Jim Lobe

WASHINGTON, Jun (IPS) - Africans strongly support military intervention authorised by the United Nations Security Council to stop serious abuses of human rights in their region, according to a just-released survey which also found that they prefer U.N. forces to those of the African Union (AU).
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By David Brown
Washington Post Staff Writer
June 2005

About 1 million people in the developing world are now getting antiretroviral drugs for AIDS, twice as many as 18 months ago but too few to reach the original goal of treating 3 million people by the end of 2005.

That was the conclusion of a report released yesterday by the World Health Organization on the status of its “3 by 5″ effort.
(more…)

Fabio Scarpello

ACEH BESAR, Indonesia, Jun 27 (IPS) - Riisa moves effortlessly, weaving her hands in harmony with six other young girls. Their embroidered dresses and red headscarves glitter under the midday Acehnese sun.
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By Elaine Lies

TOKYO (Reuters) - AIDS could spiral out of control in Asia, home to more than half the world’s population, unless authorities step up their fight against the disease, experts say.

One in four new infections occurs in Asia, which includes economically booming China, where the virus has spread to all provinces, and India, with the world’s second-highest number of AIDS/HIV patients after South Africa.
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Xinhua

Annan calls for united effort of nations for cause of development.

UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan on Monday called on both developing and developed countries to work together for the cause of development.

Annan made the remarks to the General Assembly High-Level Dialogue on Financing for Development, which is being held on Monday and Tuesday.
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Jim Lobe

WASHINGTON, Jun 27 (IPS) - U.S. President George W. Bush has been significantly exaggerating the amount of money his administration has provided in aid to sub-Saharan Africa, according to a new study released here Monday.

Instead of a tripling of U.S. aid to Africa between 2000 and 2005, as Bush has frequently insisted, Washington has increased aid by only 56 percent in real terms, according to the report by the Brookings Institution.
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Jim Lobe

WASHINGTON, Jun (IPS) - Two years after the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq, Washington’s image in Europe, Canada and much of the Islamic world remains broadly negative, according to the latest in a series of surveys of public opinion in 16 countries sponsored by the Pew Global Attitudes Project (PGAP).
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Leonardo Boff,
Theologian

The mass media drunkenness following the death of one Pope and the enthronement of another, or the feast of Corpus Christi, mobilizes millions of persons, and could led us into error as to the true meaning of religious expressions. These events utilize symbols that, by nature, are inevitably ambiguous. Every symbol points in two directions. One directs us outward, to the Sacred - that’s why it exists-, the other turns inward on itself, where it risks forgetting the Divine and the Sacred and seeing itself as an end. This is what most frequently happens. This causes a profusion of religious images, very well manipulated by masters of hype, to produce emotions and more emotions, without concern as to whether or not they evoke the Sacred. Life changes do not occur, and are never intended. The faithful are electrified, explode in tears and screams, begging for miracles, and instant canonization of their religious leader: “Suddenly saint,” and “saint now.” Many cardinals, bishops and priests are satisfied, because they see in this the triumph of religion over the criticisms and suspicions raised by modernity.
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Stephen Leahy

BROOKLIN, Canada, Jun (IPS) - Holes in the ozone layer over the Earth’s polar regions remain dangerously large, even as international efforts to solve the problem are flagging, scientists warn.

The Arctic region suffered its greatest ever loss of stratospheric ozone last winter. Only a change in weather prevented millions of people in the Northern hemisphere from being exposed to significantly higher levels of damaging ultraviolet (UV) radiation.
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Jubilee South, a network of debt campaigns, movements and people’s
organization from Africa, Latin America and the Caribbean and Asia and
the Pacific, stands firm in its position that no less than the
unconditional cancellation of all debts claimed from all South
countries will liberate the peoples of the South from debt domination.
(more…)

Jubilee South, a network of debt campaigns, movements and people’s
organization from Africa, Latin America and the Caribbean and Asia and
the Pacific, stands firm in its position that no less than the
unconditional cancellation of all debts claimed from all South
countries will liberate the peoples of the South from debt domination.
(more…)

Mithre J. Sandrasagra

UNITED NATIONS, Jun (IPS) - For the first time ever, civil society has been invited to participate in interactive sessions of the U.N. General Assembly, but the guest list has irked some leading activists who wonder why they were not asked to attend.
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Source: Reuters
By Richard Waddington

GENEVA, June (Reuters) - Genetically-modified foods can bring benefits both to farmers and consumers, but safety checks will always be needed before they are marketed, the World Health Organisation said on Thursday.
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William Fisher

NEW YORK, Jun (IPS) - As Amnesty International urged the George W. Bush administration to “close Guantánamo and disclose the situation in the USA’s shadowy network of detention centers around the globe", a subsidiary of Halliburton, the oil services group once led by U.S. Vice Pres. Dick Cheney, won a 30-million-dollar contract to help build a new permanent prison for terror suspects at the U.S. Navy’s controversial detention center in Cuba.
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Source: Reuters

By Ben Hirschler

VALLETTA, June (Reuters) - Generic drugs hold the key to AIDS treatment in the developing world, although a target of getting 3 million people on therapy by the end of 2005 may now be out of reach, according to the World Health Organisation.
(more…)

Changes include a new code of conduct for peacekeepers and monitors within each mission.

By Michael J. Jordan | Correspondent of The Christian Science Monitor

NEW YORK - Since accusations of sexual abuse by peacekeepers in Congo arose a year ago, the United Nations has taken vigorous measures to address a problem that has dogged it for years.
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Sanjay Suri

LONDON, Jun 21 (IPS) - The developing world needs long-term economic opportunities and not temporary relief, Commonwealth Secretary-General Don McKinnon told IPS in an interview Tuesday.

‘’Until they get economic opportunities, all the rest is just band aid,'’ said McKinnon. The Commonwealth is a grouping of 53 nations that includes Britain and nations once a part of the British Empire. Of the Commonwealth members, Britain and Canada are also members of the Group of Eight (G8).
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Analysis by Ferry Biedermann

AMMAN, Jun (IPS) - Now that Sunni Arabs have been included, Iraq’s parliamentary committee that is drafting the new constitution is the closest to an elected, representative body that the country has ever seen.
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By Silla Brush
USNews.com

The Bush administration has long called for United Nations reform but sidestepped the specifics. Now, though, the administration has jumped into the debate, backing several changes recommended by a bipartisan task force commissioned by Congress as well as an expansion of the 15-member Security Council.
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Thalif Deen

DOHA, Jun (IPS) - As the cry for increased development assistance continues to intensify, one of the world’s fastest growing gas-rich developing nations in the Middle East has initiated the creation of a new fund to meet some of the urgent social, economic, health and educational needs of poorer nations.
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By Nduka Uzuakpundu
June 2005

United Nations Secretary-General, Mr Kofi Annan, has called on member-states to pledge the empowerment of women and engage them as full partners in global efforts to address the vital challenge of desertification.
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Jim Lobe

WASHINGTON, Jun (IPS) - Readers of the Pentagon’s ‘Early Bird’ news file, a daily compilation of around 50 stories circulated throughout the U.S. national-security bureaucracy, could be forgiven Monday for reaching for the Rolaids, a popular over-the-counter medication for queasy stomachs.
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The much discussed reform of the United Nations has recently received a strong new input with China’s position paper being delivered this Tuesday. The importance of the reform for the future of international relations and a new balance of power has prompted us to publish the point of view of one the world’s most powerful players
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By Thomas Catan in London - Financial Times

World energy consumption surged 4.3 per cent last year, the biggest percentage rise since 1984 and the largest volume increase ever, according to new figures from BP, the oil company.

Burning fossil fuels at a faster rate also resulted in the largest absolute increase in carbon emissions, adding to the stock of “greenhouse gases� blamed for global warming.
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by Thalif Deen

MONTREAL, Jun (IPS) - U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan’s
characterisation of civil society as ‘’the world’s new superpower'’
reverberated through the corridors of McGill University here this week as
350-plus representatives of international non-governmental organisations
(NGOs) met to hatch strategies to prod world governments on crucial
political, social, and economic issues that plague the world’s poorer nations.
(more…)

Analysis by Sanjay Suri

LONDON, Jun (IPS) - The G7 finance ministers agreed Saturday to write off the debt of 18 of the poorest countries, but firm prescriptions of privatisation hovered over the debt relief offer.
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Tony Banbury
International Herald Tribune

BANGKOK On a recent visit to North Korea, I was welcomed into a modest apartment by a family in Huichon city, Chagang Province. Its four members lived on a diet of government-supplied corn and acorns foraged in nearby woodland.
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Jim Lobe

WASHINGTON, Jun (IPS) - The administration of U.S. President George W. Bush should back up its pro-democracy rhetoric in the Middle East with more action and consistency, according to new bipartisan report that also urges Washington to encourage ‘’evolutionary,'’ rather than ‘’revolutionary'’ change in Arab lands.
(more…)

By JOEL BRINKLEY - THE NEW YORK TIMES

WASHINGTON, June - In a sharp setback for the Bush administration’s Latin America policy, the Organization of American States rejected a United States plan on Tuesday to create a committee to monitor the exercise of democracy in the hemisphere. (more…)

Emad Mekay

WASHINGTON, Jun (IPS) - A U.S. promise to disperse 674 million dollars for famine relief in Africa has disappointed independent development groups, who decried the proposal as a sham that offers too little in face of the continent’s mounting crises. (more…)

Secret documents indicate Blair support for military action a year before invasion took place

Richard Norton-Taylor and Patrick Wintour
May 2005 The Guardian

Secret documents revealed yesterday show that, almost a year before the Iraq invasion, Tony Blair was privately preparing to commit Britain to war and topple Saddam, despite warnings from his closest advisers that it was unjustified. (more…)

Gustavo González

SANTIAGO, Jun (IPS) - A Chilean appeals court stripped former dictator Augusto Pinochet of immunity Tuesday, allowing him to be prosecuted for tax fraud in connection with secret bank accounts uncovered earlier in the United States.
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Larry Elliott and Patrick Wintour in Washington
June 2005
The Guardian

Three million children will die in the poorest countries of sub-Saharan Africa as a result of the failure of the global community to meet its promise of slashing the death rates of the under-fives by 2015, the UN will reveal tomorrow.
The grim figure emerged as George Bush paved the way for a landmark deal on lifting the huge debt burden on Africa’s poorest countries when he announced that the US will stump up extra cash that in the long term will cancel $15bn (about £8.2bn) of accumulated debt.
(more…)

By Wangari Maathai (*)

NAIROBI, May (IPS) - The future of the African continent is again
on the world’s agenda. The United Nations’ Millennium Development
Goals (MDGs), the United Kingdom’s Africa Commission, and a
multitude of citizen and civil society efforts are among
initiatives that are addressing the problems of Africa’s poorest
people. (more…)

writes Immanuel Wallerstein

When you’re a powerful country, it’s hard not to play with fire. But the Bush regime has been particularly reckless. Take for example the triangle Iran, Iraq and the United States. The history is well-known. The first famous CIA intervention anywhere was in Iran, way back in 1953. At that time, Iran had a prime minister named Mohamed Mossadegh, a secular middle-class politician who had the audacity to nationalise Iranian oil. The shah went into exile. Great Britain and the US were quite unhappy about this and they backed, indeed inspired, a military coup to arrest Mossadegh and restore the shah to his throne. From then on, the shah’s Iran became a close ally of the United States. Shah Reza Pahlevi’s regime was authoritarian and very repressive but this didn’t bother the US since he was a pillar of pro-US forces in the Middle East. (more…)

Jim Lobe

WASHINGTON, Jun 6 (IPS) - The flap over Amnesty International’s characterisation of U.S. overseas detention facilities and practices as a “gulag of our times” offers important insights into the deep distrust of the George W. Bush administration and its far-right and neo-conservative supporters towards some non-governmental organisations (NGOs).
(more…)

By Hanan Nasser
Daily Star staff

Monday, June 06, 2005

Analysis

BEIRUT: Kuwait’s move to appoint two women to its municipal council is the latest in a series of timid but sure steps toward granting women more say in the country’s decision-making process. Yesterday’s move comes a month after Parliament gave women the right to vote and run for elections, despite opposition by hard-line Islamist MPs.
(more…)

Stefania Bianchi

BRUSSELS, Jun 3 (IPS) - The European Union must do more to address the problem of female genital mutilation, members of the European Parliament and leading health and development agencies say.

The Donors Working Group on Female Genital Mutilation/Cutting (FGM/C), a network of public and private international agencies campaigning against the practice, and members of the European Parliament are urging the European Commission to increase its financial commitment to stop the practice of FGM/C, also known as female circumcision.
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Women’s Health Summit Addresses Crisis Of Global Proportions

The Role - and Responsibility - of the Business Community in the AIDS Crisis

Knowledge@Wharton

To the surprise of no one who attended the recent “Penn Summit on Global Issues in Women’s Health: Safe Womanhood in an Unsafe World,” the most critical issue in women’s health care today is HIV/AIDS. Indeed, in some parts of Africa, 60% of those testing positive for HIV are women, and the fastest-growing rate of new infections in sub-Saharan Africa occurs among young women. These two statistics alone have led UNAIDS - the coordinating body organizing all United Nations AIDS-related activity – to announce that HIV/AIDS “has a female face.”
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Sanjay Suri

LONDON, Jun 2 (IPS) - More than a million children across Europe and Central Asia could be facing abuse – while in care facilities – UNICEF says.

‘’That figure of a million is only a conservative estimate,'’ United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF) spokeswoman Angela Hawke told IPS. ‘’There are large data gaps that make children invisible and their problems invisible.'’
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Leonardo Boff,
Theologian

The march of the Landless Movement, (MST), to Brasilia has elicited solidarity throughout Brazil. One such group worth mentioning is the Brazilian Conference of the Religious, CRB: 50 nuns who, representing the Conference, walked more than 100 miles from Goiânia. It was impressive to see them, with their gray monastic habits in the middle of the crowd, some of them already elderly women, marching in line, happily participating in the struggle.
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LAGOS, (IRIN- UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs
Wednesday 1 June 2005 ) - Up to two-thirds of women in and around Nigeria’s biggest city Lagos have suffered some form of abuse at the hands of family members sometimes simply for not having dinner on the table, Amnesty International said on Tuesday as it urged the government to do more to help them.
(more…)

Haider Rizvi

UNITED NATIONS, May (IPS) - Indigenous groups are demanding that the World Bank seek their consent – not just consult them – before carrying out development programmes on their ancestral lands.

Representatives of native communities came away from U.N.-sponsored talks here that ended last Friday criticising the global lender for, in their view, making cosmetic changes in its development policies, which they said continue to undermine native interests.
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