Needs of the Age - newsbits

Schools are churning out the unemployable

2010-02-23T16:14:00.000-08:00

An informative article on employment and education issues in the UK. Unfortunately, its tone is rather negative.
In reply, I would say that there will always be faults in the educational and political system. Our task should be to focus on the positive and constructive trends, which certainly DO exist, and to build on these.
(Highlighting is mine.)

From The Sunday Times

February 21, 2010

Schools are churning out the unemployable

by Harriet Sergeant

The latest unemployment figures are a shocker. Eight million adults are "economically inactive". That means one in five people of working age does not have a job. A new and expanding group, poignantly described as "discouraged" workers, have even given up looking.

They are right to be discouraged but wrong that there is no work. A report out on Friday points out that a fifth of firms and a quarter of employers in the state sector are still hiring — despite the recession. Except they are taking on migrant workers — not our home-grown "discouraged" variety.

The managing director of a medium-sized IT company explained why. High-flyers — Oxford and Cambridge graduates — are still as good as any in the world. His problems come when he tries to recruit middle management. Last year he interviewed 52 graduates — all educated in state schools. On paper they looked "brilliant students". Each had three As at A-level and a 2:1 degree. He shook his head. "There's a big difference between people passing exams and being ready for work."

This was obvious even before the interview began. Of the 52 applicants, half arrived late. Only three of the 52 walked up to the managing director, looked him in the eye, shook his hand and said, "Good morning." The rest "just ambled in". When he asked them to solve a problem, only 12 had come equipped with a notebook and pencil.

The three who had greeted him proved the strongest candidates and he hired them. Within a year they were out because of their "lackadaisical" attitude. They did not turn up on time; for the first six months a manager had to check all their emails for spelling and grammar; they did not know how to learn. It was the first time they had ever been asked to learn on their own. Their ability to "engage in business" was "incredibly" disappointing and "at 5.30 on the dot they left the office".

This year the managing director has joined the 20% of companies recruiting overseas. "We are an English company but we have no English staff. It's just too much trouble," he said.

It is the same story with employers at every level in the UK. Sir Terry Leahy, the chief executive of Tesco, put it bluntly. Too many children have been leaving school after 11 or 13 years of compulsory education "without the basic skills to get on in life and hold down a job". He said 5m adults were functionally illiterate and 17m could not add up properly. "On-the-job training" cannot act as a "bandage or sticking plaster" for "the failure of our education system".

A CBI survey revealed that literacy and numeracy were not the only problems. More than 50% of employers complained that young people were inarticulate, unable to communicate concisely, interpret written instructions or perform simple mental calculations.

This goes a long way to explain why, of the 1.7m jobs created since 1997, 81% have gone to foreign workers. The Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) agrees with Leahy. UK citizens are on the dole because of "issues around basic employability skills, incentives and motivation". It is a pity it has not passed that insight on to the Department for Children, Schools and Families.

The DWP has made it clear: work is where the inflated claims for our state education finally hit the buffers. At every stage we have a system in which the expediency of politicians and the ideology of the educational establishment take precedence over the interests of pupils. ...

Read the full article here.

MONGOLIA: Extreme, crippling weather conditions - a foretaste of things to come worldwide?

2010-02-03T13:40:00.001-08:00

Asia extreme cold

Last reviewed: 29-02-2008

WORST WINTER IN DECADES

The worst winter weather in decades brought brutal temperatures and deadly snowstorms to swathes of Central Asia and China in early 2008, knocking out power supplies, crippling transport and destroying crops. Freak cold and snow across the southern half of China killed more than 100 people, affected some 100 million others and caused $15.4 billion of direct economic losses. Blizzards brought down houses, destroyed crops and created the country's worst ever power crisis as storms toppled pylons and ice on rail tracks halted coal deliveries. Thick ice and hail even hit parts China's subtropical south, while two central provinces recorded their coldest weather in 100 years. In Afghanistan, icy temperatures killed several hundred people and about 40,000 cattle. Aid groups say the cold weather affected more than two-thirds of provinces in and rendered parts of the central region inaccessible in January. Neighbouring Turkmenistan, seeking to emerge from decades of isolation, sent an aid package comprising fuel, food and clothes to northern Afghanistan. As spring promised to bring welcome relief from the cold, millions of Afghans faced the risk of seasonal floods brought on by melting snows. Tajikistan, paralysed by its coldest winter in a quarter-century, asked for emergency international aid to help it survive an energy crisis that has left millions of people without power and heating. U.N. experts say the harsh winter underscores the need for governments to build infrastructure that can withstand previously unthinkable weather. "So-called freak weather is becoming more common, and reducing vulnerability to unexpected extremes must be a top priority for governments," says Salvador Briceno, head of the U.N's disaster relief agency, ISDR. China's Meteorological Administration says the snow and cold probably developed out of a La Nina - or low sea-surface temperatures - in parts of the Pacific in the second half of last year combined with unusual weather from the west.

Source: http://www.alertnet.org/db/crisisprofiles/AS_COLD.htm

N. Korea famine, once again

2010-02-03T13:36:00.000-08:00

North Korea hunger

Last reviewed: 10-07-2008

THE SECRET FAMINE

North Korea has spent more than five decades cut off from the world. It is so secretive that no one knows how many people died in its famine of the 1990s, although analysts have estimated it killed 3-5 percent of the population. Now it faces another humanitarian crisis after a poor harvest that has caused food prices to skyrocket.

Up to 6 million in need of help

Hit by floods and rising prices

Relies heavily on international aid The Stalinist state has in recent years depended on aid from China, South Korea and United Nations agencies to feed millions of people. It blames natural disasters for its hunger woes but observers say catastrophic economic mismanagement is also responsible. Agricultural experts warn that North Korea faces its worst food shortfalls since the 1990s famine with high grain prices, flood damage from 2007 and political wrangling with South Korea taking their toll. The U.N. World Food Programme (WFP) has estimated up to 6 million people need help. In mid-2008, the United States began its first bilateral assistance to North Korea in eight years after Pyongyang agreed to relax restrictions on aid agencies' ability to monitor distribution. Delivery of the aid will be overseen by the WFP and five aid agencies. South Korea has traditionally provided major food aid to the North. But the flow stopped when President Lee Myung-bak took office in early 2008. He says aid should be dependent on how well the North abides by an international nuclear deal. Food shortages and human rights abuses have prompted tens of thousands to risk their lives trying to escape across the border into China.

KEY FACTS

Total population	23.9 million (Source: U.N. Department of Economic and Social Affairs Population Division, 2006)
Famine death estimates	220,000 (Source: Democratic People's Republic of Korea's government, DPRK) 2.5 million (Andrew Natsios, former head of the U.S. Agency for International Development) 600,000 - 1 million (Marcus Noland, Institute for International Economics) No estimate ever given by World Food Programme (WFP)
Chronic malnutrition under six years old	37 percent (DPRK/UNICEF/WFP, 2004)
Grain deficit	1.4 million tonnes (Source: Korea Rural Economic Institute, 2007)
Total targeted by WFP country operation	1.9 million people (Source: WFP)
Total targeted by WFP flood response in 2007	215,000 people (Source: WFP)
WFP donors for North Korea	United States, Japan, South Korea, European Union, Australia, Italy, Germany, Canada, Sweden, Russia, Ireland and Norway.
North Korea's military spending	15.9 percent of budget (Finance Minister, 2005)

Source: http://www.alertnet.org/db/crisisprofiles/KP_FAM.htm

Haiti quake unearths lesson of brotherhood

2010-01-26T15:40:00.001-08:00

(Haiti) Adversity teaches the universal (spiritual) law governing proper human conduct: the imperative to share ("eat with the same mouth" HW) -

The children of men are all brothers, and the prerequisites of brotherhood are manifold. Among them is that one should wish for one's brother that which one wisheth for oneself.

- Bahá'u'lláh, Tabernacle of Unity 41

From NYTimes.

Fighting Starvation, Haitians Share Portions

Maggie Steber for The New York Times

Children waiting for rice and beans distributed by the Haitian government in Port-au-Prince.

By DAMIEN CAVE

Published: January 25, 2010

PORT-AU-PRINCE, Haiti — Maxi Extralien, a twig-thin 10-year-old in a SpongeBob pajama top, ate only a single bean from the heavy plate of food he received recently from a Haitian civic group. He had to make it last.

"My mother has 12 kids but a lot of them died," he said, covering his meal so he could carry it to his family. "There are six of us now and my mom."

For Maxi and countless others here in Haiti's pulverized capital, new rules of hunger etiquette are emerging. Stealing food, it is widely known, might get you killed. Children are most likely to return with something to eat, but no matter what is found, or how hungry the forager, everything must be shared.

Source: http://www.nytimes.com/2010/01/26/world/americas/26hunger.html?ref=world

Consumerist culture as elephant in room with respect to environmental issues

2010-01-18T14:42:00.001-08:00

Collapse of the Consumer Culture Coming?

WASHINGTON, Jan 12 (IPS) - The last 50 years have seen an unprecedented and unsustainable spike in consumption, driven by a culture of consumerism that has emerged over that period, says a report released Tuesday by the Worldwatch Institute.

This consumerist culture is the elephant in the room when it comes to solving the big environmental issues of today, the report says, and those issues cannot be fully solved until a transition to a more sustainable culture is begun.

"State of the World 2010", subtitled "Transforming Cultures: From Consumerism to Sustainability", tries to chart a path away from what Worldwatch president Christopher Flavin calls "the consumer culture that has taken hold probably first in the U.S. and now in country after country over the past century, so that we can now talk about a global consumerist culture that has become a powerful force around the world."

In this culture, says the book-length report, people find meaning and contentment in what they consume, but this cultural orientation has had huge implications for society and the planet. The average U.S. citizens, for instance, consumes more each day, in terms of mass, than they weigh. If everyone lived like this, the Earth could only sustain 1.4 billion people.

Flavin admits consumerism is not the only factor driving environmental degradation but says it is one of the key root causes on which other factors are built -- and, as a cultural framework, it is expanding.

"In India and China, for instance, the consumer culture of the U.S. and Western Europe is not only being replicated but being replicated on a much vaster scale," Flavin says.

Consumption has risen sixfold since 1960, the report says, citing World Bank statistics. Even taking the rising global population into account, this amounts to a tripling of consumption expenditures per person over this time. This has led to similar increases in the amount of resources used – a sixfold increase in metals extracted from the earth, eightfold in oil consumption and 14-fold in natural gas consumption....

Escalating resource consumption has also led to unsustainable systems of distributing and producing those resources. In the field of agriculture, for instance, every one dollar spent on a typical U.S. food item yields only about seven cents for the farmer, while 73 cents goes to distribution, says the report's chapter on shifting to a more sustainable agriculture system.

It points to this as one outcome of increasingly unsustainable consumption habits. These habits have formed only recently -- the same dollar yielded 40 cents for the farmer in 1900 -- but they have now become ingrained, it says.

This consumption is based on more than individual choices. ...

Rather, we are acting under the heavy influence of cultural conventions that influence our behaviour by making things like fast food, air conditioning and suburban living feel increasingly "natural" and more difficult to imagine living without, he says.

To prevent future environmental damage, "policy alone will not be enough. A dramatic shift in the very design of human societies will be essential," says the report. ...

Flavin admits that cultural shift is "arguably one of the most difficult" topics to tackle, but, as project director Erik Assadourian says, "This shift is not only possible, it is already beginning to happen."

Most of the report, in fact, discusses action that has been and can be taken to shift the cultural paradigm, rather than the damage the current paradigm has done.

The 244-page report cites a wide variety of examples such as the enshrining of the rights of nature into Ecuador's constitution and schools pushing children to think more sustainably by giving them healthy, locally-grown lunches and encouraging them to walk or bike to class. ...

"Now I know that cultural assumptions, even well-established ones, can be overturned," he says, "The book goes well beyond standard prescriptions for clean technologies and enlightened policies. It advocates rethinking the foundations of modern consumerism."

The report also points to the roles different societal institutions can play in spurring cultural shifts. Among these, religion, government, the media, businesses and education all have key roles to play. Taken separately, their efforts might seem small, admits Assadourian, but taken together they can effect real change.

"Keep in mind that consumerism had its beginning only two centuries ago and really accelerated in the last 50 years... With deliberate effort we can replace consumerism with sustainability just as quickly as we traded home-cooked meals for Happy Meals and neighbourhood parks for shopping malls," he says, alluding to the tenuousness of what appear to be deep and solid cultural roots.

"Eventually consumerism will buckle under its own impossibility," predicts Assadourian. We can either act proactively to replace it with a more sustainable cultural model or wait for something else to fill the void, he says.

"Culture, after all, is for making it easy for people to unleash their potential, not for standing there as a wall to stop them from moving forward. Culture that does not let people grow is a dead culture," concludes Yunus.

Source: http://us.oneworld.net/article/368550-the-coming-collapse-consumer-culture

Youth dedicated to interests of children [LOVE], [SERVICE], [COMPASSION], [IDEALISM]

2010-01-06T05:36:00.001-08:00

A remarkable story of the impact that a youth can have on the well-being of his community -

2009 Children's Peace Prize: 16-Year-Old's Radio Show Brings Hope to Refugee Children

Baruani Ndume, Age 16

Baruani Ndume, 16, is the 2009 winner of the International Children's Peace Prize, presented to a child who works to further the interests of children around the world.

Baruani received the prize for his work with children in a Tanzanian refugee camp where he lives after fleeing violence in his native country, the Democratic Republic of Congo.

Now 16, Baruani has lived in the refugee camp for over nine years and dedicates his time to promoting the interests of children in the camps. His radio show, called Children for Children, airs on Radio Kwizera in Tanzania, Congo, Rwanda and Burundi. Baruani uses the show to discuss the problems and challenges refugee children face in the camp. It is also a way for refugee children to make their voices heard. This interview was translated from Swahili.

Read the full article here.

Empowerment through knowledge gained in the work process - ENVIRONMENT, DEVELOPMENT

2010-01-04T09:29:00.001-08:00

Highlighting the virtue inherent in, and benefits of empowering people (rather than simply delivering aid) -
(Excerpts:)

...in Natagaima, the women involved in the project are not discouraged by these 'minor' achievements. Because what's important for them is the knowledge they've gained and the real improvements their efforts have brought to their environment and lives. On the day that IPS followed a group of these women as they performed their daily tasks, they couldn't stop talking about all they've learned about agriculture and ecology.

Environmental improvements are not the only good thing to come out of the initiative: women have also been empowered by their work.

"Women feel empowered by the confidence they gain going out to work in their crops, working on their own, knowing they can be self-sufficient. And that's probably the best thing about this project," [Javier Múnera, an economist who manages and organises activities in Manos de Mujer] reflected.

COLOMBIA: Women Empowered by Restoring Desertified Land
By Helda Martínez

Claudina Loaiza, left, works on her ecological garden with her daughter and niece.

Credit:Helda Martínez/IPS

NATAGAIMA, Colombia, Jan 2 (IPS) - Indigenous and rural women from southern Tolima, a province located in the heart of Colombia, are lending a hand to the bleak land around them, with the aim of simultaneously recovering the ecosystem and regaining their own dignity, in a community effort that is changing their environment and their lives.

Manos de Mujer (Women's Hands) is the name of the non-governmental organisation working since 2001 in Natagaima, a town some 100 kilometres south of the provincial capital, Ibagué. Nine hundred women of the Pijao native community plant ecosystem-friendly seeds to grow natural crops without the use of agrochemicals. ...

Source: http://ipsnews.net/news.asp?idnews=49875

Electric bicycles take to streets in China - ENVIRONMENT, TECHNOLOGY

2010-01-02T15:00:00.001-08:00

LETTER FROM CHINA

Putting the brakes on pedal power

Bicycles give way to automobiles, but e-bikes keep two-wheel tradition alive

By Keith B. Richburg and Zhang Jie
Washington Post Staff Writers
Tuesday, December 15, 2009

Of all the signs of China's growing prosperity -- the gleaming new office towers, the glitzy shopping malls and designer boutiques -- perhaps the most visible is on Beijing's streets and highways, where noxious traffic jams have replaced the free flow of bicycles.

A member of China's People's Liberation Army rides an electric bicycle in Beijing. The "e-bikes" are especially popular in big cities, where urban realities provide at least some disincentive to car ownership. (Nelson Ching/bloomberg News)

Domestic sales for cars and sport-utility vehicles passed a million a month in November, making China the world's new automobile capital, at the expense of one of the world's great bike cultures.
Bicycles were ubiquitous in Beijing not long ago -- the preferred mode of transportation for millions of Chinese. Major streets boasted wide bike lanes, sidewalks carried ample parking space for bikes, and bikes usually had the right of way at intersections. But lately, public space for bicycles has been shrinking under the tyranny of the car.
"The drivers are very aggressive. They won't wait for you for a second," said Wang Litang, 65, a retired government worker who still takes his singing thrush on long bike rides, the cage dangling from the handlebars, a common Chinese practice. "The road belongs to them now."
But the battle of the byways is not over yet, as two-wheeling enthusiasts have a popular new competitor in the marketplace that is giving the car a run for its mileage. It's the electric bicycle, or e-bike, which operates on a rechargeable battery. While China is on target to sell more than 12 million cars this year, it is also on track to sell 20 million e-bikes, if trends hold from 2007 and 2008, when 20 million e-bikes were sold each year. E-bikes are proving most popular in Beijing and other big cities, where some commuters are realizing that owning a car may bring a certain prestige as a sign of affluence but also comes with gasoline prices, parking fees, the odd traffic ticket and the notorious traffic jams.
"My family bought our first car in the 1990s, but we sold our car last year," said Bai Liping, 45, a saleswoman in an insurance company and an e-bike rider. "Having a car is not that convenient, compared with an e-bike."
Besides the lower costs for parking, and the convenience of whipping quickly through intersections, she said she spends far less on maintenance than she did on a car. E-bikes need their batteries recharged overnight, and the battery typically lasts about a year before needing to be replaced.
They are also relatively inexpensive, from about $219 for the smallest models to about $366 for the largest, fastest variety.
"The real sweet spot will be if China's e-bike explosion leads to the development of electric cars and the infrastructure for charging these e-vehicles," said Alex Wang of the Natural Resources Defense Council office in Beijing, and an avid e-biker. "China is probably better positioned to make this leap than any other country in the world."
But interviews with several e-bike owners showed that convenience, not the environment, was foremost in riders' minds. "It only takes us 15 minutes from here to our store," said Zhang Shu Mei, 39, who was at Beijing's Eastern Suburban Market loading up her e-bike with goods for her grocery store. "We feel freezing riding on this e-bike in the cold wind. But there's no other choice. What would we ride if we don't use this?"

The growing popularity of e-bikes also seems to be threatening the dominant position of traditional bicycles, at least in the big cities. According to the China Bicycle Association, the peak for traditional bicycle sales in China was in 1988, when 40 million bikes were sold. That number has steadily dropped, and it has stabilized at around 20 million locally, with more Chinese bikes sold for export.
The nature of the bicycles being sold here has changed, said Niu Qing, general manager of the bicycle association. Urban Chinese are increasingly buying mountain bikes and multi-geared bikes, to be used for weekend recreation, instead of the old-fashioned commuter models.
"The bike is transforming gradually from purely a traffic tool to an entertainment and body-building measure," Niu said, adding that predictions of the death of the bicycle in China may be premature. "The industry is not going into a nose dive like people think," he said. "It will never vanish."
There may be one unintended side effect of the explosion of e-bikes and fewer people going to work through pedal power: According to the Health Ministry, 22 percent of Chinese adults are overweight and 7.1 percent are obese. In the cities, those numbers rise to 30 percent overweight and 12 percent obese. The statistics mark a dramatic rise from the 1990s, the ministry said.
"People are lazier than before," said Jin Shan, director of the sports culture research center at the Beijing Academy of Social Sciences. "Before, no matter how far it was, the bike was your only choice. Changing from bikes to cars and e-vehicles is one reason Chinese people are getting fatter."

Source: http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/12/14/AR2009121403411.html

Authoritarian regimes source of international refugees: ERITREA

2010-01-02T14:41:00.000-08:00

Eritrean footballers disappear after international match in Kenya

Twelve members of national side go missing and presumed to be hiding in bid to escape authoritarian regime in Asmara

Xan Rice in Nairobi
guardian.co.uk, Tuesday 15 December 2009

The Eritrean national team before the start of the match against Tanzania, which was held in Nairobi. Photograph: AFP/Getty Images

A dozen members of Eritrea's national football squad have disappeared in Kenya after the team was knocked out of a regional tournament.
They are presumed to have joined the tens of thousands of Eritreans who flee their country each year to escape an increasingly paranoid and repressive regime. The disaffection is particularly strong among young people who face decades of open-ended national service once they leave school.
The players absconded after losing their quarter-final match 4-0 to Tanzania in the annual CECAFA tournament for east and central African nations.
Nicholas Musonye, the general secretary of CECAFA, said a guide assigned to the team reported that 12 members of the 25-strong national side had vanished.
"The tour guide waited for them in vain at the airport on Saturday when the team was [due to travel] back home," he told Reuters.
"We think they are hiding somewhere with the intention of going somewhere, or just intending to remain here. We have alerted the authorities to help track them down."
There has been no word from the Eritrean government, which routinely denies that people are fleeing the country. But Musonye said that Tesfaye Gebreyessus, the president of Eritrea's football association, had confirmed the players did not return to Asmara with rest of the delegation.
It is not the first time the country's sporting stars have sought asylum abroad, despite a reported government policy that requires athletes to post a bond of several thousand US dollars each time they travel overseas.
In 2006, four members of the Red Sea football club disappeared in Nairobi after playing an African Champions League qualifier.
Last year, six runners representing the formidable Eritrean national athletics team were granted political asylum by the Home Office when they slipped away from government minders after competing in the World Cross Country Championships in Edinburgh.
The sports stars' flight echoes a wider trend that has turned Eritrea, with a population of just 5 million, into the second biggest source of asylum seekers in the world. Since exit visas are difficult to obtain, many young men and women risk their lives trying to escape on foot through harsh terrain to Sudan and Ethiopia.
President Isaias Afewerki's insular government, which has abolished the free press, political opposition and religious freedom, often punishes the escapees' families with large fines or jail terms.

Source: http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2009/dec/15/eritrea

EDUCATION: Excessive testing forces undifferentiated curriculum

2009-12-14T18:25:00.001-08:00

A phenomenon in education typical of the United States, yet doubtless relevant in other countries as well.
(Excerpt:)

[A] professional organization has the obligation to warn the public that excessive testing dooms children into a curriculum of test prep, and it amounts to claiming you have raised the temperature of the room when all you have done is put a match under the thermometer. ...

In Finland, where children score at the top of international tests in reading, schools don't start teaching literacy skills until children are seven years old.

Susan Ohanian

Fellow, Education and the Public Interest Center at the University of Colorado at Boulder and the Education Policy Studies Laboratory at Arizona State University

Raise Test Scores or Die
Posted: December 13, 2009

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/susan-ohanian/raise-test-scores-or-die_b_390433.html

Tag: On education

LIBERIA: Health facilities in disarray - malnutrition, unsanitary conditions stifling the young

2009-11-27T18:30:00.001-08:00

What will be a country's end when the youth, its greatest hope, are left to fend for themselves, unattended and neglected (both materially and spiritually)! Let this be a sobering lesson to us all.
(Excerpt:)

Liberia's population is estimated at 3.5 million. "Over three million Liberians have no access to safe sanitation facilities," says Muyatwa Sitali, communications officer with Oxfam UK...

A relevant quotation from a sacred text states in this regard:

O YE RICH ONES ON EARTH!
The poor in your midst are My trust; guard ye My trust, and be not intent only on your own ease.
- Hidden Words of Bahá'u'lláh

WATER: Poor Sanitation Killing Liberia's Young
By Rebecca Murray

This is 7-month-old Inga Phillips's third visit to the Slipway health centre. The clinic's is unable to care for severely malnourished children with diarrhoea and dehydration.

Credit: Rebecca Murray/IPS

MONROVIA and BOPOLU, Liberia, Nov 23 (IPS) - Nineteen-year-old Beauty Phillips clutches her emaciated baby tightly to her chest. At seven months, Inga suffers from malnutrition.

On this chaotic Friday morning in the Slipway Clinic registration room, over one hundred mothers, their crying infants wrapped in traditional lappa cloth, wait on narrow wooden benches for hours to be seen.

"She is always sickly," explains Phillips about Inga's constant vomiting and diarrhoea. "I get my water from the community hand pump, and for my toilet I'm going to the waterside or common toilet. This is why I think my daughter is getting sick."

One out of nine Liberian children die before their fifth birthday, or 110 out of every 1,000 live births, according to the Liberia Demographic Health Survey in 2007. Thirty-nine percent of children are stunted or short for their age.

Malaria, diarrhoea and respiratory illnesses like pneumonia are the leading causes of death here.

The crowded slum of Slipway lies along the polluted, marshy shoreline of the Mensurado River, near the heart of downtown Monrovia.

Although Liberia Water and Sewer are trying to reconnect pipes destroyed during the decades-long civil war, most residents cannot afford to buy or access the water.

Private septic tanks overflow regularly, and burning trash lies in heaps among the sewage surrounding the marshy pit latrines.

Liberia's population is estimated at 3.5 million. "Over three million Liberians have no access to safe sanitation facilities," says Muyatwa Sitali, communications officer with Oxfam UK, which spearheads Liberia's water, sanitation and hygiene consortium.

"Most people have no choice but to defecate in the open, where both their lives and dignity are at risk," Sitali explains.

President Ellen Johnson Sirleaf has implemented a free nationwide public health care policy for children under five years old, a crucial step towards her promise to provide universal health care for all Liberians.

Still reeling from the decades-long civil war, Liberia's 2008 Poverty Reduction Strategy estimates almost two-thirds of its citizens live below the poverty line.

This is Inga's third visit to the tiny government health centre in Slipway, built to serve 15,000 community members. She will most likely be given an oral rehydration salt tablet (ORS) and spoon-fed protein out of a plastic sachet in the feeding room out back.

However, the clinic is unable to care for severely malnourished children with diarrhoea and dehydration. These cases are referred to government hospitals, and hooked up to feeding tubes and IV fluids to replenish electrolytes.

This year, the World Health Organisation (WHO) renewed calls for supplementary zinc treatments for diarrhoea for up to two weeks, which "decreases the duration and severity of the episode and the likelihood of subsequent infections in the 2–3 months following treatment."

WHO adds, "Low osmolarity ORS and zinc are inexpensive, safe and easy to use and have the potential to dramatically lower diarrhoea morbidity and mortality." While low osmolarity - a formula with a lower concentration of salt - ORS supplies are available in Liberia, zinc treatments are yet to be formally introduced. Dr. Vivian Kpeh, who runs the Slipway clinic with the help of international health charity, Merlin, is working with the Ministry of Health to address this issue.

"If we included zinc in our guidelines, especially with children under five years of age, it could get good results instead of referring the children for other treatment," says Kpeh. "Maybe severe dehydration will not happen, because we have stopped the diarrhoea."

A five-hour drive inland from the capital, along muddy roads that are almost impassable during rainy season, the young patients at the Chief Jallah Lone government hospital in the rural town of Bopolu share the same deadly illnesses as their urban counterparts.

Esther Floumo, a 21-year-old mother and farmer whose husband was killed during the civil war, is here with her third child, one-year-old Caroline.

Attached to an IV drip, Caroline is suffering from severe malnutrition, diarrhoea, vomiting and dehydration after being fed a steady diet of mashed up burnt rice, mixed with untreated well water.

Caroline is slowly getting better; when she first arrived at the hospital one week before, she had to be force fed through a tube.

"There is very poor sanitation here," says Bennie Clarke, the RN on night duty. "Most people do not have toilets in their homes; they use the river here or pit latrines. People are washing their clothes, taking water to cook from the river."

"We treat the patients like Caroline with ORS, and if it's severe, with IV fluid," he says.

"We used to have zinc, but we are out of it," he sighs. "Let's say three or four months ago we had it here. Christian Aid was supplying it to us. They are just helping, sending supplies."

"ORS treatment with zinc – as a policy it is accepted in Liberia," explains Dr. Bernice Dahn, chief medical officer at the Ministry of Health.

"It's just a matter of getting the zinc treatment. It means that we at the MOH have not focussed on procuring this. Currently we have a large quantity of ORS in country, that's what we are using for now.

"But we don't have zinc right now. It's a matter of being a part of our essential drug list. We are doing a revision of the essential drug list, and hopefully we will have it next year."

"Access to healthcare in general is so low in Liberia, its about 40-41 percent," says Dr. Musu Duworko, WHO's Family Health and Population Advisor in Liberia.

"We have a whole problem with system distribution. (Supplies) could be at the depot here in Monrovia or at the county depot, and not available at the county facility. The closer clinics are accessible, but there are some where even the motorcycles cannot go."

With the lack of access, capacity and medicine, twinned with the country's abysmal sanitation conditions, the Ministry of Health has its work cut out for it.

"Much has to be done to help Liberia get close to meeting the Millennium Development Goals on sanitation," says Oxfam UK's Sitali. "Without concerted effort that will be a far-fetched dream and lives will continue to be at risk."

Source: http://www.ipsnews.net/news.asp?idnews=49382

S. Korea as model on development

2009-11-26T16:12:00.001-08:00

This OECD statement would reflect the fundamental principle of the interdependence of all nations, and that a nation's priority should be, first, to get on its own feet (often with the help of other, more advanced nations), and second, to fulfil its duty to assist the less advanced nations. As it has been said: "For unto whomsoever much is given, of him shall be much required."(1)

(Excerpt:)

Korea's story demonstrates the changing face of international development assistance. "Making good use of this assistance," said Oh Joon, "we worked hard to overcome poverty and achieve development. For many Koreans, including myself, it happened in our own lifetime. As a child, I went to an elementary school where we drank milk and ate corn bread that came in containers marked 'United Nations' or 'US Government'. A few months ago, I visited a kindergarten in Mongolia where children were studying with textbooks marked as gifts from the Republic of Korea."

"This is happening in the middle of an economic crisis," remarked OECD Secretary-General Angel Gurría, "when many countries are holding back, Korea is signalling the way forward, as it has done in many areas."

"OECD Development Assistance Committee (DAC) welcomes Korean membership," 26 November 2009 © OECD
http://www.oecd.org/document
/50/0,3343,en_2649_33721_44141618_1_1_1_1,00.html
Note: (1) From a letter written on behalf of Shoghi Effendi
http://bahai-library.com/compilations/living.life.html

The experience of eloquent speech - here on issues of governance in E.U.

2009-11-21T16:50:00.001-08:00

It's rare to find such outstanding diction and expression as is wielded here - by former President of Latvia Ms. Vike-Freiberga.

(Excerpt:)

...Europe. Now, for the first time, it has a common voice on the international stage. It must use it well and use it sparingly. That means worrying less about detail and concentrating on the big ...issues — a little less time worrying about the curvature of bananas and a little more devotion to energy security and the environment.

"Be anxiously concerned with the needs of the age ye live in, and centre your deliberations on its exigencies and requirements." - Bahá'u'lláh

November 21, 2009

Focus on the big issues, not the bananas

Open elections, greater democracy, energy and aid should head the list for Europe's new leaders

Vaira Vike-Freiberga

Yesterday was a good morning for Europe. Now, for the first time, it has a common voice on the international stage. It must use it well and use it sparingly. That means worrying less about detail and concentrating on the big issues — a little less time worrying about the curvature of bananas and a little more devotion to energy security and the environment.
It also means addressing valid concerns that the European Union's governing structures should be more democratic. Choosing Herman Van Rompuy as first President of the European Union and Baroness Ashton of Upholland as High Representative for Foreign and Security Policy long before the sea bass and wild mushrooms were discreetly placed on the dinner table on Thursday evening in Brussels hardly assuages those concerns.
Making the selection somewhat more transparent would no doubt have enhanced the EU's democratic credentials. There is no reason why all candidates could not declare themselves publicly beforehand. The citizens of the EU's 27 states would surely have felt more confident if they had heard candidates set out their vision on television.
It isn't difficult to communicate with the public, especially with the new technologies available to us. I was surprised by the volume of response that my candidacy received on the internet; it showed that it is wrong to say Europeans don't care who is appointed.

Ultimately, I suspect, the president might be elected. In the future, it might be possible — indeed exciting — for 500 million people to elect their president directly. It is a goal worth aiming for if we are to carry the confidence of Europe's citizens.
The union was founded to cement Europe in peace. We risk losing that if people feel alienated, have no interest in voting for their European parliamentarians and don't care what they are doing. It hardly needs a historian to point out the dangers of such sentiments becoming commonplace in a recession.
Europe is as democratic as it can be for now. It is quite a challenge to stitch together this varied group of countries, different in size, weight and economic clout, with disparate pasts and levels of internal democracy. While Western European countries have taken decades or even centuries to hone their democracies, the countries that emerged from communism are only now evolving theirs. To get this far has been a huge achievement.
We must continue to be courageous. In my lifetime I have experienced the horror of war and totalitarian rule. Europe can never again have a political system imposed on it from above. Nor can powerful countries impress their will on smaller ones. There needs to be equality at some level regardless of disparities in size. This happens in federations such as Canada and the United States. Prince Edward Island (population, 140,000) is not the same as Ontario (population 13 million); New Hampshire (1.3 million) is not the same as California (36 million).
That is not to say that Europe is ready to become a federation. In 50 years' time, perhaps, but it is not something that can be imposed. If it is to evolve, it must happen slowly and openly.
There has been much debate about whether the president of the European Council should be a consensus builder or a strong personality. One would hope to find people with both qualities. The idea that a conciliatory politician must necessarily be a boring personality is nonsense. This is a presidential position. Europe's leaders should be exciting, inspiring and able to give citizens confidence in their future.
The time for faceless bureaucracy and high-table deal-making is over. European citizens expect their representatives to be visible and to talk to them. We hope to see the new leaders on television, explaining what they are doing to the citizens of all member nations of the EU.
In ten years' time I hope Europe will be speaking with one voice on the crucial issues of the day where common interests transcend individual countries' needs. A common energy policy with respect to the sourcing and distribution of gas and oil, for example, should exist at a European level. As a big customer Europe can get a better price from a powerful supplier such as Russia than separate countries trying to get a deal piece by piece.
In terms of foreign policy, Europe spends three times as much on aid to developing countries as the US, but makes less of an impact because it is done in a scattered way. Better value would be achieved through stronger co-ordination of European efforts.
Now that the EU is working within the framework of the Lisbon treaty it must avoid the risk of getting stuck in technical detail. The larger it grows, the more it must rise above the minutiae of administration and put more oil on its wheels. Maybe it should do fewer jobs, but do them really well.
The European Union's founding fathers knew that it had to be built brick by brick if it was to be accepted. We are an extraordinary continent of diverse sovereign states collaborating more and more closely, cautiously delegating elements of our sovereignty into a central pot.
Europe has come a long way. To get where we are today took courage and grit. The worst is behind us. Though we will still be hit by crises and challenges, we have a structure for peace and stability. Let's use it well. Go to it, Europe.
Vaira Vike-Freiberga was President of Latvia 1999-2007. She is vice-chairman of the Reflection group on the long-term future of the European Union

Source: http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/comment/columnists/guest_contributors/article6926160.ece

Coherent lines of action key to solving global problems

2009-11-18T13:07:00.001-08:00

I find it remarkable to witness this new development toward a /coherent/ approach to solving the world's manifold problems --
(Excerpt:)

"There cannot be food security without climate security"... Mr Ban's comments signal how leaders are grappling with the need to respond coherently – and simultaneously – to energy, food and climate challenges. "The three are key for political security and stability," said Alexander Muller...

UN links climate with hunger

By Javier Blas in Rome
Published: November 16 2009

The world cannot achieve food security without first tackling global warming, the United Nations secretary-general said on Monday, warning that failure at next month's international climate change negotiations would result in a rise in hunger.
The warning by Ban Ki-Moon at the start of a three-day UN world food summit in Rome came one day after Barack Obama, US president, backed European and UN views that the Copenhagen summit would not produce a legally-binding agreement to tackle global warming.

A woman stands on top of maize sent by Oxfam to Kenya where the crop failed because of a lack of rain

EDITOR'S CHOICE

"There cannot be food security without climate security," Mr Ban said. "Today's event is critical," he said, referring to the food summit, "so is Copenhagen."
Mr Ban's comments signal how leaders are grappling with the need to respond coherently – and simultaneously – to energy, food and climate challenges. "The three are key for political security and stability," said Alexander Muller, assistant director-general at the UN's Food and Agriculture Organisation.
Jim Fitzpatrick, UK minister for food, farming and environment, told the Financial Times that food and climate security were "two sides of the same coin".
The summit was convened in response to last year's food crisis, which saw record prices for staples such as wheat and rice, food riots in about 30 countries and pushed the number of chronically hungry people above 1bn for the first time.
"Millions of families have being pushed into poverty," Mr Ban said. "Over the past year and a half, food insecurity led to political instability in more than 30 countries."
The problems are just a prelude of worse to come unless countries take rapid action to improve food security and tackle global warming, according to the UN chief. "By 2050, we will need to grow 70 per cent more food," Mr Ban said. "But weather is becoming more extreme and unpredictable The food crisis of today is a wake-up call for tomorrow."
He stressed that water was rapidly becoming a scarce commodity.
The International Food and Policy Research Institute, a government-funded think-tank based in Washington, estimates that if countries do not tackle climate change, child malnutrition will rise by 20 per cent by 2050.
"Climate change will eliminate much of the improvement in child malnourishment levels that would occur with no climate change," the institute said in a recent report on food security and climate.
"The accelerating pace of climate change, combined with global population and income growth, threatens food security everywhere," the report added.
The summit's declaration, approved yesterday, reflects that sentiment. "Climate change poses additional severe risk to food security and the agriculture sector," it said. But the declaration was short on setting targets and timeframes, and was watered down from an early draft, non-governmental organisations cautioned. Countries committed to "a crucial, decisive shift towards increased" investment in agriculture but without setting any target or timeframe.
Even so, diplomats said it was a strong change after almost three decades of neglect during which time the share of official development aid devoted to agriculture plunged; by 2006 it had sunk to 3.8 per cent, down from 17 per cent in 1980. In the past few months, aid for long-term investment in agriculture has started to rise.
The declaration is, in effect, an endorsement of the the strategy adopted by the world's most industrialised nations at the Group of Eight's summit in L'Aquila, Italy, where they promised a shift towards long-term investment in agriculture from a previous focus on food aid and promised $20bn over three years

Copyright The Financial Times Limited 2009. You may share using our article tools. Please don't cut articles from FT.com and redistribute by email or post to the web.

Source: http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/99bc96e0-d293-11de-af63-00144feabdc0.html?nclick_check=1

The legacy and promise of 1989: fall of the Berlin Wall

2009-11-07T08:43:00.001-08:00

A historian's candid analysis of the significance and possible implications of the Wall's fall. From the New York Times.
(Excerpts:)

...it seems the lessons of the 20 century learned in Europe are bound to be forgotten.
Namely, that there is no such thing as a permanent rivalry among nations; that neighbors, whatever the obstacles, can be partners; that zero-sum relationships can be the exception, not the norm; that peace is forged both from the top down and from the bottom up; and that global issues — like the environment, crime, trade — are best handled in a regional framework with institutions that promote good neighborliness while at the same time setting higher standards for others to emulate. ...
It may have taken a half-century of immense destruction at the hands of Europeans to transform the above into axioms that few challenge today. But, again, this is mainly the case in Europe and America.
The West, as it was once proudly called, has come to seem more and more like an island rather than a beacon. Along its peripheries, even just next door, are frightening echoes of the late 19th and early 20th centuries.
The response of most Europeans and Americans to them has been, sadly, one of limited liability. Most spent the 1990s cultivating their own gardens; so far, much of the following decade has been spent building new walls...

Op-Ed Contributor

The False Promise of 1989

By KENNETH WEISBRODE

Published: November 6, 2009

FLORENCE — Twenty years is not a very long time in history but the fall of the Berlin Wall already seems like another era. The euphoria, confidence and excitement that accompanied that event were overtaken in short order by cynicism, fear and doubt resulting, according to some quarters at least, from American triumphalism.

Enlarge This Image

Ellen Weinstein

Despite the new leaf that Barack Obama's election appears to have turned over, it will be a long time before the world hears the United States speaking of itself again as the "indispensable nation" or the American way of life as the harbinger of the end of history.
This has also been called the beginning a "new" era of globalization. But 1989 was mainly about Europe. Nobody should forget the tanks and bullets that appeared in Beijing that very same year.
In truth, 1989 represented a culmination more than a new departure. It marked the final end of a long European civil war, the third since 1914. To some it was the apotheosis of a very long campaign for continental unity, George H.W. Bush's "Europe, whole and free."
To many Americans, Bush's statement rang true. Not only because of their own history of e pluribus unum, but also because the European project — and America's critical role in it — had much to do with Americans' sense of themselves as transplanted Europeans, eager to prove to the so-called Old World that it could master its diplomatic ways.
But in the end, both Americans and Europeans realized there was much they could teach one another.
Nothing like this relationship exists elsewhere in the world, least of all in its most contentious regions. Like the once great powers of Europe, the United States has long played a powerful role in the Middle East and Northeast Asia, going back to the days of the Barbary Pirates and Commodore Perry's Black Ships, but in an itinerant and episodic fashion.
Asian civilization does not carry the same cultural significance for most Americans that European civilization once did. An "Asia whole and free" is not a phrase we expect to hear any time soon from an American president.
This is a terrible pity because it seems the lessons of the 20 century learned in Europe are bound to be forgotten.
Namely, that there is no such thing as a permanent rivalry among nations; that neighbors, whatever the obstacles, can be partners; that zero-sum relationships can be the exception, not the norm; that peace is forged both from the top down and from the bottom up; and that global issues — like the environment, crime, trade — are best handled in a regional framework with institutions that promote good neighborliness while at the same time setting higher standards for others to emulate.
For Americans, in particular, a good deal of Europe's success came down to trusting Europeans and letting them take much of the credit.
It may have taken a half-century of immense destruction at the hands of Europeans to transform the above into axioms that few challenge today. But, again, this is mainly the case in Europe and America.
The West, as it was once proudly called, has come to seem more and more like an island rather than a beacon. Along its peripheries, even just next door, are frightening echoes of the late 19th and early 20th centuries.
The response of most Europeans and Americans to them has been, sadly, one of limited liability. Most spent the 1990s cultivating their own gardens; so far, much of the following decade has been spent building new walls or in being consumed by the passions of the moment.
The world of 2009 is still much freer, more open and more peaceful than the one of a generation ago. But how much longer can this last?
As the zeitgeist of 1989 recedes into distant memory, we should do all we can to keep alive the promise it once represented.

Kenneth Weisbrode is a historian at the European University Institute and author of "The Atlantic Century."

Source: http://www.nytimes.com/2009/11/07/opinion/07iht-edweisbrode.html?nl=todaysheadlines&emc=a24

Maternal death rates alarming - a preventable tragedy: CAMBODIA

2009-10-16T16:21:00.001-07:00

CAMBODIA: Alarming Maternal Deaths Require a Mix of Solutions
By Robert Carmichael

Improving maternal health and access to health services is key to achieving the goal of reducing maternal mortality.

Credit:Robert Carmichael

PHNOM PENH, Oct 12 (IPS) - Early this year, heavily pregnant Vorn Yoeub, 37, arrived at a hospital in the western Cambodian border town of Pailin. The mother of seven other children died later that evening along with her unborn child after suffering complications from bleeding.

For most of this decade Cambodia has been trying to cut the number of deaths of women, who, like Vorn Yoeub, are the human face behind the country's stubbornly high maternal mortality rate. The figure has been running at around 461 per 100,000 live births for 10 years, and is one of nine development objectives the country is trying to improve as part of its Millennium Development Goals (MDGs).

MDGs are development goals that the United Nations member states along with other international organisations have agreed to meet by 2015.

Progress on Cambodia's nine goals is mixed: A conference in Phnom Penh late last month indicated that it would likely attain only three of them by 2015. And there are concerns that the global economic crisis could make attaining some of the remaining six MDGs much harder.

Sherif Rushdy, a consultant for the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP), told attendees that on the positive front, Cambodia would probably meet its targets in cutting child mortality; combating HIV/AIDS, malaria and other diseases; and reducing to zero the number of casualties from landmines (which is specific to Cambodia).

But it will almost certainly miss another three: Reducing maternal mortality to 140 deaths per 100,000 live births; achieving universal nine-year education; and ensuring environmental sustainability.

"[These three goals] are flashing a red light, and the country is unlikely to reach its goals in these areas," he said.

Two other MDGs – eradicating extreme poverty and hunger; and promoting gender equality and empowering women – are also thought unlikely to be met unless Phnom Penh changes its approach.

Rushdy told attendees that progress towards the final goal – developing a global partnership for development – could not be assessed since targets were not set.

Why such mixed results on two of the key healthcare goals: Little or no progress on reducing maternal mortality combined with "spectacular progress" – in the words of Rushdy – in cutting child and infant mortality? After all, they are closely linked.

In an interview with IPS, Dr Lo Veasnakiry, the Ministry of Health's director of planning, said there are solid reasons behind the declines in death rates of infants and young children.

One is the government's commitment to support the health sector financially despite the impact of the global financial crisis ripping through Cambodia's economy. Another is its policy to improve access to child-based services and their availability.

"And thirdly, we have support from the health partners in terms of technical and financial services," he said. One of these is the United Nations Children's Fund (UNICEF).

Malalay Ahmadzai, UNICEF's mother and child health specialist, added several other factors to the success mix, among them the strategy to improve breastfeeding practices.

But improvements have also come from areas that at first sight appear to have little in common with health – primary education, for example. Mothers with some education have an improved understanding of health matters, she said. The strong economic growth of the past decade has also helped, as have better roads and quality of care in this predominantly rural society.

"Things are very much linked," Ahmadzai said.

This combination of improvements has helped lower the number of infant deaths to 60 per 1,000 live births, well on the way to meet the MDG of 50 per 1,000 live births.

Such factors have also driven down the number of under-fives dying, from 124 per 1,000 live births in 1998 to 83 per 1,000 currently. Rushdy told the conference that Cambodia should meet its goal of 65 per 1,000 live births.

Yet it still leaves the question of the country's extremely high maternal mortality rate. One senior UNDP staff said statistical modelling of the data shows the true figure could be anywhere between 300 and 700 deaths per 100,000 births. But whatever the true figure, there is widespread agreement that the target of 140 will not be achieved.

Dr Lo cited a lack of money and insufficient technical expertise. And, he added, the initial target was set too high. He has proposed that the government revise upwards the target of 140 deaths per 100,000 live births to 250 deaths. He rejects the suggestion that this is simply shifting the goalposts. And, he points out, some progress is better than none.

"We think the [revised goal of] 250 is likely to be achieved," he said, citing gains in a number of the underlying indicators related to maternal or infant health. For example, this time last year, 79 of Cambodia's 967 health centres lacked midwives. "But by the middle of this year all the [remaining] 79 health centres are staffed with midwives."

Another improvement is the government's introduction of an incentive for midwives: Those who work in rural health facilities are paid 15 U.S. dollars for each baby born alive. Those working at hospitals – in larger, urban areas – get 10 U.S. dollars. "This has produced a positive impact on the [successful number of] deliveries," he said.

And while just one-third of births were attended by skilled health workers a decade ago, that number rose to 58 percent last year. The target for 2015 is 80 percent.

Pre-natal visits are also up from around 30 percent in 2000 to 80 percent last year while the number of Caesarean sections for births with complications has also increased – an indication that more women with problem births are getting appropriate medical intervention. All of this gives him cause for optimism. "We can use these proxies to look at the progress for the future," he said.

But if the true maternal mortality numbers remain opaque, the afflictions killing five Cambodian women a day in childbirth are clearer. A 2005 Japanese-funded study found more than half die from bleeding, while eclampsia kills another one in five.

"The complications [with maternal mortality] are unpredictable," said UNICEF's Ahmadzai, "and the onset of complications can be very quick."

She said rapid reaction is vital in addressing what health experts call "the three delays" behind the high death rate among women of reproductive age. The first delay is the decision by the family in this predominantly rural population whether or not to take the woman to the health clinic. The second is access, or simply getting to the clinic, and financial aspects such as affordability. The third is the quality of care women get once they reach the clinic.

"If any of these three delays exists, then the mother [who is bleeding] dies within an hour or two or three," she added.

The solution is a mix of improved resources and trained staff: "more skilled birth attendants, good supplies, quality improvement of services, and then improving access," said Ahmadzai.

Speaking to IPS, the UNDP's Rushdy said the "stubbornly" high maternal mortality rate has other causes too. "This is a gender issue – girls and mothers continue to be neglected," he said. "Girls' nutrition is the first to be cut when there are financial difficulties in households. So one root cause is a general bias against women."

Another is the loss of skills in many areas such as health. Most of Cambodia's educated people either died during the Khmer Rouge regime or fled overseas.

Rushdy believes the MDG to eradicate poverty and hunger — which are inextricably linked to health, women's in particular — will not be met unless Cambodia can shift economic growth away from its narrow urban base of garment manufacturing, tourism and construction. He said the solution is to promote development in rural areas, where the majority of Cambodians live.

"There are ways to mitigate the risks, such as providing free access to health care. Health problems are the ones that drive people into poverty," he said.

(END/2009)

Source: http://www.ipsnews.net/news.asp?idnews=48810

Critical issues to be addressed at World Summit on Food Security in Rome 16-18 Nov.

2009-10-16T15:02:00.001-07:00

(Excerpts:)

For Stamoulis, in order to produce more food, "we have to make sure that farmers are properly supported in the developed and developing countries, not at the expense of each other." So far we are not doing a good job, he says. "Developed countries support farmers tremendously, while developing countries do not have the means.

"We need to invest massively in a different kind of agriculture, less water- dependant, less destructive, less petroleum-based, less mechanised, a conservation agriculture, a complicated agriculture," he says. "The reason is: if we don't do that, we destroy the planet and everybody starves."

And that is what is at stake here, in Rome.

DEVELOPMENT: Rome, Food Capital of the World - Part 1

By Miren Gutierrez* and Oriana Boselli

A farmer harvests sorghum seeds in Sudan. The price of the seeds has doubled over the last two years.

Credit:U.N.

ROME, Oct 3 (IPS) - It was once true that all roads led to this ancient capital. Today it is the furrows of maize, wheat and rice fields that take you to Rome, where the biggest global food organisations are headquartered, and the World Summit on Food Security (Nov. 16-18) is being organised.

The situation couldn't be more momentous.

"The global food insecurity situation has worsened and continues to represent a serious threat for humanity," says the summit website. According to the latest U.N. projections, the world population will rise from 6.8 billion to 9.1 billion in 2050 - a third more mouths to feed. Most population growth will occur in developing countries.

High food prices in developing countries, a global economic crisis affecting jobs, deepening poverty, and more hungry people combine to paint a bleak picture.

So, what are the expectations of the food organisations present in Rome?

Kostas Stamoulis, head of the Food and Agriculture Organisation's (FAO) agricultural development economics division, says this summit "is not a fund-raising exercise...the original position is that we eliminate hunger, preferably by 2025, although I am not sure if this will be the summit's objective, because the countries have yet to agree on the targets..."

One of the concrete issues on the table, he says, is "reform of the global governance of food security. It has to be better coordinated, because so far every crisis turns into a big disaster. Also, despite all the wealth in the world, we have seen chronically hungry people increasing since 1996."

A recent paper by FAO says that "producing 70 percent more food for an additional 2.3 billion people by 2050 while at the same time combating poverty and hunger, using scarce natural resources more efficiently, and adapting to climate change are the main challenges world agriculture will face in the coming decades."

For Stamoulis, in order to produce more food, "we have to make sure that farmers are properly supported in the developed and developing countries, not at the expense of each other." So far we are not doing a good job, he says. "Developed countries support farmers tremendously, while developing countries do not have the means.

"Part of the objective too is to make sure that countries realise that a lot more resources have to be devoted to agriculture. Not necessarily during the summit...this is not a pledge summit. That happened in July, when the G8 pledged 20 billion dollars to support agriculture. This is a summit where countries, at the highest level, reconfirm their support."

At the summit of the Group of Eight (G8) most powerful countries, held in July in the Italian city of L'Aquila, they decided to mobilise 20 billion dollars over three years to fight the food crisis, and it was said the money could be used to promote agriculture rather than as aid. But people like Paolo di Croce, secretary-general of Slow Food International, were sceptical. "We have to change the model that caused this situation (of food crisis), not patch up the gaps with some crisis money," he said in an earlier interview with IPS.

For Stamoulis, this is a good point. The money should be invested primarily on small farmers, he says. Investments should be made too in infrastructure - roads, ports, storage facilities. "In terms of technology and access to markets, we have to make sure small holders take a fair share of this allocation, so they increase their productivity."

Considering that 30 countries are currently experiencing food emergencies, "another issue is to have a better early warning system and a better coordinated response," he says.

What is new in comparison with the food crises of the 1970s and the historic World Food Conference of 1974?

"Now we have the Committee on the World Food Security (CFS), which meets all the criteria to become a real world partnership from the bottom up," says Stamoulis. "One of the issues leaders will talk about is precisely the reform of the CFS, of which I have the honour to be the secretary-general."

According to Stamoulis, the CFS is undertaking reforms in order to involve civil society in the decision-making process, so it becomes "a real global forum for coordination of the various national and international initiatives on food security."

In the 70s, the summit took place under the pressure of the food crisis. "But here we are putting something together that will tackle not only the food crisis, but also more structural issues and chronic hunger. And this should be done with a lot of stakeholders' participation, not just a group deciding. That is a big difference. This time we have a better chance to succeed, because we are more inclusive."

The voices of the food organisations interviewed for this report seem to echo the tension between two crucial problems: the need to address urgent food emergencies right now, and the need to invest in longer-term structural solutions.

The host of the summit, the FAO, is one of three U.N. food agencies based in Rome. Each has different goals. FAO acts as a "neutral forum" where all nations meet to negotiate agreements and debate policy. FAO's staff includes agronomists, foresters, fisheries and livestock specialists, nutritionists, social scientists, economists and statisticians, "who collect, analyse and disseminate data that aids development."

The International Fund for Agricultural Development (IFAD) is another. Unlike FAO, IFAD specialises in financing rural development projects.

Kevin Cleaver, IFAD's assistant president, says IFAD has seen money for agricultural projects increase now to "the largest percentage ever."

"The economic crisis that began 2008 has affected developing countries' food production very negatively," he says. "All statistics point to that effect: in 2008 and 2009, the number of people globally suffering from hunger or malnutrition increased about 100 million.

"Things were getting better in the previous five-year period...but 2008 was a turning point," he says, due to a combination of factors: the financial crisis, fewer remittances, less income coming in, less money to buy food. "Credit dried up in the developed countries, so you can imagine what happened in the high-risk investment countries of Africa or other low income countries of Asia. It just disappeared. And that had a very negative impact on agriculture."

Then, the G8 meeting in L'Aquila happened. "One of the reasons why IFAD was so happy with the results was that the world leaders admitted that the food crisis was creating havoc in the developing countries and generating food insecurity," says Cleaver. "The increase of hungry people was unacceptable, but also a security threat. If hungry people become angry, it is more likely that they take up a gun, emigrate to Europe or the U.S...the G8 was admitting a security problem, and this is the first time we have seen such a thing."

Money was not only pledged, "some of these countries are starting to follow up, to deliver," he adds. "In the past we often had just words. Now we see some action."

IFAD was established as an international financial institution in 1977 in one of the major outcomes of the 1974 World Food Conference. Is the same sort of momentum building up now?

Cleaver says there are some important differences.

"IFAD was part of the response of the international community to a similar crisis," he says. "The prices of the major food staples and livestock products hugely increased in 1974 and 1975. There was a shortage of food; starvation. The international community got together, and created IFAD.

"It did some other things, like putting more money in research. A lot of bilateral aid agencies invested in agriculture. Even in the private sector, one of the things we saw is big investments in agriculture. The effect was that by the end of the 1970s, food prices had gone down dramatically. In the 1980s, there was an abundance of food even in developing countries.

"Real prices of food relative to other commodities continued to fall. The world went into abundance. The function of the World Food Programme (WFP) was to take some of this surpluses in industrial countries and distribute them in places in distress," he says. "There is no longer a global surplus.

"The world cereal stocks are at historic low," says Cleaver. "The real prices of food have increased dramatically. Look at the statistics: the rate of growth of agricultural productivity has declined to about a third of what it was. In other words, science and technology haven't generated growth, haven't kept up with people's growth. Supply is not keeping up with demand."

Why? "Complacency; we were so successful. Donors got out of the agriculture business. We also have seen less investment from the private sector. Institutions like the Inter American Development Bank and USAID, almost all of the bilateral agencies, have withdrawn from agriculture. This has destroyed agricultural capacity."

On top of this, climate change and other "serious slow environmental problems" combined to "crush agriculture". Cleaver mentions areas such as South Asia and China, dependent on natural irrigation, that are in danger now for lack of rain.

"What has happened in these areas is a salinisation," he says. "The extraction of water has been so great that the aquifers have disappeared. So, globally there are huge water shortages in irrigated areas. In Mexico, 50 percent of aquifers are totally exhausted. These areas are producing nothing. Uzbekistan had huge irrigated areas. Now it looks like snow, because the salt is so thick. Nothing can grow in that 'snow', not even weeds.

"We need to invest massively in a different kind of agriculture, less water- dependant, less destructive, less petroleum-based, less mechanised, a conservation agriculture, a complicated agriculture," he says. "The reason is: if we don't do that, we destroy the planet and everybody starves."

And that is what is at stake here, in Rome.

*Miren Gutierrez is IPS Editor-in-Chief. (END/2009)

Source: http://www.ipsnews.net/news.asp?idnews=48712

Natural resources, lawlessness fuel armed conflicts buffeted by arms trade

2009-10-08T13:45:00.001-07:00

Was man created for waging such perpetual "resource wars"?! Who are the consumers, by the way? And what about the arms trade that fuels the slew of armed conflicts going on? Following are two articles on the these themes.

"The evidences of discord...are apparent everywhere, though all were made for harmony and union."

- Baha'i writings http://is.gd/43qV8

(Excerpts:)

In recent decades, many of the bloodiest conflicts in Africa and Asia have been fuelled by profits from the exploitation of natural resources including diamonds, timber and minerals... [T]here are no formal global mechanisms governing trade in other ......conflict resources like timber, minerals and cocoa.

Since most governments agreed in 2006 on the need to regulate the global arms trade, an estimated 2.1 million people had died as a direct or indirect result of armed violence.
That worked out at more than 2,000 per day, or more than one every minute.

Resource wars

Last reviewed: 30-06-2009

TRADE IN NATURAL RESOURCES FUELS WARS

Labourers work at an open-cast diamond mine near Kpetewama, Sierra Leone.
REUTERS/Dylan Martinez

In recent decades, many of the bloodiest conflicts in Africa and Asia have been fuelled by profits from the exploitation of natural resources, including diamonds, timber and minerals. Efforts are being stepped up to clamp down on the trade in these conflict resources.

Millions have died in resource-fuelled wars since the late 1990s
The Kimberley Process has reduced international trade in conflict diamonds
Campaigners want legally enforceable rules for oil and mining companies

Trade in "blood diamonds" provided vital funding for warlords and rebels fighting civil wars in Angola, Sierra Leone and Liberia in the late 20th century. After this was exposed, pressure grew for an international mechanism to stop this trade, thereby cutting off cash for arms purchases and helping end conflicts. The Kimberley Process - a scheme to certify the source of diamonds - was launched in 2003, and is credited with reducing the proportion of conflict diamonds in international trade to below 0.5 percent. Most of the worst resource-fuelled wars in recent years have ended. But activists warn that, without greater efforts to make international trade more ethical, history could repeat itself. Besides the Kimberley Process for diamonds, there are no formal global mechanisms governing trade in other conflict resources like timber, minerals and cocoa. Advocacy group Global Witness says a first step would be to reach an internationally agreed definition of what they are. Campaigners also want legally binding rules to govern the conduct of multinational oil and mining companies, which they accuse of indirectly contributing to human rights abuses. Most major corporations have signed up to voluntary schemes, but critics say they lack teeth.

Source: http://www.alertnet.org/db/crisisprofiles/conflictresources.htm

Armed violence kills 2,000 a day worldwide - groups

07 Oct 2009 00:01:00 GMT Source: Reuters

* An estimated 2.1 million people killed since 2006

* Groups call for treaty in 2012 regulating arms trade

* U.S. Bush administration opposed past treaty efforts

By Patrick Worsnip

UNITED NATIONS, Oct 6 (Reuters) - More than 2,000 people around the world are dying from armed violence each day, on average, advocacy groups said on Tuesday, urging nations to launch negotiations on a treaty to regulate the arms trade.

A report by the 12 groups was issued as a U.N. General Assembly committee began considering a draft resolution that would set a timetable for negotiations with the aim of concluding a treaty in 2012.

The report, written for the groups by British-based Oxfam, said that since most governments agreed in 2006 on the need to regulate the global arms trade, an estimated 2.1 million people had died as a direct or indirect result of armed violence.

That worked out at more than 2,000 per day, or more than one every minute - most of them civilians.

Of the deaths, more than 700,000 resulted from armed conflicts, including those in Afghanistan, Somalia, Sudan, Sri Lanka and the Democratic Republic of the Congo, the report said. The figures also include people killed in non-political violence involving firearms.

Oxfam executive director Jeremy Hobbs said eight out of 10 governments wanted agreement on an arms trade treaty.

"This month we want the majority of enlightened countries at the U.N. to make it happen," Hobbs said in a statement. "An intransigent few cannot be allowed to keep their foot on the brakes forever."

The proposed legally binding treaty would tighten regulation of, and set international standards for, the import, export and transfer of conventional weapons.

Supporters say it would give worldwide coverage to close gaps in existing regional and national arms export control systems that allow weapons to pass onto the illicit market.

Nations would remain in charge of their arms export control arrangements but would be legally obliged to assess each export against criteria agreed under the treaty. Governments would have to authorize transfers in writing and in advance.

CONCERNS ON EFFECTIVENESS

The main opponent of the treaty in the past was the U.S. Bush administration, which said national controls were better. Last year, the United States accounted for more than two-thirds of some $55.2 billion in global arms transfer deals.

Arms exporters China, Russia and Israel abstained last year in a U.N. vote on the issue.

The proposed treaty is opposed by conservative U.S. think-tanks like the Heritage Foundation, which said last month that it would not restrict the access of "dictators and terrorists" to arms but would be used to reduce the ability of democracies such as Israel to defend their people.

The U.S. lobby group the National Rifle Association has also opposed the treaty.

Diplomats said the Obama administration was more open than its predecessor to a treaty, but still had concerns about its effectiveness and whether it could affect U.S. citizens' rights to bear arms. Treaty supporters say it would not regulate domestic arms sales.

The resolution before the General Assembly is sponsored by seven nations including major arms exporter Britain. It calls for preparatory meetings in 2010 and 2011 for a conference to negotiate a treaty in 2012.

Haggling over the text is due to continue until a vote in the assembly's first committee, which deals with disarmament, in the last week of October. The resolution would then go to the full assembly in December.

(Editing by Eric Beech)

Source: http://alertnet.org/thenews/newsdesk/12549000465.htm

Doesn't the world need virtues above all? [INTEGRITY], [JUSTICE], [HONESTY], [COMMITMENT]

2009-10-01T04:36:00.001-07:00

Françoise Le Goff: Risking Job by Returning Donor's Money

Thanking donors for a generous response to floods in Namibia

A teaser from an interview with Françoise Le Goff in next week's edition of Inspire magazine.

***

What started off as a volunteer activity with the Red Cross in 1977 in her home town of Brittany, France, ended up as a globe-trotting career. Françoise Le Goff's journey has taken her through Chad, Paris, Geneva, and for the past 10 years, back again to Africa (Kenya, Zimbabwe, South Africa), working in a number of senior roles. In January 2008 Françoise was appointed head of the southern Africa Zone, making her one of the IFRC's (International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies) seven most senior representatives in the world.

Returning donor money:

On one mission, Françoise arrived in a country and walked immediately into a situation rampant with allegations of corruption against the National Red Cross Society leadership. At her first meeting with the National Society's board, she warned in diplomatic terms of the risks that the organization faced if it chose to do nothing about these allegations.

Warning given, and nothing changed. The process repeated itself at another board meeting: warning, platitudes and promises, and then no action. "I have had experiences where by applying my own principles I risked my career or my standing," says Françoise, recalling the episode. "But I believe that part of living and working in line with values, means taking risks."

And so, having realized that nothing would change without action on her part, she took the decision to return a large sum of money (over USD 2 million) to the donor as she no longer felt that she could vouch that it would be spent and used appropriately.

"When you take risks, you create a process that inevitably takes on a life of its own. But if the risk is taken on principle – be it the principles of an organization or a combination of an organization's and you own – then you come from a position of strength. Regardless of the outcome of the process, your position will remain strong."

In this case, the process validated her decision. At the National Society's General Assembly, the President of the National Society was hounded from the floor – and eventually out of office – with angry allegations of corruption and mismanagement. Françoise's action had given momentum to the growing sense of frustration within the organization. The timing was right.

EBBF: What did you think was going to happen when you gave back the money? What was at stake in your mind?

Françoise: I was indeed not sure of what would happen. I was new in the country and I did not know or realize the level of frustration amongst the local Red Cross membership. However, I did know the donor and I understood the reputation risks for the organization, both of which were key elements in the decision.

But the key issue in my mind was the fact that beneficiaries and vulnerable people were being deprived of support. I was also very aware that my own reputation – my own integrity – was possibly at stake. If I didn't denounce what was happening, I saw that some would see that I was endorsing it. This gave me the courage to speak out. And in the end, this action triggered a change process that was very positive, and very, very successful in the long run.

I based my actions on a few principles such as honesty, professional integrity, and justice – to be the voice for the voiceless.

Source: http://ebbf.org/blog/?p=994

Desperation growing as poor neglected in Pakistan

2009-09-28T08:19:00.001-07:00

(Excerpts:)

"As they say, poverty is not about loss of income, it is about loss of capability. We must strengthen our people, men women and children by national literacy schemes, good basic health coverage, skill development and livelihood schemes," said Shah (parliamentarian Nafisa Shah from Sindh province).

Jobs would give people the "capability to confront and overcome poverty."

PAKISTAN: 'Empty Stomachs' Could Spark More Riots, Experts Warn
By Zofeen Ebrahim

Men and women, young and old alike, wait in queue to buy flour at a subsidised price during the Ramadan.

Credit:Fahim Siddiqi

KARACHI, Sep 23 (IPS) - For a bag of flour, they risked life and limb.

Scores of women, many of them married and with children, gathered outside the office of Chaudhry Iftikhar, a local trader, in the old quarters of the port city's Khori Garden to get free rations of flour.

Then a stampede broke out as the people scampered to get their hands on the rations, killing 18 women and leaving more than 30 others injured, most of them between ages 30 and 50.

The Sep. 14 unfortunate incident took place while the Ramadan – an Islamic holy month during which people fast from dawn to dusk — was being observed.

During this monthlong religious observance, many philanthropists dole out charity, believing it helps them win favour from God. Pakistan is known to be one of the top ten countries with the highest level of individual charity. Iftikhar had been distributing free rations of flour for over a decade at the site of the stampede.

Facing a judicial inquiry into the incident, Iftikhar blamed the skyrocketing prices of essential commodities, including flour, which he said exacerbated poverty and spawned the Monday mayhem.

Baspareen was among those who perished in the stampede. Her family's sole breadwinner, her husband being ill, she left behind seven preschool-age children. Safia, the eldest of the brood, will now have to assume her mother's role of looking after her family.

"Hunger and poverty has a female face, definitely," said parliamentarian Nafisa Shah from Sindh province.

"Women bear the burnt (of hunger)… due to our defined gender roles. Women are responsible for cooking and feeding the children," explained Mustafa Talpur, regional advocacy and policy advisor in Asia for WaterAid, an international non-governmental organisation which provides water, sanitation and hygiene education to some of the world's poor.

Citing food security studies, Talpur said women "are responsible for food grains, cooking. . . and are the last to get food when everybody in the family has had their meal".

"The recent tragic death of women has only made the issue more visible. In rural areas there are many manifestations of hunger — like low birth-weight babies, under-five malnourishment," to name a few. Incidents similar to the Khori Garden stampede — albeit sporadic and on a smaller scale — had taken place in the past, where some people lost lives trying to get food.

In one of these horrific episodes, 12-year-old Ejaz Solangi died in a baton charge by police who were trying to pacify a frenzied mob scrambling for wheat in Thatta, Sindh province. Fifty-five-year-old Mohammad Rafaqat died in Gujranwala in Punjab province while waiting in queue to buy 10 kilograms of flour.

I.A. Rehman, director of the Human Rights Commission of Pakistan (HRCP), warned of more of these incidents "if centres for free distribution of food or for sale at subsidized rates are opened."

On the other hand, he said, if such centres are not opened, "we should be prepared for food riots, the first common stage for anarchy," he told IPS.

"There is a revolution brewing, for nothing is worse than an empty stomach," declared social worker Perween Saeed. Ten years ago, she opened a 'tandoor' restaurant (where one can buy two pieces of subsidised 'roti' – unleavened bread – and get a plate of curry or vegetables for free) for the daily wage earners in a poor locality of Karachi, which she has since expanded to three.

"There will be an increase in criminal activity, and if the state doesn't pay attention now, the results will be horrific," she warned.

Abdul Sattar Edhi, founder of Pakistan's best-known charity, Edhi Foundation, said "a bloody revolution is simmering." He added, "people will resort to killing to feed their children."

There have been reports of parents either selling or poisoning their due to poverty. Just recently, a man had gone to the press club in Quetta in the north-west of Balochistan province, announcing that he was selling off his daughter so he could a bag of flour for his family.

Edhi, who runs a 'langar'(soup kitchen) across Pakistan to feed approximately 250,000 people, has urged people not to sell or kill their children. "Send me your children. I will feed all of them," he said.

"The state needs to take cognizance of these facts. We have serious issues of poverty and hunger in a country which has long been a net grain exporter," said Ali Dayan Hasan, South Asia senior researcher of the Human Rights Watch, during a telephone interview from Lahore, capital of Punjab province.

"We always had poverty and hunger, but never starvation. In large parts of the country, most people got a meal," Hasan said, adding that what was changing now was that the "poor are getting poorer" and that the gap between rich and poor has widened.

Based on 2008 data from the Food and Agriculture Organisation, a specialised agency of the United Nations, undernourishment in Pakistan increased from 24 to 28 percent of the population, and the number of people deemed to be "food insecure" increased from 60 million to 77 million during the same period.

Pakistan's economic growth slowed to two percent during the fiscal year 2008-2009, down from an average annual 6.8 percent over the previous five years.

Consumer prices in this South Asia's second largest economy rose 10.7 percent from a year earlier after gaining 11.2 percent in July, according to the Federal Bureau of Statistics.

"It's a huge failing of successive governments, as we see the gaps widening," said Zohra Yusuf of HRCP.

"That this should happen in a country proud of its nuclear capability and one of the largest standing armies in the world is very instructive," said senior journalist and political analyst Ghazi Salahuddin.

He said those in the government needed to improve their image. "Pakistan must have created a record of (the number of) days its president has been abroad in a year — perhaps more than one hundred days!"

Shah cited "economic meltdown, inflation, the war against militancy" as reasons for the worsening poverty in her country. She was quick to point out, however, that "underspending on social sectors, historically, has made our people vulnerable. Hence (the incidence of) ill health, hunger, illiteracy."

"Non-developmental expenditure remains unchecked while no attempt is made at economic reforms – land or industrial or labour," said Yusuf.

Edhi refused to pin the blame squarely on the government for the extent of poverty now gripping the nation. Tax evaders are responsible for the empty national coffers, he said.

"I also blame all of us who have plenty of money to drink endless cups of tea, smoke cigarettes, chew 'paan' (betel leaf) and using cell phones. We are a nation of spendthrifts. No wonder our leaders are begging all the time."

"I don't think there is a dearth of wheat or rice. Even Pakistan is exporting rice," said Mustafa Talpur, regional advocacy and policy advisor in Asia for WaterAid. The actual issues are "distribution and affordability" of basic commodities for the poor, especially those in urban areas.

Noted economist Haris Gazdar said the "dignified way is to have a proper social protection system in place, which is what some people in governments are trying to do."

He explained: "There is a tradeoff between queues and markets. You ration through queues or through prices, your choice." He said the present scenario was a "media-generated hype," adding that the opposition party, Pakistan Muslim League (Nawaz Group), "generated populism around giving free/cheap food to people without having any proper mechanisms in place."

He sid the real culprits of the Khori Garden incident "are foolish and self-promoting private charities, media, and public figures who are generating populism around need."

On Sep. 16, the government launched an income generation programme, Waseela-e-Haq, under which interest-free loans of 3,000 Pakistan rupees (36 U.S. dollars) would be given every month to 731 families, to be paid over a period of 12 to 15 years.

This programme is under the 34 billion-Pakistan rupee (412 million U.S. dollars) Benazir Income Support Programme (BISP) launched in October 2008.

"BISP is a very good poverty alleviation programme," conceded Shah, but it needs to be "supplemented with good and sensible spending on the social sectors."

"Priorities have to change if the state considers that people are important," said Hasan.

"As they say, poverty is not about loss of income, it is about loss of capability. We must strengthen our people, men women and children by national literacy schemes, good basic health coverage, skill development and livelihood schemes," said Shah.

Jobs would give people the "capability to confront and overcome poverty."

(END/2009)

Source: http://ipsnews.net/news.asp?idnews=48557

Prioritizing sustainable food, nutritional security, regionally and globally

2009-09-25T14:34:00.001-07:00

LATIN AMERICA: Food Crisis Must Be Regional Priority
By Humberto Márquez

CARACAS, Sep 21 (IPS) - There are 52 million hungry people in Latin America and the Caribbean, six million more than in 2008 - an aspect of the global economic crisis that must be a top priority focus of national policies and development aid, according to a meeting of experts from 27 countries held in the Venezuelan capital.

The region "presents a contradiction, because it has resources, land, water, energy and other elements necessary to sustain production that would be sufficient to cover needs, but by contrast it has areas suffering chronic food shortages," Mexican economist José Rivera, secretary general of the Latin American Economic System (SELA), told IPS during a break in a Sept. 17-18 meeting on the food crisis in the region held by the regional body.

What has been described as a financial debacle since 2008 "is actually a structural crisis affecting finance, employment, food supplies, the environment, energy shortages and climate change. But it is the food aspect that requires priority treatment, because it directly affects people's lives," Rivera said during the two-day gathering, which involved experts from the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO) and the Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean (ECLAC).

One out of 10 people in Latin America and the Caribbean go to bed hungry every night, while at a global level, one billion people do so – 100 million more than in 2008, according to the FAO.

The U.N. agency doubts that the goal of cutting the number of hungry people in the world to 420 million by 2015 - the goal set at the World Food Summit in 1996, when some 800 million people were hungry – will be met..

The issues of food security and hunger eradication must be dealt with "as national priorities, by incorporating them as central elements of state policies and of the cooperation and integration agendas with a regional scope," said the representatives of SELA's 27 member states taking part in the Meeting for Consultation and Coordination on Food Prices and Food Security in Latin America and the Caribbean.

"It is fundamental to commit all national bodies, including the private sector, government agencies, subregional integration schemes and specialised international organisations to the strategies to guarantee food and nutritional security," added the document containing the meeting's conclusions and recommendations.

"The challenge posed to developing countries by the goals of sustainable food and nutritional security entails increasing supply, raising productivity, incorporating vulnerable communities and favouring the appropriate operation of local agricultural markets, while giving priority to cooperatives and small and medium-sized agricultural producers," says the document.

"There are experiences that are worthy of greater attention, like the efforts of Bolivia and Ecuador to salvage native knowledge and plant varieties that are known by rural indigenous communities and are of high nutritional value and have not been commercialised," Diego Montenegro, a Bolivian representative of the Inter-American Institute for Cooperation on Agriculture (IICA), told IPS during the meeting in Caracas.

The meeting discussed the impact on food supplies and on agricultural sustainability of the global rise in food prices, which according to Montenegro increased by an average of 40 percent in the 2006-2008 period.

The conclusions of the meeting point out that "the recent expansion of the (region's) agricultural and livestock production and exports has been concentrated in a limited set of primary commodities with little added value. This has resulted in a high vulnerability to the fluctuations in the international prices of both exportable products (such as coffee and soybean) and import products (such as rice, corn, sugar, etc.) and in significant falls in the international exchange terms."

The price of cooking oils, for example, rose 153 percent on average from 2006 to 2008, while the price of cereals when went up 126 percent and dairy products 88 percent.

One commodity that particularly stood out was rice, the price of which climbed 140 percent in just five months in 2008 – from 376 dollars a ton in January to 900 dollars a ton in May – compared to beef, which went up just 28 percent between 2006 and September 2008, when the price peaked.

"Speculation has been one of the factors that has hit the food market hardest," said Rivera, who called for support for initiatives to limit financial speculation in international commodity markets.

The SELA meeting called for the exchange of information and the transfer of appropriate technology in the region, training in agriculture and livestock breeding, the generation of applied knowledge, and the use of new technologies in the agricultural sector, to benefit small and medium-sized producers in particular.

The participants also recommended the establishment of a special food security fund, to assist countries with agricultural production projects and food emergency programmes, and the creation of networks of regional research institutions and laboratories for seed improvement, genetic upgrading and the development of resistant varieties.

The delegates especially highlighted an initiative adopted in February 2009 by the member countries of ALBA (Bolivarian Alternative for the Peoples of the Americas), an alternative bloc made up of Antigua and Barbuda, Bolivia, Cuba, Dominica, Ecuador, Honduras, Nicaragua, Saint Vincent and the Grenadines, and Venezuela.

In April, the ALBA food programme earmarked nine million dollars for an agricultural project in Haiti, the poorest country in the hemisphere, and a total of 13 million dollars for 10 projects in eight other countries in the Caribbean region.

SELA reported that the initiative focuses on needy sectors of the population like indigenous communities, peasant farmers and Afro-descendants.

The regional body also underscored an innovative scheme by Petrocaribe – under which Venezuela sells some 15 countries in the region fuel on preferential terms – involving the creation of a 50 million dollar development fund. As long as the price of oil is above 100 dollars a barrel, Petrocaribe will earmark 50 cents of a dollar for food security projects in the region for every barrel it sells.

Delegates at the meeting also warned of the need to keep the production of biofuels from triggering a conflict between the environment, agriculture and trade.

Montenegro said that "fortunately, many countries interested in agro-bio-energy have identified crops that have high energy value and do not compete with food production, while biofuel consumer countries like the United States have recognised that competing with food production is not right in a situation like today's."

Rivera, meanwhile, warned that the full impact of the global crisis in the region has not yet been felt, and that food insecurity could become even worse in the next few months – in spite of the fact that this region, home to less than 10 percent of the global population, has 15 percent of the planet's farmland and 33 percent of the world's water sources, grows 30 percent of all oilseed crops and produces 21 percent of the world's chicken and 26 percent of beef.

Indeed, as the SELA document points out, "Due to its agricultural potential and as a food producer, the region could contribute to significantly solving the lack of food at the global level." (END/2009)

Source: http://ipsnews.net/news.asp?idnews=48533

Outright slavery, people trafficking widespread in Australia

2009-09-25T05:46:00.001-07:00

'Slavery active in Australia': Legal expert

SYDNEY, 25 September 2009

Australia has become a destination country for people traffickers who are the modern-day version of slave traders, according to Pam Stewart, a senior law lecturer from the University of Technology, Sydney.

Ms Stewart is a member of the Anti-Slavery Project, which was established at the university in 2003. The project provides direct assistance to victims of enslavement and human trafficking as well as advocating legal and policy reform.

People trafficking is a human rights issue, said Ms Stewart, who was speaking at a reception held at the Bahá'í National Centre on 20 September to mark the International Day of Peace.

"This is about human rights abuses happening in Australia today," she said.

People trafficked to Australia are forced to work by their slave-owner/employer, often in the sex industry or as forced labourers, Ms Stewart said.

"They are commodified, dehumanised, imprisoned, and denied their own identity by having their documents taken away," she said.

Ms Stewart said that people traffickers rely on their victims' fear of authorities.

"They are frightened - frightened of being sent back, frightened of giving evidence, frightened for their welfare of their families at home," she said.

"People need to know what their rights are. In many cases, they don't even know they have rights," Ms Stewart said.

Lucrative

People trafficking is one of the world's most lucrative crimes, Ms Stewart said.

It is estimated that traffickers have reaped some $42.5 billion a year worldwide in the past decade, she said.

Although the exact scale of the problem in Australia is unknown, the Australian Federal Police has undertaken more than 270 investigations of trafficking related offences since 2004, leading to 34 people being charged and nine convictions.

"These cases are only the tip of the iceberg," Ms Stewart said.

Ms Stewart praised the Federal government for introducing laws that criminalise slavery, sexual servitude, trafficking and debt bondage.

She said that the Australian Federal Police has a taskforce to combat people trafficking.

A Commonwealth Victim Support Program for trafficked persons has provided support to 107 people, nearly all of them women, since 2004, she said.

Special visa arrangements have also been put in place for trafficking victims.

"We are achieving things but there's plenty more to do," Ms Stewart said.

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Please visit www.bahai.org.au for full story with photographs and links.

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Move to Ban Violent Video Games in Crime-ridden Venezuela

2009-08-28T14:55:00.001-07:00

Venezuela plans law to ban violent videogames

26 Aug 2009
Source: Reuters

CARACAS, Aug 26 (Reuters) - Venezuelan lawmakers are moving to outlaw the sale of violent videogames and toys in an attempt to fight rampant crime in the country.

A bill to ban sales of violent games passed its first hurdle in the National Assembly on Tuesday evening, the legislative chamber said in a statement issued on Wednesday.

Dozens of people are murdered every week in the capital Caracas, one of Latin America's most dangerous cities, sometimes for as little as a pair of shoes or a mobile phone.

Opponents of President Hugo Chavez say 100,000 people have been murdered since he assumed office in February 1999. The government says its opponents and Venezuela's private media exaggerate the problem.

Police release crime statistics irregularly and officials frequently say they do not know how many homicides have taken place.

To become law, the bill must pass a second vote in the National Assembly and be signed by Chavez. The National Assembly has not set a date for a second vote.

Some countries ban violent videogames and many restrict their sale to children. Although few studies have shown that such games cause aggressive tendencies, they have often been the subject of controversy. (Reporting by Ana Isabel Martinez; Writing by Robert Campbell; Editing by Eric Walsh)

Source: http://www.alertnet.org/thenews/newsdesk/N26262990.htm

Big-city squatters organize themselves: Abandon panhandling for self-sustaining work

2009-08-20T11:41:00.001-07:00

PARAGUAY: Indigenous Squatter Communities Organise Self-Help
By Natalia Ruiz Díaz

Cerro Poty soup kitchen.

Credit:Natalia Ruiz Díaz/IPS

ASUNCIÓN, Aug 2 (IPS) - Indigenous families living in a squatter settlement on the outskirts of the Paraguayan capital are organising themselves, and now have a community soup kitchen and are producing and selling handicrafts. They don't want to return to panhandling on the streets of Asunción, so far from their home villages.

In the last few decades, the number of poor indigenous people on the streets of Greater Asunción has increased, as the exodus of native families from rural areas has grown.

"Anteve rosêva'ekue la cállepe, semaforope rojerure moneda mitâkuéra ha mba'e. Ko'âga tres meses la ndorojuvei la cállepe" ("We used to go out on the street and ask for money, with our children, at the stoplights. But we haven't gone out to beg on the streets in three months"), Petrona Ruiz, one of the women running the Cerro Poty soup kitchen, told IPS in Guaraní, an official language in Paraguay along with Spanish.

The settlement of Cerro Poty, where the families live in makeshift dwellings, is located at the foot of Lambaré hill on the outskirts of Asunción, near both the Paraguay river and the city dump.

The neighbourhood was created in the late 1990s by Guaraní families from the eastern province of Canendiyú. Today it is home to 28 native families from central, southern and southeastern Paraguay.

The expansion of large-scale soy farming is one of the causes of the growing migration to Greater Asunción, which has a population of around 1.7 million.
"We went to see what was happening in Canendiyú and found that indigenous and campesino (peasant) families are abandoning their land, suffocated by the encroachment of soy crops and the use of toxic agrochemicals," Claudio Rolón, with the National Secretariat on Children and Adolescents (SNNA) unit for attention to indigenous children and adolescents, told IPS.

Canendiyú is one of the country's leading soy-producing provinces, along with Alto Paraná and Caaguazú in the east and Itapúa in the south. Soy production has climbed 191 percent since the 1995-1996 harvest. And while output rose 49 percent at a national level between 2003 and 2006, it grew 80 percent in Canendiyú.

Soy cultivation began to expand in this land-locked South American country in the mid-1960s and boomed in the late 1990s with the introduction of genetically modified soy. Paraguay is now the world's fifth-largest soy producer. In 2007, soy accounted for 38 percent of the country's total agricultural output, according to the Ministry of Agriculture.

After centre-left President Fernando Lugo took office in August 2008, the SNNA launched a programme to provide assistance to indigenous squatter settlements in Greater Asunción, with the aim of keeping children and teenagers off the streets.

Cerro Poty, with a population of 135 people, 68 percent of whom are under 17, is one of the settlements targeted by the programme. Of the 92 children and adolescents in the community, 81 were out with their mothers panhandling or scavenging for recyclable waste products on the street.

The first step taken by the programme was to organise a soup kitchen, which also provides free milk to all children under five. In addition, cultural, social organising and income-generating activities got underway.

"We organised ourselves in committees of women, craftspeople, school support and community members, to help each other out," community leader Silverio Gómez explained to IPS.

Mothers work in the soup kitchen and help take care of the community garden along with a group of children and young people.

Others are involved in producing woodcarvings and other handicrafts, to generate income for the community.

"We are receiving training and are paid for the work we do," said Gómez.

Cerro Poty is now one of a network of cultural centres that supports the work of craftspeople, promoted by the Secretariat of Culture. Tools and equipment were obtained with assistance from the Organisation of Ibero-American States for Education, Science and Culture.

"The aim is to support the work of craftspeople, building on the woodcarving talent and skills of the Guaraní," said SNNA communications director Adriana Closs.

They carve animals in balsa wood, and craftswomen are also learning to make jewelry and receiving training in fabric-making.

The products are showcased and sold in the shops set up for that purpose by the programme.

"The community is recovering its craft-making skills, and now we are taking the next step: helping them sell their products," said Closs.

A web site was created to show and sell their products at both the national and international levels, while providing information about the community.

The experience at Cerro Poty is being replicated in other squatter settlements around the capital, which range from a few months to over a decade old and are home to a total of 3,500 people.

According to the census office's 2008 survey of indigenous households, there are 108,300 members of 20 different indigenous groups in Paraguay, representing two percent of the population.

Besides tiny white, black and Asian minorities, the rest of the population of Paraguay is of mixed Spanish and Guaraní descent.

And although 90 percent of the population speaks both Guaraní and Spanish, indigenous people suffer inequality on every front: health, education, employment and access to basic services like running water and electricity. Six out of 10 indigenous people in Paraguay live in poverty.

Rolón said the work in the squatter communities takes into consideration the traditional organisational structures of each particular ethnic group. First, a dialogue is established between the SNNA and the community, "recognising the identity of each community and its leaders and people."

In Cerro Poty, lunch at the soup kitchen is ready, far from the city's stoplights and streets. (END/2009)

Source: http://www.ipsnews.net/news.asp?idnews=47934

Using rooftops to green, freshen urban environments

2009-08-10T10:15:00.001-07:00

MEXICO: Green Therapy on the Rooftops
By Verónica Díaz Favela*

Employees and patients alike enjoy the green roof at the Belisario Domínguez Hospital.

Credit:Verónica Díaz Favela/IPS

MEXICO CITY, Aug 1 (IPS/IFEJ) - In the last two years a Mexico City hospital, kindergarten and municipal government office building have experimented with plant-covered rooftops. Today, workers and visitors are enjoying the benefits.

Eight months ago, the first "nature roof" was created at the Belisario Domínguez Hospital in the working-class neighbourhood of Iztapalapa, Mexico City's most densely populated district, home to 1.8 million people.

The green roof of this three-storey hospital is divided in two: the larger part is over a portion of the first storey, the smaller is over the third.

"Having direct or visual contact with a green area helps a great deal in the patients' recovery. In Japan, nearly every hospital has a 'nature' terrace," Tania Müller, head of the project, said in an interview.

According to the hospital's director, Osvaldo González La Riviere, "the workers enjoy the space. Initially, the smokers used it, but we have been able to regulate that. Some patients found out about the rooftop garden and now they ask to go for a stroll there, with the help of family members."

Installation of such a roof requires waterproof treatment that prevents roots from taking hold in the building material, as well as a polyethylene layer to prevent runoff. A geotextile product is added to prevent fine particulates from the underlayer from reaching the roof itself.

And finally, the underlayer is put in place, a mix of volcanic stone material, lighter than soil, and organic material to feed the plants, which are then planted on top. The plants need no watering.

One section of the hospital's green roof is alongside the gynaecology/obstetric ward. For women who have just given birth, "it is more pleasing to look out the window at a natural setting than to see a vending cart or a truck spitting out fumes," said Evangelina Sandoval, the deputy medical director.

Also, "working with patients and constantly facing illness and death produces stress. Now, instead of leaving by their usual route, many workers use the emergency exits in order to pass through the rooftop garden," she said. The hospital employs about 1,000 people.

The green area covers 1,000 square metres - one-tenth the total roof area of the hospital. The roof was transformed from a barren concrete wasteland to a lush place that attracts bees, butterflies and birds - a stark contrast to the dense traffic and the concrete structures surrounding it.

Three native species from the Valley of Mexico were planted there. "All are sedums (leaf succulents), of the Crassulaceae family," explained Müller, director of urban, park and bikeway reforestation for Mexico City.

The heat from "a normal rooftop can reach 80 degrees Celsius, contributing to the 'heat-island effect' (the increase in temperature in urban areas with few green spaces and lots of pavement), especially in a city as urbanised as this one," she said.

Thanks to the vegetation, the roof's temperature is maintained at 25 degrees Celsius, creating a microclimate that returns moisture to the environment and retains dust and particulate matter that could otherwise harm people's lungs, Müller added.

Furthermore, it won't be necessary to re-waterproof the roof for 80 years.

That is why the Secretariat (Ministry) of Health gave the Mexico City government the green light to create green roofs for its 28 hospitals.

All of this "is viable, but we need resources," said Müller. With the global economic crisis, "everywhere budgets have had to be adjusted, and that is what we are evaluating."

Planting a rooftop can cost 95 dollars per square metre, whether in Mexico, Europe or the United States.

But the positive results are obvious. Take the Centre for Child Development (CENDI), which provides services for 400 children of the city's subway train workers, and is located in Mexico City's historic central district.

"Fifty percent of the city's chickens are concentrated in the surrounding blocks, which causes heavy soil and air pollution. In addition, there is traffic and a high crime rate," said CENDI director Nadia Tapia.

Even so, this kindergarten has generated many of the cutting-edge programmes that are ultimately implemented nationwide. In keeping with this trend, in mid-2008, the city government inaugurated a green rooftop - 1,190 square metres - on this two-storey building.

Since then, once the children reach the age of two they are introduced to the roof garden. Those ages three to six practice gardening skills in a small plot, where they make compost, and grow tomatoes, potatoes, parsley, chamomile and cactus.

"The children relax, explore and are more calm and cooperative when they reach the teaching area, increasing their capacity to learn," said CENDI paediatric expert Araceli Becerra.

These children, explained the director, come from low-income families. "Seventy-five percent live in very small apartments, and because of crime concerns, they don't have access to parks."

When they visit the rooftop, "they get excited and they want to touch and observe everything," teacher Rosa Muñoz said in an interview for this article.

According to Müller, the green roofs are an "alternative for sustainable urban development, especially in a city like this, where even if we wanted to create a ground-level park, there is no room to do so."

In the cities of Latin America, the average for green areas overall is 3.5 square metres per person. The World Health Organisation recommends nine to 12 square metres per person.

"In Mexico City, we would have nine million more square metres of green space if we put one green square metre on every roof," said Alberto Fabela, who is in charge of the rooftop at the Secretariat of Urban Development and Housing (SEDUVI).

Since April 2008, the SEDUVI six-storey public building has set aside 900 square metres of its roof for green space. The technique employed here is hydroponics - growing plants suspended in water.

So far, it has produced 21,000 ornamental plants, donated to the districts of Coyoacán and Azcapotzalco, where they adorn gardens and median areas along boulevards.

Geraniums, marigolds, kalanchoe, petunias are grown, "all strong and resistant to stress from the streets: cars, noise, smog, people," said Fabela.

The plants are produced with the help of the 800 SEDUVI employees, who have the option of dedicating one hour of their workweek to maintaining, sowing or transplanting the flowers.

"We teach them to remove wilted leaves and to plant seeds. Obviously, it is a kind of therapy. We give them one hour, but the time passes quickly. The most receptive are the young people, 18 to 25, and elderly women," Fabela added.

The Mexico city government hopes that the more than 8,000 square metres of green roofs created so far in public buildings will serve as an example for the private sector.

For now, the city plans to ask businesses requesting construction permits to dedicate 10 to 20 percent of their rooftops to green space - in exchange for tax benefits.

*This story is part of a series of features on sustainable development by Inter Press Service (IPS) and the International Federation of Environmental Journalists (IFEJ), for the Alliance of Communicators for Sustainable Development (www.complusalliance.org). (END/2009)

Source: http://www.ipsnews.net/news.asp?idnews=47929

Ongoing human rights abuses at root of Xinjiang violence

2009-07-20T09:38:00.001-07:00

Behind the Violence in Xinjiang

by Nicholas Bequelin

July 9, 2009

Published in The New York Times

HONG KONG — The eruption of ethnic violence in China's Xinjiang Uighur Autonomous Region, the most deadly recorded in decades, seems to have taken both Beijing and the world by surprise. It should not have.

The violence, coming on the heels of massive protests in Tibet less than 18 months ago, reflects the profound failure of Beijing's policies toward national minorities, whose areas represent almost four-fifths of the country's landmass but whose population makes up only 8 percent of China's 1.3 billion people.

The Uighur people, much like the Tibetans, have a history, culture, religion and language distinct from the rest of China. Their homeland, the ring of oases that formed the backbone of the Silk Road in ancient times, was only incorporated into the Chinese empire in the 18th century.

And the effective colonization of Xinjiang only started after 1950s, when Beijing began to settle People's Liberation Army soldiers who had put down the short-lived independent East Turkestan Republic (1944-1949) on military state farms. The proportion of Han Chinese in the population of Xinjiang leaped from 6 to 40 percent as a result of state-sponsored population transfers from other parts of China.

A second massive assimilation drive was initiated in the 1990s, prompted in part by the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991 and Beijing's fear of instability in the region. This time, instead of relying on forcible population transfers, Beijing created economic incentives to attract new Han settlers. In less than a decade, an ambitious program called the "Big Development of the Northwest" brought between one and two million new Chinese migrants to Xinjiang.

Economic development surged, spurred by a combination of massive subsidies, oil exploitation and rapid urbanization. But the Uighurs were not part of the rising tide. Resentment over job discrimination and loss of lands swelled, combined with anger at China's religion policies and the stream of new settlers.

The government's response was purely repressive. Already sharp limits on religious and cultural expression were further tightened. Any expression of dissent became synonymous with advocating "separatism" — a crime under Chinese law that can carry the death penalty.

Any sign of ethnic distinctiveness outside of the sanitized version promoted by the state was denounced as a plot by "separatist forces abroad." After a failed uprising in the city of Yining in February 1997, the authorities launched a massive crackdown that led to tens of thousands of arrests and dozens of executions.

For most Uighurs, Xinjiang increasingly became a police state, where they lived in fear of arrest for the slightest sign of disloyalty toward Beijing.

Even prison officials started to complain to Beijing that prison and labor camps across the region had become jam-packed. Isolated acts of anti-state violence, such as the assassination of Uighur "collaborators," attacks against police stations and the explosion of two bombs in Urumqi buses in February 1998 only reinforced the determination of the state to increase its repression.

After the Sept. 11 attacks in the U.S., the Chinese began to justify its campaigns in Xinjiang as a contribution to the global war on terror. China also used its growing international influence to secure cooperation from neighboring states to arrest and deport Uighurs who had fled persecution.

Although there is no dispute that clandestine Uighur groups have from time to time carried out violent attacks — most recently in a series of bombings and attacks on Chinese soldiers just before the Olympic Games — the massive propaganda offensive about the threat of "East Turkestan" terrorism drove Chinese public opinion toward an even more negative perception of the Uighur people, who in turn felt increasingly ostracized and discriminated against.

Beijing's accelerated attempt over the past few years to forcibly refashion Uighur identity has also fueled growing resentment. Following Xinjiang Party Secretary Wang Lequan's declaration in 2002 that the Uighur language was "out of step with the 21st century," the government started to shift the entire education system to Mandarin, replacing Uighur teachers with newly arrived Han Chinese. The authorities also organized public burnings of Uighur books. Control over religion was extended last year to prohibit traditional customs such as religious weddings, burials or pilgrimages to the tombs of local saints.

Earlier this year, the government suddenly announced plans to raze the city of Kashgar, the centuries-old cultural center of the Uighur civilization and one of the only remaining examples of traditional central Asian architecture. In a few weeks, the old city will have almost entirely disappeared, forcing out 50,000 families to newly constructed, soulless modern buildings.

This is the backdrop against which Uighurs reacted to graphic images circulating on the Internet last week of Uighur workers being beaten to death by Chinese coworkers in a Guangdong factory. They took to the streets.

Unless the government addresses the root causes of ethnic tensions and ends its systemic human rights violations, the chances of more violence will remain high.

Nicholas Bequelin is a senior Asia researcher for Human Rights Watch.

Source: http://www.hrw.org/en/news/2009/07/09/behind-violence-xinjiang

Mauritania slaves: 500.000 born into continuing slavery

2009-07-20T08:46:00.001-07:00

AWARDED FOR EXPOSING THE AFRICAN COUNTRY WHERE ONE IN FIVE ARE SLAVES

SOS Esclaves have been awarded the 2009 Anti-Slavery Award for nearly 15 years of fighting slavery in Mauritania, a country where an estimated 18 per cent of the population, or 600,000 people, are born and continue to live in slavery.

Receiving the award on Wednesday 27 May 2009 at Chatham House in London on behalf of the organisation is SOS Esclaves president, 64-year-old Boubacar Messaoud.

Boubacar Messaoud is himself the son of slaves and was one of the first people to denounce slavery in Mauritania. He has also been imprisoned three times for fighting against slavery in his country.

As recently as 2 April 2009, Boubacar was targeted as an anti-slavery activist and narrowly avoided death after being beaten unconscious by police at a rally in Mauritania's capital Nouakchott.

Boubacar said: "Slavery in Mauritania is a hidden practice but exists everywhere. Just because people are not in chains or publicly beaten by their masters does not mean they are free. The only thing that slaves know in Mauritania is slavery. All they know is their masters."

While slavery in Mauritania has existed for centuries, today virtually all cases involve Hratine (Arabic speaking descendants of black Africans captured into slavery by Arab-Berber 'White Maures' hundreds of years ago) owned by White Maures masters.

Those who are still in slavery are born as slaves, are inherited as property by their masters and receive no payment for their work. Slaves are expected to work every day. Men and children care for their master's animals, which are usually camels, cows, and goats. Female slaves generally work from before sunrise to after sunset, caring for the master's children, fetching water, gathering firewood, pounding millet and other domestic tasks.

Female slaves are frequently beaten and raped by their masters. Their children are also considered the master's property and, along with other slaves, can be rented out or loaned or given as gifts in marriage.

Over the years SOS Esclaves has helped hundreds of former slaves, while its activists have faced harassment, threats and even imprisonment for speaking out about slavery and campaigning for its end.

There have been several attempts to end slavery in the country, including the decree to end slavery in 1981, which made Mauritania the last country in the world to officially abolish the practice.

In 2007 the same year as Mauritania's first free and democratic elections, and after a hard fought campaign by SOS Esclaves, supported by Anti-Slavery International, slavery was finally criminalised by the new government.

However, the military coup of August 2008 has brought a halt to the progress made against slavery and renewed violence against anti-slavery campaigners. On 6 June, the leader of the coup, General Mohamed Ould Abdel Aziz is expected to win presidential elections, which are being boycotted by opposition parties.

Romana Cacchioli, Anti-Slavery International's Africa Programme co-ordinator, said: "Despite the hard fought victory to criminalise slavery in 2007 the new law has not resulted in a single conviction. We are concerned that the lack of progress since the coup last August and the targeting of Boubacar Messaoud in April indicate that the new regime is looking to try and sweep the issue of slavery once more under the carpet."

Case study of a former slave in Mauritania

Kheidama Mint Barka, aged 48, said: "I was born a slave. I would look after the family's animals all day long. I would take the sheep to get water in the morning and in the afternoon I would take the camels. I never took a break and I was never allowed to rest.

"I would come back home in the evening completely exhausted. Sometimes I was so tired I would become clumsy and would make silly mistakes and I would be beaten by the mistress's youngest son. Sometimes to punish and frighten me I would be left down the well. My mistress's oldest son would also rape me. I always had to be at his disposal.

"Since I have been freed I have been earning a living with small jobs, preparing millet and providing other services for people. At least now I am paid for the work I do."

Source: http://www.antislavery.org/english/press_and_news/news_and_press_releases_2009/2009_award_winner.aspx

Market forces skewed: We can buy a 99-cent cheeseburger but not even a head of broccoli

2009-07-13T09:10:00.001-07:00

FILM: Shattering the Myth of "Agrarian America"
By Sherazad Hamit

Joel Salatin of Polyface Farm and his grass-fed herd.

Credit:Food Inc.

NEW YORK, Jul 8 (IPS) - "How is it that you can buy a 99-cent cheeseburger but not even a head of broccoli?" wonders Michael Pollan, author and co-narrator of the new documentary "Food, Inc.".

Without question, since the rise of the fast food industry in the 1930s, the race to deliver food faster, fatter, bigger and cheaper has changed the food industry dramatically.

"When McDonald's is the largest purchaser of ground beef, potatoes, pork, chicken, tomatoes, lettuce and apples, they change how [this food] is produced," says Eric Schlosser, author of the bestseller "Fast Food Nation" and co-narrator of the film.

This in turn impacts the price of certain foods. Instead of small local farms and a diverse range of products at the supermarket, there are a handful of companies and factories that process animals and crops to resemble foods we love.

It is in this context that director Robert Kenner and narrators Pollan and Schlosser seek to unveil the truth about "Agrarian America", a pastoral fantasy spun by the U.S. food industry.

The explicit point of the film is that the multinational-dominated industry has evolved into a dangerous animal. It is heavily subsidised and protected by the government and yet is barely accountable to any public food safety or regulatory body.

In fact, the industry itself is largely responsible for self-policing food safety and quality standards – a Supreme Court-sanctioned freedom that has allowed it to control farmers, minimise oversight and feed the U.S. appetite while simultaneously incurring significant human and environmental costs - costs hidden from the public by droves of corporate lawyers, the film argues.

In stepwise fashion, Schlosser and Pollan take us to the corn fields of middle America. We are told that in order to understand why foods like cheeseburgers are in fact cheaper than broccoli, we need to look at the impact of corn subsidisation and technology on the industry.

Subsidies make it possible for corn to be sold cheaply to multinationals which use it as feed for animals ill-equipped by evolution to properly digest it. In the case of cattle, the result is a mutated and virulent strain of bacteria - E.coli 0157:H7 - that when shed in manure, spreads from one animal to another.

High-tech industry, Pollan maintains, has compounded these circumstances. No longer is the food industry looking to better the conditions of feeding operations. It is looking for quick fixes.

"When approximately 400 animals are slaughtered each hour, and one meat patty consists of meat from thousands of animals, the odds of contamination increase exponentially," says Pollan.

Kenner's inside footage of putrid chicken farms and ground beef being cleansed in ammonia packs a subversive punch. For those who dismiss the food debate as an issue dwelled on by the nutritionally and socially conscious, Kenner makes clear: anyone who eats three meals, whether you eat meat or not, is at risk.

It is this consistent reality check that causes even the most apathetic viewer to question the safety of our food and the existence of adequate laws.

To that effect, perhaps the most shocking revelation is the narrow scope of authority of the U.S. Department of Agriculture, one of the main food safety bodies. Described as "toothless", the USDA is given the blunt end of the sword – although perhaps even its critics are too kind.

Through the tireless work of featured food safety advocate Barbara Kowalcyk, we are made to understand the true extent of its impotence owed to the slew of officials ensconced in government regulatory bodies like the Food and Drug Administration, Environmental Protection Agency and USDA who are now working to protect their former multinational employers.

While the notion of corporate cover-ups is unsettling, even more so is the responsibility of multinationals for a system of worker-slavery at food-processing factories. Through hidden-camera footage of factory working conditions and exchanges at border crossings, we are privy to part of the real human cost of producing food cheaply, an arrangement allegedly granted tacit approval by corporate higher-ups.

The remainder of that human cost is, of course incurred by consumers. Underscoring that fact is an encounter with a working-class family from Los Angeles struggling to make ends meet and put food on the table – a family for whom the food debate is truly a luxury, a pre-occupation of the wealthy.

The family's two adolescent daughters are living proof a generational endemic – obesity - the biggest predictor of which is income-level. One in three U.S. citizens born after 2000 will have early onset diabetes. That figure jumps to one in two amongst minorities. These are staggering statistics even to those who strongly believe obesity is a crisis of personal responsibility.

We have now come full circle to the cheeseburger and the broccoli, and are reminded that there are more forces at work than one's ability to resist fast food. There is a systemic skew towards cheaper, nutritionally deficient foods in our supermarkets. It is at this point that we are cued to ponder over nutritional alternatives and a plan of action to change the status quo.

We are presented with "organic". In an interesting "us" vs. "them" framework involving Stonyfield dairies and the Walmart super-store chain, respectively, we become proponents of the organic cause. The obvious downsides, namely price and availability, are immediately squared away and we are launched into a discussion on the profitability and sustainability of organic brands.

The conclusion is that organic brands can take down the giants if consumers leverage their purchasing powers.

"It is an easy decision to support organic. If it is clear that the customer wants it, it is easy to get behind it," says Walmart executive Tony Arioso.

After much food for thought, the documentary closes with prescriptions ranging from buying produce in season and eating organic to changing school meals and writing to political representatives.

While good in intention, the list falls short of addressing the main problem of the working class: that of getting a head of broccoli on the dinner plate in an affordable way. In lacking this dimension it falls prey to the prevailing criticism it set out to defeat: that the food debate is open only to the better-off.

What is required is a list that includes more avenues for involvement at different economic levels and a marketing strategy that goes beyond limited release viewers. Overall, "Food, Inc" is as enjoyable as it is informative.

(END/2009)

Source: http://www.ipsnews.net/news.asp?idnews=47581

Uganda forest likely gone in 50 yrs

2009-07-13T06:55:00.001-07:00

INTERVIEW-Uganda likely to lose all forest cover in 50 yrs

09 Jul 2009

Source: Reuters

A woman burns tree trunks to get charcoal for sale in Kadocha village in Kotido district, northeastern Uganda. Communities here say they have no alternative sources of energy, forcing them to deplete their forests.
OXFAM/Handout

* Uganda could lose forest cover in 50 years

* Tree planting needed to mitigate global warming

By Frank Nyakairu

NAIROBI, July 9 (Reuters) - Uganda will lose its entire forest cover in the next 50 years if the government does not embark on immediate efforts to halt rapid deforestation, a forestry expert warned on Thursday.

Forests and tree planting can help mitigate the effects of global warming by increasing carbon storage and cutting greenhouse gas emissions, experts say. Tropical deforestation accounts for a fifth of emissions from human activities.

"We have been observing using satellite imagery that over the last 15 years we have lost more that 1.5 million hectares of forest cover," Xavier Mugumya, Uganda's forest management specialist at the National Forest Authority, told Reuters.

"Uganda is likely to have very low if not completely no forest cover within 50 years if nothing is done to reverse this trend," he said in an interview.

The east Africa nation's forest cover has fallen to 3.5 million hectares in 2005, Mugumya said. Trees soak up carbon dioxide as they grow and release it when they are burnt or rot.

The G8 agreed on Wednesday to try to limit global warming to 2 degrees Celsius and cut greenhouse gas emissions by 80 percent. A new U.N. climate agreement is due to be signed in Copenhagen in five months.

Rich countries agree they have to lead a climate fight after enjoying two centuries of industrialisation and pollution, but they disagree with developing nations on how much of the burden they should carry under a new treaty.

"If nothing is done to stop the drivers of deforestation then the sustenance the forests contribute to life and the country's biodiversity will be lost completely," said Mugumya, who is also Uganda's international climate change negotiator.

Mugumya said that Uganda's rapid population growth -- one of the highest in the world -- was hurting the nation's efforts to combat deforestation.

Individuals also hold 70 percent of remaining forest land, making it difficult to regulate depleting cover, Mugumya said.

"This will have to call for a concerted effort where individuals, governments and the developed countries will have to work together to reduce emissions and control carbon levels in the atmosphere." (Editing by Jack Kimball and Giles Elgood)

Source: http://www.alertnet.org/thenews/newsdesk/L9521780.htm

Eight Women Die EACH DAY During Delivery - MADAGASCAR

2009-07-13T06:47:00.001-07:00

HEALTH-MADAGASCAR: Eight Women Die During Delivery Each Day

By Fanja Saholiarisoa

ANTANANARIVO, Jul 9 (IPS) - Eight Malagasy women die per day while giving birth, either due to complications during the pregancny or during delivery, according to a recently-published national Demographic and Health Survey (DHS).

As a result, Madagascar is unlikely to achieve Millennium Development Goal (MDG) 5, which aims to reduce maternal mortality by three quarters by 2015.

Madagascar's maternal mortality rate remains high at 469 per 100,000 live births, according to the survey. The key reason for this is postpartum haemorrhage (PPH), health experts say, which is defined as blood loss greater than 500 millilitres during vaginal delivery or greater than 1,000 mL during caesarean delivery.

PPH is a particular problem in resource-poor settings, like rural Madagascar, where access to health facilities and services is compromised.

In an attempt to improve maternal health, the Malagasy health department has now started to make the drug misoprostol, a drug developed to prevent gastric ulcers, but also used as an effective and relatively-cheap medicine to induce labour, available in 31 of the country's clinics.

"This project will save the lives of many women in Madagascar and is an alternative for deliveries outside health centers," explains Thierry Ramanantsoa, a doctor at the Marie Stopes private hospital in Antananarivo, which initiated the project in collaboration with the health department.

Ultimately, health authorities plan to provide the drug in all of the country's 111 districts. "If the health department managed to (provide misoprostol) in all districts, the country can reduce its maternal death rate by 12 percent," estimated Jean Pierre Rakotovao, country representative of Venture Strategies for Health and Development (VSHD), a Canadian NGO which financially supports the project.

Obstetric fistula

The second most common cause of maternal mortality in Madagascar is obstetric fistula, a medical condition in which a hole develops between either the rectum and vagina or between the bladder and vagina after severe or failed childbirth when adequate medical care is not available.

The condition is particularly common in teenage mothers. 157 out of 1,000 births are given by young women between 15 and 19 years, according to a 2004 DHS survey.

Teza Soa, a 17-year-old mother from Toliara, in Madagascar's south, lost her baby during delivery and later developed obstetric fistula. Her own life was saved thanks to a free surgery provided by health workers of the United Nations Fund for Population (UNFPA) a few days after the delivery. "It was a difficult experience for me. Fortunately, I could access these (health) services," recalled Soa.

Preventable diseases such as PPH and obstetric fistula, are rampant due to a severe shortage of skilled health workers on the island. Although 80 percent of pregnant women receive prenatal consultation, only about half of births are attended by skilled health personnel and only a third of babies are born in a hospital setting, DHS researchers say.

Access to health care also remains limited because 65 percent of the rural population lives more than ten kilometres from the nearest health facility, without transport available to get there.

"Lack of (access to) skilled attendants penalises many mothers," says Dr Edwige Ravaomamana, head of UNFPA's reproductive health programme.

But even if pregnant women manage to visit their nearest health facility, there is no guarantee that they will be able to access the services they need. Many clinics on the island have no special delivery rooms, and often there are more patients than beds. In some instances, women had to lie on wooden tables when giving birth.

Lack of resources

The local clinic in Belanitra, a rural community in Madagascar's north, is one such resource-poor health facility. "It's hard to carry out interventions here in case of complications and because of the lack of hospital beds," complained Dr Augustine Rajoronary, the main physician of the clinic.

The clinic has only four beds, while about 20 women give birth here per month. "Sometimes, we ask our patients to bring their own mattress, or the woman has to leave a few hours after labour to give room to others," he told IPS.

Hopes are high that the introduction of misoprostol and improved fistula care will make a difference to maternal mortality rates. Previous efforts by the national health department to improve maternal health have had some success, but did not sufficiently decrease the numbers of death.

A couple of years ago, for example, the Ministry of Health, Family Planning and Social Welfare started to integrate traditional birth attendants into the health system because to assist child birth in remote, rural areas. About 500 midwives were trained, and they facilitate about 60 percent of deliveries.

Yet, midwives do not have the skills or resources to handle complications at child birth. "Apart from the low use of services in antenatal clinics, there is the low rate of births attended by skilled personnel. Only 21 percent of births are medically monitored, and 66.4 percent take place at home," explained UNFPA representative Benoït Kalassa.

UNFPA provided $1.3 million to strengthen maternal health services in the country in 2008 and 2009. Apart from treating fistula, UNFPA provides free family planning services and caesarean sections in public health care centres.

(END/2009)

Source: http://www.ipsnews.net/news.asp?idnews=47604

Song, dance as communication medium among women, stimulating dialogue - AFRICA

2009-07-07T14:22:00.001-07:00

DEVELOPMENT-AFRICA: Song and Dance to Empower Women Farmers
By Sholain Govender-Bateman

PRETORIA, Jul 5 (IPS) - Community theatre will be the main thrust of an innovative pilot project that aims to give women farmers stronger influence in agricultural policy-making in Southern Africa.

The Food Agriculture and Natural Resources Policy Network (FANRPAN) is set to launch the Women Accessing Realigned Markets (WARM)project in July, after a funding agreement was signed with the Gates Global Development Foundation in June.

"Traditionally song and dance are integral parts of African culture and act as a powerful communication medium whilst also stimulating dialogue so this is what we are going to use," says FANRPAN Natural Resources and Environment Programme Manager, Thembi Ndema.

WARM's main objective is to provide a platform for rural women farmers to express their specific needs and to raise issues that help realign policy research agendas to meet them.

"Women are already engaged in farming and are seeking ways in which to increase their production and earnings."

Ndema explains that women farmers are often marginalised in business relations and have little control over access to land, seed and fertiliser as well as credit and technology.

Currently, women make up 70 percent of the total agricultural workforce in Sub-Saharan Africa. They are responsible for 100 percent of the processing of basic foodstuffs, according to the latest Food and Agricultural Organisation (FAO) statistics. Ndema says that community theatre will help bridge the gap between researchers' knowledge and the communities involved in the project.

"We need to get to the local level and increase these farmers' understanding of input markets whilst also educating researchers once we gain insight from the communities," says Ndema.

"Policy-makers lack the right information needed to inform policy development and more analytical statistics which can be used to fine tune programs and policies to reach the most vulnerable and needy segments of the population."

The project's planned interventions include providing the participants with access to credit and research services, technology and input and output markets whilst also boosting their participation in policy-making processes at community and national level through active involvement in agricultural organisations.

FANRPAN will get to grassroots level by encouraging community mobilisation of women farmers in order to communicate key agricultural messages linked to productivity, development plans and accessing of services.

"We will identify community champions who will help spread the message," says Ndema.

FANRPAN CEO Dr Lindiwe Majele Sibanda says WARM will be extended if it succeeds. It is set to run for three years in Malawi and Mozambique with universities, national agricultural and research organisations and organisations like the Alliance for a Green Revolution in Africa (AGRA), Oxfam, World Vision, the International Fund for Agricultural Development and the Graça Machel Development Foundation all on board.

(END/2009)

Source: http://www.ipsnews.net/news.asp?idnews=47530

Demography potent factor in distribution of nations' power

2009-07-05T11:56:00.001-07:00

An enlightening analysis from The Times Online.

Democracy's forces can't beat demography's power

Even in the age of high-tech warfare, shifts in the world population give a military advantage to 'underdeveloped' countries

Richard Ehrman

The word jingoism originated from a music hall ditty of the Boer War: "We don't want to fight", it ran, "but by jingo if we do, we have got the men, we've got the guns, we've got the money too." A hundred years later it often seemed that Tony Blair was intent on pursuing the reverse policy — always up for a fight but painfully short of the means to pursue it.

The pressure that this put on our Forces is well known. But another factor that has had a huge bearing on our ability to wage war in places such as Afghanistan and Iraq has received much less attention.

For decades, strategists have maintained that raw numbers should no longer be a decisive factor in military thinking. In an age of high-tech warfare, professionalism, training and technology are supposed to be the keys to military success, not population. Yet in Iraq and Afghanistan none of this has helped anything like as much as the experts predicted — and demography has had a lot to do with it.

The problem has been that, even for a power as mighty and sophisticated as the US, occupying a Third World country with a fast-growing population means putting an uncomfortably large number of boots on the ground.

In Iraq, the Pentagon struggled right from the start to find enough troops to control the country after the fall of Saddam Hussein. Now much the same thing is happening in Afghanistan. Britain discovered this 90 years ago when we occupied Iraq in 1918 after the collapse of the Ottoman Empire at the end of the First World War. Iraq's population at the time was 2 million, compared to about 45 million in the United Kingdom. Even so we had to deploy more than 100,000 troops to hold the country in the face of tribal unrest and nationalist insurgency, and even with that many men we were hard pressed to keep control.

In terms of numbers the West still held the upper hand compared to the Middle East until well after the Second World War. In 1950 all the Arab countries together had a combined population of only 60 million, compared with nearly 160 million in the US and a combined total of 120 million for Britain, France, and Spain — the three European powers that then still ruled territory in the Arab world.

By 2000 the demographic balance had changed dramatically. The Arab world had increased fourfold to just over 240 million, not far short of America's 284 million. Over the same period the population of Iraq increased even faster, from under 6 million in 1950 to 25 million in 2000 — and 30 million today. In Afghanistan (which is not an Arab country) it went up at a similar pace, from 8 million to 20 million by 2000, and approaching 30 million today.

Thanks to their high fertility, these countries are also now much younger than the West. Between 1950 and 2000, the average age in America rose from 30 to 35, and in Europe from 30 to nearly 38 — the oldest of any continent. In Iraq and Afghanistan the average age fell over the same period; in Iraq it was only 18 in 2000 and 16 in Afghanistan. The result, as America and Britain have discovered to their cost, is that both have disproportionately large reserves of fighting-age men.

In a region that is already unstable, fast-growing young populations — usually with plenty of time on their hands — are highly likely to spell trouble, even if Western nations steer clear of them. Across the Middle East, youth unemployment was estimated by the International Labour Organisation at 25 per cent in 2003, the highest in the world.

And, as elsewhere in the developing world, more and more of the population are concentrated into the slums of large cities. Within ten years more than 70 per cent of the region's population will be urban, with a quarter living in cities with populations of one million or more. For any potential invader, demography like this is a nightmare.

Just how much of a nightmare was the subject of a famous article in 1995 entitled "Force Requirements in Stability Operations" by James T. Quinlivan, an analyst at the Rand Corporation and a leading authority on the subject.

In it he pointed out that "the populations of countries in the underdeveloped world have expanded markedly relative to the population of the United States. More particularly, the populations of Third World countries have expanded even more dramatically relative to the size of the American military."

Quinlivan's conclusion was that "first, very few states have populations so small that they could be stabilised with modest-sized forces. Second, a number of states have populations so large that they are simply not candidates for stabilisation by external forces."

Neither Afghanistan nor Iraq, it should be pointed out, is an especially large country by the standards of today's developing world. Iran is two and a half times as numerous as Iraq, while Pakistan's population is nearly six times that of Afghanistan. And what goes for Middle Eastern demography is also true of Africa. In 1950 the countries that now comprise the EU had a combined population one and a half times that of Africa. Now Africa outnumbers the EU by more than two to one, and by 2050 the ratio is expected to be five to one.

Many Western leaders, however, still appear to think that they can hold sway over both regions, much as they did 50 or 100 years ago. What such thinking ignores is the enormous shift in the balance of world population that has occurred since the days of empire — and is still continuing. Europe began the 20th century with 25 per cent of the world's population and finished it with 12 per cent. By the middle of the century that figure is projected to fall to only 7.5 per cent.

One of the most important lessons of both the insurgency in Iraq and the battle against the Taleban in Afghanistan is that not only is the power of numbers now on their side not ours, but in future the disparity is going to get only greater.

Richard Ehrman is deputy chairman of Policy Exchange. The Power of Numbers will be published next week by Policy Exchange and the University of Buckingham Press

Source: http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/comment/columnists/guest_contributors/article6626293.ece

Overcoming trauma of displacement through storytelling, illustration

2009-06-24T09:51:00.001-07:00

Sketching her journey: Refugee past inspires Vietnamese illustrator

20 Jun 2009

Written by: Katie Nguyen

Lucie Trinephi

It wasn't her journey as a refugee that scarred Lucie Trinephi. It was the destination.

Fleeing Vietnam by a military ship was just a memory, whereas punches and jeers from school bullies hurt. So did growing up on a rundown housing estate near Paris. Westernising her name didn't stave off the racist abuse as her family started their lives over again.

"I don't think I was really traumatised by the escape," Trinephi reflected in an interview. "I was more traumatised when I arrived in France. I wanted to go back."

Some 20 years later, she did, at least in her head. Cycling by the sea in Copenhagen, she had a sudden flashback to 1975. The thwack of the rotor blades above Saigon, the tense silence of the adults, and her own curiosity - it all came flooding back.

Now she's channeling these vivid memories into an illustrated book of her personal story. From Maus via Persepolis to Waltz with Bashir, cartoon explorations of identity have proved popular in recent years, adding graphic depth to harrowing stories.

But for Trinephi, the aim is not to pen a bestseller as much as to find peace.

"It's quite a meditative thing to do because I'm free to express myself," she said. "I come from an Asian background where people don't talk about their feelings."

The daughter of a surgeon, Trinephi was seven when she fled Vietnam with her mother and five brothers and sisters, just hours before northern Communist forces seized the southern capital Saigon, expelling American invaders and the civil war.

Her illustrations reconstruct their journey to Europe, via a landing craft carrier bound for the Philippines, which they boarded thanks to an uncle in the South Vietnamese navy.

Crammed inside the cavernous belly of the ship were scores of other families whose relatives had fought against the north's Viet Cong guerrillas, and shared the same fear of reprisals as they seized control of the country.

One frame of her book shows a child falling off the walkway to the ship in the crush to get on. He was never found.

Trinephi remembers long days staring at the sky and exploring the vessel with her sisters, weaving past other refugees and their piles of suitcases. The packets of instant noodles her mother packed were shared among the seven of them. One packet a day, one bite each.

In the Philippines, they boarded a U.S. naval carrier which took them on to Guam and a refugee camp. After a while, they were allowed through the barbed wire to play on the beach. In the evenings they watched films in the open air.

After several weeks in the camp, Trinephi's family left for France to join her father, a doctor, who was already there.

EPIPHANY

In her early twenties, Trinephi's curiosity about her roots started calling her. She went to Hong Kong, where she worked as an interpreter in a Vietnamese refugee camp. By this time, hundreds of thousands of Vietnamese were on the move in wooden boats, most of them spending months if not years in camps from Malaysia to Australia.

Trinephi's job was to encourage them to return to their homeland. After years of feeling like an outsider, it came naturally.

"In my basic Vietnamese, I was telling them to go home because I had this big identity crisis," she said. "I told them: 'don't think you arrive and you'll get a job and money'."

During the same trip she went back to Vietnam for the first time. But she did not feel as if she belonged, and left more confused than ever. She moved to Denmark to work as a cartoon colourist, and it was there that she experienced her epiphany.

Now living in London, Trinephi is working on a trilogy of graphic narratives. The first volume depicts her escape, the second the history of the war. The last will tell the stories of others who left after it ended, like her uncle who was sent to a Communist re-education camp for 10 years. His wife thought he had vanished forever, but they were eventually reunited in the United States.

"Graphic art is a good way of telling a story," Trinephi said. "And, I have many more stories to tell."

To see Lucie Trinephi's work, click www.vovchic.com

Reuters AlertNet is not responsible for the content of external websites.

Source is here.

Biodiversity cushions impact of environmental vicissitudes

2009-06-18T13:38:00.001-07:00

Q&A: 'Variety Can Protect Against Famine'
Sabina Zaccaro and Miren Gutierrez* interview three 'GUARDIANS OF DIVERSITY'

Panagiotis Sainatoudis

Credit:Bioversity International

ROME, Jun 17 (IPS) - How many varieties of date palm or melon exist? And why should we care? IPS spoke to three 'Guardians of Diversity' so named by Bioversity International for their contribution to conservation.

Bioversity International is the largest international research organisation dedicated to conservation and use of agricultural biodiversity.

Slimane Bekkay is a farmer in Ghardaia, Algeria. Conservation of date palm diversity has been his mission for a long time, both for scientific and cultural reasons. His lexicon of date palm varieties explains the different terms used in Arabic, Mozabite (an ethnic language in central Algeria) and French in order to provide insight into the role of the date palm in Arabic and Mozabite culture.

Jose Esquinas-Alcazar collected seeds of nearly 400 varieties of melon while a young man in his native Spain. Today, these form the basis of the national melon diversity collection. For 22 years, Esquinas-Alcazar served as secretary of the Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO) commission on genetic resources for food and agriculture; he is now professor of plant production at the Polytechnic University of Madrid and director of studies on hunger and poverty at the University of Córdoba in Spain.

Panagiotis Sainatoudis is the coordinator of Peliti, a non-governmental organisation in Greece that distributes local crop varieties to growers. To date, roughly 50,000 packages of 1,500 varieties of vegetables and cereals have been collected and distributed to farmers around Greece.

Bioversity International celebrates the Guardians of Diversity in the Mediterranean. They are farmers, community activists, scientists and scholars who have devoted their lives to safeguarding the diversity of animals and crops that people depend upon for food and agriculture.

IPS: What prompted you to start collecting and tracking plants?

SLIMANE BEKKAY: What led me to date palms is their longevity and the importance that the Islamic religion bestows on the date palm. It appeared together with human beings on earth.

JOSE ESQUINAS-ALCAZAR: In the 1970s there was a tremendous amount of melon diversity in Spain. I wanted to prevent this abundance from being lost, together with traditional knowledge. When I started to collect seeds, I found 380 different varieties of melon; nowadays only 10 or 12 of them are available in the markets or cultivated at all.

PANAGIOTIS SAINATOUDIS: In January 1991 a friend asked me if I wanted to buy some seeds that he had brought from abroad. He said they came from a bank of seeds in the U.S. The parcel contained seeds and roots from various plants from all over the world; the most impressive was a variety of maize that was very colourful and was cultivated by Amerindians, a population that had almost disappeared!

The following year, I went home for the marriage of my brother. In a courtyard I saw a kontoroko black corn. I asked the owner, an old lady, for a few seeds. So I got this idea of asking people to share with me seeds from their own varieties. I collected seeds of maize, pumpkins, beans etc...From then on, wherever I went, I asked the local people which seeds they cultivate, and also how to cook and maintain them. In the beginning I did not realise their value. Only after many years I began to see their political, economic, social and cultural dimension.

IPS: What makes dates or melons special? Why should we all worry about their conservation?

SB: The date palm's specificity is that this plant is growing in warm places and its production is extremely healthy. Their diversity and conservation is important to us because of the significant number of date varieties and the continuous coming up of new varieties. We are not afraid of its disappearance because there are always new varieties. I think the date palm will only disappear with the Universe.

JES: Natural resources, and agricultural biodiversity in particular, are limited resources that we have inherited as a treasure from our parents and that we must transfer in their entirety to our children, so that they may deal with unforeseeable future environmental changes. Diversity is the basis of adaptation and we need it to meet the unpredictable environmental changes, including climate change. You can select only from diversity, not from uniformity. This is why agricultural diversity is so important.

When I was collecting melons, one of the places I visited was Las Hurdes (in Spain). While waiting for the bus, I met a farmer with a small donkey. I explained to him that I was collecting different melon varieties. He told me that he had a variety that when the rest died, remained alive, and that he could give me some seeds.

We rode on the little donkey for three-and-a-half hours. He gave me some seeds. When we analysed the seeds in the lab we discovered that they were resistant to certain diseases, including some rare ones, which was a big surprise. Nowadays, thanks to those seeds, this resistance has been introduced into many commercial varieties, both in Spain and abroad.

PS: Local varieties are living pieces of our culture, our history, our family. They fill our tables and our lives with colour and perfume, forms and flavours. They resist illnesses, and will continue giving us fruits. We can cut a beautiful red tomato, eat it, and then if we like it, keep its seeds for next year. We determine freely what we will put on our table and in our body. The seeds are food, and who controls the food has an enormous political and economic power. So, whoever keeps his own seeds is self-sufficient and keeps a piece of his freedom.

IPS: We have all heard about how a potato disease was the cause of the Great Famine in Ireland between 1845 and 1852. But what is the relationship between hunger and nutrition, and biological diversity?

SB: Biological diversity allows maintaining an important number of species and varieties, and this can guarantee that we have enough food and prevent famine.

JES: The potato grown throughout Europe was very homogeneous since it derived from the few samples that arrived in Spain from the 'New World'. In Ireland it soon became the basic staple of the country's diet, which leads us to an event that best exemplifies the importance of biodiversity.

When the phytosphora infestans fungus appeared in Europe it destroyed all the potato farms in Ireland and the rest of Europe, causing what became known as the 'European famine'. The famine caused the death in Ireland alone of between 1.5 and two million people. Many millions more had to migrate. This potato disease affected almost half the population.

The solution was then found in Latin America, where they were surprised to find potatoes of all colours: violet, blues, red, orange, yellow, shaped like a corkscrew, cylindrical, oval, etc. In this immense variety a large number of resistances are hidden, among them resistance to phytosphora infestans. Through crossbreeding the resistant plants with European commercial varieties, the resistant genes were introduced and the European problem was solved. Biodiversity is essential for buffering unexpected changes and to prevent future famines.

PS: What is it that saves people when an epidemic strikes? The fact that all humans are not the same. Exactly the same thing can save a plant population: diversity, or what scientists call a "large genetic base".

Modern varieties and hybrids have a limited genetic base. This is dangerous in case of an epidemic. For example, 30 percent of the wheat in the world comes from only one parent and 70 percent is derived from a total of six parents. During the 1970s in the U.S. an epidemic destroyed more than half the production of corn, which was all derived from the same hybrid. The solution was found in a little variety of corn in the region of Chiapas, Southern Mexico. The 'rich' U.S. survived with the help of the 'poor' farmers of Southern Mexico.

Today a great famine in the world could happen because there is a very poor genetic basis, and also because of the lack of genetic material.

IPS: What is the link between culture and biological diversity?

SB: Language is a means to study biological diversity as a science and a culture at the same time. The relation is interdependent.

JES: Genetic resources represent the identity of the people. Language is the instrument used for transmitting this identity and the traditional knowledge on the natural world that surrounds us. I am thinking for example of traditional medicines. Altogether, culture, language and genetic resources are the three pillars that define the identity of people.

PS: Where there are minorities there is also increasing biodiversity. The Greek immigrants of the 1960s and 1970s cultivated their own seeds from their villages in their new homelands. Today's refugees come from rural areas and preserve their own seeds, as a living memory of their homeland. Seeds are an essential part of culture and language, customs, cuisine and even clothes. Maintaining agricultural biodiversity is maintaining our historical memory. And this is important because people without history are a tree without roots.

*Miren Gutierrez is IPS Editor-in-Chief. (END/2009)

Source: http://ipsnews.net/news.asp?idnews=47256

Volunteer action-oriented network for the environment created in Romania

2009-06-18T13:33:00.001-07:00

ROMANIA: Volunteers Promote Green Living
By Claudia Ciobanu*

Mai Mult Verde volunteers at work.

Credit:Alexandra Radu/IPS.

BUCHAREST, Jun 17 (IPS/IFEJ) - A network of volunteers from Romania has managed to plant more than 100,000 trees and collect 70 tonnes of trash in just one year, filling in gaps in the working of state institutions, and showing that there is potential for civic engagement among Romanian youth.

Mai Mult Verde (More Green) is a small NGO that was set up in the spring of 2008 with the goal of creating a permanent network of volunteers who would help design and implement projects for cleaning up nature and providing education on the environment.

Over the past year, more than 8,000 people from all over the country have got involved in various projects of the group, showing that many young Romanians are ready to volunteer to do environmental work if the proper framework is made available.

The initial goal of Mai Mult Verde was to plant 10,000 trees and collect 20 tonnes of trash in a year. Their final results surpassed the most optimistic predictions.

"Judging by our interactions with the volunteers, it is clear that the idea that Romanians are passive and indifferent to the public good is an old prejudice with no basis in current reality," says Miruna Cugler, communications manager for the group.

The volunteers have been integrated in an online community, which allows them not only to take part in implementation of projects, but to have a say in their creation.

Dragos Bucurenci, president of Mai Mult Verde, says one of the main problems of NGOs in Romania is that they only include volunteers at the implementation stage. This approach restricts creative inputs from the grassroots, and prevents a deeper involvement of volunteers in tackling the social problems they care about.

The goal of the group is to form a network of 10,000 volunteers in five years, of which a quarter would stay constantly involved in its actions.

The focus of most Mai Mult Verde projects so far has been cleaning up the environment. Groups of volunteers have picked up trash left behind by people having barbeques in forests. Others have cleaned up garbage from rivers. Alongside trash collection, the group is promoting recycling.

At present, about 10 percent of waste is recycled in Romania, compared to 60 percent in Germany.

Companies involved in processing recycled materials say business is not profitable. "Unfortunately, Romanians recycle very little, it is not yet a part of their culture," says Octavian Burlacu, director of the waste management company Supercom in Bucharest. "It is difficult to keep our activities running because while the costs with equipment and personnel are high, we do not get enough material to process."

Mai Mult Verde runs ad campaigns asking people to recycle, and is calling for Romanians to write petitions to authorities asking for more facilities for separated collection to be made available across the country.

The group also plants trees. In collaboration with Romsilva, the national forest administration, volunteers from Mai Mult Verde have planted more than 100,000 trees in areas affected by deforestation around the country. Many of the zones targeted by the group have been repeatedly devastated by floods as a result of deforestation.

Romsilva provides land and saplings. "We are extremely glad to receive this un-hoped for help with planting from the volunteers," says Theodor Chiriac, Romsilva manager for the Bucharest region. "The work of the volunteers makes it possible for us to reach our reforestation targets."

"Whenever we get involved in planting trees, we sign an agreement with Romsilva that the plantations will be cared for and that the use of the land stays the same for the next 50 years," Miruna Cugler from Mai Mult Verde told IPS. "We also have agreements with the local municipalities where we plant, through which they commit to ensure the security of the plantations for the duration of their political mandates, of up to five years."

In addition to planting saplings in the areas affected by floods across the country, the group has planted 30,000 saplings over 12.5 hectares of land around the Bucharest bypass. The trees are meant to clean the air in what is one of the most polluted areas of Romania.

Much of the work of the group is to promote a cleaner and greener lifestyle among Romanians. One of their most successful initiatives is the opening of the first bike rental centre in the Romanian capital.

According to data provided by the group, people have moved for more than 4,600 hours on bicycles rented from Cicloteque since the centre opened in August 2008. Through the use of bikes in place of cars, the emission of 49 tonnes of carbon dioxide has been prevented, the group says.

The success of the group seems to derive from a combination of a new interest in the environment among Romanians, and some smart campaigning from the ten permanent employees and four office volunteers.

Funding for the group comes exclusively from private companies. Last year, the NGO had a budget of one million euros. But director Dragos Bucurenci says that this year's financing is barely at a third of the level of money received last year, because several companies have been hit by the financial crisis.

But the group's campaign still has high visibility through involvement of musicians, TV stars, politicians and journalists. The network of volunteers is still growing, and the group has just trained 100 young people to lead communities.

(*This story is part of a series of features on sustainable development by IPS - Inter Press Service, and IFEJ - the International Federation of Environmental Journalists.) (END/2009)

Source: http://ipsnews.net/news.asp?idnews=47253

"End Hunger: Walk the World" mobilised people in 70 countries

2009-06-13T07:33:00.001-07:00

DEVELOPMENT: Thousands March as Food Crisis Deepens
By Shari Nijman

Young people walk against hunger in New York City.

Credit:Shari Nijman/IPS

NEW YORK, Jun 8 (IPS) - An estimated 300,000 people across the globe hit the streets Sunday to support the World Food Programme (WFP) and its mission to feed hungry schoolchildren and battle malnutrition worldwide.

"End Hunger: Walk the World" mobilised people in 70 countries, covering all 24 time zones. The event started in Sydney, Australia, where the famous Harbour Bridge was climbed by local celebrities, and ended 24 hours later on the Polynesian island of Samoa.

In New York City, some 700 people, dressed in white, blue and orange, turned out to support the WFP, which provides both emergency food aid and also works to help reach the longer-term U.N. Millennium Development Goal of halving the proportion of hungry people in the world by 2015.

"Food prices have gone up dramatically, and the global economic crisis is pushing more and more people into the vicious cycle of hunger," Karen Sendelback, president of the group Friends of World Food Programme, said at the rally.

Most of the world's hungry live in developing countries. According to the latest Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO) 2008 statistics, there are 963 million hungry people in the world and 907 million of them are in developing countries. They are distributed like this:

565 million in Asia and the Pacific

230 million in Sub-Saharan Africa

58.4 million in Latin America and the Caribbean

41.6 million in the Near East and North Africa

Other factors driving world hunger are an increase in natural disasters such as floods, tropical storms and drought; armed conflict (since 1992, the proportion of short and long-term food crises attributable to human causes has more than doubled, from 15 percent to more than 35 percent); extreme poverty and inadequate agricultural infrastructure, such as roads, warehouses and irrigation; and the threats to farmland posed by erosion, salination and desertification.

According to the WFP, hunger and malnutrition remain the world's number one health risk, greater than AIDS, malaria and tuberculosis combined.

"One in six people go to bed hungry every night," Bettina Luescher of the World Food Programme told IPS. '"People always think that hunger is such an overwhelming problem, that it can't be solved. But it takes only 25 cents a day to feed a child."

"In theory, we could feed every hungry schoolchild in the world for three billion dollars. And we know that it's possible," she added.

Children's early development is critical to their future. Economists estimate that every child whose physical and mental development is stunted by hunger and malnutrition stands to lose 5-10 percent in lifetime earnings.

The gathering in New York City was by no means the largest in the world. The most impressive numbers were seen in Africa, where 53,000 people walked in Malawi. In Tanzania, another 50,000 people walked the five kilometres for WFP.

"Every walk is five kilometres long," Berthilde Heijmeskamp of the global mail and express delivery company TNT told IPS. "This represents the average distance that poor schoolchildren walk every day from home to school to get education and meal."

In Kenya, the event started a day earlier, on Saturday, so its participants could attend mass on Sunday. The most famous walker in Nairobi was Paul Tergat who, as a little boy, received school feeding himself.

He walked many miles every day to get an education and a healthy meal. Eventually, he grew up to be one of the fastest marathon runners in the world, winning the New York Marathon and establishing multiple world records.

"This is a perfect example how a bit of food can help children realise their talent and passion," Luescher said.

'End Hunger: Walk the World' started in 2003 as an employee engagement initiative by WFP and TNT. That year, a relatively small number of people walked the five kilometres on the Great Wall of China.

In the next few years, the event grew so fast, that WFP decided to include two other corporate partners, Unilever and DSM, in the walk.

Unilever, one of the biggest suppliers of consumer goods in the world, joined WFP in 2007. They participated in the walk as part of their 'Together Child Vitality' programme.

"We use this walk to raise awareness among our employees and the rest of the world about child hunger and malnutrition," said Amanda Sourry, an executive vice president of Unilever.

The latest addition to the walk was DSM, a life sciences and materials sciences company, which joined for the first time this year.

"Giving children just any food isn't good enough. It has to have enough nutritional value to develop things like eyesight," Jim Hamilton, president of DSM Nutritional Products in New Jersey, explained to IPS.

DSM partners with WFP to create packages with micro-nutrients providing schoolchildren with the necessary vitamins to develop their bodies and skills.

"This is a good example of corporate responsibility - people in big corporations actually also enjoy inspirational stuff," Hamilton said.

(END/2009)

Source: http://www.ipsnews.net/news.asp?idnews=47135

Farmers take brunt of economic woes - suicides increase in India

2009-06-10T12:28:00.001-07:00

The extreme class-society of India causes society to neglect the rights of its poorest citizens to earn a living.

INDIA: Farm Suicides Turn Children Into Farmers
By Jaideep Hardikar

Digambar Rathod with his mother, Sunita, elder sister Roshni (in yellow), and younger siblings Saroj and Mahesh (right foreground). His father committed suicide on Jan. 1.

Credit:Jaideep Hardikar/IPS

YAVATMAL, India, Jun 10 (IPS) - Eleven-year-old Digambar Rathod looks older than his age. Shy and uncertain, he stares disconcertedly at the garlanded photograph of his father Jaideep, a 42-year-old cotton farmer who committed suicide on Jan. 1, 2009 in Tiwsala village, in eastern Maharashtra state's suicide-torn Yavatmal district.

As the new head of the household, the boy-turned-farmer has adult responsibilities like the repayment of a bank loan of 190,000 rupees (roughly 3,960 dollars) that was the cause of his father's death.

Digambar has dropped out of school, says his mother, Sunita, grief-stricken and burdened by the terrible tragedy the family has suffered. His older sister Roshni too has left school to take over the household work. The two younger children, a boy and a girl, are too young to work, says Roshni.

But everyone knows that it won't be long before all four Rathod children join the ranks of Vidarbha's baccha-kisans (child farmers). Here in six districts including Yavatmal, Wardha and Akola, thousands of cotton farmers have taken their lives due to mounting debts and a dramatic decline in farm incomes over the past decade or so, and their children have stepped into their shoes.

Daughter as 'Burden'

In November 2005, a 17-year-old schoolgirl from an impoverished farm household in Aasra village, Maharashtra state, committed suicide.

"If I don't my farmer father will (take his life)," Neeta Pudalikrao Bhopat wrote in her dying note. "My family can't make 1,000 rupees (roughly 20 dollars) a month. I have two younger sisters. My parents can't bear the burden of our marriages when we don't have enough to eat. So, I am ending my life."

The inability to meet dowry demands is one of the many factors driving poor farmers to suicide, a study commissioned by Government of Maharashtra found in 2005.

At that time, there were over 300,000 farm households with marriageable girls in the six worst affected districts of Vidarbha's cotton belt.

The Institute of Health Management, Pachod (Aurangabad) found last year that the age of marriage of girls has fallen sharply in Maharashtra, particularly in the crisis-ravaged areas.

Archana, 13, will be married off early, says her mother Annapurna Rameshwar Suroshe, a farm widow in Naheshwadi village of Yavatmal. The legal age of marriage is 18.

Annapurna's two sons, Mangesh and Nakul, study in a boarding school in the nearby town of Umarkhed thanks to financial support from her brother. But she has not allowed her daughter to go away. "It is not safe for Archana to be on her own," she says.

Saraswati Amberwar says one of the causes for her husband's suicide was worrying about where he would get the money to marry his four daughters off. Now their second daughter Jaishree blames herself for her father's death and is clinically depressed, according to doctors.

According to the National Crime Record Bureau (NCRB), 40,000 of the 184,000 farmers' suicides reported in India between 1995 and 2007 were from Maharashtra. Over 25,000 of the deaths in the state were registered after 2002.

Ganesh Diliprao Kale in Ralegaon village, Yavatmal, was barely 13 when he became the eldest male in both his own and his two uncles' families. Over a span of five years, between 2003 and 2008, his father's brothers and father were driven by debt to suicide.

"Ganesh cultivated our farm last season with little support from relatives," says his mother Shalini. Her school-going daughter, Ashwini, 11, assists them on the weekends. She's already taken over much of her mother's work in the house.

A few miles away, in Khadakdoh village, in south Yavatmal, Kavita Kudmethe and her two daughters, around 13 years of age, scrape a living as farm workers. Her husband killed himself in 2007, and his parents threw Kavita and her daughters out of the house.

She knows that had one of them been a son, the family would not have turned her out. Girls are considered a social burden in India. The tension of finding a groom for their daughters has emerged as a contributing cause to the spate of farmers' suicides, according to a 2005 study commissioned by the Maharashtra government.

Kavita hopes to marry her daughters off as soon as they turn 15 although the legal age of marriage for girls is 18. "That'll relieve me of my burden," she says. Farm suicides in Vidarbha have robbed so many children of their childhoods.

Swati Thote, 12, shoulders the responsibility of domestic chores and tending the livestock while her mother Sarla works on their 4-acre farm in Kosurla village, Wardha. Swati's cotton farmer father committed suicide in December 2005.

At 13, Roshani Shete takes care of her mother, Shobha in Pimpalkhuta village, Amravati district. Her landless father took his own life, having accumulated huge debts for a farm he had leased. The girl, a constant smile on her face, does most of the chores, and goes to school without fail. "She's become my mother," says Shobha.

But the smile may be hiding a deep emotional scar. Roshani has not slept soundly since her father's suicide in October 2008, her mother says. The father and daughter were very close. In fact, she is terrified to sleep in his room in their tiny mud hut, her mother reveals.

"These children are inheriting debt, distress and emotional upheavals," laments Vijay Jawandhia, a sexagenarian farmers' leader from Vidarbha. "The impact of the agrarian crisis on generations (within families) is terrible and has long-term consequences."

Dr Sujay Patil, a young psychiatrist in Akola has been offering free consultancy services to farmers showing signs of depression or mental illness from his home district of Akola. He says, "younger and younger farmers are turning up for medication as they are unable to cope with the pressures of agriculture and the new economic order."

According to Dr Shailesh Pangaonkar, a Nagpur-based child psychologist, "early maturing of children, who haven't had time to mourn the loss of their fathers, could lead to a subtle depression throughout their lives." He advises that such children need "education, cultural involvement and economic stability, for healthy growth …"

For most rural families, especially in Vidarbha, this is a distant dream. Cotton farmers have been acutely affected by soaring input prices, declining incomes, lack of irrigation, and volatile global prices, among other things.

"I simply can't support my daughters emotionally or feed them nutritious food," says Kavita, the dispossessed widow. "My daughters are as vulnerable to (sexual and physical) exploitation as I am," she adds in a resigned voice.

A random study of 20 children from suicide-affected households by this journalist in 2008 found them emotionally disturbed. While some were extremely aggressive, the others were very docile.

Saraswati Amberwar, in Telangtakli village of Yavatmal, says her second daughter, Jaishree has not recovered from the shock of her father's suicide 10 years ago. "She is on medication, and has become silent and submissive, as if she's dead from inside," she says.

In contrast, Prasheet Pethkar, 14, in Kurzadi village, Wardha district, spews abuse at his mother who he blames for the family's problems and his father's suicide.

"There should be government intervention," says Vilas Bhongade, a social worker and child rights campaigner in Vidarbha. "The impact of the farm crisis on children must be seen in the light of a child's right to survival, protection, development and participation."

"These children desperately need emotional support," adds Prabhakar Nakade, a school teacher in Wardha and member of the District English Language Teachers' Association (DELTA) which has experience with children from suicide-affected farm households.

"Though they work and support their families like adults, we must not forget they are just children," he pleads. (END/2009)

Source: http://www.ipsnews.net/news.asp?idnews=47158

Complete ban on alcohol: The only thing that could save their community from going under

2009-06-08T09:54:00.001-07:00

Q&A: How an Alcohol Ban Revived an Aboriginal Community
Shari Nijman interviews JUNE OSCAR, CEO of Marninwarntikura Fitzroy Women's Resource Centre

June Oscar

Credit:Shari Nijman/IPS

UNITED NATIONS, May 22 (IPS) - In 2007, a group of aboriginal women from Fitzroy Crossing in Western Australia decided that the only thing that could save their community from going under was to impose a complete ban on the sales of takeaway alcohol.

In the previous year, the community had witnessed 13 suicides and many alcohol-related deaths, resulting into a funeral every week. By pushing for a drinking ban, the women of Fitzroy Crossing hoped that the crisis would be resolved and the aboriginal community would regain its strength.

This week, activist June Oscar and others screened 'Yajilarra', a documentary about the women of Fitzroy Crossing's quest to fight the drinking culture, at United Nations headquarters in New York.

Oscar and some 2,000 indigenous leaders from around the world are attending the eighth session of the U.N. Permanent Forum on Indigenous Issues here from May 18-29.

Excerpts from the interview follow.

IPS: The women of Fitzroy Crossing have successfully pushed for a ban on the sale of hard takeaway liquor in your area. Do you think the drinking problem among aboriginals much larger than it is within non-aboriginal communities?

JUNE OSCAR: I think the problem is actually a lot larger in non-aboriginal communities. But we are a minority in our country and we are more visible. Just because we don't see the non-aboriginal people out in public drinking, I don't think non-aboriginal people are not drinking at high levels. Alcohol is not just an aboriginal problem; it's a problem in all societies.

We see a lot of non-aboriginal children drinking directly after they graduate from year 12. Also, we see a lot of drinking by people who aren't aboriginal, at sporting events and other events in the country.

The type of drinking that happens among many of our people is binge drinking. When the money comes in, large purchases [of alcohol] can be made and there is a lot of activity concerning alcohol.

There are, however, many people in our community that are very responsible when drinking, or who don't drink at all. But unfortunately, the ones that get highlighted are a small minority doing a lot of damage to their communities, their families and to themselves.

IPS: What kinds of changes have you witnessed in Fitzroy Crossing since the restrictions?

JO: We have seen many improvements and changes. But we've witnessed new challenges as well. There has been a decrease in [alcohol-related] patients at the emergency department of our hospital from about 85 percent to around 35 percent.

For the very first time in years, the professional staff at the hospitals consists of people with permanent positions, rather than emergency personal. Before, we couldn't get any hospital staff to stay and live in Fitzroy Crossing for longer than three months. Now, we have all our doctors positions filled and all our nurses positions filled.

We have seen an increase in school attendance. Furthermore, a lot more people have entered into employment, and people are generally looking a lot healthier. We witnessed people making better life choices and being a lot more responsible when they are using alcohol.

IPS Do you think a drinking ban should be implemented in the whole of Australia?

JO: I think there is a real opportunity here for some honest discussion about how alcohol is seen as part of the Australian culture. There is a need for a real discussion with the breweries, which profit from the production and the sale of alcohol. They have to be aware of the levels of damage that the governments of some communities have to pick up on.

You see it [alcohol] marketed to young people in a colourful and tasty manner. It's something that really concerns me. People who make alcohol and sell it are making it accepted to our young people. We see an industry that's growing and creating more profit, but at the other end of the spout that means more problems, more health issues and more family relationship issues.

Alcohol is a big issue for non-aboriginal people as well, especially around young people, in public places in the city. So we really need to have an honest discussion in Australia and I think the time is right.

IPS: Could the progress that has been made by the alcohol restrictions have been achieved in any other way, maybe without a complete ban?

JO: This is the way that we have chosen to deal with it, because the situation on the ground needed this level of intervention. The community needed drastic and decisive action. We had to justify and build a case to convince the director general of liquor licensing to impose this decision. I don't believe we could have achieved the same results in any other way. This is what we have done, and this is what we learned. This is just the beginning.

Because there is much suffering, and much loss and pain in these communities, the inconvenience for someone returning home at the end of the day and not be able to have his alcoholic beverage isn't that important. In the scheme of things, this is bigger than individuals. This is about a society of people surviving into the future. We are a minority people in our country and we need all of us to go forward.

IPS: Do you think the effects achieved in Fitzroy Crossing will inspire more communities in Australia to impose a drinking ban?

JO: I think so, because it is clearly demonstrated to the government that all these public funds are being spend mopping up after just one industry that is creating so many problems in many communities. The situation in Fitzroy Crossing has really shown that both costs and lives can be saved here.

Source: http://www.ipsnews.net/news.asp?idnews=46945

"Peace Builders" - an organisation comprising Jewish, Muslim, Christian and "even agnostic" women

2009-06-04T14:05:00.001-07:00

FRANCE: Sharing a Recipe for Peace

By Alecia D. McKenzie

Baking together for peace.

Credit:Ale McKenzie

PARIS, Jun 1 (IPS) - Fourteen women are gathered in a Jewish kosher bakery on a sunny afternoon in Creteil, a multi-ethnic commune southeast of Paris. Bent over bowls of flour, tubs of butter and cartons of eggs, the women share jokes and anecdotes, speaking in both French and Arabic, as they knead dough and crack eggs open.

The women are members of the Bâtisseuses de Paix, or the Peace Builders, an organisation that comprises Jewish, Muslim, Christian and "even agnostic" women, working to improve relations between the Jewish and Muslim communities in France amidst a growing number of anti-Semitic incidents.

They meet once a month at this bakery, Les Jardins de la Mediterrannee, located in a shopping centre flanked by beige and grey housing blocks. There they concoct pastries from Tunisia, Morocco, Egypt, Israel and other countries, in an activity that brings together individuals who might normally not meet, or even speak to one another.

"I love this rapprochement of people," says Julie Sultan, a Tunisian-born Jew who has lived in France 53 years. "No white, black, brown or any colour. Just a meeting of hearts. We are all sisters, and to tell the truth, I feel closer to Arab women than to French women."

Ouafa Kabsi, a Tunisian Muslim, says that for her, being a member of the group is a way to "open up" and to change preconceptions. "We're all human beings, we're all the same," she says.

Formed in 2002 by French Jewish journalist Annie-Paule Derczansky in response to acts of anti-Semitism in the suburbs around Paris, the Bâtisseuses say they have a core membership of some 60 women and see a further 300 to 400 each year at their various activities.

"Women are the backbone of Mediterranean families and the builders of the future," says Derczansky. "What we do is an example to children that happy co-existence is possible because we've seen many friendships develop between Muslim and Jewish women."

These sentiments contrast with the rise in ethnic tensions in France, home to the largest Jewish and Muslim populations in Western Europe (numbered at around 600,000 and five million respectively). Indeed, several high-profile cases involving both communities have hit the courts over the past month, leading to much discussion and soul-searching.

In the most disturbing case, a Frenchman of African origin, Youssouf Fofana, is on trial for the 2006 murder of a Jewish young man, Ilan Halimi. Also accused are 26 alleged accomplices of Fofana, including women and teenagers.

Halimi was kidnapped in January 2006, held for ransom, and tortured for three weeks in a cellar in the Paris suburb Bagneux before he was left handcuffed to a tree near a railway station. When police found him, he was in a state of shock, his body covered with burns and cuts. He died on way to hospital. Prosecutors say the perpetrators targeted Jews for ransom money.

The Bâtisseuses de Paix are now planning meetings to "allow people to comprehend what in the education of young people could have led them to commit such a crime," says Derczansky, who also acts as president of the group. "We don't want to explain or to excuse, but to try to understand."

Along with the bakery workshops, the group organises dinner meetings where diplomats, psychoanalysts and other experts are invited to give speeches. The Bâtisseuses also work with schoolchildren, taking them alternately to the Institut du Monde Arabe (Arab World Institute) and to the Musee d'art et d'histoire de Judaisme (Judaism Art and History Museum), both in Paris. "The idea is to show how much Jews and Muslims have in common," says Derczansky. Her hope is that if religious harmony can be fostered at a young age, there might be fewer cases of ethnic violence.

But the group has its work cut out for it in other ways. Although members make it a point to avoid discussing the political situation in the Middle East, events there can reignite simmering hatred. During the Israeli military campaign against Hamas in January of this year, some synagogues were attacked, and Jewish students were abused on the streets.

The Bâtisseuses suspended all meetings because "everybody was feeling too much pain," says Derczansky. She proposed a talking session, "like in psychoanalysis", but no one responded.

"Nobody got back to me," she recalls wryly. "But the important thing is that no one withdrew from the group."

The organisation is now busy with another of its projects: trying to get the Grande Mosquée of Paris to erect a plaque showing that Jewish adults and children were sheltered there during World War II before they made their escape to other countries.

The group has launched an appeal to President Abdelaziz Bouteflika of Algeria (under whose authority the mosque falls) to open the historical archives on the role of the mosque during the German occupation of France.

"This would send such a strong symbolic message if people knew that Muslims were working to save Jewish people during World War II, while the French government was in collaboration with the Nazis," Derczansky says.

Source: http://www.ipsnews.net/news.asp?idnews=47048

Pakistan: One of the largest (2 mill.) and quickest displacements of people the world has ever seen

2009-06-03T08:37:00.001-07:00

How Pakistanis' generosity is increasing poverty

03 Jun 2009

Written by: World Vision

Reuters and AlertNet are not responsible for the content of this article or for any external internet sites. The views expressed are the author's alone.

Photo by Chris Webster" src="http://www.alertnet.org/thefacts/imagerepository/PKsisters193.jpg" name="mainimage" width="193" border="0" height="202">

Saima, 12, and 10-month-old sister Sana. Saima has walked 20km across mountains to escape fighting.
Photo by Chris Webster

By Chris Webster I am in Pakistan's northwest, where some of the poorest communities on earth are opening their doors to more than two million people fleeing fighting across Swat Valley. At times up to 100,000 have been uprooted each day, most of them taking refuge with extended family or local people desperate to help. And, as fighting goes on, the exodus continues. This is one of the largest and quickest displacements of people the world has ever seen. Only we haven't really seen it. More than two million people are out of sight, absorbed into homes with up to 25 people in one room. Many are suffering under 40 degree heat with no access to clean water, shelter, food or healthcare. The numbers are so hard to comprehend that part of me dismissed it. Another part of me was afraid to comprehend it. It is impossible to dismiss the children and families I met. "It was scary when we ran," says 12-year-old Saima. "It was like my heart was beating in my feet. There was a time I couldn't go another inch because of ulcers under my feet ... but the fear kept us going somehow." Saima and more than 30 members of her family and relatives walked 20 kilometers across rugged mountain paths leading away from the frontlines. They were eventually collected by a truck and taken to a village in Buner where they found refuge in the home of Rizwan Ali, a complete stranger. Rizwan Ali's daughter-in-law died in child-birth so he now looks after the new-born boy as well as Saima and her family and relatives. Rizwan, 59, has already sold a portion of his land in order to afford the increased burden on his finances. He even paid for the truck to rescue them. As a result of sharing everything, Rizwan now fears he and his family may soon face extreme poverty, or even displacement. "I'm exhausted," he says. "We have to play so many roles, host, provider, security, breadwinner." Families taking in hundreds of thousands now face a desperate situation where their hospitality puts their own livelihoods and survival on the brink. Or they have to ask their guests to leave. "It will be easier to die than to ask displaced people to leave our homes," says Rizwan. This is the generosity of hosts here in Pakistan. A cultural and deeply rooted code that means you share everything you have with those in need, whoever they are. I think I had romanticised this ideal before I saw it for myself in Pakistan's northwest villages. This is hospitality that hurts. It is gritty, sacrificial and hard. It is etched in the faces of those we meet. The root of the word 'compassion' means to 'suffer with'. Pakistan's hosts are truly suffering with those displaced. They are enduring daily turmoil as their assets are sold at a reduced price. They are giving out of their impoverishment. If we only give of our excess we will not know what it is to suffer with, or to show compassion. I think compassion fatigue is a condition only the wealthy can afford to suffer. World Vision is in Pakistan and is reaching out to hosts and those displaced in the region. But it is not enough. If we are not able to do more for Pakistan's displaced millions, the hosts look set to join them. The world is going through a monumental economic downturn; our means to give financially are dwindling. Yet we must all shoulder the burden, the international community must fully fund the appeals. Could we too consider the example of Pakistan's hosts and other poor communities on the frontline against poverty? Let's share some of their compassion.

Reuters AlertNet is not responsible for the content of external websites.

Source: http://www.alertnet.org/db/blogs/53806/2009/05/3-110423-1.htm?refer=wd20090603

Saudi ties to Taliban a factor in destabilization of Pakistan, Afghanistan

2009-06-03T04:06:00.001-07:00

US looks for Saudi help in Afghanistan, Pakistan

3 June 2009

AP – FILE - In this December 16, 2007 file photo, Muslims pilgrims walk outside of the Grand mosque in Mecca, …

By SEBASTIAN ABBOT, Associated Press Writer Sebastian Abbot, Associated Press Writer –

KABUL – The United States, grappling with how to counter the spread of Taliban militants on both sides of the Afghanistan-Pakistan border, is turning to Saudi Arabia for help. But so far the kingdom seems wary of diving into the thorny conflict.

Pakistan will be on the agenda when President Barack Obama meets with Saudi King Abdullah in Riyadh on Wednesday, according to Mark Lippert, deputy national security adviser.

Obama's defense secretary, Robert Gates, has already asked the Saudis for help in staving off the spread of militants in Pakistan and encouraging Pakistani officials to work together in countering the terrorist threat.

"Saudi Arabia clearly has a lot of influence throughout the entire region, and a long-standing and close relationship with Pakistan," Gates said after a visit to the kingdom last month.

Many experts say the Sunni Arab powerhouse could be crucial in mediating some form of reconciliation with the Islamic extremists wreaking havoc in both countries. Saudi Arabia could also help cut off large sums of money that flow to militants from wealthy Saudi donors and Islamic charities.

Saudi Arabia has historical ties with the Taliban. The kingdom and Pakistan worked together to facilitate the rise of the radical Islamic movement in the 1990s and they, along with the United Arab Emirates, were the only countries to recognize Taliban rule in Afghanistan.

Saudi relations with Pakistan are equally deep. Riyadh and Washington worked through Pakistan's intelligence services to provide money and weapons for Islamic fighters battling the Soviets in Afghanistan in the 1980s. Saudi Arabia also holds a special religious status as the land of Islam's two holiest cities, Mecca and Medina.

Afghan President Hamid Karzai has repeatedly asked Saudi Arabia to mediate between his government and the Taliban.

Still, the kingdom is reluctant to take an overt mediation role unless all sides are clearly ready to make peace, said Ali Awadh Asseri, the former Saudi ambassador to Pakistan, who left his post in May.

Saudi Arabia learned from its experience in the 1990s after the Soviets left Afghanistan, he said. At the time, the kingdom invited the warring Afghan factions to Mecca and brokered a peace deal, but they returned home and resumed fighting.

"So we will only be involved when there is absolute commitment by all factions," he said. "We're not going to jump in."

But that doesn't mean the Saudi role has been nonexistent. It has always preferred to work through secret back channels rather than public diplomacy, and its approach to Afghanistan and Pakistan has been no different.

Abdullah held a secret meeting with Afghan officials and former Taliban government members in Mecca last September to explore the possibility of mediating reconciliation talks, said Abdul Salam Zaeef, the Taliban's former ambassador to Pakistan, who attended the meeting.

Saudi Arabia has contact with Taliban leader Mullah Omar and other militants in Pakistan and Afghanistan, according to Arsala Rahmani, a former Taliban deputy higher education minister, who also attended.

"If Saudi Arabia can't convince the Taliban to negotiate, nobody can," said Rahmani.

But many experts believe the Taliban won't be ready to strike a deal that is acceptable to Afghanistan, Pakistan and their allies until they lose momentum on the battlefield.

"I believe as long as a range of militant groups believe they are powerful and feel they can spread influence, they are not going to want to reconcile," said Seth Jones, an expert on Afghanistan and Pakistan at the RAND Corporation.

The Obama administration has indicated a willingness to reconcile with more moderate members of the Taliban. It also hopes the thousands of additional troops it is sending to Afghanistan this year and the recent Pakistani military operation in the country's northwest will help reverse militant gains.

But there are limits to the effectiveness of Saudi mediation.

Steve Coll, an expert on Afghanistan and Pakistan who heads the New America Foundation, pointed out that the Saudis were unable to convince the Taliban to turn over Osama bin Laden in the late 1990s.

"The Saudis have attempted over the years a number of mediations of this character because of their religious prestige," said Coll. "But the agreements in Mecca tend not to stick when the parties get back home, and the Taliban in particular have proved intractable in Saudi mediation."

The Saudis could be better help in policing the large sums of money that flow into the countries, especially Pakistan, from wealthy donors and Islamic charities in the kingdom, said Daniel Markey, an Afghanistan and Pakistan expert at the Council on Foreign Relations.

The Saudis have insisted they are doing all they can to rein in terror financing. Many experts believe they could do more but say the Saudis are wary about angering religious conservatives in the country who are key government supporters.

Source: http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20090603/ap_on_re_as/as_saudi_afghanistan_pakistan

Uzbekistan: Child labor widespread despite government ban

2009-06-02T02:41:00.000-07:00

OneWorld reports.

In Brief: Child Labor in Uzbekistan Cotton Fields

June 1, 2009

OneWorld US, OneWorld UK, Environmental Justice Foundation, EurasiaNet.org

WASHINGTON, May 29 (OneWorld.net) - State-sponsored child labor in the cotton fields of Uzbekistan remains widespread, despite a government ban enacted last year in response to international criticism.

Cotton growing in a field near Samarkand, Uzbekistan. © AudreyH (flickr)» Seeds of Child Labor Lie Deep in Uzbek Cotton Industry
from EurasiaNet.org

OneWorld.net's editors also suggest:

» Report: "Still in the Fields"
from the Environmental Justice Foundation

» Child Labor Topic Guide
from OneWorld UK

Pakistani Girl Calls for Peace - 1.2 million displaced in Northwest

2009-06-02T02:38:00.001-07:00

Two articles from Oneworld.net reporting from war-torn northwestern Pakistan.

In Brief: Humanitarian Updates from Pakistan

May 27, 2009

OneWorld US, International Rescue Committee, Human Rights Watch, IRIN, Save the Children

WASHINGTON, May 27 (OneWorld.net) - As the conflict in northwestern Pakistan continues, humanitarian groups are reporting on rising numbers of uprooted people, 1.2 million vulnerable children, severe shortages of food, water, and services, lack of medical care for displaced pregnant women, and trapped civilians, some by Taliban landmines.

» People uprooted by the conflict in Pakistan. © bbcworldservice (flickr) Number of Displaced Pakistanis Grows as Does Need for Water, Food, and Services
from the International Rescue Committee

OneWorld.net's editors also suggest:

» Save the Children Assists Displaced Children in Pakistan
from Save the Children

» Pregnant Displaced Women Lack Facilities, Skilled Medics
from IRIN

» Fear Amid Reports of Landmine-Laying in Mingora
from IRIN

» Pakistan: Lift Swat Curfew for Trapped Civilians
from Human Rights Watch

A Pakistani Girl's Call for Peace

May 27, 2009

Oxfam America, OneWorld US, International Rescue Committee, Inter Press Service, ActionAid, Human Rights Watch , Islamic Relief Worldwide, Refugees International, United Nations News Center

WASHINGTON, May 26 (OneWorld.net) – Prevented from attending school due to ongoing violence in northwest Pakistan, 11-year-old Malalay speaks out about peace and her right to an education.

What's the Story?

"I represent Swat, the Switzerland of the East, which, was once so beautiful, so peaceful and so full of life has now become a valley of violence, bloodshed, and denial of respect for humanity and values," said Malalay, speaking on behalf of her classmates at a peace conference organized by the international poverty alleviation group ActionAid and its local partner Citizen Rights and Sustainable Development. "O' the protector of human rights and justice, Come out! Stand by us! Give my books back! Give my pen back!" reads a poem Malalay wrote and used to address local elders.

Due to recent violence in northwest Pakistan, including Malalay's native Swat valley, hundreds of schools have been burned down. In addition, millions of people have been forced to flee the ongoing conflict between the Taliban and Pakistani military. Together, these factors are "causing girls to lose their right to an education," says ActionAid. (See the organization's full statement below.)

Pakistani Civilians Fleeing

The number of people fleeing and seeking to flee their homes in northwest Pakistan has spiked since a massive operation by the Pakistani military was launched on May 5 "to flush out Islamic fighters in Buner, Swat, and some areas in the nearby Dir district," according to the humanitarian news agency Inter Press Service.

People have been walking great distances in search of food, water, shelter, and medicine, reports Oxfam America. The aid organization has had to double its efforts as the total number of people seeking refuge from the violence recently passed 2 million, "making the crisis the greatest internal displacement of people in the country's history."

"Of the nearly 1.5 million people that have fled [the most recent bouts of conflict] so far, some 131,000 people are staying in camps, with more than 1.3 million staying in private accommodation, with host families or friends, and some in schools," notes the United Nations (UN) News Center.

The influx is putting extreme pressure on existing resources and the UN refugee agency has said it is crucial to establish new camps for those affected.

Some Still Trapped In Conflict Zone

While over a million civilians have escaped the fighting, hundreds of thousands remain trapped in the conflict zone, where "severe shortages of food, water, and medicine are creating a major humanitarian crisis," says Human Rights Watch.

Calling on Pakistani authorities to lift a 24-hour curfew on certain provinces, including Swat, the international monitor adds it has received "persistent reports of ongoing civilian casualties from Pakistani artillery shelling and aerial bombardment as desperate civilians break the curfew in search of food and water or to flee hostilities."

"Pakistani armed forces and Taliban militants should take all necessary precautions to avoid civilian casualties in fighting in Pakistan's volatile Swat valley and adjoining areas of the North West Frontier Province," appealed HRW amid earlier reports that the Taliban is preventing civilians from leaving the combat areas and using them as human shields.

"Hundreds of thousands of people are still trapped," said the International Rescue Committee (IRC), calling for "a humanitarian corridor so people can flee to safety and vital aid can be delivered."

U.S. Response

U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton announced last week plans to send $110 million in aid to displaced Pakistanis, reports Refugees International (RI).

While the funds will help aid agencies respond quickly to the current situation, RI expressed concern that the funding is "insufficient compared to the scale of the crisis." Says RI Advocate Patrick Duplat: "the U.S. must provide many more resources" to support and protect Pakistanis forced to flee their homes.

Background: Repression and Conflict in Northwest Pakistan

"Since 2007, the Taliban have imposed their authority in Swat and adjoining areas through summary executions -- including beheadings -- of state officials and political opponents, public whippings, and large-scale intimidation of the population," writes HRW. "Girls' schools have been shut down, women have not been allowed to leave their homes unless escorted by male family members, polio immunization programs were halted, and nongovernmental organizations were expelled."

In early April, Pakistani President Asif Ali Zardari signed a peace accord increasing the Taliban's control over numerous districts within the NWFP and allowing them to establish their version of Islamic law in Swat in exchange for laying down their arms.

Two weeks ago, however, Prime Minister Yusuf Raza Gilani "declared an end to the peace deal with the Taliban, citing multiple violations of the deal by the Taliban and vowing to 'eliminate them,'" explains HRW.

Take Action

The U.S.-based group Islamic Relief Worldwide launched an initial $750,000 emergency appeal to assist the nearly 2 million people affected by the violence and growing humanitarian crisis in Pakistan. "Assistance will include the provision of emergency aid such as blankets, clothing and cooking sets, supplies of clean water, and psychosocial support for traumatized children," writes the organization. Click here to read more and get involved.

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Malalay: A Pakistani Girl Speaks Out in Swat

From: ActionAid

Ongoing war in Swat displaced more than 1 million people in the past six weeks. Families are forced from their homes due to the conflict. And when they leave, they lose much more than the roof over their head. They lose their ability to make a living, access to food and other assets they might have stored, and the ability to predict what tomorrow might hold for their children.

This violence and the increasing pressure brought to bear by the Taliban and other extremists in Swat is causing girls to lose their right to an education. Hundreds of schools were burnt down in the recent violence. The war is taking shape as a war on female education. In the face of this, Malalay, an 11-year-old girl from Swat - and a gifted student - speaks out.

"I represent Swat, the Switzerland of the East, which, was once so beautiful, so peaceful and so full of life has now become a valley of violence, bloodshed and denial of respect for humanity and values," says Malalay. "My valley is turning into ruins and my school is threatened to be turned into ashes."

ActionAid in collaboration with Citizen Rights and Sustainable Development (CRSD) organized a peace conference with community groups from Swat and other conflict-prone areas in Pakistan to discuss and highlight the effects of extremism and the on-going war on terror. Malalay spoke on behalf of her classmates as this conference.

Malalay whose name is derived from a heroic folk lore character, gave moving account of her life as a girl in Swat. She shared her fears and concerns about the future which seem to hold nothing but bleakness. She explained that her community has complied with all the Taliban's orders but they still continue to harrass the community.

"Every child of my age in the area is terrified. We are not allowed to go to schools, when they asked us not to go to schools, we stopped going there," she added. "Yet, they torched our schools. We couldn't go out to play."

"I want to become a doctor. I want to tell all the extremist elements that if they deny female education, where would they send their own daughters for medical treatment," Malalay said.

Malalay is also fearful for her teachers who are threatened everyday by these militant elements.

"My teachers have dedicated themselves for the mission of imparting education and yet, these forces have threatened to kill them and forced them to stay at home," she added

"My school has 62 teachers and around 700 children are studying in the school and it's been weeks that no educational activity has taken place in our schools. I won a quiz competition on my last day at school and I was so happy that I beat all the other students of my age, but now I dread that I would never be able to go to school, participate in quizzes and win prizes for my abilities," Malalay said, with tears in her eyes.

Malalay is a very intelligent girl and has a very good understanding of what is happening in her community. Her love for her homeland and her anguish on the current situation is very obvious from this poem, which she wrote herself to address elders and the people in power.

Education is my basic right

My books have been burnt

My pen has been broken

My school has been torched

O' the protector of human rights and justice,

Come out! Stand by us!

Give my books back!

Give my pen back!

I am the daughter of the Eve!

I'm a mother, I' m a sister, I' m a daughter...

I am an honorable part of this global village...

Is there anyone to hear my voice, to hear Swat??

Help us and protect us!

Malalay inspires people with her conviction, from the originality of thoughts. Her words are source of strength, encouragement and hope. She vows to continue speaking out against the violation of girls' rights, especially their right to education, as she believes education is the only way to prosperity and better future.

Please join ActionAid as it assesses the current situation for hundreds of thousands of people fleeing northwest Pakistan due to a recent rash of violence between the government and Taliban forces.

OneWorld TV: Humanitarian Crisis in Pakistan's Camps

Cattle raised for beef a factor in clearing Amazon forest

2009-06-01T12:09:00.001-07:00

Amazon rainforests pay the price as demand for beef soars

Inquiry highlights concerns over ranching in heartland of Brazil

A three-year survey by Greenpeace shows that western demand for beef and leather and an increase in cattle ranching is leading to intensified deforestation in the Amazon. Source: guardian.co.uk Link to this video

Four-year old Daniel Santos da Silva and his older brother Diego Mota dos Santos, 10, heard their first gunshots in April. Their father was shot in a dispute over land on a cattle ranch near the Brazilian town of El Dorado, in the Amazonian state of Para. The boys heard he was taken to hospital, but they have not seen him since.

The ranch is called Espirito Santo, holy spirit, though goodwill to all men is hard to find there. Heavily armed guards protect the thousands of cattle that roam its lush pastures and the hacienda-style complex built on a hill at the farm's centre, complete with swimming pool.

Daniel and Diego live on the muddy fringe of the farm in a hastily erected collection of palm frond-roofed huts to shield them and a hundred-odd other families from regular tropical downpours. They are squatters, but squatters rights are rarely observed in Para.

Espirito Santo and thousands of farms like it raise cattle on Amazonian pasture that was once rainforest. The farms are huge, and so is their impact. The cattle business is expanding rapidly in the Amazon, and now poses the biggest threat to the 80% of the original forest that still stands. Where loggers have made inroads to the edge of the forest in the states of Para and Mato Grosso, farmers have followed.

A report today from Greenpeace details a three-year investigation into these cattle farms and the global trade in their products, many of which end up on sale in Britain and Europe. Meat from the cattle is canned, packaged and processed into convenience foods. Hides become leather for shoes and trainers. Fat stripped from the carcasses is rendered and used to make toothpaste, face creams and soap. Gelatin squeezed from bones, intestines and ligaments thickens yoghurt and makes chewy sweets.

Greenpeace says it has lifted the lid on this trade to expose the "laundering" of cattle raised on illegally deforested land.

The environment campaign group wants Brazilian companies that buy cattle to boycott farms that have chopped down forest after an agreed date. To get the industry onside, it is seeking pressure from multinational brands that source their products in Brazil, and, ultimately, from their customers. Three years ago, a similar exposure of the trade in illegally grown Brazilian soya brought a rapid response from the industry, and a moratorium on soya from newly deforested farms that still holds.

Last month, the Guardian joined Greenpeace on an undercover visit to the cattle farming heartland around the town of Maraba, deep inside the Amazon region. While saving the rainforest is a fashionable cause in faraway developed countries such as Britain, in Maraba it is a provocative and even dangerous ideal.

Many people in Maraba work at the slaughterhouse perched on a hill that overlooks the town. The facility is owned by the Brazilian firm Bertin, one of the companies targeted by Greenpeace for buying cattle from farms linked to illegal deforestation. After slaughter, Greenpeace says Bertin ships the meat, hides and other products to an export facility in Lins, near Sao Paolo. From there, they are shipped all over the world. The firm is Brazil's second largest beef exporter and the largest leather exporter. It is also the country's largest supplier of rawhide dog chews.

Bertin denies taking cattle from Amazon farms associated with deforestation. The company says it "makes permanent investments in initiatives that minimise impacts resulting from its activities" and that it seeks "to be a reference in the sector". It says it has already blacklisted 138 suppliers for "irregularities".

Brazilian government records obtained by Greenpeace show that 76 cattle were shipped to the Bertin slaughterhouse in Maraba from Espirito Santo farm in May 2008. Another 380 were received in January this year.

Standing on Espirito Santo's shady veranda, Oscar Bollir, the farm manager, insists they do nothing wrong.

Under Brazilian law, such farms inside the Amazon region must retain 80% of the original forest within their legal boundary. So why is there pasture for as far as the eye can see? The farm is very big, Bollir says, and most of the required forest is on the other side of some low-slung hills in the distance.

The squatters on the farm, part of a political movement to settle landless people on illegally snatched farmland, are troublemakers, he says. "They don't want land they just want trouble. They want to take all the farms." Earlier that day, he says, he and his men had been forced to visit a neighbouring farm where squatters had killed cattle. Unlike the previous incident on Espirito Santo, when Daniel and Diego's father was shot alongside several others, Bollir says, this time there had been no trouble.

He adds that he is aware of environmental concerns, but that his priority is to produce food and jobs. "Why are these other countries looking at Brazil and telling us what to do?"

The next day, Greenpeace investigators flew over Espirito Santo – the group has a single-engined plane donated by an anonymous British benefactor. Bollir's promised bonanza of forest was not there. GPS data combined with satellite images show that just 20% to 30% of the farm is forested. A local lawyer also reported that during the nearby dispute over the killed cattle, three squatters had been shot and injured.

The Greenpeace report identifies dozens of farms like Espirito Santo that it says break the rules across Para and Mato Grosso to supply Bertin and other slaughter companies. Campaigners say there are probably hundreds or even thousands more.

Cheap pasture from clearing and seeding rainforest is very attractive to farmers without easy access to the expensive agrichemicals and intensive land management techniques used in more developed countries. Within a few years, the planted pasture becomes overrun with native grass, unsuitable for cattle. Many farmers then take the cheap option and knock down adjoining forest to start again, leaving swaths of unproductive deforested land in their wake.

Andre Muggiati, a campaigner with Greenpeace Brazil based in the Amazon town of Manaus, says efforts to protect the forest in frontier regions such as Para are crippled by a lack of effective governance. Government inspections are inadequate and many farms are not even registered so checks cannot be carried out. Casual violence and intimidation are common. "It's totally unregulated and many people behave as if the law does not apply to them. It's like the old US wild west," he says.

Illegal deforestation is not the only problem: farms are regularly exposed as using slave labour, and, like many tropical forest regions, there are regular and violent clashes over land ownership.

The problem is clear a three-hour flight across the patchy forest from Maraba, where a clearing on the side of the river is home to a few hundred Parakana people, a tribe with no contact with the outside world until 1985.

Greenpeace can only reach the village because its plane is equipped to land on the sluggish water, but cattle farmers are steadily intruding. Hundreds of farms have been set up in the surrounding reserve, and they are not welcome.

"Since the invaders arrived there have been many problems," says Itanya, the village chief. Food is harder to find, he says, and discontent is growing. "If the government don't find a solution we will solve it ourselves. We know how to make poison arrows and we are ready to kill people." It is not an idle threat: in 2003 the bodies of three farmers were discovered in the jungle not far from the village. Itanya says it was the work of a neighbouring group.

"We asked them many times to stay away," Kokoa, the chief of the neighbouring group, told the Guardian through an interpreter. "They wouldn't, so one time we said to them that you will never go back and you will stay here forever. We killed them. We are proud that we defended our land."

Food for thought

How much of the Amazon rainforest has been lost and how quickly?

Since the 1970s, when satellite mapping of the region became available, around a fifth of the rainforest has been destroyed, an area the size of California. Greenpeace US estimates that, between 2007 and 2008, another 3m acres (1.2m hectares) have been destroyed.

What is driving the destruction?

Logging, cattle farming and soy plantations are key, plus the increased construction of dams and road, and shifting patterns of farming for local people and mining (for diamonds, bauxite, manganese, iron, tin, copper, lead and gold). These factors are often interlinked – trees are cut down for timber and the cleared land can be used for grazing cattle. Soybeans are then cultivated on the same land. Land is also cleared for biofuel crops. According to Greenpeace, around 80% of the area deforested in Brazil is now cattle pasture. Brazil's biggest export markets for beef are Europe, the Middle East and Russia. Friends of the Earth Brazil estimate that cattle farming in Brazil has been responsible for 9bn-12bn tonnes of CO² emissions in the past decade, almost equivalent to two years worth from the US. Infrastructure projects such as hydroelectric dams also threaten the forests because they cause large areas to be flooded. Currently, the biggest planned project is the Tocantins River basin hydroelectric dam, the effects of which stretch over a distance of 1,200 miles.

Why are cattle a particular problem?

In 2006, the UN Food and Agriculture Organisation found that the livestock industry, from farm to fork, was responsible for 18% of all anthropogenic greenhouse gas emissions. In addition, livestock-rearing can use up to 200 times more water a kilogram of meat compared to a kilo of grain. Furthermore, global meat consumption is on the rise, having increased by more than two and half times since 1970.

Who is trying to stop the destruction?

At this year's climate change negotiations in Copenhagen, governments will consider the "Redd" mechanism. This is the idea that richer countries could offset their carbon emissions by paying to maintain forests in tropical regions. The idea has roots in the 2006 review of the economics of climate change by Nicholas Stern, who said £2.5bn a year could be enough to prevent deforestation in the eight most important countries. But Friends of the Earth says the proposals seem to be aimed at setting up a way to profit from forests, rather than stop climate change, and fail to protect the rights of those living in the forests.

In 2007, Greenpeace also came up with a plan to stop deforestation in the Amazon by 2015. It included creating financial incentives to promote forest protection; and increased support for agencies to monitor, control, and inspect commercial activities. So far, only some of these proposals have been taken up by the Brazilian government. Alok Jha

Source: http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2009/may/31/cattle-trade-brazil-greenpeace-amazon-deforestation

Life-expectancy list for world's countries

2009-05-22T14:18:00.001-07:00

Long life in citizens is a clear indicator of a nation's general health!

WHO: Japan, San Marino top life-expectancy list

By FRANK JORDANS, Associated Press Writer Frank Jordans, Associated Press Writer – Thu May 21

GENEVA – Girls born in Japan today are likely to live until the year 2095, some with a good chance of seeing the dawn of the next century thanks to the world's longest life expectancy.

Japan's child mortality rates are also among the world's lowest, according to statistics published Thursday by the World Health Organization.

For every 1,000 babies of both sexes born in Japan, 996 will make it past their fifth birthday — a key indicator of the health of a nation. Most European countries fare equally well on child mortality, while the United States limps behind both in child mortality and life expectancy.

The tiny nation of San Marino, which is surrounded by Italy, has the world's lowest child mortality and boasts the longest average life span for men anywhere, at 81 years.

Children in the West African country of Sierra Leone and Afghanistan are at the other end of the scale. About a quarter will die before the age of five, and overall life expectancy is short.

Men in Sierra Leone live on average just 39 years, while women live to 43. In Afghanistan both sexes fare badly, with men and women living to 41 and 42, respectively.

The figures for 2007 are the latest available.

The data showed that some countries have made remarkable progress in increasing life expectancy since 1990 — partly by ending wars, partly through successful health initiatives, and child mortality rates have been key.

"The decline in the death toll of children under five illustrates what can be achieved," said WHO's director of statistics, Ties Boerma.

The increased use of insecticide-treated mosquito nets for malaria, oral rehydration therapy for diarrhea, better access to vaccines and improved water and sanitation in developing countries are proving particularly effective, he said.

"The signs are really encouraging for many countries, and they weren't encouraging in the 1990s," said WHO's director of statistics, Ties Boerma.

Some 9 million children under 5 years old died in 2007, compared to 12.5 million in 1990.

Eritrea in East Africa increased its average life expectancy during that period by 33 years to 61 for men, and by 12 years to 65 for women. On the other side of the continent, in Liberia, the figure for men jumped 29 years to 54, and rose 13 years to 58 for women. Angola, Bangladesh, Maldives, Niger and East Timor also increased their average life expectancies for both men and women by full 10 years.

In the United States, life expectancy was on the rise for both sexes, but not so dramatically: up to 76 from 72 years for men, and to 81 from 79 for women.

The U.S., which spends the highest amount of money per person on health care — $6,719, also still lags on child mortality compared to other advanced nations. About eight in 1,000 children will die before the age of 5 — an improvement from 11 per 1,000 in 1990 but still twice as many as in Japan.

Other countries, meanwhile, showed a sharp decline since that time, especially in Africa, where AIDS and weak health systems take a heavy toll.

In Zimbabwe, a yearslong economic crisis and rampant inflation have created serious shortages of food and medicine and forced medical workers to flee the country. Those factors are among the reasons that women's life expectancy fell by 19 years to 44 and the men's average fell 12 years to 45.

The southern African nation of Lesotho recorded a 16-year drop for both men and women to 43 and 47 respectively. In the nearby kingdom of Swaziland, women live to 49 year on average, a drop of 14 years, while men's life expectancy declined by 12 years to 47.

Botswana, Congo, Kenya, South Africa and Zambia also reported significant drops in life expectancy for both sexes.

In Russia, the average life expectancy for men dropped to 60 from 64 years since the time of the Soviet Union. For women the drop was less marked, to 73 from 74 years.

The figures are only one of over 100 health indicators that WHO tracks in its 193 member states. Others include mother and child mortality; prevalence of diseases such as HIV, malaria and tuberculosis; access to doctors and medical facilities; and health expenditure per person.

Source: http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20090521/ap_on_he_me/un_un_life_expectancy

Chinese to relocate 150 million from ecological disaster area

2009-05-20T15:50:00.001-07:00

Desertification is eroding the basis for human health and prosperity in China and many other lands, especially Africa.

Water shortages prompted by over-irrigation and the stress of global climate change have forced Chinese authorities to relocate millions of people from former agricultural areas that are being gradually engulfed by inhospitable deserts. The government estimates more than 150 million people will need to be relocated, largely from the northwest.

'We have taken every measure we can think of to stop the desert moving closer and submerging our crops and villages'

Farmers end up as eco-refugees in a government relocation plan aimed at giving them a better life

Jonathan Watts in Minqin
guardian.co.uk, Monday 18 May 2009

Click here to view a related VIDEO

When the desert winds tear up the sands outside his front door, Huang Cuikun, pictured below in a dried- up riverbed near his home, says he is choked by dust, visibility falls to a few metres and the crops are ruined.

Dust storms hit his village in Gansu province more often than in the past. The water table is falling. Temperatures rise year by year. Yet Huang says this is an improvement. Three years ago the government relocated him from an area where the river ran dry and the well became so salinated that people who drank from it fell sick.

"Life is easier now," he says, puffing on a cigarette in the new brick home that the authorities have given him. "When we lived in Donghuzhen, we had little water and the crops couldn't grow. Our income was tiny and we were very poor."

Huang is one of millions of Chinese eco-refugees who have been resettled because their home environments degraded to the point where they were no longer fit for human habitation. The government says more than 150 million people will have to be moved. Water shortages exacerbated by over-irrigation and climate change are the main cause.

The problem is most severe in the north-west, where desert sands are swallowing up farmland, homes and towns. Huang lives in Mingqin, a shrinking oasis area that government advisers privately describe as an "ecological disaster area".

The Yellow river is diverted more than 62 miles (100km) to replenish dried-up reservoirs and aquifers in Minqin, where the population has swollen from 860,000 to 2.3 million over the last 60 years, even as water supplies have declined.

It is not enough. The Tengger desert is encroaching from the south-east and the Badain Jaran desert from the north-west. Since 1950 the oasis has shrunk by 111 square miles (288 sq km), while the number of annual superdust storms has increased more than fourfold. In Liangzhou district, 240 of the 291 springs have dried up.

Global warming is adding to the problem. Evaporation rates are rising, along with temperatures. According to a study by the Centre for Agricultural Water Research in China, 64% of the reduced stream-flow in the area is attributable to climate variation.

The government pays many farmers to cease production and has relocated thousands of others, like Huang, out of the worst affected areas. The government has given him a new home and land, but the desert winds still howl outside the door and his fields are bordered by sand dunes. Workers in the fields wear masks to protect their faces from the dust storms that whip in from the dunes.

Huang likes his new home, but with the climate getting hotter and drier, he cannot be complacent that it is secure from the sands.

"It's just 2km or 3km from here to the desert, says Huang, so we have taken every measure we can think of to stop the desert moving closer.To survive, we must control the desert. Huang know the trees alone cannot save his home. "In Minqin, our greatest need is water. That is our lifeline. Without water, we cannot survive."

Source: http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2009/may/18/china-ecorefugees-farming

Constructive social action led by youth in Pakistan [INITIATIVE], [AUDACITY], [IDEALISM], [COOPERATION]

2009-05-19T14:30:00.001-07:00

A remarkable story of a constructive initiative for the benefit of the local community by youth in Pakistan!
(Excerpts:)

"Everybody keeps blaming the government, but no one actually does anything," said Shoaib Ahmed, 21, one of the organizers. "So we thought, why don't we?"

"The rich don't care, the poor can't do anything, so it's up to the middle class to make the change," Mr. Khwaja said, as a group of friends standing near him nodded in agreement. "We have to lead by example. To change it from inside."

May 19, 2009

Young Pakistanis Take One Problem Into Their Own Hands

Zackary Canepari for The New York Times
Members of "Responsible Citizens" collected garbage in the Gulberg neighborhood of Lahore.

By SABRINA TAVERNISE

Published: May 18, 2009

LAHORE, Pakistan — The idea was simple, but in Pakistan, a country full of talk and short on action, it smacked of rebellion.

A group of young Pakistani friends, sick of hearing their families complain about the government, decided to spite them by taking matters into their own hands: every Sunday they would grab shovels, go out into their city, and pick up garbage.

Zackary Canepari for The New York Times
Shoaib Ahmed, 21, one of the organizers of the group, in Lahore on a recent Sunday.

It was a strange thing to do, particularly for such students from elite private schools, who would normally spend Sunday afternoons relaxing in air-conditioned homes.

But the students were inspired by the recent success of the lawyers' movement, which used a national protest to press the government to reinstate the country's chief justice, and their rush of public consciousness was irrepressible.

"Everybody keeps blaming the government, but no one actually does anything," said Shoaib Ahmed, 21, one of the organizers. "So we thought, why don't we?"

So they got on Facebook and invited all their friends to a Sunday trash picking. Trash, Mr. Ahmed said, "is this most basic thing. It's not controversial, and you can easily do it."

Pakistan is a country plagued by problems, like Islamic extremism and poverty. But these young people are another face, a curious new generation that looks skeptically on their parents' privilege and holds mullahs and military generals in equal contempt.

"The youth of Pakistan wants to change things," said Shahram Azhar, the lead singer for Laal, a Pakistani rock band, reflecting an attitude that is typical of this rebellious younger generation.

"The reason the Taliban is ruling Swat," he said referring to a valley north of Islamabad where Islamic extremists took control this year, "is because they are organized. We need to organize, too."

"The only answer to Pakistan's problems," he added, "is a broad-based people's movement."

The trash movement, which calls itself Responsible Citizens, does not yet qualify as broad, but it still drew a respectable crowd on a recent Sunday, considering the heat (above 90 degrees) and the time (around 4 p.m.). Mr. Ahmed and his friends were doling out trash bags they had bought for the occasion. About 40 people had gathered. Some were wearing masks. All were carrying shovels.

They set their sights low. The area of operation, Ghalib Market, was modest, a quiet traffic circle in central Lahore encircled by shops, a cricket field and a mosque.

It was not one of the dirtiest parts of the city, but the group felt attached to it, as they had cleaned it in the past, and wanted to see if their actions were having any effect.

The first time they cleaned there was like raking leaves on a windy autumn day.

"We collected, like, 30 bags, but there was no visible difference," Mr. Ahmed said.

But they talked with local shopkeepers, in a kind of trash outreach, asking them to walk their garbage to the trash bin. Those connections, Mr. Ahmed said, were actually the point of the cleaning — setting an example for others to follow.

"The major problem people have here is that there are no bins," said Murtaza Khwaja, a 21-year-old medical student.

Actually, the problem was deeper. A long-term cycle of corrupt, weak governments interrupted by military coups has caused Pakistan's political muscles to atrophy, leaving Pakistani society, particularly its poor, hopeless that it will ever receive the services — education, water, electricity, health — that it so desperately needs.

"People say, 'This is nice, but things will never change,' " Mr. Khwaja said, pointing to a hamburger seller who he said was particularly pessimistic. "There is a hopelessness."

That is where the trash cleaning comes in. Locals find it perplexing and helpful in equal measures. One enthusiast who met the group on its first outing in March, Muhamed Zahid, has come to every one since. One man passing by in a rickshaw dismounted to help them shovel for a while.

The men in the mosque, on the other hand, were picky, wanting the young people to clean the mosque but not the surrounding area.

"They said, 'We already have Christians doing that for us in the morning,' " Mr. Khwaja said. Christians are a minority in Pakistan, and those who have no education often work in the lowest-paid jobs, like collecting trash, sweeping streets or fixing sewers.

On Sunday, Malik Waqas, a 16-year-old who was driving by on a moped, stopped to watch a cluster of young people shoveling what looked like old food.

"It's good," Mr. Waqas said shyly. When asked why, he said, "Because people care."

But that also confuses passers-by, many of whom stop to gape at the young people, who, in their jeans, T-shirts and sunglasses, look more New York than Pakistan. On Sunday, three men in flowing, traditional garb leaned on a fence staring at the students while they cleaned.

Mr. Khwaja's mother, who had also come to clean, was commanding like an army general, trying to get them to join in.

"Most of them just mock us," she said. " 'What are you women doing?' "

But the youngsters seemed to understand the men's perspective.

"They're like, 'Why are these rich people cleaning this up? It's probably a college project,' " one student said.

That brought the students to the most serious discussion of the day, one that is arguably Pakistan's biggest problem: the gap between rich and poor. Generations of poverty and a system of substandard education that keeps people in it have created fertile ground for Islamic militancy, which now poses a serious threat to the stability of the country.

"Here, if you're poor, you're not even a human being," said Pavel Qaiser. "It's the culture we have — one landlord and the peasants working under him."

And here was a revelation: the trash picking, which the students had intended as an example for shopkeepers and residents, was actually an exercise for themselves.

"The rich don't care, the poor can't do anything, so it's up to the middle class to make the change," Mr. Khwaja said, as a group of friends standing near him nodded in agreement. "We have to lead by example. To change it from inside."

He continued, his voice urgent, as if he were giving a speech: "We want to tell everyone, 'You have the right. For 60 years everyone has told you that you don't, but you do!' "

Then he bemoaned the small number of friends they were able to gather for the trash cleaning. For those who didn't come, he had a message. "You want to do something? Pick up a shovel."

Source: http://www.nytimes.com/2009/05/19/world/asia/19trash.html?_r=1&pagewanted=1&ref=world

AGRICULTURE-AFRICA: Knowledge Is Power for Farmers

2009-05-18T12:06:00.000-07:00

Basic training in economic principles presents a simple means for empowering individuals and communities.

AGRICULTURE-AFRICA: Knowledge Is Power for Farmers
By Joyce Mulama

NAIROBI, May 16 (IPS) - Following training by the Alliance for a Green Revolution in Africa, a hundred farmers in central Kenya, armed with an improved understanding of their local markets are commanding higher prices for their bananas.

"These farmers used to sell bananas by just looking at the bunch. A trader would come and dictate the price. Before, they were selling at three shillings per kilo (0.04 U.S. cents), now they are selling for up to ten times more," Anne Mbaabu, director of the Market Access Programme of the Alliance for a Green Revolution in Africa (AGRA) told IPS.

AGRA, an organisation which unites farmers, research scientists, business and governments to boost productivity and incomes, has been working with the Kamahuha Farmers Group, connecting the farmers with buyers who they communicate with directly using mobile phones.

"The buyer may say, 'I want bananas that are not injured, I want them of this maturity and in this quantity.' The farmer will then negotiate the price as opposed to previously, when he would just estimate the price," Mbaabu said.

Improving access to market information and building the capacity of African farmers to understand market trends and needs, was the highlight of a meeting of agricultural experts held May 13-15 in Nairobi.

With the theme of the event being the role of markets in accelerating Africa's economic growth while improving incomes of poor farmers, it was stressed that for farmers to gain, they must not only produce, they must have effective access to markets in order to sell their harvests at fair prices.

Think local

Markets in Africa, it emerged, are poorly-organised and volatile. Farmers lack market information on current wholesale or retail prices that they need to negotiate good prices for their produce.

"You have to know where the market is first. If you do not have access to information, the farmers cannot even access markets or participate in them. So the big issue is providing adequate information for farmers to be aware of markets, but also to be aware of the needs of markets because market needs are changing a lot," noted Akinwumi Adesina, AGRA's Vice President for Policy and Partnerships.

Experts like Ade Freeman of the International Livestock Research Institute (ILRI) argue that domestic and regional markets provide the greatest opportunity for African farmers, rather than markets further a field.

The population of the East African Community - Kenya, Uganda, Tanzania, Rwanda and Burundi - is roughly 100 million; over 389 million people live in the countries that form the Common Markets for Eastern and Southern Africa.

"We are talking about huge markets, in terms of the numbers of people that are involved. And people will always need to buy food. Some of these countries have been experiencing economic growth of about five to six percent per annum. So, all factors that favour increasing demand for agriculture in these markets are moving in the right direction, providing an opportunity for regional and domestic markets to be exploited," Freeman said.

There are several hurdles that have stifled regional trade, including high tariffs. "Tariff structures in Africa are actually much higher between countries than they are between Europe and Africa. So this makes it difficult for us to trade between ourselves," Adesina pointed out.

There have also been calls for customs regulation standards (requirements which someone exporting or importing goods or services is expected to adhere to, and they vary from country to country) to be harmonised to make it easier for people to transport goods across borders.

Access alone is not enough

But for poor farmers to increase productivity and enter these markets, they need to be supported with improved seeds, fertilisers, irrigation, and pest management technologies. And government intervention to provide this support constitutes subsidies, a thorny issue at international trade talks.

Mbaabu's take is a different one. "These subsidies, as they are called, are targeted. It's not just mass subsidies; it is targeted at those who cannot be able to afford, and then once they are able to get these inputs, they become self-sufficient in their food production and then you end up reducing poverty. So let us not criminalise subsidies; it is support, targeted support to our farmers."

In Kenya, the government has over the last year reduced fertiliser prices from about 79 dollars to the current 33 dollars. This is still too costly for many farmers, according to Peter Njoroge, chair of the League of Small-Scale Coffee Farmers. He told IPS that a good number of farmers were abandoning farming due to the high input costs, and he wants authorities to reduce further the fertiliser prices or even distribute them free of charge to small producers.

The Malawi government was commended for going against the grain to provide subsidised hybrid maize seeds and fertilisers to its farmers beginning three years ago. It has since moved from a serious food deficit to becoming a net maize exporter.

And the results of farmers using high-yielding inputs are tangible. "The standing point is an increase in productivity in areas where farmers use improved inputs," Joseph Mwangangi, the regional director of Agribusiness Strengthening Programs at CNFC Inc, an organisation dedicated to increasing and sustaining rural incomes through empowering farmers in developing countries, told IPS.

Mwangangi, whose organisation works with the Agriculture Commodity Exchange in Malawi pointed to a recent study by the Bunda College of Agriculture at the University of Malawi, which found that up to 86 percent of farmers were using improved inputs. This, the study says, has led to increased or improved household food security.

Even with these gains, not everyone is in favour of subsidies to poor farmers. Hans Binswanger, a private consultant on agriculture and rural development from South Africa, cautioned about potential risks associated with subsidy programmes.

"If not designed and implemented properly, they can cause disruptions in markets, resulting in high prices which are completely unnecessary, and which are costly to the government, costly to its people. This undermines the intended benefits of the fertiliser and seed subsidy programme," he stated.

(END/2009)

Source: http://ipsnews.net/news.asp?idnews=46877

PERU: Microbusiness Helps Women Weather Crisis

2009-05-18T12:03:00.000-07:00

An innovative and audacious way to initiate growth, starting from the grassroots!

PERU: Microbusiness Helps Women Weather Crisis
By Blanca Rosales *

Artisans at work.

Credit:Maritza Asencios/IPS

LIMA, May 15 (IPS) - Microenterprise is an escape valve for social tension at times of crisis, and microbusinesses do a better job of weathering the storm than bigger companies because they are used to overcoming difficulties – a positive effect that is further multiplied when it involves women.

"Microbusiness owners have always operated in tough conditions. For them, there has always been a crisis," Sonia Arenaza, a Peruvian member of ACCIÓN International – a Boston, Massachusetts-based microfinance network involved in Africa, Asia and Latin America - told IPS.

"This is a reality that you see in Peru as well as the rest of Latin America and developing countries in general," said Arenaza.

The microfinance expert also confirmed that "during this time of global financial crisis, women who run microbusinesses are doing a better job at withstanding the negative effects, as shown by numerous studies.

"They are performing better in financial and entrepreneurial terms," she said.

In Peru, the impact of the global crisis has led to a plunge in exports, spending cuts and a rise in social tension, especially among the poor.

Against that backdrop, microfinance takes on a special importance because it channels funds into keeping afloat small businesses, which are a lifeline for the lowest income sectors, said Arenaza.

In Peru, which has an economically active population of 10.6 million people, 35 percent of whom are women, there are an estimated three million microbusinesses, which by definition employ five or less people.

Microloans are mainly granted in developing countries, fomented by government policies, local and international NGOs, and regulated financial institutions.

The Inter-American Development Bank's (IDB) Multilateral Investment Fund reports that there are 565 microfinance institutions in Latin America and the Caribbean financing around nine million microenterprises, with an outstanding loan portfolio of 9.2 billion dollars, which covers 13 percent of demand for microlending.

But the advantages of channeling financial services and products to female microenterprise owners are not limited to times of crisis, said Arenaza.

"This has a multiplier effect in terms of development, in first place related to the microenterprise itself and the improvement of its business, and in second place related to the home and the improvement of living conditions for the microbusiness owner's family, like health and education for the children," she said.

Statistics show that women all around the world are better borrowers, when they manage to gain access to loans, the expert said.

But microfinance should also focus on women because they have traditionally been marginalised by lending institutions and because a large proportion of them are among the poorest of the poor.

Women's ability to combine "productive" and family "reproductive" roles in microfinance activities means microcredits to women can have a greater impact, on their families and on society as a whole, in terms of expanding progress and social improvements, Arenaza added.

The growing awareness of the importance of microcredit was seen at the fifth Summit of the Americas in April, where U.S. President Barack Obama announced the creation of a microfinance fund to promote development in the western hemisphere.

An index called Microscope on the Microfinance Business Environment in Latin America and the Caribbean, carried out by the Economist Intelligence Unit - a specialised service of the British magazine The Economist - and commissioned by the IDB and the Andean Development Corporation, ranked Peru at the top of the list in 2008, pushing aside Bolivia.

The ranking is based on three aspects of microfinance: the regulatory framework, the investment climate and institutional development.

Peru and Bolivia are followed on the index by Ecuador, El Salvador, Colombia, Nicaragua, Guatemala and Paraguay.

Export business

In Peru, the number of groups of women who have used microlending to improve their incomes and lives has grown.

Rosa Pacheco is one illustration of the trend. She embroiders traditional handbags and purses for Casa Betania (Casabet), a small company that she founded with several other women to generate an income for the poorest women served by community soup kitchens in the slums of the Lima neighbourhood of San Martín de Porres.

The Catholic Sisters of the San José del Sagrado Corazón lent the women a locale, and provided advice. A year after the women began to work, they received a donation from Caritas France, which was used to purchase two sewing machines and materials to produce the knitted and embroidered accessories and clothing that the organisation sells at home and abroad.

Since then, Casabet has been self-financing, said Pacheco.

The women, who are highly skilled in embroidery and knitting, produce sweaters, scarves, purses, vests, ponchos, backpacks and a number of other products, using Peruvian materials, patterns and designs. Their logotype is a feline symbol characteristic of the pre-Columbian Paracas indigenous culture.

"We decided to set up Casabet in 2004 because we were already producing and selling our goods, but we wanted to have a more formal business, and to export," said Pacheco.

Casabet belongs to the Warmimaqui (women's hands, in the Quechua language) network, which groups five workshops in Lima Norte, the northern part of the capital, where the city's industrial districts, as well as the most populous neighbourhoods, are concentrated.

"We have come together as a group of organised women to sell our goods," said Pacheco. "We have a web site, with a catalogue."

The group's production is export-oriented, and the company is a member of the Central Interregional de Artesanos del Perú (CIAP - Interregional Centre of Peruvian Artisans).

"Through CIAP, our products are sold in France, Belgium and Italy, although as a result of the crisis, the number of orders has plummeted. We also have clients in Australia and Britain," she explained.

From the start, Casabet has been much more than just a company. It emerged as a solution to address the needs of the most vulnerable women who visit several soup kitchens in the neighbourhood of San Martín de Porres.

A mental health workshop for victims of domestic violence led the participants to decide to stop being "charity cases" and to seek their own solutions.

They discovered that several of them knew how to embroider, knit and crochet, and that realisation gave rise to today's flourishing export company.

No more handouts

"We figured that if we were able to run a soup kitchen, we could manage a company that would offer work and generate funds for the soup kitchens themselves," Martha Vera, administrator of the Virgen de Nazareth bakery, which is also run by women, told IPS.

The poor quality of the bread products received by the soup kitchen prompted the women to think about setting up their own bakery. The initial funding came from two Catholic organisations and Intermón – the Spanish branch of the international aid agency Oxfam – which provided 20,000 dollars.

The women used the money to buy a plot of land and build a one-story building.

Twenty years later they have a three-story building, modern bakery equipment, and a four-ton truck that is used to distribute their products.

The company has two lines of production: enriched bread for breakfasts in public schools, and pastries that are sold to food stores. "We also make fortified bread products for Socios en Salud, an organisation that provides food aid to tuberculosis patients," said Vera.

They have been good at paying off their loans, and representatives of the state and the institutions with which they work have told them that women generally are better payers than men.

"We are more responsible and aware," said Vera. "We take our company's work very seriously, and with greater responsibility. We treat it as if it were another child; we take care of it; we are attentive. We are aware that our households depend on the bakery."

Of the 200 bakeries producing food for public school breakfasts in Lima, 150 are run by women.

"Our children have completed their studies, some of us have set up our own businesses, and we are an example for other women, so we feel very rewarded," said Vera.

* With additional reporting from Maritza Asencios in Lima (END/2009)

Source: http://www.ipsnews.net/news.asp?idnews=46863

"Cycle of harvest and hunger" in Liberia underscores the importance of agriculture for development

2009-05-18T12:01:00.000-07:00

The issues of safety and agriculture will be seen to be the most urgent concerns in development.

(Excerpt:)

"We see there is a need for food. Especially for women. We have to help them," says Doh. "Some of them are trying to find a place to help themselves. Their husbands are gone, either died in the war or gone, and their children are left unattended. The women have a lot of troubles."

Originally from Zwedru, Doh spent her career working at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs in Monrovia during the decades-long civil war that devastated the country. "I came back briefly in 2003 just to see - I saw a lot of empty land and empty houses," she says sadly...

For ordinary subsistence farmers, the annual cycle of harvest and hunger threatens to continue, committing them to a lifetime of relentless labour to satisfy their basic needs.

LIBERIA: Rural Women Confront Hunger Gap, Their Own Way
By Rebecca Murray

Liberia's new farmers like Jeanet Gay (above) do not have husbands to support them and their children

Credit:Rebecca Murray/IPS

ZWEDRU, Liberia, May 15 (IPS) - Three brightly-clothed women walk slowly around the fallen, charred trees strewn haphazardly across the blackened clearing, each carrying snail shells filled with indigenous rice seed to bury in the rich soil.

The women belong to a local cooperative, Women and Children Development Secretariat (WOCDES), and wake early for the 5-km hike down the dirt road to their farm near Zwedru, Grand Gedeh County, in Liberia's vast forest region on the Ivorian border.

Their day is spent in hard manual labour, hunched over and digging at the soil with small spades. Between them they plant three hectares of seed under a blazing tropical sun, stopping only for a staple meal of rice and cassava leaf.

Jeanet Gay is one of the farmers. A 35-year-old mother, she fled the civil war's fighting to Monrovia, the Liberian capital, only for her husband to be murdered by militiamen on the city's main bridge. Her mother, father and nieces were all killed at home. Neither of her work companions have husbands to support them and their children.

The women's 'upland' rice crop will take up to six months to grow and harvest, and as much as 40 percent of the crop may be lost to birds, groundhogs and other vermin. Meanwhile, the farm's 'lowland' or swamp area, which is naturally irrigated, is reserved for introducing one hectare of rice breeder seed called Nerica.

Rice for Development

Rice is the largest staple food for Liberia's 3.5 million people, and provides a quarter of the daily domestic diet.

But, lacking essential tools, fertilisers and the vital infrastructure to access markets, many subsistence farmers view rice cultivation as too labour intensive. Their efforts can reap greater reward through planting alternative cash crops and buying imported rice instead.

According to the Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO), Liberia produces only 40 percent of its total annual rice requirement domestically, and relies heavily on international imports for the remaining 60 percent.

Liberia is not alone. Like many West African countries, its years of brutal conflict drove much of its rural population to urban centres. In January 2009, the Barcelona-based agricultural watchdog, GRAIN, reported, "Partly because of the rapidly increasing urban population, sub-Saharan Africa has gone from producing more rice than it needed (112 percent of domestic consumption) in 1961 to importing 39 percent of its consumption in 2006." "Annual imports cost almost 2 billion U.S. dollars," they add.

Meanwhile, a global food crisis, exacerbated by the worldwide economic meltdown last fall, has had a severe impact upon the price of imported rice. In Zwedru's colourful main thoroughfare, food suppliers display only the most widely available variety, Chinese butter rice, which has virtually doubled its local value of a 50kg bag to 40 U.S. dollars since 2006

In 1979, President William Tolbert's plan to encourage local rice growth backfired among a hungry Liberian population. In his efforts to promote domestic rice production, heavy tariffs were imposed on the cereal's import. The price of rice soared, sparking violent riots, which many believe led to the violent overthrow of Tolbert's regime the following year, igniting the long civil war.

The Ministry of Agriculture hopes to avoid similar unrest, promoting domestic Nerica rice production as a major development component in Liberia's immense post war reconstruction effort under President Ellen Sirleaf Johnson.

"We are importing Nerica breeder seeds from the West Africa Rice Development Agency (WARDA), which are then multiplied into foundation seeds at Liberia's Central Agricultural Research Institute (CARI)," says Quan Dinh, the USAID-backed advisor to the Ministry of Agriculture. "These seeds will ultimately be distributed to NGOs and the private sector to modify into certified seeds."

Short for 'New Rice for Africa', Nerica is an Asian-African hybrid, which is heavily touted by Liberia's Ministry of Agriculture for its short three-month growth period and, according to a United Nations Food and Agricultural Organisation (FAO) study, it has a 25 percent increase in yield over non-hybrid strains.

Liberia's two commercial rice ventures, including a Libyan-backed 30 million dollars, 17,000-hectare rice farm in fertile Lofa County, are well-suited for the Nerica brand, with financial means to replenish the seed every two harvests, efficient machinery, fertilisers, and irrigation and transportation systems.

Thirty kg of Nerica breeder seeds were recently donated to WOCDES by the local branch of the international development charity, German Agro Action, and will be planted within two weeks.

Nerica is promoted as an antidote to the West African country's painful 'hunger gap', which runs through the rainy season from April to July. This is when the 75 percent of Liberia's rural population who live by subsistence farming begin to exhaust their food stores before the new crop is ready for harvest.

"This is a dream for me," says WOCDES founder, Betty Doh, about the organisation's activities on her family's 275-hectare plot of land. Although Liberian law bans women from inheriting land, Doh's brothers, who received the property when their father died, encouraged her farming initiative wholeheartedly.

"We see there is a need for food. Especially for women. We have to help them," says Doh. "Some of them are trying to find a place to help themselves. Their husbands are gone, either died in the war or gone, and their children are left unattended. The women have a lot of troubles."

Originally from Zwedru, Doh spent her career working at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs in Monrovia during the decades-long civil war that devastated the country. "I came back briefly in 2003 just to see - I saw a lot of empty land and empty houses," she says sadly.

For Liberia's subsistence farmers like Jeanet Gay, however, the Nerica may not offer such a ready solution to their annual hunger gap - indeed it may ultimately threaten their livelihoods.

"To achieve good results, farmers must have easy access to fertilisers, pesticides and extension services, which the vast majority of them simply do not have," says GRAIN. "Perhaps the most serious concern with Nerica is that it is being promoted within a larger drive to expand agribusiness in Africa, which threatens to wipe out the real basis for African food sovereignty - Africa's small farmers and their local seed systems."

In Grand Gedeh County, Betty Doh's WOCDES, the South Eastern Women's Development Association (SEWODA) and the Grand Gedeh Rural Women's project are a few of the farming collaboratives initiated by women hoping to transform from subsistence farming, and into small profitable agricultural businesses.

But they have a long way to go. In an impoverished nation where unemployment hovers around an estimated 85 percent, all are looking for funds. Doh financed the farm's upland seed purchase herself, but lacks the machines, fertilisers and effective pest deterrence to farm her rice crop efficiently. She is unsure where she will get another batch of Nerica grain for the low lands, when what was given to her runs out.

For ordinary subsistence farmers, the annual cycle of harvest and hunger threatens to continue, committing them to a lifetime of relentless labour to satisfy their basic needs.

"When I got back, I cried every day for some time, because I saw Zwedru destroyed, and it was empty for me," remembers Jeanet Gay. "My husband, mother, father, and brothers all lost. But I adjusted after some time, and haven't left since."

"I want to make some money, and take care of my children. After this work I just try to forget and go to bed and feel fine the next day." (END/2009)

Source: http://ipsnews.net/news.asp?idnews=46859

Neglect of sanitation impacts education, health - MADAGASCAR

2009-05-15T05:45:00.001-07:00

A clear example of the interdependence of education and infrastructure.

MADAGASCAR: Education Hampered by Lack of Clean Water

By Fanja Saholiarisoa

ANTANANARIVO, May 13 (IPS) - Because most schools in Madagascar have no access to running water, lack of hygiene and sanitation have become a major problem for children on the Southern African island. Many pupils fall sick regularly, are unable to attend classes and hence don't perform well at school.

Although government has promised to improve sanitation within its education system, programmes are yet to be implemented. To speed up the process, a national network of more than 150 non-governmental organisations, Diorano Wash, has launched a clean water initiative in 400 Malagasy schools that enables children to wash their hands at least once a day.

"[The water shortage] results from the fact that the country's school construction programme did not take into account the required infrastructure. Funding for new schools did not include money to install running water," said Diorano Wash national coordinator Herivelo Rakotondrainibe.

Lack of clean water is a problem in both urban and rural areas on the island, according to Rakotondrainibe, but the more rural the school, the more difficult it is to find sanitary conditions. In many rural schools, children are therefore instructed to bring a bottle of water each morning, which they use to wash, drink and for ablutions.

The situation has a direct impact on children's health. According to a 2002 study by the Antananarivo-based National Institute of Statistics, more than half of under-five-year-olds die of diarrhoea in Madagascar, mainly caused by lack of sanitation. Moreover, skin infections and respiratory diseases are common results of contaminated water sources.

"Many water sources are unclean in Madagascar, and few people have access to clean water at their homes," said Dr Emile Rasoanirainy, chief physician at the Paediatric Hospital in the country's capital Antananarivo.

According to an official survey of hygiene at Malagasy schools in February 2009, only 18 percent of the country's 111 school districts have access to drinking water at their educational facilities. Only 30 percent have toilet facilities, while pupils in the rest of the schools have to defecate in nature.

One of the schools particularly badly affected by lack of sanitation is Ilafy primary school, located in a rural area about 20 kilometres outside of Antananarivo, which has been operating without running water for the past 90 years. Asking pupils to bring their own water to school has been teachers' only solution to dealing with the water shortage and resulting hygiene problems.

"Students bring drinking water in a bottle. It is mainly used to wash their hands after they used the toilet," explained Aimée Rasoanirina, one of the school's teachers. Yet, one bottle of water is not enough to ensure hygiene and sanitation throughout the day, says Rasoanirina, nor is the water the children bring necessarily safe to drink. Many of her pupils miss school due to illness, which leads to them performing less well at school.

"I draw from a river close to our house. I drink it when I am thirsty, even if it is not clean," said Hasinanirina (9), one of the school's pupils who says he regularly suffers from diarrhoea.

A 2009 National Institute of Statistics study confirmed that lack of access to drinking water directly relates to the percentage of children missing school, particularly due to diarrhoea. About 3.5 million school hours are lost each year in Madagascar, the study found, calculating that of the 2.5 million school-going pupils those who fall ill need about three days to recover.

Numerous schools in Madagascar have now started to educate their pupils about the importance of hygiene and sanitation. Ilafy Primary School, for example, introduces the topic of basic hygienic behaviour, such as washing of hands before meals, from Grade 1.

Having soap to clean their hands properly is yet another problem, however. "The school district provides some soap, but it is never enough for all schools," lamented Rasoanirina.

Teachers and parents now call on government to fulfil promises to improve the country's water and sanitation systems, prioritising schools.

"Elected political representatives have promised us a system of water supply, but so far their promises have not been kept," said Landy Rasoatavy, a mother of three from Ilafy. She says she boils water for her children every morning, because their only source of water is a polluted river.

Until government implements sanitation systems in the country's schools, teachers and pupils will continue to rely on initiatives, like Diorano Wash, which are dependent on funding from international donors. United Nations Children's Fund (UNICEF) and USAID have so far spent $4 million on school hygiene programmes in Madagascar.

But the country's current political crisis might be an obstacle to a swift implementation of existing sanitation policies. Madagascar has been led by a transitional government under ex-Antananarivo mayor and former disc jockey Andry Rajoelina since Mar. 17, after former president Marc Ravalomanana was toppled.

Newly appointed Minister of Water, Niry Lanto Randriamahazo, is yet to announce a strategy to improve the supply of clean drinking water in schools.

Source: http://www.ipsnews.net/news.asp?idnews=46832

Needs of the Age - newsbits

Schools are churning out the unemployable

MONGOLIA: Extreme, crippling weather conditions - a foretaste of things to come worldwide?

WORST WINTER IN DECADES

N. Korea famine, once again

THE SECRET FAMINE

KEY FACTS

Haiti quake unearths lesson of brotherhood

Consumerist culture as elephant in room with respect to environmental issues

Youth dedicated to interests of children [LOVE], [SERVICE], [COMPASSION], [IDEALISM]

2009 Children's Peace Prize: 16-Year-Old's Radio Show Brings Hope to Refugee Children

Empowerment through knowledge gained in the work process - ENVIRONMENT, DEVELOPMENT

Electric bicycles take to streets in China - ENVIRONMENT, TECHNOLOGY

LETTER FROM CHINA

Bicycles give way to automobiles, but e-bikes keep two-wheel tradition alive

Authoritarian regimes source of international refugees: ERITREA

EDUCATION: Excessive testing forces undifferentiated curriculum

LIBERIA: Health facilities in disarray - malnutrition, unsanitary conditions stifling the young

S. Korea as model on development

The experience of eloquent speech - here on issues of governance in E.U.

Open elections, greater democracy, energy and aid should head the list for Europe's new leaders

Coherent lines of action key to solving global problems

EDITOR'S CHOICE

The legacy and promise of 1989: fall of the Berlin Wall

Maternal death rates alarming - a preventable tragedy: CAMBODIA

Critical issues to be addressed at World Summit on Food Security in Rome 16-18 Nov.

Natural resources, lawlessness fuel armed conflicts buffeted by arms trade

TRADE IN NATURAL RESOURCES FUELS WARS

Doesn't the world need virtues above all? [INTEGRITY], [JUSTICE], [HONESTY], [COMMITMENT]

Desperation growing as poor neglected in Pakistan

Prioritizing sustainable food, nutritional security, regionally and globally

Outright slavery, people trafficking widespread in Australia

Move to Ban Violent Video Games in Crime-ridden Venezuela

Big-city squatters organize themselves: Abandon panhandling for self-sustaining work

Using rooftops to green, freshen urban environments

Ongoing human rights abuses at root of Xinjiang violence

Mauritania slaves: 500.000 born into continuing slavery

Market forces skewed: We can buy a 99-cent cheeseburger but not even a head of broccoli

Uganda forest likely gone in 50 yrs

Eight Women Die EACH DAY During Delivery - MADAGASCAR

Song, dance as communication medium among women, stimulating dialogue - AFRICA

Demography potent factor in distribution of nations' power

Even in the age of high-tech warfare, shifts in the world population give a military advantage to 'underdeveloped' countries

BACKGROUND

Overcoming trauma of displacement through storytelling, illustration

Biodiversity cushions impact of environmental vicissitudes

Volunteer action-oriented network for the environment created in Romania

"End Hunger: Walk the World" mobilised people in 70 countries

Farmers take brunt of economic woes - suicides increase in India

Complete ban on alcohol: The only thing that could save their community from going under

"Peace Builders" - an organisation comprising Jewish, Muslim, Christian and "even agnostic" women

Pakistan: One of the largest (2 mill.) and quickest displacements of people the world has ever seen

Saudi ties to Taliban a factor in destabilization of Pakistan, Afghanistan

Uzbekistan: Child labor widespread despite government ban

Pakistani Girl Calls for Peace - 1.2 million displaced in Northwest

Malalay: A Pakistani Girl Speaks Out in Swat

Cattle raised for beef a factor in clearing Amazon forest

Food for thought

Life-expectancy list for world's countries

Chinese to relocate 150 million from ecological disaster area

Constructive social action led by youth in Pakistan [INITIATIVE], [AUDACITY], [IDEALISM], [COOPERATION]

AGRICULTURE-AFRICA: Knowledge Is Power for Farmers

PERU: Microbusiness Helps Women Weather Crisis

"Cycle of harvest and hunger" in Liberia underscores the importance of agriculture for development

Neglect of sanitation impacts education, health - MADAGASCAR