Julio Godoy
HEILIGENDAMM, Germany, Jun 8 2007 (IPS) – This year s summit of the G8 heads of government will likely be remembered as a how not to organise such an event, for the contrast between the expectations it raised and its negligible accomplishments, and for its enormous security costs.
This year s summit of the G8 heads of government will likely be remembered as a how not to organise such an event, for the contrast between the expectations it raised and its negligible accomplishments, and for its enormous security costs.
The three-day Group of Eight summit, held in this Baltic seaside resort, ended with two vague, non-binding promises more aid for Africa, and negotiations towards a post-Kyoto Protocol international agreement to reduce greenhouse gas emissions a…
Interview with Argentine activist Patricia Pérez
BUENOS AIRES, Jul 7 2007 (IPS) – Science has yet to provide rigorous studies of how HIV/AIDS or the impacts of antiretroviral medications affect women #39s bodies in particular, Argentine activist Patricia Pérez, nominated for the 2007 Nobel Peace Prize, told Tierramérica.
Patricia Pérez Credit: Clarín newspaper
This lack of knowledge is due to the fact that women remain invisible in the health care systems, according to Argentine activist Patricia Pérez, who was diagnosed with HIV (human immunodeficiency virus) when she was…
Interview with Patty Lovera of Food and Water Watch
MIAMI, Aug 9 2007 (IPS) – Imagine 600,000 hens confined in seven sheds with a total of four workers to care for them and cages so dilapidated that birds often became entangled in frayed wires and died horribly.
Factory farms like this broiler operation confine thousands of animals in one place. Credit: Farm Sanctuary
That was the situation at one massive egg farm in the U.S. state of Pennsylvania in 2005,…
Aaron Glantz
SAN FRANCISCO, Sep 10 2007 (IPS) – Dane and April Somdahl own the Alien Art tattoo parlor on Camp Lejeune Boulevard just outside the sprawling Marine Corps base of the same name in Jacksonville, North Carolina.
Brian Rand Credit:
In an interview from the back of her shop, April talked about how her customers tastes have changed since George W. Bush ordered the invasion of Iraq in March 2003.
As the war approached, she said, The most popular tattoos were eagles and United States flags. Those were coming in so often and, you know, everybody was like I gotta get my flag.’
Then, a year into the war, …
Dalia Acosta
HAVANA, Oct 4 2007 (IPS) – Becoming a senior citizen in Cuba has ceased to be seen as a tragedy, the end of useful life and a resigned waiting for death. Embracing old age without fear, with its pain and its wisdom, appears to be the purpose of thousands of women and men who attend classes at the University for Older Adults.
By 2025, Cuba could be the country with the greatest proportion of elderly people in Latin America and the Caribbean, so getting ready to face the future is virtually obligatory for the institutions in charge of health policies, as well as for those who are still young enough to view the sunset of their days as a far-off prospect.
After I retired, I thought my life was over. I felt completely useless, Ofelia Díaz, 63, told IPS. I wo…
Puy Kea*
PHNOM PENH, Oct 31 2007 (IPS) – A Cambodian public official has weathered assassination threats and a slow-moving bureaucracy in this post-conflict country to create one of the most trusted and safest water supply systems in Asia.
It was bureaucratic and it was full of incompetent staffers, Ek Sonn Chan, director of Phnom Penh Water Supply Authority (PPWSA) said of the organisation he joined in October 1993. I fired many staff and my friends told me that I would be assassinated.
But the 57-year-old water champion , as Asian Development Bank (AsDB) hailed him, prevailed and transformed the authority into a model public water utility in Asia. For his work, he was awarded the 2006 Ramon Magsaysay Award for government service, the Asian equivalent of the Nobel …
Ranjita Biswas
KOLKATA, Nov 30 2007 (IPS) – Sex workers in this eastern metropolis are being encouraged to put pleasure back into their services as one way of limiting the spread of HIV and other sexually transmitted diseases (STDs).
Rajyashree Choudhuri, chief of the Institute of International Social Development (IISD), a non-governmental organisation (NGO), said the idea proceeded from formal surveys which showed that sex workers in Sonagachi, the largest red light area in the city, entertained more than five clients a day on average.
Many of them were married or had regular relationships too. So we encouraged them to have fewer clients or maybe a fixed number of loyal clients, she told IPS.
When the sex workers said they feared their earnings could drop, I…
Matthew Cardinale
WAYNESBORO, Georgia , Jan 14 2008 (IPS) – Residents and environmental activists are in a bitter dispute with large U.S. energy corporations and the federal government over the safety of nuclear power, as more than a dozen corporations plan to, or have filed, paperwork to open new nuclear power plants, primarily in the U.S. South.
A recent protest at the Oak Ridge nuclear plant in Tennessee. Credit: Nicholas Foster/Atlanta Progr…
Thalif Deen
UNITED NATIONS, Feb 20 2008 (IPS) – When the Commission on the Status of Women (CSW) holds a two-week session beginning next Monday, one of the lingering issues high on the agenda will be the continued under-funding of women s activities at the United Nations.
The primary theme of the two-week CSW session Feb. 25 through March 7 is financing for gender equality and the empowerment of women.
We believe it is impossible to discuss financing for gender equality without discussing the structural mechanisms including within the United Nations system to deliver needed resources to improve women s lives on the ground, said June Zeitlin, executive director of the New York-based Women #39s Environment and Development Organisation (WEDO).
Without a strong…
Brahima Ouédraogo
OUAGADOUGOU, Mar 25 2008 (IPS) – Water is the origin of life I come from Central Africa where we have a lot of water, but it was when I came here that I really understood the meaning of this expression, says Antoinette Dinga Dzongo, the African Development Bank s representative in Burkina Faso, in reference to the need for improved water provision in this West African country.
Now, Burkina Faso has taken a significant step to addressing this problem, launching a national water and sanitation programme at a cost more than a billion dollars.
Encompassing both rural and urban areas, the initiative will provide 17,290 wells and connections to potable water supplies. This should enable 90 percent of the approximately 14 million inhabitants of the nation …