Ángel Páez
LIMA, Jun 6 2006 (IPS) – The plot of the film Sleeping with the Enemy is not fictional in essence. Close to 70 percent of all the women killed in one year in Peru died at the hands of their husbands, partners, lovers or boyfriends, and the murders were committed at home or in a place that was frequented by the couple.
Violence against women has reached alarming levels in Latin America. More than 300 women have been murdered in Ciudad Juárez, Mexico, in the last 11 years, while in Guatemala, 500 women suffered the same fate in the 2000-2004 period. Peru s case is also dramatic, to the point that people have begun to talk of femicide, or the murder of a person based on the fact of the victim s being female.
But the biggest danger is not out on the street. …
Marwaan Macan-Markar
BANGKOK, Jul 18 2006 (IPS) – An independent commission launched in New Delhi aims to get leaders of Asia-Pacific countries to stand up and take note of the daunting challenge posed by the spread of HIV/AIDS -including increased poverty and development setbacks.
The political leadership in this region is not alive to the fact that a large number of people are infected and that will have socio-economic consequences, J.V.R. Prasada Rao, director of the Joint United Nations Programme of HIV/AIDS (UNAIDS) Asia-Pacific office, told IPS. We have to find new ways of dealing with this issue and provoking interest.
For one, smaller countries in the region with a growing number of people with HIV/AIDS must be told what the socio-economic cost of the pandem…
Emad Mekay
WASHINGTON, Aug 25 2006 (IPS) – The revelation that commercial rice in the United States was found to be contaminated with an unlicensed genetically engineered strain shows how easily the food supply in the United States and in countries importing U.S. food can be tainted, watchdog groups say.
The long grain rice that was found to contain trace amounts of genetically engineered (GE) Liberty Link Rice 601, produced by the agro-chemical giant Bayer CropScience and never intended for commercial release, was immediately banned in Japan.
The United States is responsible for 12 percent of the global rice trade and many countries rely on U.S. rice to feed their people.
The main importers of U.S. rice are Mexico, Central America, Saudi Arabia, Canada and So…
Marcela Valente
BUENOS AIRES, Oct 24 2006 (IPS) – Argentina has begun hiring engineers, chemists, physicists, technicians and communications and environmental experts in its nuclear industry, which has been paralysed since the 1990s. But in the face of this enthusiasm, activists are wondering if there will be more safety and transparency this time around.
Although one of the arguments for resurrecting nuclear power in the country is the need to curb climate change, caused by burning fossil fuels, most environmentalists say nuclear energy is potentially hazardous, and creates a long-term latent threat in the form of radioactive waste.
But nuclear experts are convinced that atomic energy is the cleanest and safest source of energy in the world. And the Néstor Kirchner …
Fulgence Zamblé
ABIDJAN, Nov 28 2006 (IPS) – Education officials in Côte d Ivoire are revising how children are taught about the dangers of HIV/AIDS in the West African country, this as statistics from June 2006 show prevalence in schools to be at four percent.
The national HIV prevalence rate is 4.7 percent, also according to the 2006 figures down from seven percent in 1991.
In the past, we contented ourselves with mentioning the wearing of condoms or with skimming over the issue during class, Méa Kouadio, a technical advisor to the national education minister, told IPS. But now, he added, officials are urgently promoting abstinence for young people and condom use by adults through a new curriculum adopted for the 2006-2007 school year.
The new programme…
Moyiga Nduru
JOHANNESBURG, Mar 14 2007 (IPS) – The people of Nigeria s oil-rich Niger Delta are poor not because they do not have resources but because they do not have political power. Those who wield power in Nigeria are building skyscrapers in Lagos and Abuja while there is nothing in the Niger Delta. It is the same at the global level.
These are the words of Tajudeen Abdul-Raheem, deputy director of the Millennium Campaign for Africa based in the Kenyan capital Nairobi. In the past week, he participated in an Anglican Church conference entitled Prophetic Witness, Social Development and HIV and AIDS which examined progress towards the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs).
Rowan Williams, the archbishop of Canterbury who heads the 77 million Anglicans, also attended…
Mario Osava
RIO DE JANEIRO, Apr 16 2007 (IPS) – The Brazilian capital woke up to another red April Monday. Eight hundred landless peasants occupied the headquarters of the government office in charge of land distribution, while 1,000 indigenous people camped out on the Ministries Esplanade, demanding better healthcare and the formal demarcation of their territories.
Demonstrations by indigenous and rural people have been spreading all over Brazil ever since last week, as part of Indigenous April and the Campaign for Land Reform led by the Landless Workers Movement (MST).
Tuesday, Apr. 17 is International Peasant Struggle Day, which marks the anniversary of a 1996 massacre in Eldorado de Carajás, in Brazil #39s eastern Amazon region, when the police opened fire on a p…
Ernst-Jan Pfauth
UNITED NATIONS, May 24 2007 (IPS) – Valuable resources in every discarded product with a battery or plug computers, televisions, phones and other household gadgets are being trashed in rising volumes worldwide, and unless countries start recycling more of this high-tech scrap, they will soon face serious shortages, experts say.
Computer recycling centre Credit: StEP Initiative
Every year, the world generates 40 million metric tonnes of electronic scrap e-scrap, noted Jeremy Gregory, a postdoctoral associate in the Materials Systems Laboratory and …
Steven Lang
JOHANNESBURG, Jul 25 2007 (IPS) – Water resources are unevenly distributed throughout the countries of Southern Africa. The region boasts of some of the world s largest lakes and rivers, but is also a land of vast deserts.
Women carrying water in eastern DRC, where many struggle to access this resource. Credit: Tiggy Ridley/IRIN
Measured by volume the Congo River, rising in the East African highlands and flowing through the rainforests …
Ellen Massey
WASHINGTON, Aug 23 2007 (IPS) – One of the largest international aid organisations in the world turned the food aid industry on its head recently by declaring that they will turn down 46 million dollars in food subsidies from the U.S. government.
Combine harvesting corn near Stockton, Kansas. Credit: USDA/Dave Hein
The United States budgets 2 billion dollars a year in food aid, which buys U.S. crops to feed populations facing starvation amidst crisis or those that endure chronic hunger.
But the U.S.-based CARE Int…