November 6

International Day for Preventing the Exploitation of the Environment in War and Armed Conflict

On 5 November 2001, the UN General Assembly declared 6 November of each year as the International Day for Preventing the Exploitation of the Environment in War and Armed Conflict (A/RES/56/4).

Though mankind has always counted its war casualties in terms of dead and wounded soldiers and civilians, destroyed cities and livelihoods, the environment has often remained the unpublicized victim of war.Water wells have been polluted, crops torched, forests cut down, soils poisoned, and animals killed to gain military advantage.

Furthermore, the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) has found that over the last 60 years, at least 40 percent of all internal conflicts have been linked to the exploitation of natural resources, whether high-value resources such as timber, diamonds, gold and oil, or scarce resources such as fertile land and water. Conflicts involving natural resources have also been found to be twice as likely to relapse.

The United Nations attaches great importance to ensuring that action on the environment is part of conflict prevention, peacekeeping and peacebuilding strategies - because there can be no durable peace if the natural resources that sustain livelihoods and ecosystems are destroyed. Six United Nations agencies and departments, coordinated by the UN Framework Team for Preventive Action, have partnered with the European Union (EU) to help countries reduce tensions over natural resource and use environmental management for peacebuilding and conflict prevention.

Events

355 – Roman Emperor Constantius II promotes his cousin Julian to the rank of Caesar, entrusting him with the government of the Prefecture of the Gauls.
1528 – Shipwrecked Spanish conquistador Álvar Núñez Cabeza de Vaca becomes the first known European to set foot in Texas.
1632 – Thirty years war: Battle of Lützen is fought, the Swedes are victorious but the King of Sweden, Gustavus Adolphus dies in the battle.
1789 – Pope Pius VI appoints Father John Carroll as the first Catholic bishop in the United States.
1844 – The first constitution of the Dominican Republic is adopted.
1856 – Scenes of Clerical Life, the first work of fiction by the author later known as George Eliot, is submitted for publication.
1861 – American Civil War: Jefferson Davis is elected president of the Confederate States of America.
1865 – American Civil War: CSS Shenandoah is the last Confederate combat unit to surrender after circumnavigating the globe on a cruise on which it sank or captured 37 vessels.
1869 – In New Brunswick, New Jersey, Rutgers College defeats Princeton University (then known as the College of New Jersey), 6-4, in the first official intercollegiate American football game.
1913 – Mohandas Gandhi is arrested while leading a march of Indian miners in South Africa.
1917 – World War I: Third Battle of Ypres ends: After three months of fierce fighting, Canadian forces take Passchendaele in Belgium.
1918 – The Second Polish Republic is proclaimed in Poland.
1934 – Memphis, Tennessee becomes the first major city to join the Tennessee Valley Authority.
1935 – Edwin Armstrong presents his paper "A Method of Reducing Disturbances in Radio Signaling by a System of Frequency Modulation" to the New York section of the Institute of Radio Engineers.
1935 – First flight of the Hawker Hurricane.
1935 – Parker Brothers acquires the forerunner patents for MONOPOLY from Elizabeth Magie.
1939 – World War II: Sonderaktion Krakau takes place.
1941 – World War II: Soviet leader Joseph Stalin addresses the Soviet Union for only the second time during his three-decade rule. He states that even though 350,000 troops were killed in German attacks so far, the Germans had lost 4.5 million soldiers and that Soviet victory was near.
1942 – World War II: Carlson's patrol during the Guadalcanal Campaign begins.
1943 – World War II: the Soviet Red Army recaptures Kiev. Before withdrawing, the Germans destroy most of the city's ancient buildings.
1944 – Plutonium is first produced at the Hanford Atomic Facility and subsequently used in the Fat Man atomic bomb dropped on Nagasaki, Japan.
1947 – Meet the Press makes its television debut (the show went to a weekly schedule on September 12, 1948).
1948 – Deputy commander-in-chief of the Eastern China Field Army General Su Yu launched a massive offensive toward Xuzhou, defended by seven different armies under the Suppression General Headquarter of Xuzhou Garrison, the Huaihai Campaign, the largest operational campaign of the Chinese Civil War begins.
1962 – Apartheid: The United Nations General Assembly passes a resolution condemning South Africa's racist apartheid policies and calls for all UN member states to cease military and economic relations with the nation.
1963 – Vietnam War: Following the November 1 coup and execution of President Ngo Dinh Diem, coup leader General Duong Van Minh takes over leadership of South Vietnam.
1965 – Cuba and the United States formally agree to begin an airlift for Cubans who want to go to the United States. By 1971, 250,000 Cubans made use of this program.
1971 – The United States Atomic Energy Commission tests the largest U.S. underground hydrogen bomb, code-named Cannikin, on Amchitka Island in the Aleutians.
1975 – Green March begins: 300,000 unarmed Moroccans converge on the southern city of Tarfaya and wait for a signal from King Hassan II of Morocco to cross into Western Sahara.
1977 – The Kelly Barnes Dam, located above Toccoa Falls Bible College near Toccoa, Georgia, fails, killing 39.
1985 – In Colombia, leftist guerrillas of the 19th of April Movement seize control of the Palace of Justice in Bogotá, eventually killing 115 people, 11 of them Supreme Court justices.
1986 – Sumburgh disaster – A British International Helicopters Boeing 234LR Chinook crashes 2.5 miles east of Sumburgh Airport killing 45 people. It is the deadliest civilian helicopter crash on record.
1995 – The Rova of Antananarivo, home of the sovereigns of Madagascar from the 16th to 19th centuries, is destroyed by fire.
1999 – Australians vote to keep the Head of the Commonwealth as their head of state in the Australian republic referendum.
2004 – An express train collides with a stationary car near the village of Ufton Nervet, England, killing 7 and injuring 150.
2005 – The Evansville Tornado of November 2005 kills 25 in Northwestern Kentucky and Southwestern Indiana.

Holidays and observances

Christian Feast Day:
Illtud
Leonard of Noblac
Winnoc
November 6 (Eastern Orthodox liturgics)
Eid ul Adha (2011), Islamic holiday, observed by Muslims worldwide
Constitution Day (Dominican Republic, 1884)
Constitution Day (Tajikistan, 1994)
Constitution Day (Tatarstan, 1992)
Finnish Swedish Heritage Day, a flag day (Finland)
Green March (Morocco)
Gustavus Adolphus Day, death of King Gustavus Adolphus of Sweden and official flag day (Sweden)

For details, contact Datacentre