by Ida Karlsson, IPS, Italy - After the United States senate’s move to stem the flow of money from mineral mines fuelling the brutal civil war in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), the watchdog group Global Witness (GW) is calling on Europe to follow suit.
by Thin Lei Win, Reuters, UK - A New England Journal of Medicine study last year showed that conventional malaria-fighting treatments derived from artemisinin took almost twice as long to clear the parasites that cause the disease in patients in Pailin and others in northwestern Thailand, suggesting the drugs were losing potency in the area.
by Elahe Amani, Women News Network, USA - Today on a daily basis, personal memoirs of ongoing encounters of dictatorship and resistance in Iran are being written in print and in cyberspace by countless Iranian civil rights activists, scholars and women human rights defenders.
by Daniela Estrada, IPS/TerraViva, Italy - When Chile elected Michelle Bachelet as its first woman president in 2005, thousands of women celebrated the historic victory as their own personal triumph, proudly marching in the streets wearing mock presidential sashes. Today, men and women both recognise the concrete and symbolic progress achieved in gender issues under her administration.
by Diana Cariboni, IPS, Italy - "I've been crying (tears of joy) since yesterday. It's amazing to see how an ordinary person made it so far," said 44-year-old María del Rosario Corbo, referring to Uruguay's new President José "Pepe" Mujica, who was sworn in Monday at the head of this South American country's second leftist administration.
by Zofeen Ebrahim, IPS, Italy - Dressed in women’s attire and a nose-pin errantly positioned on one nostril, 38-year-old Shahzadi adjusts her ‘dupatta’ (scarf) over her head as she enters the office of Cantonment Board Clifton, a provincial government bureau that recently hired her.
by Sophie Tarr, Deutsche Welle, Germany - A new report from anti-corruption organisation Transparency International has found that systematic corruption and mismanagement are keeping many African children from a decent education, despite years of reform.
by Evelyn Matsamura Kiapi, Terraviva, Italy - As the East Africa Community (EAC) gradually moves towards a political confederation, women’s rights groups from the five member states are pushing for an East African Protocol on Gender and Development to bridge the gender gaps within the integration process.
by Fiona Walker, BBC, UK - The Scottish Refugee Council says that 25 years since it was set up, the situation for asylum seekers and refugees is worse than ever.
by Claire Ngozo, IPS, Italy - He fishes by night and sells his catch by day. He's the breadwinner for his family of six. Maliko Malombe is nine years old.
by Elizabeth Eames Roebling, IPS, Italy - Despite a history of often tense relations, the first nation to render assistance to Haiti after last month's devastating earthquake was its island neighbour, the Dominican Republic.
by Lucy Fleming, BBC News, UK - Celebrities like Mia Farrow and George Clooney may have done more to prolong the suffering of Darfur than resolve the crisis in Sudan's war-torn region, a new book argues.
by Lucy Komisar, IPS, Italy - The global bank HSBC may be running offshore accounts for central banks. According to a U.S. Senate investigation, an HSBC subsidiary in London called HSBC Equator Bank had a sister bank in the Bahamas.
by Peggy Simpson, Women News Network & Women's Media Center, USA - Able to quickly reach a well-developed network of women throughout the country, an alternative banking system performs while the Haitian economy is in shambles.
by Zofeen Ebrahim, IPS, Italy - No sooner does a visitor step into the facility than a surreal scene unfolds: The sound of laughter, the sight of ready smiles and vigorous, pumping handshakes mix with the acrid odor of an unwashed human body and the unbearable stench of neglect that in turn combines with the heavy smell of medicine.
by Karen Sloan, Associated Press, USA - Holocaust survivors and Israel's prime minister gathered in Auschwitz to mark the 65th anniversary of the liberation of the Nazi death camp. The ceremony was a key event on International Holocaust Remembrance Day on Wednesday.
by Ann Hellman, IPS, Italy - The seizure of large commercial farms - almost all white-owned - has continued despite the formation of a unity government in Zimbabwe. The country's farm workers say they are the biggest losers.
by Marwa Awad, Reuters, UK - Egypt has been rounding up youths accused of links to Islamist groups over the past months, reflecting a growing suspicion that militant ideologies are wooing recruits to carry out sporadic attacks.
by Miriam Gathigah, IPS, Italy - January marks the fifth anniversary of the Comprehensive Peace Agreement (CPA) which ended a bitter north-south civil war in Sudan. With important elections scheduled for April, women are debating and fighting for an expanded role in the new institutions of government.
by Alexandra Kirk, Linda Mottram, Australia Network News, Australia - Lawyers and refugee advocates are calling for Australia's spy agency ASIO to reveal why five Sri Lankans being held on Christmas Island have been deemed a security threat.
by Daniela Estrada, IPS, Italy - Chilean President Michelle Bachelet signed Monday the official document inviting Chile to join the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD), making it the first South American member of the "rich countries' club".
by Zofeen Ebrahim, IPS, Italy - Wracked by intense violence in 2009, Pakistan has seen an unprecedented displacement of hundreds of thousands of people, which persists to this day.
by Tanya Wood, Deutsche Welle, Germany - Germany's top-circulation women's magazine, Brigitte, has started the New Year with a new concept: replacing professional models with real women. It's a response, they say, to what the modern woman wants.
by Paula Dear, BBC, UK - Britain is to host a summit later this month on the terror threat posed by Yemen. While many countries will attend, the UK's relationship with the Middle East state is unique - going back more than 150 years.
by Nilanjana Bhowmick, Women News Network, USA - Sexual identity in society based on gender recognition has caused much suffering for those who are intersex. Discrimination, harassment, and ongoing misunderstanding of the condition is part of the problem.
by Thelma Mejía, IPS, Italy - Corruption in Honduras has taken root at every level of the state, which is helpless to combat it because of the lack of credibility of most of its institutions, the erosion of social capital and the public perception that the problem is here to stay.
by Andrea Bord, IPS, Italy - More than 50,000 people are expected to take to the streets of Gaza on Dec. 31 for a mass march designed to send a message to the United States, a key supporter of Israel's army, that the situation in Gaza violates international human rights laws.
by Lansana Fofana, IPS, Italy - A new police force plan to recruit youths in each community, to help fight the country-wide spate of armed robbery, has provoked controversy and sparked a nationwide debate.
by Natalia Antelava, BBC, UK - More than six-and-a-half years after the invasion, the body count has become a measure of success and failure in Iraq.
by Astrid Zweynert, Reuters, UK - In the chaos that usually follows a natural disaster, taking the time to create maps may seem low down on the priority list when a rapid response is key to helping to save lives.
by Neena Bhandari, IPS, Italy - For the global religious community, the use of nuclear arms is an overwhelmingly important ethical issue for the human family. Thus, nothing less than the immediate abolition of such weapons is needed from the highest levels, said speakers at the Parliament of the World’s Religions currently underway in this Australian city.
by Marcela Valente, IPS, Italy - Touted as "harvested forests," single-crop tree plantations are fast encroaching on the native forests and grasslands of Argentina, Brazil and Uruguay, affecting the environment and the lives of local communities, rural women say.
by Daksha Warty, IPS, Italy - Defying Hindu orthodoxy and intolerant male priests, women in Maharashtra state, western India, have revived a Vedic tradition and become priests.
by Anna Husarska, APFA News.com, Bhutan - In Bhutan, a Himalyan country famed for its focus on Gross National Happiness, the Nepalese minority has been forced out
by Sabina Zaccoro, IPS, Italy - World farmers are not part of the official delegations at the Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO) food summit on food security that opened here Monday. But they came anyhow to express their views, since, they say, it is their communities that are most impacted by the food crisis.
by Daniela Estrada, IPS, Italy - "If the government says let's sit down and try to reach a solution, we'll be there," Héctor Llaitul, a leader of the radical Mapuche organisation Coordinadora Arauco Malleco (CAM), who is in prison in the southern Chilean region of Bío-Bío, told a group of foreign correspondents.
by Rebecca L. Weber, AllAfrica, Mauritius - Land reform has always been a popular part of political rhetoric for a democratic South Africa, but agrarian transformation has not been realized in the post-apartheid era. The vast majority of agricultural land is still owned by whites, while black landowners tend to have tiny plots in the former homelands.
by Laura MacInnis, Reuters, USA - Despite living six to eight years longer than men, women lack essential health care throughout their lives, particularly as teenagers and elderly people. "Women generally live longer than men, but their lives are not necessarily healthy or happy," Margaret Chan, the head of the United Nations health agency, said at the WHO on Monday.
by Jane Duncan, South Africa Civil Society Information Service, South Africa - "All shall call." This phrase was popularised by Pallo Jordan in the mid 1990's, and became a catchphrase of telecommunications transformation in South Africa. It echoed the idea espoused by Jordan at the Plenipotentiary meeting of the International Telecommunications Union (ITU) that access to telecommunications was a right, not a privilege. A snap survey of telecommunications usage by residents of Grahamstown points to just how foreign these concepts are today.
by Lisa Bryant, VOA News, USA - A French engineering firm has built what is being hailed as the world's most environmentally sound building, a structure that produces more energy than it consumes.
by Jessica Golloher, Voice of America, USA - Joseph Stalin's grandson has sued a prominent Russian newspaper for libel, claiming Novaya Gazeta is tarnishing the former Soviet leader's good name.
by Helda Martinez, IPS News, Italy - Sexual violence is used as a weapon of war in Colombia by all parties in the country’s longstanding armed conflict, and its main victims are women and girls, states a report recently released by Intermón Oxfam, backing up claims made repeatedly by national and international human rights groups.
Evelyn Kiapi, IPS, Italy - An interview with Sylvia Mwichuli, deputy director of the UN Millennium Campaign Africa. The Millennium Development Goals cannot be achieved at the United Nations. The UN can create a platform for governments to make commitments but cannot force compliance by member states.
by Pumza Fihlani, BBC, UK - At the age of 14, Nolizwi Sinama set off from her aunt's home to a neighbouring village. She thought she had been sent on a routine chore. In fact, she was on her way to be married to a 42-year-old man.
by Elizabeth Arrott, VOA, USA - Egypt has long valued its role as one of the more tolerant of the predominantly Muslim nations.
by Sharon Cohen & Lisa Orkin Emmanuel, AP, USA - Her mansion in Iraq was bombed, her medical career and future in her beloved country dashed the day she found a white envelope on her car windshield. Inside was a single bullet. Wassan Yassin was marked for death.
by Suzanne Hoeksema, IPS, Italy - With 2,000 people dying daily in armed violence fuelled by irresponsible arms transfers, talks to create an international treaty regulating these weapons can no longer be delayed.
by Elahe Amani with Lys Anzia, Women News Network, USA - A mother protecting her child isn’t anything unique. But in Iran, humanitarian activist mothers are now becoming global icons for human rights causes worldwide.
by Suzanne Hoeksema, IPS, Italy - Often vilified and mistreated, migrant workers benefit both the countries they move to and the ones they leave behind, says the latest Human Development Report released Monday.
