China’s youth compete for stable gov’t jobs in unstable economic times | Business and Economy News

A good result on China’s annual national civil service exam is a requirement for any Chinese candidate who wants to be considered for the tens of thousands of vacant civil service jobs that the government seeks to fill every year.

Many of the vacant positions are reserved for recent Chinese graduates.

When 22-year-old recent graduate Du Xin sat down for the exam in December last year at a test centre in the city of Shijiazhuang in China’s Hebei province, she had been studying vigorously for six months.

Some applicants even hire tutors to prepare them for the exam.

Candidates are tested broadly on their general knowledge and analytical skills while in more recent years they have also been tested on their grasp of “Xi thought” – Chinese President Xi Jinping’s ideology and vision for China.

Despite her months of preparation, Du knew that the odds that her test result would bring her closer to a government job were slim.

As she began the exam, so, too, did millions of other Chinese youths across hundreds of Chinese cities.

“The competition is fierce,” Du told Al Jazeera.

That year the chance of securing a civil service position was 70 to one.

A candidate makes last-minute preparations to sit for the Chinese civil service examinations, which nationwide, millions of candidates sit to qualify for thousands of job vacancies in the government, in Hefei, east China’s Anhui province in 2011 [File: AFP]

Therefore, Du was surprised and thrilled when she learned that she did well on the exam and subsequently landed a job as an organiser at the local office of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) in Shijiazhuang.

This year, the competition looked to be even more fierce as the number of candidates sitting down for the exam at the end of November surpassed three million for the first time.

The number of vacant government positions has not kept up, lowering the odds of securing a job like Du’s from 70 to 1 to 77 to 1, according to the state-run Global Times.

Du is not surprised by the high number of applicants.

“I think a lot of young people in China really want a stable job right now,” she said.

This picture taken on November 24, 2013 shows a group of candidates arriving for China's national civil service exam in a university in Nanjing, east China's Jiangsu province. More than one million people took China's national civil service exam on November 24, officials said, but faced huge odds against clinching one of the few government jobs available. CHINA OUT AFP PHOTO (Photo by AFP)
Candidates prepare to take China’s national civil service exam in a university in Nanjing, east China’s Jiangsu province, in 2013 [File: AFP]

Job security is an ‘iron rice bowl’

The appeal of stable employment was what drew Du to the civil service exam last year at a time of economic turmoil in China.

“I felt a bit lost after I finished my graduate studies, I didn’t know what I wanted to do,” she told Al Jazeera. “But I knew I wanted a job where I could feel secure and have free time, and that made me interested in government work.”

Although employment in China’s civil service rarely pays as well as comparable employment in the Chinese private sector, there are other benefits. Civil servants usually have access to better medical insurance, a preferential pension plan, consistent bonus pay-outs and secure lifetime employment.

The security that comes with a public position has given rise to the nickname, “iron rice bowl”.

Iron rice bowls are coveted by some traditional Chinese parents for their children – not just for stability but because some see obtaining such jobs as a recognition of excellence by the state.

Candidates queueing to take the national examination for admissions to the civil service in Wuhan in China’s central Hubei province in 2021 [File: AFP]

An important aspect of life as a civil servant for Du is the working hours.

“I work from 9am to 5pm, and I don’t have to work on weekends,” Du said.

Many of Du’s friends in the private sector work the 996 system – 9am to 9pm, 6 days a week.

“Compared to them, I have a lot more free time to enjoy my hobbies,” she said.

Yang Jiang was also not surprised by the record number of applicants for China’s civil service exam this year.

Jiang is a scholar of China’s economic policies and a senior researcher at the Danish Institute for International Studies.

The number of applicants has been growing quickly in recent years, and according to Jiang, one reason is the equally high number of Chinese graduates entering the job market.

In 2023 alone, almost 11.6 million Chinese finished their studies, the highest number ever.

But the overarching reason for the high number of civil service exam applicants is the Chinese economy, Jiang told Al Jazeera.

“The economic situation is uncertain in China,” she said.

Candidates arrive for China’s national civil service exam in a university in Nanjing, east China’s Jiangsu province, in 2013 [File: AFP]

The Chinese economy has been struggling to reach the growth rates of earlier years, the housing market is in the deepest slump in decades and foreign direct investment struck a deficit in the July-September period of 2023 for the first time recorded.

For Chinese graduates, circumstances look particularly grim: youth unemployment hit a record high of 21.3 percent in June before the authorities stopped publishing the numbers.

“The private sector in particular has seen a lot of layoffs in the economic downturn,” Jiang explained.

“That has naturally made more Chinese graduates look towards the public sector for the sort of job security that is currently missing in the private sector,” she said.

‘They can’t make us disappear’

Like Du, 23-year-old Chris Liao from Guangdong province in southern China graduated last year with a master’s degree in public administration. He also signed up for the civil service exam.

“I didn’t make it past the written exam,” he told Al Jazeera.

Afterwards, Liao was unable to find a job within his field of study, forcing him to work as a cook for a while before he moved back with his parents outside Guangzhou, the largest metropolis in Guangdong.

He is now among the millions of unemployed young people in China.

“I feel like life got really difficult when COVID hit and ever since it hasn’t stopped getting difficult,” he explained.

Liao believes that the government’s COVID-19 strategy is the cause of many of the economic problems plaguing China today.

“So it is the government’s responsibility to do more to make the situation better,” he said.

According to observers, the large number of unemployed youth in China’s major cities is a significant cause for concern for the party-state.

One Communist organisation in Liao’s Guangzhou even presented a plan in March about sending unemployed youths to the countryside to foster rural development.

Such a plan hearkens back to Chairman Mao Zedong’s Cultural Revolution of the 1960s and 1970s during which time millions of urban youths were sent to the countryside in a period of political and social upheaval that caused the deaths of at least two million people.

In January, President Xi also spoke about Chinese youths “revitalising” the countryside.

Liao does not believe that such plans are realistic in modern times, however.

“They can’t make us disappear into the countryside,” he said.

“There are too many of us, and we are growing in number.”

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Israeli air attack on residential home in Rafah kills four Palestinians | Israel-Palestine conflict News

Israeli warplanes have bombed a house belonging to the Shehadeh family in the Brazil neighbourhood in the Rafah governorate, south of the Gaza Strip.

Four people were killed in the attack on Thursday, and dozens of others wounded. At least 15 people remain missing under the rubble.

The wounded were transferred to the Abu Youssef Al Najjar Hospital and the Kuwaiti Specialty Hospital in Rafah.

The house, which belonged to Abdullah Shehadeh, a doctor, sheltered dozens of displaced people.

People in the neighbourhood, alongside the civil defence crews, dug through the wreckage with simple tools and their bare hands, in an attempt to retrieve the bodies of those killed that remained under the rubble.

In two separate attacks on the Abu Dabaa and Ashour family homes in Rafah, the number of people killed from the aerial bombardment increased to 25.

The attacks came on the same night when communication networks were cut off once again by Israeli forces, the fifth time since October 7.

In a statement, the government media office in Gaza announced the Israeli policy as a “deliberate act”.

“Cutting off communications and the internet means that Palestinians will face life-threatening disasters, as there will be many killed and wounded people [in Israeli attacks] that no one will be able to reach,” the media office said. “Thus, the number of victims killed will increase.”

More than 280 Palestinians and about 800 others were injured on Thursday, as air raids and artillery shelling continued throughout the Gaza Strip, especially in the southern city of Khan Younis, northern Gaza, and the neighbourhoods east of Gaza City.

Since the beginning of the Israeli offensive on the coastal territory, at least 18,797 people have been killed, and more than 50,000 wounded, according to Palestinian authorities. Some 7,780 Palestinians remain missing and are presumed dead under the rubble of their own homes.

More than 253,000 housing units have been partially damaged by the ongoing bombing, and more than 52,000 housing units were completely demolished by the Israeli air attacks or have become uninhabitable.

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Israeli army says it mistakenly killed three captives held in Gaza | Israel-Palestine conflict News

The captives were killed during combat with Palestinian fighters after they were erroneously identified as a threat.

The Israeli army has killed three captives held by Palestinian armed groups in Gaza after “mistakenly” identifying them as a threat, according to Israeli military officials.

The military said on Friday that the captives were killed during combat with Palestinian groups in Gaza and expressed its condolences to the families while saying there would be “full transparency” in the investigation into the incident, which is “under review”.

“During combat in Shujayea, the [Israeli army] mistakenly identified three Israeli hostages as a threat. As a result, the troops fired toward them and they were killed,” the army said in a statement.

“The [Israeli army] began reviewing the incident immediately … Immediate lessons from the event have been learned, which have been passed on to all [Israeli army] troops in the field,” it added, expressing “deep remorse over the tragic incident”.

The hostages were identified as three young men who had been abducted from Israeli communities during the Hamas attack on October 7 – 28-year-old Yotam Haim, 25-year-old Samer Al-Talalka and 26-year-old Alon Shamriz.

The army’s chief spokesman, Daniel Hagari, said Israeli troops found the hostages and erroneously identified them as a threat. He said it was believed that the three had either fled their captors or been abandoned.

Israeli troops have engaged in fierce battles with Palestinian fighters in the area in recent days.

About 250 captives were taken into Gaza by Palestinian groups during the October 7 attack on southern Israel, which killed around 1,200 people, according to Israeli authorities.

Israel’s war on Gaza has killed more than 18,700 Palestinians, according to Gaza’s Health Ministry, most of them women and children. Thousands more are missing and trapped beneath the rubble.

The Israeli government has repeatedly stated that bringing home all of the hostages is one of its principal aims in the war.

To date, 110 of the captives have been freed, mostly during a seven-day truce last month in exchange for Palestinians held in Israeli jails.

Israel has also repatriated eight bodies, including on Friday those of dual Israeli-French national Elia Toledano, 28, abducted from an electronic music festival, and two 19-year-old soldiers.

The deaths were announced as US National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan said the US and Israel were discussing a timetable for scaling back the offensive against Hamas, even though they agree the overall fight will take months.

Sullivan also met with Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas to discuss the besieged enclave’s postwar future.

US President Joe Biden’s administration has expressed unease over Israel’s failure to reduce civilian casualties and its plans for the future of Gaza, but the White House continues to offer wholehearted support for Israel with weapons shipments and diplomatic backing.

Israeli air raids and shelling continued Friday, including in the southern city of Rafah, part of the shrinking areas of tiny, densely populated Gaza to which Palestinian civilians had been told by Israel to evacuate.

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Israeli strike kills Al Jazeera cameraman, injures Gaza bureau chief | Israel-Palestine conflict News

NewsFeed

An Al Jazeera journalist was killed and another injured by Israeli missiles in southern Gaza. Cameraman Samer Abudaqa, who had been critically injured, died after paramedics were prevented from rescuing him. Gaza bureau chief Wael al-Dahdouh was wounded in the same strike. The network deems this incident a deliberate attempt to target its correspondents and their families in the Gaza Strip.

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Al Jazeera condemns Israeli forces killing of cameraman Samer Abu Daqqa | Israel-Palestine conflict News

Media network says it holds Israel accountable for systematically targeting and killing journalists and their families.

Al Jazeera Media Network condemns in the strongest terms the Israeli drone attack on a Gaza school that resulted in the killing of cameraman Samer Abu Daqqa.

The Network holds Israel accountable for systematically targeting and killing Al Jazeera journalists and their families.

In today’s bombing in Khan Younis, Israeli drones fired missiles at a school where civilians sought refuge, resulting in indiscriminate casualties.

Following Samer’s injury, he was left to bleed to death for over 5 hours, as Israeli forces prevented ambulances and rescue workers from reaching him, denying the much-needed emergency treatment.

Al Jazeera Media Network extends its sincere condolences to the family in Gaza and in Belgium of the late colleague Samer Abu Daqqa.

With the killing of Samer Abu Daqqa number of journalists and media workers killed in Gaza reached over 90.

Al Jazeera urges the international community, media freedom organisations, and the International Criminal Court to take immediate action to hold the Israeli government and military accountable for these acts of carnage and crimes against humanity.

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Israel to reopen Karen Abu Salem to allow humanitarian aid into Gaza | Israel-Palestine conflict News

Announcement comes as national security spokesman Jake Sullivan visits the region amid growing international isolation.

Israeli authorities have announced the temporary reopening of the Karem Abu Salem crossing with Gaza, called Kerem Shalom by Israel, acquiescing to US calls to allow more humanitarian aid into the strip as fighting grinds on.

In a statement on Friday, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s office said that the country’s cabinet had approved the “temporary” measure, which US officials hailed as a positive step.

“The cabinet’s decision determines that only humanitarian aid arriving from Egypt will be transferred into the Gaza Strip this way,” the statement said.

For the last two months, the Rafah crossing with Egypt has been the only point of entry into the strip, where a trickle of assistance has done little to address a humanitarian crisis driven by an Israeli assault that has killed more than 18,000 people and displaced 80 percent of all residents.

As Israel’s campaign in Gaza has continued, the United Nations and other world bodies have warned of severe shortages of food, clean water and medicines.

UN agencies say that as the bombardment has continued, it has become impossible to distribute aid outside Rafah, where the population has been swollen to approximately one million with hundreds of thousands of displaced people coming from areas further north.

The decision comes one day after White House National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan met Israeli officials to discuss the timeframe and style of Israel’s military operations in Gaza, as Israel and its US ally come under growing international pressure to bring the fighting to an end.

“It’s a significant concession, the Israelis would say, because right at the outset of this war Israel said there’ll be no further contact, no further links between Gaza and Israel, while they’re now having to open up that Kerem Shalom crossing for goods under US pressure so that Israel can meet its agreement of [letting in] 200 trucks of aid a day,” Al Jazeera’s Bernard Smith reported from Tel Aviv.

“And as an indication, before the war started, there were 500 trucks a day going into Gaza, when there was much less need for emergency aid.”

“President [Joe] Biden raised this issue in recent phone calls with Prime Minister Netanyahu, and it was an important topic of discussion during my visit to Israel over the past two days,” Sullivan said in a statement on Friday, calling the opening a “significant step”.

Sullivan also met on Friday President Mahmoud Abbas, who leads the Palestinian Authority in the occupied West Bank, to discuss the future of the PA and increasing violence against Palestinians by Israeli settlers.

The official Palestinian news agency Wafa reported that Abbas told Sullivan that the US must “intervene to force Israel to stop its aggression against our people in the West Bank, including occupied Jerusalem”.

The US has suggested that the PA could take control of the Gaza Strip in the aftermath of the Israel-Hamas war, but Abbas and the PA are highly unpopular among the Palestinian population due to the policy of security coordination with Israel.

Many Palestinians see the policy as a form of complicity in Israel’s occupation.

Reporting from the city of Jenin in the occupied West Bank, Al Jazeera correspondent Charles Stratford also noted that many Palestinians have little trust in the words of US officials.

“You speak to any Palestinian on the ground here and there is absolutely zero trust in any kind of rhetoric, any kind of statement, that is coming out from the US administration, whether it be Jake Sullivan or Joe Biden. There is deep, deep, distrust,” said Stratford.

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Two Al Jazeera journalists wounded in Israeli attack in southern Gaza | Israel-Palestine conflict News

Two Al Jazeera Arabic journalists have been wounded while covering an Israeli attack on a school in Khan Younis, southern Gaza.

Wael Dahdouh, Gaza bureau chief for Al Jazeera Arabic, and cameraperson Samer Abudaqa were covering an earlier air strike at Farhana school in Khan Younis when they were wounded on Friday by shrapnel from an Israeli missile attack.

Dahdouh was hit by shrapnel on his upper arm, and was transferred to Nasser Hospital with minor injuries.

Abudaqa sustained shrapnel injuries and remained near the scene of the incident for about two hours, as paramedics were unable to reach the site due to Israeli fire, according to Al Jazeera correspondent Tareq Abu Azzoum.

Witnesses said there was heavy shelling in the area around the school.

The ambulance had to receive prior “approval” from Israeli forces before it could reach Abudaqa, Abu Azzoum reported from Rafah.

His medical condition remains unclear at this time.

According to Al Jazeera’s Wael Dahdouh, who was also injured in the attack, Abudaqa was “critically injured”, Abu Azzoum added.

Many Palestinians from the central and northern parts of Gaza have sought shelter in Khan Younis since the war began in October. Many have now been pushed further south towards the strip’s southernmost city of Rafah after Israel intensified its military operations in Khan Younis.

The attack comes amid violent clashes between Palestinian fighters and the Israeli army in locations across Gaza. Residents reported fighting in Shejaya, Sheikh Radwan, Zeitoun, Tuffah, and Beit Hanoun in north Gaza, east of Maghazi in central Gaza and in the centre and northern fringes of Khan Younis, according to the Reuters news service.

In late October, Wael Dahdouh lost four of his family members in an Israeli air raid.

His family had been seeking refuge in Nuseirat camp in the centre of Gaza when their home was bombed by Israeli forces, killing his wife, Um Hamza, his 15-year-old son, Mahmoud, his seven-year-old daughter, Sham, and his grandson, Adam, who died in hospital hours later.

“Despite all the difficulties, despite the death of his family, he rebounded within minutes to do his job again. And now, Wael is the victim,” said Al Jazeera’s senior political analyst Marwan Bishara.

The International Federation of Journalists (IFJ) said it was “shocked” at the attack.

“We condemn the attack and reiterate our demand that journalists’ lives must be safeguarded,” it said in a post on X.

An IFJ report published last week found that 72 percent of journalists who died on the job this year were killed in the Gaza war.

‘A professional, strong team’

The two journalists have worked together with Al Jazeera Arabic since before the war.

“[Samer] and Wael make up a very professional, strong team on the ground, documenting everything and bringing all the facts and live pictures of what the Palestinian people have been going through,” Hani Mahmoud said.

“But particularly with this war, given its intensity in scale and magnitude and the sheer amount of destruction, they have been at the forefront of covering every little detail that one might have forgotten about,” he added.

Jodie Ginsberg, the president of the Committee to Protect Journalists, said Palestinian journalists in Gaza felt abandoned by the international community.

“The role of journalists in such a situation is absolutely vital – particularly in Gaza where we’ve seen the kinds of institutions that traditionally also help with the kinds of documentation about the impact, like the UN officials, have left – so we’re really only left with the Gazan journalists doing this very important documentation work,” she told Al Jazeera.

“The international governments’ failure to push for an end to this conflict is increasingly creating a real sense of abandonment amongst the community and particularly amongst the journalist community in Palestine and the region,” Ginsberg said.



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Indigenous advocates reject Chile’s new draft constitution ahead of vote | Elections News

For more than a decade, architect Julio Ñanco Antilef has campaigned to rewrite Chile’s constitution, a relic from when General Augusto Pinochet ruled the country as a military dictator.

But now, as Chile prepares to vote on a new draft, Ñanco Antilef finds himself in a paradoxical position: hoping to keep the old version in place.

“It’s not that we are defending Pinochet’s constitution. It’s just that this proposal is worse,” he told Al Jazeera in a recent interview.

A member of the Democratic Revolution party, Ñanco Antilef was one of the few left-wing representatives to participate in the Constitutional Council that drafted the new version, which is set to go before voters on Sunday.

Rather, it was Chile’s far-right Republican Party that led the drafting process, holding 22 of the council’s 50 seats.

The result, critics say, is a draft that favours right-wing priorities at the expense of historically marginalised groups, including Chile’s Indigenous peoples.

“It is tied to a business model and favours individual interests rather than collective ones,” said Ñanco Antilef, himself of Indigenous Mapuche descent.

Now, he and other Indigenous Chileans are pushing for voters to reject the draft constitution, even if that means the country will be stuck with the Pinochet-era version for the foreseeable future.

“We are 13 percent of the population,” said Alihuen Antileo Navarette, a Mapuche lawyer elected to represent Chile’s Indigenous peoples on the council.

He argues the draft constitution deliberately “excludes” Indigenous voices from government.

“The text does not ensure that we have institutional representation, neither in Congress nor in the Senate, and it ignores our historical demands to respect our ancestral territories,” Antileo said.

Chilean President Gabriel Boric holds up a copy of the latest draft constitution, presented to him by Constitutional Council President Beatriz Hevia [File: Esteban Felix/AP Photo]

A history of inequality

Sunday’s referendum will be the second time in as many years that Chileans have gone to the ballot box to weigh a new version of the country’s constitution.

President Gabriel Boric indicated it would also be the last opportunity to swap out the Pinochet-era constitution for the remainder of his four-year term.

“Whatever the result that the people choose, that process will come to an end,” Boric said at a summit of world leaders last month.

The history of the current constitution stretches back to 1980, when Pinochet — a ruler who oversaw the mass abduction and execution of his left-wing critics — appointed a government commission to draft a legal framework to formalise his authority.

Ñanco Antilef grew up during the dictatorship in the 1980s. “There was a strong repression. We didn’t even go out on the patio of our house because police would throw tear gas. It was a situation of fear. I remember they shot a neighbour dead. These are the memories I have of that time.”

Living in a low-income neighbourhood on the periphery of the capital Santiago, Ñanco Antilef also witnessed inequality that he now credits to Pinochet’s right-wing model of governance.

“It allowed people who had resources to maintain their privileges, and for the people who didn’t, it was difficult to obtain a higher quality of life. I was only able to go to higher education because I won grants and got help from others,” he said, adding: “Pinochet’s constitution generated a very individualistic society.”

The 1980 constitution has been criticised not only for its undemocratic origins but also for enshrining Pinochet’s rigidly conservative values in Chilean law.

Opponents say that, despite numerous amendments, the constitution still curtails social welfare programmes in favour of protecting free-market values. It also fails to acknowledge Chile’s Indigenous groups, which comprise an estimated 2.2 million people.

José Antonio Kast, leader of Chile’s Republican Party, celebrates the number of seats his party claimed on the Constitutional Council on May 7 [File: Esteban Felix/AP Photo]

A tale of two drafts

Concerns over social welfare ultimately simmered into widespread anti-government protests in 2019. Millions of Chileans flooded the streets, voicing a spectrum of demands, including calls for better public healthcare, fairer access to education, abortion rights and pension reform.

Many protesters singled out Pinochet’s constitution as the root cause of the discontent. That prompted Chile’s government to hold a referendum in 2020 to decide whether to ditch the old charter and write a new one.

The voters came back with an overwhelming response: 78 percent approved of the proposal, and a plan to reimagine the constitution was hatched.

But the first attempt floundered. Written by a Constitutional Council comprised mostly of left-wing leaders and independents with no political experience, the 2022 draft was seen as lengthy, confusing and overly progressive. It failed at the ballot box, with 62 percent of voters rejecting it.

In May, another election was held to determine who would write the second draft. This time, voters turned to the conservative right.

“After [the] progressive movement, there was a regression and fear of change,” Claudia Heiss, the head of political science at the University of Chile, said of the swing rightward.

She believes the draft on Sunday’s ballot enshrines values and ideas that “don’t belong in a constitution”, by recognising “patriotic symbols” and protecting “the patriarchal conception of society and traditional gender roles”.

Among the most controversial additions is an article that appears to acknowledge the rights of “life of those who have yet to be born” — language that could tighten Chile’s already restrictive abortion laws.

Elisa Loncon from the Mapuche Constituent Assembly celebrates her election to lead the Constitutional Convention on July 4, 2021 [File: Esteban Felix/AP Photo]

Draft prompts Indigenous concerns

But Indigenous rights supporters also see Sunday’s draft as a step backwards, after the promise of the first rewrite attempt.

The first draft envisioned Chile as a “plurinational” country, “composed of various nations” that recognised Indigenous rights to autonomy and self-governance.

The second version, however, defines Indigenous groups as “part of the Chilean nation, which is one and undivided”.

The number of Indigenous representatives on the second Constitutional Council was also curtailed. Indigenous candidates had to receive at least 1.5 percent of the total vote to have a seat on the council. Only one, Antileo, qualified.

By contrast, the first council included 17 seats for Indigenous groups, distributed according to population size. The Mapuche, Chile’s largest Indigenous population, were given seven seats, while the Aymara were given two. Eight other Indigenous groups — the Atacameño, Colla, Quechua, Yagán, Kawésqar, Chango, Diaguita and Rapa Nui — were given one seat each.

Experts like Salvador Millaeo, a Mapuche lawyer and academic at the University of Chile, indicated that the new constitutional draft’s shortcomings are part of a long tradition of Indigenous marginalisation.

“Chile has a terrible relationship with its Indigenous people,” Millaeo said. “We need rules that establish an equal distribution of development opportunities where ancestral grounds are recognised, and the cultural patrimony of Indigenous people is protected, respected and guaranteed.”

He explained that Sunday’s constitutional draft only mentions Indigenous rights in an “abstract” way, by saying the law “could” include Indigenous representation in Congress.

The new draft would also strengthen Pinochet’s governance model, upholding neoliberal principles that are at odds with Indigenous values, Millaeo said.

“For example, the idea that nature is not an object but a subject that needs to be cared for — that’s not in the current [constitution], but the new proposal goes even further away from that.”

Constitutional experts meet inside the National Congress to create a proposal to send to members of the Constitutional Council in Santiago, Chile, on June 5 [File: Esteban Felix/AP Photo]

Voter fatigue high

That Indigenous viewpoint, however, runs contrary to many of Chile’s business interests.

The country is one of the world’s top copper producers, and its economy is hinged on resource extraction. Mining makes up about 58 percent of the country’s total exports.

Fernando Hernandéz, a civil engineer who works in the mining sector, said he plans to vote in favour of the new draft constitution because it protects Chile’s economic interests.

Land should “generate value, jobs and growth”, Hernandéz explained.

But like many Chileans, Hernandéz is sceptical of what a new constitution can achieve. And after nearly three years of constitutional votes and councils, fatigue is setting in.

“Chile won’t transform from one day to another by changing the constitution,” Hernandéz said. “This has been exhausting for Chile and for its people.”

Ñanco Antilef, the architect who participated in the Constitutional Council, agreed that voter enthusiasm is waning. “There’s electoral fatigue and less interest in the process this time around.”

But he insisted that voting was still important, if only to protect the status quo — and hold out hope for a better deal in the future for Indigenous Chileans.

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‘War is stupid and I want it to end’: Injured Palestinian children speak | Israel-Palestine conflict News

Hundreds of thousands of Palestinian children have been directly affected by Israel’s onslaught on the Gaza Strip, ranging from displacement to being wounded or killed.

Since October 7, more than 10,000 children have been killed or are lost under rubble and presumed dead, according to a report by the Euro-Med Human Rights Monitor. At least 24,000 children have lost one or both parents in Israeli attacks and about 18,000 have been injured with some in critical condition.

Nearly half of the Gaza Strip’s 2.3 million people – 47 percent – are under the age of 18. The majority of them have lived through at least four Israeli offensives during their short lives.

Due to the blockade imposed by Israel on the coastal enclave, children are also facing the prospect of starvation, particularly in northern Gaza, where they eat on average one meal a day. Furthermore, the lack of clean drinking water, overcrowded conditions and lack of sanitation in United Nations-run schools, where many displaced people are seeking shelter, has led to an outbreak of infectious diseases, to which children are particularly vulnerable.

Over the past 68 days, more than 18,700 Palestinians have been killed in Israeli attacks, including more than 7,700 children, according to the Ministry of Health in Gaza. This means that one Palestinian child is killed every 10 minutes, leading the World Health Organisation to describe the situation as “humanity’s darkest hour”.

Nearly 8,000 people are missing and presumed dead under the rubble of their homes, and more than 50,000 have been wounded – the vast majority women and children.

Despite the UN general-secretary saying on October 31 that Gaza has turned into a “graveyard for children, a living hell for everyone else”, the Israeli offensive and ground invasion has continued and shows no sign of slowing down.

“The ongoing Israeli attacks have left over 18,000 Palestinian children injured with many in critical condition,” the Euro-Med monitor said. “Dozens more have suffered amputations, and hundreds more have suffered severe burns to various parts of their bodies.”

At Deir el-Balah’s Al-Aqsa Martyrs Hospital, Al Jazeera spoke to several children who had survived Israeli bombardments either directly on their homes or in their neighbourhoods.

‘I miss my school’: Sa’ed al-Areer, eight, from Shujayea

Eight-year-old Sa’ed al-Areer was playing in the street when Israeli warplanes bombed a house nearby, leaving him with a fractured skull and a broken leg [Attia Darwish/Al Jazeera]

I was playing in the street with my cousin outside the house in Maghazi refugee camp. The Israeli planes bombed the building opposite us. I suffered a fractured skull, stitches all around my head, a broken leg and a big wound that doctors said exposed my bone.

My favourite football players are Alaa Attiya and Omar Khamis from the Shujayea Football Club. They score a lot of goals. I’ll play when we go back to our homes, but I don’t have a football. I still want to be a football player when I grow up. I miss my school.

‘War is stupid’: Abdullah Jabr, eight, from Bureij refugee camp

Abdullah Jabr, eight, and his family were all injured when their house collapsed on top of them when an Israeli missile struck their neighbour’s home [Attia Darwish/Al Jazeera]

My mother was making supper for us when our next-door neighbour’s house got targeted. The walls of our home fell on top of us, breaking my leg and my arm in two places. Our home is gone.

I like Cristiano Ronaldo, but I want to be a doctor, so I can help children get better. I hope my medical referral sends me to the United Arab Emirates not to Egypt because I don’t want to travel in a car to Egypt. I want to get on a plane and look out the window when I’m in the sky. I want to get better and come back to Gaza.

War is stupid. I want it to end. I’ve saved 1,000 shekels [$270]. My dad is keeping them safe for me. My favourite food is chicken wings, and I want to take my family out to a restaurant after this is over.

‘I was playing on the swing’: Mayar Abu Saad, 12, from Shati refugee camp

Twelve-year-old Mayar Abu Saad shows off a photo of herself before the war with long hair [Attia Darwish/Al Jazeera]

We left our home in Shati and went to stay with my grandpa in Nuseirat. My grandfather said we should go down to the yard and bake bread. A missile struck our home, and those inside like my Aunt Tagreed, Uncle Sameh, Uncle Mohammed and my cousin Rital were killed, 11 in total. My sister Sabah was also killed. She was so young, only two years old.

I was playing on the swing in the yard, and when I woke up, I found myself in the hospital. The doctors cut my long hair and I was so upset. They thought I was going to die, but my heart kept beating. They operated on me for four hours and said I have internal bleeding, a fractured skull, broken pelvis and two broken legs.

I have stitches on my hand and stomach, and my legs have titanium parts. I want to be a teacher, and my favourite subject is English.

‘The sound was scary’: Hayat Miqbil, seven, from Karameh, northern Gaza

Hayat Miqbil, seven, suffered two broken legs after an Israeli missile targeted her family home in Nuseirat refugee camp [Attia Darwish/Al Jazeera]

We were at my grandfather’s house in Nuseirat eating moussaka when the Israelis bombed us. The sound was scary. My mother, grandad, Uncles Mustafa, Sameh and Taiseer, his wife and my cousins Hamoud and Uday were all killed.

Mama was outside. I was injured in my legs. Both of them are broken. My Baba and Aunt May are taking care of me. I was sitting under the window and saw the missile falling. We thought it was heading behind our house. I remember a man rescued me from under the rocks. My legs were stuck. I want to be a dentist, so I can fix my dad’s teeth. I like drawing and playing with my dolls.

‘I had shrapnel in my stomach’: Issa Yahya, 10, from Bureij refugee camp

Issa Yahya, 10, was rescued from under the rubble of his home by his grandfather [Attia Darwish/Al Jazeera]

I’m the first in my class. Our neighbour’s home in Nuseirat was bombed, and the walls of our house collapsed on us. We were under the rubble. My grandpa pulled me out. I had shrapnel in my stomach and couldn’t eat for 10 days. My legs have more than 50 stitches.

My grandma and cousin were killed. I want to be a doctor, and my favourite subject in school is maths.

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ECOWAS court orders reinstatement of Niger’s ousted Bazoum | News

Mohamed Bazoum was overthrown by members of his presidential guard on July 26 and has been detained with his family since then.

A West African court has ruled that the ousted president of Niger, Mohamed Bazoum, and his family have been arbitrarily detained and called for his reinstatement.

Bazoum was overthrown by members of his presidential guard on July 26 and has been detained at home with his wife and child since.

The coup was widely condemned and prompted sanctions from West Africa’s main political and economic bloc, the Economic Community of West Africa States (ECOWAS), amid widespread calls for a return to democratic rule.

On Friday, the ECOWAS Court of Justice sitting in Abuja ordered Niger’s military government to re-establish constitutional order through Bazoum’s reinstatement. The judge, Gberi-Be Ouattara, called for his immediate and unconditional release.

According to his lawyer Seydou Diagne, Bazoum filed a lawsuit before the court on September 16 to free him.

The Nigerien military government also filed a suit before the court in November to order the lifting of the sanctions imposed on the country by ECOWAS. The request was denied.

This is a developing story. More details to come.

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