has been able to generate from elsewhere.
Offered Since: 1986
Eligibility: To apply for Commonwealth Shared Scholarships, candidates must:
Be a citizen of or have been granted refugee status by an eligible Commonwealth country.
Be permanently resident in an eligible Commonwealth country.
Be available to start academic studies in the UK by the start of the UK academic year in September 2024.
By September 2024, hold a first degree of at least upper second-class (2:1) honours standard, or a lower second-class degree and a relevant postgraduate qualification (usually a Master’s degree).
Not have studied or worked for more than one (academic) year or more in a high-income country
Be unable to afford to study in the UK without this scholarship.
Have provided all supporting documentation in the required format.
The CSC aims to identify talented individuals who have the potential to make change. We are committed to a policy of equal opportunity and non-discrimination, and encourage applications from a diverse range of candidates.
Selection: Each participating UK university will conduct its own recruitment process to select a specified number of candidates to be awarded Commonwealth Shared Scholarships and put these forward to the CSC. The CSC will then confirm that these candidates meet the eligibility criteria for the programme.
Applications will be considered according to the following selection criteria:
Academic merit
Quality of research proposal
Potential impact on the development of the candidate’s come country
Number of Scholarships: More than 200 scholarships
Commonwealth Shared Scholarships value:
Each scholarship provides:
Approved airfare from the Scholar’s home country to the UK and return at the end of the award (the CSC will not reimburse the cost of fares for dependants, nor the cost of journeys made before the award is confirmed) – funded by the CSC.
Approved tuition fees: full fees are covered by agreement between the CSC and the UK university, and scholars are not liable to pay for any part of the tuition fee.
Stipend (living allowance) at the rate of £1,347 per month, or £1,652 per month for those at universities in the London metropolitan area (rates quoted at current levels) – paid and funded by the university.
Warm clothing allowance, where applicable – paid and funded by the university.
Thesis grant towards the cost of preparing a thesis or dissertation, where applicable – paid by the university, funded by the CSC.
Study travel grant towards the cost of study-related travel within the UK or overseas – paid by the university, funded by the CSC.
Contribution towards the cost of a mandatory tuberculosis (TB) test, where required for a visa application (receipts must be supplied) – paid by the university, funded by the CSC.
If a Scholar has children and is widowed, divorced, or a single parent, child allowance of child allowance of £576.61 per month for the first child, and £143 per month for the second and third child under the age of 16, if their children are living with them at the same address in the UK.
Duration of Commonwealth Shared Scholarships:
Scholarships are tenable for any approved course offered by a participating UK university.
Scholarships are to obtain one degree; funding will not be extended to enable candidates to complete a qualification in addition to or higher than that for which the selection was made.
Scholarships are made in respect of full-time study only and no other course of study may be undertaken at the same time.
Candidates must take the necessary steps to apply for admission to the preferred university. Many courses have strict admission deadlines and candidates should check admission requirements carefully when applying.
The CSC is unable to accept any applications or documentation not submitted via the online application system.
Applicants are advised to complete and submit applications as early as possible, as the online application system will be very busy in the days leading up to the application deadline.
Applicants must apply to study an approved Master’s course at a participating UK university.
Applicants can apply for more than one course and to more than one university, however they may only accept one offer of a Shared Scholarship. Note these scholarships are only for Master’s courses and not for undergraduate or PhD study.
Applicants must also apply and secure admission for the chosen university course in addition to applying for a Shared Scholarship. Please check with the chosen university for their specific advice on when to apply, admission requirements and rules for applying.
Applications will be shared with the universities who will nominate their chosen candidates to the CSC in March 2024.
Israel has used the October 7 “Al-Aqsa Flood” incursion to mount a genocidal assault on Gaza. The official narrative from Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, repeated faithfully by his imperialist backers, is that Hamas carried out an unexpected and unprecedentedly barbaric assault and must now be wiped out at whatever cost.
This turns truth on its head. As the World Socialist Web Site has repeatedly warned, ever since his government took office at the end of 2022, Netanyahu mounted provocation after provocation against the Palestinians aimed at inciting retaliation, as then occurred on October 7. Al-Aqsa Flood provided the casus belli for a pre-planned campaign of mass murder and ethnic cleansing of the Palestinians beginning with Gaza and then moving on to the West bank and including Israel’s 2 million Arab citizens.
Palestinians look for survivors following Israeli airstrike in Nusseirat refugee camp, Gaza Strip, October 31, 2023. [AP Photo/Doaa AlBaz]
Israel’s genocidal campaign has already claimed more than 14,000 lives—mostly children, women and the elderly. It has destroyed hospitals, schools and apartment blocks, while Israel’s refusal to allow food, fuel, electricity and even water to enter Gaza means that many more defenceless Palestinians will die a terrible death from starvation, thirst and disease.
But Israel’s entire narrative surrounding the events of October 7 has begun to collapse, with mounting evidence that Netanyahu’s government and Israel’s army and security services knew a military incursion was about to happen and that once it did take place, large numbers of Israeli casualties resulted from a massive military operation carried out by the Israel Defense Forces (IDF).
These revelations have been largely ignored by the world’s media, which has dutifully and endlessly repeated Israel’s claims that Hamas fighters committed horrific atrocities—including brutal kidnappings, babies being decapitated and burned and women raped—that claimed 1,400 lives. The gunmen, they said, had deliberately targeted the Supernova music festival killing hundreds of young people, and also slaughtered the residents of Kibbutzim.
Many of the Israeli families of those killed, injured and taken hostage on October 7—reflecting a widely held view that Netanyahu is responsible for the disaster and did nothing to prevent it—have called for an independent and international investigation, which the government has refused. They have demanded answers to two basic questions:
What did Israel’s military-intelligence apparatus know in advance about what Hamas had planned? And what happened over the weekend of October 7-8?
What did Israel know about the planned attack?
The official line on October 7, endlessly repeated, was that Israel’s infamous Mossad spy network had no inkling that such a large-scale attack, requiring months of planning, training and coordination among several Palestinian groups, including Hamas, Islamic Jihad and non-affiliated Palestinians, was in the offing.
The secret American military-intelligence base in Israel’s Negev desert just 20 miles from Gaza, “Site 512,” was likewise blindsided.
Neither did the authorities explain how its massive electronic border fence could have been breached with only rudimentary tools and without any sirens going off or army bases being alerted—meaning that the Middle East’s most sophisticated army supposedly took hours to arrive at the scene in a country no bigger than the US state of New Jersey.
Media commentary has largely ascribed Israel’s security failure to its focus on the West Bank. The Netanyahu government has promoted settler violence against the Palestinians and ultra-orthodox provocations at the Al-Aqsa Mosque that supposedly consumed the attention of the IDF and Mossad.
Historically, far from viewing Hamas as a threat, Netanyahu has bolstered it as a counterweight to the Fatah-dominated Palestinian Authority (PA). Israel has worked to cement divisions between the two rival Palestinian factions and prevent the establishment of a mini-Palestinian state made up of the West Bank and Gaza.
As an anonymous Israeli intelligence officer told TheWashington Post last month, “That’s what happens when you forget that all defense lines can eventually be breached and have been historically. That’s what happens when you underestimate your enemy.”
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu attends the weekly cabinet meeting at the prime minister's office in Jerusalem, Wednesday, Sept. 27, 2023. [AP Photo/Abir Sultan]
Netanyahu repeatedly denied having received any military-intelligence about a possible attack. On October 29, he tweeted that “under no circumstances and at no stage was Prime Minister Netanyahu warned about Hamas’ intending to go to war.”
Two days ago, his lies were exposed with the publication by Ha’aretz of letters written in March and again in July by the head of the research division at Military Intelligence, personally warning Netanyahu that the sociopolitical crisis rocking the country was encouraging Iran, Hezbollah and Hamas to risk action against the country, even simultaneously.
In March, Brigadier General Amit Sa’ar wrote, “We are seeing deliberation on whether to sit on the fence and let Israel continue to weaken itself, or to take initiative and worsen its situation”, and attached the intelligence reports on which his warnings were based.
He added, “To our understanding, this insight is the foundation of Hamas’ high motivation to execute attacks from the north at the present time, and it also spurs Iran to increase efforts by its proxies to advance attacks against Israel.”
When Defense Minister Yoav Gallant drew attention to this, Netanyahu promptly sacked him, reinstating him following massive protests.
Sa’ar sent Netanyahu another letter in July, just before the Knesset approved legislation granting the government powers to override the Supreme Court, saying, “The worsening crisis is intensifying the erosion of Israel’s image, worsening the damage to Israeli deterrence and increasing the probability of escalation.” IDF Chief of Staff Herzl Halevi tried to brief Netanyahu on the security situation but was refused an audience.
These are only the latest revelations refuting Netanyahu’s claims of ignorance of a planned attack by Hamas.
Just two days after the attack, on Monday October 9, Egypt exposed Netanyahu’s protestations that he had no foreknowledge. An Egyptian intelligence official told Associated Press that Cairo had repeatedly warned the Israeli authorities that “something big” was being planned from Gaza. He said, “We have warned them an explosion of the situation is coming, and very soon, and it would be big. But they underestimated such warnings.” He added that Israeli officials had played down the threat from Gaza, instead focusing on the West Bank. Netanyahu has denied receiving any such warning, denouncing the story as “fake news.”
Israel’s own soldiers also reportedly raised the alarm. But they were ignored and threatened. On November 18, speaking on a Channel 12 news programme, at least two female soldiers described how they had raised concerns for weeks beforehand about what they regarded as suspicious activity along the Gaza border. They told their commanders about “training, anomalies and preparations” near the border wall, telling Channel 12 they had seen “new people visiting farms around the border.”
Not only were their reports brushed aside, but the soldiers said they were threatened with court martial for raising concerns, “We were told that if we continue to harass on this issue, you will stand trial.” An officer told them, “Hamas are just a bunch of punks, they won’t do anything.”
Such threats suggest that, while the full extent of Hamas’s planned incursion may have been unclear, the Israeli authorities knew about a planned attack and allowed it to happen. Put more bluntly, they wanted an atrocity and so stood down their defence and rescue services. Furthermore, the Biden administration’s full-throated support for Israel—including its deployment of warships to the region the very next day—indicates that October 7 was seized on by US military and intelligence officials to activate war plans prepared long in advance.
What happened on October 7?
On October 7, under cover of thousands of rockets launched as a distraction, at least 1,500 Palestinians undertook what can only be described as a heroic suicide mission, breaching the fortified Erez Crossing point and several points in the electronic fence between Gaza and Israel. Their declared intention was to destroy Israel’s military division on Gaza’s border and to take hostages that could be traded for the approximately 5,300 Palestinian prisoners held in Israeli prisons—some 1,500 of whom were being held under administrative detention without charge or trial for an indefinite period.
They attacked the military base near the Erez Crossing and several military outposts, knocking out their technical equipment and disabling their communications systems, preventing the soldiers from reporting the attacks. In the ensuing battles, Palestinian fighters killed many soldiers, taking some as hostages, before moving on to the southern towns, villages and kibbutzim and to the Supernova music festival extended by one day to October 7 just five days earlier.
The site of a music festival near the border with the Gaza Strip is seen on Thursday, October 12, 2023. [AP Photo/Erik Marmor]
According to reports in the Israeli press, the IDF, “caught off guard,” were slow to respond to the desperate cries for help from people caught up in the attacks, enabling Hamas fighters and the other Palestinian groups to kill around 1,400 people and take 240 hostages, including soldiers, civilians, foreign nationals and one Palestinian citizen of Israel.
It took two weeks for this story to come apart.
On October 20, Ha’aretz released the names and locations of 683 Israelis killed during the Palestinian insurgency, or about half of the reported 1,400 death toll. Of these, 331 were soldiers and police officers, many of them female, with a further 13 rescue service members. (This number has since risen to 377 military and police personnel and 845 civilians for a revised down total of 1,222. The initial total included some of the dead Palestinians.) None of those listed were children under the age of three, repudiating all the lurid and mendacious claims about the slaughter, beheading, and in one instance even the cooking in an oven, of babies. Seven victims were reported as being between 4 and 7 years old, and nine between 10 and 17.
That so many (48 percent) of the incomplete list are Israeli combatants means that ferocious armed battles took place between the Israeli security forces and Palestinians. Some 1,500 Palestinians were reportedly killed, with none apparently captured alive. It took three days before the fighting stopped and the IDF regained control.
Numerous sources testify that a significant number of Israeli civilians lost their lives in the crossfire, or more likely because of the infamous Hannibal Directive formulated during Israel’s occupation of southern Lebanon in 1986. The Directive aims to prevent the capture of Israelis by enemy forces, even at the cost of their lives and implies that the IDF should kill Israelis rather than allow them to fall into the hands of Hamas.
Ha’aretz’s military correspondent Amos Harel detailed how the massive military base and Coordination of Government Activities in the [Occupied] Territories (COGAT) facility at the Erez Crossing, which functions as the nerve centre of Israel’s siege on Gaza, came under attack by Palestinian fighters. The unit’s deputy commander described how he and his tanks unit “fought inside the kibbutz, from house to house, with the tanks.” “We had no choice,” he concluded. What he didn’t say was that until recently, when they were redeployed to the West Bank, IDF soldiers were stationed at all kibbutzim.
With many of its soldiers killed or wounded, the unit’s commander was “compelled to call for an aerial strike against the base itself in order to repulse the terrorists.” IDF Apache helicopters were used repeatedly in the next days, killing not only Palestinian fighters but also Israeli army personnel and civilians. The helicopter strikes explain the significant damage to buildings, with many burnt out, and the large number of burnt-out cars, as well as several burned bodies, that the government had blamed on Palestinians armed with rifles and hand grenades—weapons that were incapable of causing that level or type of damage.
Yediot Aharonoth, an Israeli news outlet, noted in a report on the Apache squadrons that “the pilots realized that there was tremendous difficulty in distinguishing within the occupied outposts and settlements who was a terrorist and who was a soldier or civilian… The rate of fire against the thousands of terrorists was tremendous at first, and only at a certain point did the pilots begin to slow down the attacks and carefully select the targets.”
Yasmin Porat, a 44-year-old mother of three whose partner was killed, explains in a long interview with Kan public broadcaster, published on the Electronic Intifada, how, having fled the Supernova festival, she was captured and held hostage by Palestinian militants in Kibbutz Be’eri. She said she was well-treated, rebutting Israel’s claims of deliberate gross mistreatment and abuse by the Palestinian fighters, adding that the kidnappers treated her and other hostages “humanely,” in the belief they would be able to return safely to Gaza as they would be with their Israeli captives.
In the event, however, IDF soldiers fired not just on the Palestinians but also on hostages. She said, “They eliminated everyone, including the hostages. There was very, very heavy crossfire.” She added, “After insane crossfire, two tank shells were shot into the house. It’s a small kibbutz house, nothing big.”
Quique Kierszenbaum, reporting in The Guardian about his tour of Kibbutz Be’eri under the auspices of the Israeli Army’s propaganda unit, writes, “Building after building has been destroyed, whether in the Hamas assault or in the fighting that followed, nearby trees splintered and walls reduced to concrete rubble from where Israeli tanks blasted the Hamas militants where they were hiding. Floors collapsed on floors. Roof beams were tangled and exposed like rib cages.”
Witnesses also told journalists from the New York Times and The Economist about what took place at Kibbutz Be’eri and Kibbutz Nir Am. Essentially set up as defence posts years ago, all kibbutzim have their own armed defence guards. While focusing on what the Palestinians had done, their accounts also described initial battles between armed Palestinians and armed Israelis during which civilians were killed and other civilians taken captive.
Videos show Palestinians in shootouts with armed Israeli security forces, with unarmed Israelis taking cover in between. Other videos show fighters shooting toward houses and throwing grenades into fortified areas. Eyewitnesses have testified that grenades were thrown into bomb shelters, although it is not known who threw them. There have been several press reports of Israelis killed by friendly fire, while several Israelis have claimed they were fired upon by Israeli military and police.
Israeli military drives through the site of a music festival near the border with the Gaza Strip in southern Israel on October 12, 2023. [AP Photo/Ohad Zwigenberg]
Ha’aretz journalist Nir Hasson reported on October 20 his interview with a local resident of Be’eri named Tuval, who was away from the kibbutz when the attack took place but whose partner was killed. He wrote, “According to him, only on Monday night and only after the commanders in the field made difficult decisions—including shelling houses with all their occupants inside in order to eliminate the terrorists along with the hostages—did the IDF complete the takeover of the kibbutz. The price was terrible: at least 112 Be’eri people were killed. Others were kidnapped. Yesterday, 11 days after the massacre, the bodies of a mother and her son were discovered in one of the destroyed houses. It is believed that more bodies are still lying in the rubble.”
In the last few days, the Israeli police report into the attack on the Supernova music festival, where the largest number of deaths occurred—364 people, including 17 police officers—and where 40 people were taken hostage, found that contrary to Israeli government claims, the festival was not on Hamas’s list of targets. Hamas could not have planned to attack it, as the festival organisers switched to the site in the Western Negev desert only two days before, after the original location in southern Israel fell through. Palestinian fighters only found out about it by accident after the festival was then extended by a day at short notice. Most of the 4,400 attendees managed to escape before the attack took place.
Ha’aretz reported that police investigators found that an IDF helicopter opened fire on the attackers, hitting some people attending the festival. ABC News had earlier reported that an Israeli tank had headed to the site of the festival, while videos appeared to show IDF forces opening fire at Palestinian fighters through a crowd of unarmed civilians.
These eyewitness testimonies drive a horse and cart through the official Israeli narrative. They show that:
The IDF acted as brutal and trigger-happy mass murderers of both Palestinians and Israelis.
Many Israeli captives were still alive on the Monday, two days after the events of October 7.
Hostages were not only killed in the crossfire that took place between the IDF and Palestinian militia on the Saturday. Many were killed as a consequence of the IDF’s deliberate decision to attack the kibbutz with tank shells and other heavy weaponry at close quarters in the full knowledge that hostages and their captors were there.
The IDF, not the Palestinians, caused many of the Israeli civilian deaths that were used to justify Israel’s genocidal war on Gaza and the deployment of US warships to the Middle East. How many can only be confirmed by releasing the results of autopsies that would show the type of bullets used.
Finally, it explains why army spokesperson Daniel Hagari found that a “substantial” number of the hostages taken by Hamas are military officers.
Far from protecting Israeli civilians, the Netanyahu government and the IDF used them as cannon fodder in pursuit of a policy of Israeli expansionism and Jewish Supremacy.
Netanyahu has in part agreed to a temporary “operational pause” in its genocidal assault on Gaza, in return for Hamas releasing 50 hostages, to try and contain mounting anger within Israel over his responsibility for October 7. But there is no reason to believe this will work.
Throughout the Southeastern US, state residents seeking medical care are seeing a raft of hospital closures and attacks on health programs while healthcare workers face increasingly deteriorating conditions.
In Alabama, two local hospitals—Princeton Baptist Medical Center in Birmingham, and Shelby Baptist Medical Center in Alabaster—closed their programs for pregnancy and maternal care on October 25. Additionally, Monroe County Hospital is slated to close its labor and delivery unit in November.
Speaking with CBS 42, Dr. Elizabeth Sahlie, a general pediatrician at Simon Williamson Clinic Pediatrics located on the Princeton Baptist Medical Center in Birmingham, expressed concerns about the impact of eliminating obstetric services at these three Alabama hospitals. “That puts you at risk,” she said, adding, “Then if something, let’s say you go into pre-term labor and you’re that far away from the hospital, that’s a really dangerous situation for a woman.”
A recent report from March of Dimes indicates that a majority of patients that would seek out such services are largely poor and working class, with 27.9 percent of women in Alabama having no access to a birthing hospital within a 30-minute drive, in contrast to the national figure of 9.7 percent. The closest trek ranges between 60 and 90 minutes out. This becomes particularly challenging for those without reliable transportation, public or otherwise.
Moreover, a study recently published by the Alabama Board of Nursing indicates that 38,725 nurses intend to exit the profession over the next four years. Despite an influx of nurses entering the workforce and migrating from other states, the study anticipates a precipitous fall in the overall number of nurses in Alabama annually by 2027.
Since 2019, court records revealed that the University of Arkansas for Medical Sciences (UAMS) has initiated legal action against more than 8,000 patients in pursuit of unpaid medical bills. Within the Arkansas court system, UAMS is the second most prolific filer of debt collection lawsuits, surpassed only by the state tax office.
According to a 2021 US Census Bureau report, the median household income in Arkansas is $52,123 while average household income is $73,346. Currently, some 500,000, or 17 percent, of Arkansans live below the state’s poverty line. The poverty rate before the COVID-19 pandemic was 16.2 percent. This rate has exploded as a result of the pandemic, as federal and state government allowed the coronavirus to ravage the nation.
Notably, UAMS’s utilization of legal recourse has surged during the pandemic. While filing a meager 35 lawsuits in 2016, this number surged a hundred-fold in 2021.
In Georgia, Republican Governor Brian Kemp’s new health plan for low-income adults has enrolled only 1,343 people through the end of September, about three months after launching. The new health plan requires people to work to be qualified for coverage under Medicaid.
The state launched the Pathways plan in July just as it began a review of Medicaid eligibility following the end of the COVID-19 public health emergency in May. Federal law prohibited states from removing people from Medicaid during the three-year emergency.
The state previously said it delayed the reevaluations of 160,000 people who were no longer eligible for traditional Medicaid but could qualify for Pathways to help them try to maintain health coverage. However, observers have said they have detected little public outreach to target populations.
Thirty-nine states have expanded Medicaid eligibility to nearly all adults with incomes up to 138 percent of the federal poverty level, $20,120 annually for a single person and $41,400 for a family of four. North Carolina will become the 40th state to do so in December. None of those states require recipients to work to qualify.
Louisiana is grappling with an alarming increase in infant mortality rates, placing it at the 48th position among US states. Furthermore, data from the Annie E. Casey Foundation for 2021 revealed 35 percent of children have parents who lack stable employment, 27 percent of children live in poverty, and 11 percent of teenagers are either unengaged in school or unemployed, all surpassing national averages.
In Mississippi, Republican Governor Tate Reeves has said he remains opposed to Medicaid expansion and derisively calls the proposal “welfare expansion.” The governor’s Democratic challenger Brandon Presley, meanwhile, has pledged to make access to healthcare a priority in his campaign platform and has promised to expand Medicaid on “day one,” should he be sworn into office. This promise is belied by the fact that the Democratic Party failed to codify Roe v. Wade; has expanded detention centers for migrant children, which are notorious for failing to provide proper medical care, hygiene and hygiene products; and is preparing to make further cuts in social welfare programs.
Traffic passes the publicly owned Greenwood Leflore Hospital, in Greenwood, Miss., Friday, Oct. 21, 2022. The hospital closed its labor and delivery unit on Nov. 30, 2022. The closure means the area's women will need to travel about 45 minutes to give birth at a hospital, and without focused hospital support, the city's only OB/GYN clinic could struggle to provide maternity care. [AP Photo/Rogelio V. Solis]
According to the Center for Healthcare Quality and Payment Reform, 34 of Mississippi’s 74 rural hospitals are at risk of closure. The struggling hospitals cite major losses on uncompensated services rendered, or services provided to people without health insurance coverage. With resources being used by the poor and working class, emergency rooms by law cannot turn patients away, regardless of their coverage status, meaning that hospitals are providing care without financial compensation from the state and federal governments. Mississippi’s hospitals lose about $600 million on uncompensated care annually, which would be alleviated through the nationalization of medicine and health care.
Lastly, in Tennessee, the decision to close the Baptist Minor Medical Center in the city of Bartlett, Baptist Minor Medical Center in Memphis, and Baptist Minor Medical Center in Olive Branch was made on October 22 with the aim to “better serve” its patients, as stated by the hospital.
The strike by Kaiser Permanente workers in October was the largest-ever healthcare workers strike in the US. The strike by more than 85,000 health care workers, which could have crippled the private profiteers of the healthcare industry, was isolated to a three-day strike by the Coalition for Kaiser Permanente Unions (CKPU).
This capitulation of the unions to the diktats of Kaiser Permanente and the policies of the Biden administration, which is funding Israel’s genocide of the Palestinians with billions of dollars, is a warning for all healthcare workers.
Although the Kaiser strike did not have a physical presence in the southeastern US, healthcare workers are subject to the same exploitation, along with state and federal anti-democratic and discriminatory laws and policies.
A Palestinian woman mourns over the body of a child as she sits by dozens of bodies of Palestinians murdered by Israeli airstrikes on Jabaliya refugee camp, at the Indonesian Hospital in the northern Gaza Strip on Saturday, November 18, 2023. [AP Photo/Ahmed Alarini]
In the hours leading up to Friday morning’s 7:00 a.m. planned commencement of a four-day pause in fighting, Israeli air and ground forces intensified their vicious bombardment of the Gaza Strip. Attacks on hospitals and dozens of residential buildings continued, underscoring just how tenuous the brief lull in the Israeli regime’s genocidal onslaught on the Palestinians is.
The agreement has more the character of a pause for Israel to reload its weapons for the next stage in its ethnic cleansing of the enclave than with any effort to alleviate the humanitarian catastrophe and bring an end to the war. Initially set to begin Thursday but delayed without explanation, the deal is supposed to see 50 Israeli hostages released by Hamas in exchange for the freeing of 150 Palestinian prisoners in Israeli custody.
Israeli warplanes will continue to fly over northern Gaza, apart from a six-hour window between 10:00 a.m. and 4:00 p.m. each day but are supposed to refrain from flying over southern Gaza for the four-day period. The agreement says that some 200 aid trucks and four fuel trucks will enter Gaza each day, less than half of the 500 trucks that supplied the enclave daily prior to the beginning of Israel’s bombardment.
One of the main targets of Israeli Defence Forces (IDF) attacks Thursday was the Indonesian Hospital in the north of the Gaza Strip, where some 200 patients and 10 medical staff are effectively trapped. Strikes took place on the hospital’s main gates and power generator.
Dr. Marwan Sultan, medical director of the Indonesian Hospital, told the BBC during the day that the facility was under “heavy fire” from Israeli tanks. As the day progressed, he reported that shells were fired into the building’s third floor. “We miraculously survived certain death—shrapnel fell on us and the ceiling is damaged,” he said.
Israeli forces also detained the medical director of Al-Shifa Hospital, Mohamed Abu Salmiya, after presenting spurious allegations about the discovery of an underground Hamas tunnel powered by the hospital’s electricity. The intensified bombardment of the Indonesian Hospital was similarly justified with unsubstantiated assertions about a “terror infrastructure” under the building.
The systematic targeting of hospitals is just one among many war crimes under international law perpetrated by the ultra-right government led by Benjamin Netanyahu with the unrestrained support of the imperialist powers. Another is the collective punishment meted out to Gaza’s 2.3 million people by cutting off electricity, water and fuel following the 7 October mass uprising led by Hamas against 75 years of brutal Israeli oppression.
Unrelenting air strikes continued across Gaza throughout Thursday. The Gaza Health Ministry reported the deaths of 27 people at a school run by the United Nations Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA) in the Jabaliya refugee camp. The Abu Hussein School was hosting displaced Palestinians forced from their homes by the Israeli assault on Gaza. Over a dozen civilians were also killed in various strikes in northern Gaza and the southern city of Khan Younis, where civilians have been ordered by the IDF to flee. The Israeli military stated it had targeted “300 Hamas targets” on Thursday alone. Violence also continued in the West Bank, where a 12-year-old boy shot by Israeli soldiers became the 52nd child and 229th Palestinian fatality since 7 October.
Summing up the horrendous toll extracted by over six weeks of sustained Israeli bombardment, Gaza’s Government Media Office reported an increase of the civilian death toll since October 7 to 14,854, including more than 6,100 children. Thursday’s report also noted that over 7,000 Palestinians are missing, either because they are buried under the rubble, on the road fleeing their homes or their fate is “unknown.” Some 36,000 Palestinians have been injured, 75 percent of them women and children.
Underscoring the indiscriminate character of Israel’s bombing campaign, the figures confirmed the deaths of 207 medical workers and at least 65 journalists. In a bombing on Sheikh Nasser neighbourhood in eastern Khan Younis Thursday that killed five, a Reuters photo journalist was injured, according to the Palestinian Wafa news agency.
On Israel’s northern border with Lebanon, exchanges of fire also intensified. Hizbollah reportedly fired some 80 rockets and missiles into northern Israel Thursday, one of the largest numbers during a single day since 7 October. The IDF reported Israeli air strikes late Thursday evening. On Wednesday, an Israeli air strike killed five Hizbollah members, including Abbas Raad, son of the head of Hizbollah’s Loyalty to the Resistance group in the Lebanese parliament, Mohammed Raad.
Under these conditions, the fate of the four-day pause hangs in the balance. Qatar, which played the leading role in mediating the agreement with support from the US, has only confirmed the details for hostage releases on Friday. At 4:00 p.m., 13 Israeli hostages are supposed to be handed over to the Red Cross in Gaza, while 39 Palestinians are expected to be released from Israeli detention. Asked briefly on Thursday by a reporter to comment on the agreement, US President Joseph Biden replied that he would not give an update on the deal “until it is done.”
On top of the uncertainty surrounding hostage exchanges after Friday, the commitment by Israel to allow 200 aid trucks into Gaza could also prove a dead letter. The Times of Israel reported that senior Biden administration officials believe the Rafah border crossing cannot accommodate this level of aid, and Israel has refused to reopen its Kerem Shalom crossing into Gaza. The report continued that El-Arish airport, the only facility in Egypt accepting aid for ground transportation into Gaza, has just one runway and limited parking facilities, making it logistically impossible to supply adequate aid for Gaza’s population through Rafah alone.
Israel’s hardline stance on this issue is motivated by its explicitly declared intention to drive a large portion, if not the entirety, of the Palestinian population out of Gaza and into the Sinai Desert. A leaked document from the Intelligence Ministry last month confirmed such plans exist. Earlier this month Foreign Minister Eli Cohen vowed that Kerem Shalom, which was the main commercial route into Gaza prior to 7 October, would never be reopened. “There won’t be a connection of goods, and there won’t be a connection of people, including workers,” Cohen said when he made the announcement on 13 November.
The Netanyahu government’s intention to further escalate the war following the pause, however long it lasts, was laid out Thursday by Defence Minister Yoav Gallant. The pause, according to Gallant, is a “brief respite … at the end of which the fighting will continue intensely.” Gallant, who infamously labelled Palestinians “human animals” at the outset of the war, added, “At least another two months of fighting is expected.” For his part, military spokesman Daniel Hagari remarked, “In the coming days, we will focus on planning and completing the preparations for the next stages of combat.”
US imperialism and its European allies have emboldened the Israeli government in its genocidal policy throughout the conflict. This support will continue throughout any pause in the fighting, with arms and military equipment pouring in on US transport planes from the US Ramstein Air Base in Germany and on ships passing through the Mediterranean.
The unconditional backing given to the IDF’s onslaught by Washington takes place in the context of a rapidly developing third world war in which the entire Middle East is viewed as a critical front. Biden has sent a nuclear-capable submarine and two aircraft carrier battlegroups to the region to menace Iran, which Washington sees as a major obstacle to the consolidation of its regional hegemony. The willingness of the imperialist powers to accept the brutal slaughter in Gaza underscores that in the looming war with Iran, not to mention the already raging US-NATO war with Russia in Ukraine aimed at subjugating Russia to a semi-colonial status, there is no limit to the number of human lives they intend to sacrifice in pursuit of their geostrategic and economic interests.
