Children exposed to mining industry pollution in Peru. The debate on mining is raging throughout Latin America. Credit:Milagros Salazar/IPS
WASHINGTON, Sep 27 2012 (IPS) – New research from Oxfam, an international aid agency, finds that some of the largest multinational oil and mining companies are increasingly incorporating principles of community consent into their day-to-day operations.
Oxfam’s researchers looked at 28 of the world’s largest extractives companies and combed through their publicly available commitments to addressing the issue of community rights. They used the information to come up with a ranking – the Community Consent Index – that, …
Growing old in Jabaliya refugee camp in Gaza. Credit: Emad Badwan/IPS.
GAZA CITY, Mar 7 2013 (IPS) – “In Gaza we don t lead normal lives, we just cope, and adapt to our abnormal lives under siege and occupation,” says Dr. Mona El-Farra, a physician and a long-time human rights and women s rights activist in the Gaza Strip. On International Women s Day, when many of the world s women are fighting for workplace equality and an end to domestic violence, Farra and the majority of Gaza s women fight for the most basic of rights.
“It is difficult to live in this small piece of land, where basic needs like clean water, regular electricity, proper sanit…
LGBT activists, human rights observers and police officers wait outside a courtroom in Uganda’s constitutional court. Four activists had brought a case against Minister of State for Ethics and Integrity Simon Lokodo. Credit: Will Boase/IPS
UNITED NATIONS, Apr 26 2013 (IPS) – Ishita Chaudhry spent the past 36 hours listening to U.N. delegates discuss population growth and development. She noticed that on “controversial” topics, such as sexual and reproductive rights, young people’s voices often get lost.
“For us as young people, it’s really not as controversial as it is for governments,” said Chaudhry, a member of the (ICPD), at a press briefing Thurs…
Ranjit Devraj interviews SANJEEV CHOPRA, managing director of the National Agricultural Cooperative Marketing Federation of India (NAFED)
A tribal widow in India bends over a wood fire making puffed rice. Credit: Manipadma Jena/IPS
NEW DELHI, Jun 24 2013 (IPS) – As managing director of the National Agricultural Cooperative Marketing Federation (NAFED), India’s apex agriculture marketing organisation, Sanjeev Chopra is in the thick of planned legislation to cover 800 million Indians under the world’s biggest food subsidy programme.
The new bill, whose implementation will cost 23 billion dollars annually, has been criticised as a ploy by the rul…
Raúl Pierre interviews Mariela Castro, director of Cuba’s National Centre for Sex Education
Mariela Castro speaking at the conference on population and development in Montevideo. Credit: David Puig/UNFPA
MONTEVIDEO, Aug 15 2013 (IPS) – Latin America and the Caribbean cannot hope to have truly advanced, progressive policies in sexual and reproductive health as long as women do not have the right to decide to interrupt their pregnancy, says Mariela Castro.
“To me it is shameful that many women in the region are still forced to decide between prison or death,” said Castro, director of Cuba s (CENESEX) and a member of the high-level task force for the Internati…
QUITO, Oct 28 2013 (IPS) – The secrecy surrounding a friendly settlement in a case that Ecuador brought against Colombia in the International Court of Justice for damage caused by anti-drug spraying along the border has further angered those affected by the fumigation.
Ecuador dropped the lawsuit filed in 2008 in The Hague-based Court, as a result of signed Sept. 9, a copy of which was obtained by IPS.
The settlement stipulates that Colombia is to pay 15 million dollars in compensation, to be invested in areas in Ecuador of coca crops with the glyphosate herbicide near the country’s border.
But how and when the investments will be made has not yet been clarified.
The Colombian government also pledged not to carry out aerial spraying over the next year …
Three boys in the Moqattam area look out over Cairo, the growing population of which is rapidly depleting already scarce water resources. Credit: Shelly Kittleson/IPS.
CAIRO, Feb 6 2014 (IPS) – Heavy reliance on water intensive crops, a major upstream dam project for the Nile basin, and rising groundwater levels pushing at pharaoh-era monuments will be pressing issues for the next Egyptian president whether military or civilian.
As criticism continues over the military’s heavy-handedness to quell protests, little attention is being given to the late January announcement by Egypt’s minister of irrig…
WASHINGTON, Apr 7 2014 (IPS) – The world’s first hospital to be built and run in a developing country under a public-private partnership is taking up more than half of the health budget in Lesotho, according to new estimates, diverting resources from populations outside of the capital.
The unique funding arrangement for the Queen ‘Mamohato Memorial Hospital, which opened in 2011 in the capital city of Maseru, came about under a deal brokered by the International Finance Corporation (IFC), the World Bank’s private sector arm.“It’s very concerning that the deal was structured to give a 25 percent return to a private company – that’s a phenomenally high rate.” — Anna Marriott of Oxfam
Yet while the Washington-based IFC was negotiating on behalf of the Les…
WASHINGTON , May 20 2014 (IPS) – Delegates to this week’s annual meeting of the World Health Assembly (WHA) in Geneva should agree on an ambitious agenda to sharply cut the rate of newborn deaths and stillbirths over the next two decades, according to maternal and infant health experts.
Reducing the rates of newborn deaths and stillbirths has lagged significantly behind the remarkable progress achieved in cutting mortality among children between the ages of one month and five years, according to a new study in the “Every Newborn” Series published by the British medical publication, ‘The Lancet”.
Thanks in major part to the U.N.’s Millennium Development Goals (MDGs), reductions in mortality for children 1-59 months and maternal mortality have averaged 3.4 perc…
KIEV, Aug 17 2014 (IPS) – Doctors are warning of a worsening tuberculosis epidemic in Eastern Ukraine as the continuing conflict there begins to take a heavy toll on public health.
With thousands of people fleeing the region every day, medical supplies severely disrupted and those left behind under growing physical stress and increasingly unable to access medical services, conditions are ripe for a rise in new TB cases.
Dr Masoud Dara, Tuberculosis Programme Manager at the World Health Organisation (WHO) , told IPS: “The situation with TB was not good before the conflict, but we can say that the conflict has certainly made it worse.”Since the outbreak of hostilities and the Ukrainian military’s push to reclaim control of areas in Eastern Ukraine from pro-Russian se…