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
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