"We have been spending sleepless nights without electricity and clean water.
This place is not worth living in but we have no option and will remain here as
long as the military operation continues in our area," said Gul Rahim, a former
resident of Bara tehsil in Khyber Agency, currently languishing in the Jallozai
refugee camp in the Nowshera district of Pakistan's Khyber Pakhtunkhwa.
(IPS) - The tourist brochure shows pictures of lovely white sandy
beaches, tall coconut trees and rolling mountains. Welcome to
the Caribbean.
(IPS) In response to the pressures of everyday life, some people in Cuba are promoting meditation as a way to protect the mind and body and foster a culture of peace.
(IPS) Agnes Torres, a transsexual psychologist and gay rights activist, left her home in the central Mexican state of Puebla on her way to a party. The next day, her body was found in a gully, naked from the waist down. Her throat had been slit.
(IPS) - Only a small proportion of women in the region whose rights are undermined achieve full access to justice, says a collective of women's organisations from eight countries of Latin America.
(BBC) "We want to hear each others' stories on how we have coped with changes, how we have got to where we are now and thus how we can be an inspiration to others," says Anna Loa Olafsdottir, one of the people behind a group of women in southwest Iceland who call themselves SKASS.
(IPS) - Protests in the southern Chilean city of Puerto Aysén over the region's isolation and high local prices of fuel and food have spread to other isolated regions of the country.
(IPS) - Beauty Moyo's desire for access to water has finally been met. The rains that fell in the past week after a long dry patch have awakened this small-holder farmer deep in rural Plumtree, Zimbabwe on the border with Botswana to the reality of sparse rainfall, climate change and how she and her fellow villagers can respond.
This week more than half the residents eligible to vote in Libya's embattled
coastal city of Misrata cast their ballots for local council representatives in their
first democratic election in decades.
(IPS) - After a hearing that lasted more than 11 hours, a Guatemalan
court ordered the trial of former dictator Efraín Ríos Montt
(1982-1983), who could face up to 30 years in prison if he is
convicted of genocide and crimes against humanity.
(IPS) - The primitive Juang tribe in remote Nola village on Chandragiri hill experienced its first three institutional childbirths only a month ago.
(IPS News) The Russian opposition movement which has risen to prominence since the Dec. 4 parliamentary elections has not said its last word, says 35-year-old Sergey Udaltsov, one of its most visible figures.
(IPS News) Amateurism, high prices, mismanagement, and a limited product range have discouraged Inderjeet Rajcoomarsingh, the former chairman of the Mauritius Agricultural Cooperative Federation, from shopping at cooperative stores.
(IPS News) Fifteen respected academics from different Turkish universities signed a
declaration in Ankara last week protesting recent state regulations restricting
access to a variety of websites on ‘moral' and ‘national integrity' grounds.
The forests of northwestern Pakistan have become the latest victim of the
Taliban's increasingly desperate quest for resources to sustain and fund its
military programme.
Blame for the shadowy war of attrition against Iran's ballistic missile and
nuclear programmes usually prompts vigorous U.S. and Israeli denials of
involvement, or self-imposed silence. Yet, the two allies risk being hoisted on
their own ambiguity petard.
(IPS) A school in Slovakia has defended its decision to segregate Roma children from
other students after a court ruled the practice breached equal rights laws.
(IPS) The massive overhaul of Hungary's political system by the conservative Fidesz
party is raising fears the country's days as a liberal democracy may be
numbered. With opposition parties powerless, it is civil society that has
awakened to support a more participatory democracy.
(IPS) - Mexican or foreign-born children being held by one of their parents in this or another country are caught up in a legal tangle marred by red tape and the arbitrary powers of judges, according to experts.
(IPS) - Tucked away in a dense and ecologically diverse tiger reserve in Southern India,
tribes-people and wildlife defenders are locked in a battle of indigenous
peoples' rights versus wildlife rights.
(IPS) With its encampments mostly destroyed, the nascent Occupy
Movement in thousands of communities across the U.S. and
dozens more around the world has not faded away.
(IPS) - Hounded by the economic crisis that shows no signs of letting up and by political leaders of all stripes, Portugal's conservative Prime Minister Pedro Passos Coelho sent out an unprecedented message to his fellow citizens: emigrate.
(IPS) - A judge in Argentina has begun to investigate human rights crimes committed during Spain's civil war and the dictatorship of General
Francisco Franco (1936-1975).
On the verge of officially forming a coalition government to run the country and
rewrite the nation's pre-revolution constitution, Tunisia's dominant, Islamist
political party Ennahda has come under fire for its economic neo-liberalism,
both from opponents and from coalition partners.
Basic income security and access to social services can improve food production and consumption in the developing world, which can be boosted by South-South cooperation.
(IPS) As Islamabad and Washington wrangle over responsibility for the Nov. 26 cross-border airstrike that killed 24 Pakistani troops, families of the dead soldiers are demanding revenge on the United States.
(IPS) Argentina's soy boom has been a major source of foreign exchange. But the other side of the coin is the toxic effects among the rural population, from spraying agrochemicals.
(IPS) The Toronto public school board has approved the second 'Africentric' Alternative School despite persistent criticism that the format attracts mainly black students and is equivalent to segregation in a country that prides itself on national unity regardless of ethnic differences.
(IPS) - "Using high quality seed, I harvested 20 quintals (one quintal = 100 pounds), while with ordinary seed I only get 10 quintals," Vilma Rodríguez, a beneficiary of a seed production programme in the northwestern Nicaraguan province of Estelí, told IPS.
(IPS) As several countries in the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) elect bodies to
write new constitutions, women are looking to expand their rights through
legislation.
(IPS) Sexual violence against women in Mexico is on the rise, alongside the escalation of violence between police and soldiers and the drug cartels, women's rights activists warn.
(IPS) - The shop is filled to bursting with buyers. One by one, customers follow a salesperson to one of a row of booths where they are provided with a wealth of information on the mobile phones for sale. But nobody tells them what to do with the old phones they are replacing.
(IPS) The announced introduction of Islamic law in post-Gaddafi Libya has drawn
strong opposition from women, the non-religious and the Amazigh minority.
(IPS) Malawi is experiencing a drug shortage as the country's international donors
remain reluctant to release aid meant for the health sector.
(BBC) They are men who have lost all pride and self-confidence and who have been left severely traumatised by their experience. At the medical centre in Uganda where they are being treated, they talked candidly about the crimes carried out against them.
(IPS) - Sixteen-year-old Noor Bano believes nothing short of a revolution will convince
the men in Malangabad – her remote village in the Khairpur district of the Sindh
province, some 460 kilometres from the southern port city of Karachi – to treat
women as equals.
(IPS) - DNA analysis, ethical tribunals and diplomatic pressure are the new instruments that migrants' organisations are wielding to combat the abuses suffered by undocumented migrants in Mexico and the United States.
(IPS) - The United States' decision to cut funding for the United Nations Educational,
Scientific and Cultural Organisation will hurt the specialised agency's work,
officials here say.
(IPS) In Mbedza village, a remote rural community in southern Malawi, Fedson Feston
beams an infant's awkward smile and swings his tiny arms up towards the face
of his mother. Four months old, Fedson is too young to know how lucky he is to
be alive.
(IPS) At 19, Liz Sandra Falcón had never imagined that every decision she made could have an impact beyond her own life: not only on people close to her, but on Cuban society itself, and even – although it might seem like an exaggeration – on global tendencies.
(IPS) Cubans are still waiting for changes and measures implemented in agriculture to translate into cheaper food. Meanwhile, the government is adjusting its budget, because more than the 1.6 billion dollars initially allocated for food spending will likely be needed.
(IPS) Harsh austerity measures and a struggling economy have given birth to the ‘new
poor' in Athens, a term used to describe those suffering the impacts of social
exclusion and rapidly shrinking civic welfare institutions.
(IPS) Women make up just 12 percent of the roughly 18,000 candidates who will
stand for election to parliament in the Democratic Republic of Congo's Nov. 28
elections.
(IPS) "I caught tuberculosis, but I'm lucky because it's been cured," says Hernán Arévalo from his bed in the new hospital at the Peruvian prison of Lurigancho, one of the most crowded and dangerous in Latin America. "Before, whoever came in here was unlikely to get out alive."
(IPS) Mary Mingle thought she had a boil on her breast, so she bought some medication and tried to treat it at home. Two months later, bothered by persistent pain, she went to the doctor.
(IPS) When Mona Kareem, a member of the Bidoun population of Kuwait,
was 11 years old, a neighbour Kuwaiti woman asked her where
she was from. When Kareem answered, "I am from Bidoun," the
woman
laughed at her. "There is no country called Bidoun. There is
no Bidoun."
(IPS) Civil society organisations are calling on governments in developing countries to stop leasing and selling out land to transnational corporations because it leads to land degradation and food insecurity.
(IPS) "We have a duty to show what the reality is, and we will do so with complete independence," said French judge Philippe Texier, a member of the Permanent People's Tribunal, which has opened a chapter in Mexico.
(IRN) The severe financial and economic problems in Portugal are driving many women to desperation and pushing them into prostitution as a last resort to support their families.
