IRIN-humanitarian news and analysis

FREETOWN, 20 December 2007 (IRIN) - The Sierra Leone government has called for an inquiry into unrest over diamond-mining operations in the east of the country after residents were killed in protests last week.

The government has ordered operations suspended at Koidu Holdings Mining Company’s site in the town of Koidu in Kono district, according to a 17 December statement. A 10pm to 6am curfew remains in effect in the area.
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Interview with Tetteh Hormeku of Third World Network Africa

ACCRA, Dec 20 (IPS) - A lively debate has been taking place in Ghana for some time now over the likely effects that an economic partnership agreement (EPA) with the European Union would have on the country. This has been thanks in no small part to the work of Tetteh Hormeku, one of Africa’s most vocal campaigners on trade issues.
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Interview with social movements expert Dieter Rucht

BERLIN, Dec 20 (IPS) - Social movements are responsible for some of the most important transformations taking place lately in our societies and minds, says Prof. Dieter Rucht from the Berlin Centre for Social Sciences (WZB).

Author of numerous articles and books on social movements, Dieter Rucht is currently co-chair of the research group ‘Civil society, citizenship and political mobilisation in Europe’ at the Wissenschaftszentrum Berlin für Sozialforschung (WZB). He is also honorary professor at the department of political and social sciences at the Free University of Berlin. Rucht spoke with IPS correspondent Claudia Ciobanu in Berlin.
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From The Economist print edition
Dec 19th 2007

What the Lisbon and Brussels summits say about today’s Europe

IN THESE carbon-conscious times, there was much carping because European Union leaders held a party in Portugal to sign their new treaty, only to fly 1,700km (1,060 miles) to Brussels for a formal summit the next day. This jet-setting was indeed wasteful, and not only in the obvious way. The Lisbon bash on December 13th was both interesting and revealing; it was the summit in Brussels that was dull and largely devoid of substance.
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Por Amy Goodman

Diciembre de 2007

El Premio Nobel de la Paz fue otorgado el fin de semana pasado en Oslo, Noruega. Al Gore compartió el premio con el Panel Intergubernamental sobre el Cambio Climático de la ONU (IPCC, por sus siglas en inglés), que representa a más de 2.500 científicos de 130 países. La solemne ceremonia tuvo lugar mientras Estados Unidos bloqueaba todo progreso significativo en la Conferencia Mundial sobre el Cambio Climático de la ONU en Bali, Indonesia, y al tiempo que, en el Senado de EE.UU., los republicanos echaban por tierra el proyecto de ley aprobado por la Cámara de Representantes, que habría acelerado la adopción de fuentes de energía renovable en detrimento de las grandes corporaciones del petróleo y del carbón.
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By Thalif Deen

UNITED NATIONS, Dec 18 (IPS) - When U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon paid his first official visit to East Timor (Timor-Leste) last week, he was conscious of the growing demands for accountability for crimes committed during Indonesia’s invasion and subsequent occupation of that relatively new nation state.

A coalition of some 70 international human rights and non-governmental organisations wrote an open letter to the secretary-general seeking “substantive justice to the people of Timor-Leste” who “suffered countless war crimes and crimes against humanity during the Indonesian invasion and 24-year occupation of their homeland.”
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By Robert Marquand

Staff writer of The Christian Science Monitor
The council takes up the issue Wednesday after 18 months of lower-level negotiations failed.

PARIS
After some 18 months of talks, countless missions, painstaking mapmaking, hand-holding, and hand-wringing – the sticky situation of Kosovo’s status will be taken up by the United Nations Security Council Wednesday.

The meeting, to take place in private, constitutes the first test at the highest level of diplomacy of whether Russia intends to make independence for the Serb province a difficult if not nasty process for the West.
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By CHERIE BLAIR

London

LIKE many people nowadays, I’m the product of a single-parent family. My sister and I were brought up by my mother after my father deserted us when we were young. It must have been very tough for my mother but we children thrived because of a huge amount of support from a big extended family.

When I reflect on the plight of millions of widows across the world, I realize just how fortunate we were. Although we were surrounded by love, widows and their children in many societies are shunned, abused and exploited.
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Interview with Katrina Pacey, social justice attorney

VANCOUVER, Canada, Dec 18 (IPS) - Katrina Pacey is a lawyer with the Pivot Legal Society in Vancouver. Pivot is engaged in social justice work through legal reform in the inner city of Vancouver. Pacey is currently taking a case to the British Columbia Supreme Court, and eventually, the Supreme Court of Canada, arguing that the country’s prostitution laws violate the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms.
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By THOMAS FULLER and ANDREW C. REVKIN

December 16, 2007

NUSA DUA, Indonesia — The world’s faltering effort to cut greenhouse gas emissions got a new lease on life on Saturday, as delegates from 187 countries agreed to negotiate a new accord over the next two years — pushing the crucial debates about United States participation into the administration of a new American president.

Many officials and environmental campaigners said American negotiators had remained obstructionist until the final hour of the two-week convention and had changed their stance only after public rebukes that included boos and hisses from other delegates.
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Interview with Mariela Castro

HAVANA, Dec 13 (IPS) - Cuban sexologist Mariela Castro shocked the world, and a good number of people in Cuba, this year when she announced a proposed legal reform in this socialist Caribbean island nation which would include the full recognition of the rights of gays, lesbians, transsexuals, transvestites and transgender persons.

The director of the National Centre for Sex Education (CENESEX), Castro has followed a strategy of awareness-raising on sexual diversity in Cuba since 2004, and is one of the few people in Latin America and the Caribbean to carry out a campaign of such magnitude on this issue from a government institution.
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By Michael Heath

Dec. 14 (Bloomberg) – United Nations troops will need to remain in East Timor for “several'’ more years to prevent a resumption of violence in the Southeast Asian nation, the head of UN peacekeeping said.

Violence erupted in East Timor in March last year when former Prime Minister Mari Alkatiri fired a third of the country’s armed forces for desertion, prompting clashes that killed 37 people. About 155,000 people, or 15 percent of the population, were forced from their homes and international peacekeepers and UN police were deployed to restore order.
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Interview with author and activist Maude Barlow

HALIFAX, Canada, Dec 14 (IPS) - Imagine a planet where nuclear-powered desalination plants ring the world’s oceans; corporate nanotechnology cleans up sewage water so private utilities can sell it back to consumers in plastic bottles at huge profit; and the poor who lack access to clean water die in increased numbers.

This may sound like science fiction dystopia, but according to Maude Barlow, author of the recently released book “Blue Covenant: The Global Water Crisis and the Coming Battle for the Right to Water", this future is not too far away.
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By Marwaan Macan-Markar

NUSA DUA, Bali, Indonesia , Dec 13 (IPS) - Green groups hoping that the social and environmental cost of biofuels would get an airing at the United Nations climate change conference here are a disappointed lot.

The Dec. 3-14 conference has given only marginal attention to biofuels during the formal sessions – involving government officials and ministers from some 180 countries – where a blueprint is being shaped to strike a balance between economic growth and environment protection.
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Mark Lattimer

Guardian - Thursday December 13, 2007

After the invasion of Iraq, the US government claimed that women there had ‘new rights and new hopes’. In fact their lives have become immeasurably worse, with rapes, burnings and murders now a daily occurrence. By Mark Lattimer

They lie in the Sulaimaniyah hospital morgue in Iraqi Kurdistan, set out on white-tiled slabs. A few have been shot or strangled, some beaten to death, but most have been burned. One girl, a lock of hair falling across her half-closed eyes, could almost be on the point of falling asleep. Burns have stretched the skin on another young woman’s face into a fixed look of surprise.
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By Eric Lemus

NUSA DUA, Indonesia, Dec 12 (IPS) - Representatives of non-governmental organisations (NGOs) called for greater accountability on the part of industrialised countries and a firmer stance by developing nations in order to avert failure at the current conference on climate change in Indonesia.

Environmentalists are feeling frustrated at the 13th Session of the Conference of the Parties (COP) to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC), taking place Dec. 3 to 14 on the Indonesian island of Bali.
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Editorial - The New York Times

December 12, 2007
The Soviet-style guessing game over Russia’s presidential succession seemed all but decided this week when President Vladimir Putin endorsed the candidacy of his loyal protégé, Dmitri Medvedev, and then Mr. Medvedev announced that, once elected, he would appoint Mr. Putin to be his prime minister.

Commentators in Russia quickly declared that the Russian people craved stability — and Mr. Putin — far more than democracy, and that this was what they wanted. Of course, Mr. Putin dominates Russian television, most of the rest of the news media and all of the country’s political system, so anyone who doesn’t bear his stamp of approval is bound to look like a risky unknown.
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Antonio Guterres *

December 11, 2007

The ideal is for people not to have to move, and to care for them if they do.

THE 21st century will be defined by the movement of people from one country and continent to another. The number living outside their homeland already stands at 200 million, the same as the population of Brazil, the fifth largest country.

Looking to the future, it seems certain that the world will witness new and more complex patterns of displacement and migration.
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By Eric Lemus*

NUSA DUA, Indonesia, Dec 11 (IPS/IFEJ) - The multitudinous United Nations Conference on Climate Change under way since Dec. 3 on the tropical Indonesian island of Bali has oscillated between optimism and quiet reserve.

The 12-day event is a thermometer of the success or failure of a strategic anti-global warming treaty that should emerge in two years. But the forecast is confidential.
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Interview with Peter Schatzer, International Organisation for Migration

VENICE, Dec 10 (IPS) - With waves of opposition to tides of immigrants in Europe, Peter Schatzer has his job cut out. And seeing that the Mediterranean is the favoured route for migration into Europe, whether documented or not, he is at the forefront of presenting the human face of migration before political opposition to it.

Schatzer, director of the regional office for the Mediterranean and chief of mission in Italy and Malta of the International Organisation for Migration (IOM), talked to Sanjay Suri from IPS at a meeting on the role of communication in the alliance among civilisations organised in Venice by IPS together with the IOM and the Province of Venice.
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By STEPHEN CASTLE – NYC

LISBON, Dec. 8 — A summit meeting of leaders from Europe and Africa on Saturday was dominated by divisions between the two continents over trade and criticism from European leaders of human rights abuses in Zimbabwe.

The first such European Union-African meeting in seven years began amid growing concern in Europe that its economic and political influence in Africa was being eclipsed by China’s growing economic influence there.
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Dec 6th 2007
From The Economist print edition

Rising food prices are a threat to many; they also present the world with an enormous opportunity

FOR as long as most people can remember, food has been getting cheaper and farming has been in decline. In 1974-2005 food prices on world markets fell by three-quarters in real terms. Food today is so cheap that the West is battling gluttony even as it scrapes piles of half-eaten leftovers into the bin.
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IPS

LISBON, Dec (IPS) - On the eve of the second Africa-European Union summit, there is broad agreement on the need to defend human rights, above all else. But academics, analysts and activists from both continents harbour serious doubts that this noble aim will find root in reality.

“It is an unavoidable truth that human rights and democratic values are one level below strategic interests,” said researcher Manuela Franco at the Portuguese Institute of International Relations, in statements published Wednesday by the Público de Lisboa newspaper.
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Analysis by Trita Parsi*

WASHINGTON, Dec 6 (IPS) - The U.S. National Intelligence Estimate’s assertion that Iran currently does not have a nuclear weapons programme has caused much frustration in Israel. Deputy Defence Minister Ephraim Sneh referred to the report as a lie at a recent breakfast in New York, and Infrastructure Minister Binyamin Ben-Eliezer reportedly “doesn’t buy” its findings.
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By Monte Reel

Washington Post Foreign Service
Thursday, December 6, 2007; A20

BUENOS AIRES – Most of them would be in their 90s now, men who have kept their identities hidden for decades to escape punishment for their Nazi pasts.

Concerns that they might succeed, and die without being held accountable, have led officials at the renowned Simon Wiesenthal Center to announce one final drive to locate elderly war criminals hiding in South America: Operation Last Chance.
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Por Ramón-Antonio Gutiérrez Palacios (*)

Pareciera que cada vez se nos hace más difícil vivir en el mundo. A la mayoría de nosotros, nos cuesta cada día más sobrevivir, con dignidad y decencia, en nuestras vidas cotidianas.

‘’Porque muchos, de luchar están cansados,
y ya no creen más en nada de lo bueno de éste mundo.'’
Los Iracundos (grupo musical uruguayo de los años setenta)

Pareciera que cada vez se nos hace más difícil vivir en el mundo. A la mayoría de nosotros, nos cuesta cada día más sobrevivir, con dignidad y decencia, en nuestras vidas cotidianas. No obstante, a las dificultades de encontrar ‘’empleo'’ y tener que labrar la tierra, segar los campos, recolectar y cazar o, transformar los recursos naturales para producir la infinidad de bienes y servicios, que a diario ansiamos con mayor vehemencia consumir y sobreconsumir, se vienen a sumar las dificultades que encontramos en nuestra convivencia con otros.
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Comentario de Ogaga Ifowodo*

NUEVA YORK, dic (IPS) - Hace 12 años, el escritor Ken Saro-Wiwa y ocho ambientalistas de la minoría ogoni de Nigeria fueron ejecutados en la horca por la dictadura del general Sani Abacha, a pesar de la fuerte campaña internacional con que se intentó salvar sus vidas.

El último aniversario de su muerte fue conmemorado con la puesta en escena del unipersonal “Tings Dey Happen” ("Cosas que pasan"), escrita y protagonizada por el joven autor y actor estadounidense Dan Hoyle, quien pasa revista a la “política del petróleo” en ese país africano.
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Interview with Andrew Hudson, of the UNDP Water Governance Programme

UNITED NATIONS, Dec 5 (IPS) - Last month, the Prince of Orange, Willem-Alexander of the Netherlands, and U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon joined forces to declare 2008 the International Year of Sanitation (IYS).

Some 1.5 million children die every year due to inadequate water, sanitation and hygiene, while more than a third of the world’s population does not have access to basic toilet facilities.
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Editorial - The New York Times

December 5, 2007

There is a lot of good news in the latest intelligence assessment about Iran. Tehran, we are now told, halted its secret nuclear weapons program in 2003, which means that President Bush has absolutely no excuse for going to war against Iran. We are also relieved that the intelligence community is now willing to question its own assumptions and challenge the White House’s fevered rhetoric. The president and his aides are apparently too worried about getting caught again shaving intelligence to stop that.

But there’s also a lot of worrisome news in there that must not be overlooked.
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Interview with German Development Minister Heidemarie Wieczorek-Zeul

BERLIN, Nov 30 (IPS) - Developed countries have a “moral duty” to help the world’s poorest countries combat the consequences of climate change to which they have contributed the least, says German Development Cooperation Minister Heidemarie Wieczorek-Zeul.

One way to do this is through emissions trading which will help “mobilise the billions needed for climate protection,” but only if the United States, Canada and Japan follow the European Union example, she says in an interview with IPS European director Ramesh Jaura.
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Federico Mayor Zaragoza *

On August 3, 2007 the White House announced a world Meeting on Climate Change for 27-28 September. President Bush’s motives may be positive, but like so many previous committees, panels, etc. may also provide an excuse to postpone taking the decisions that are really important for mankind. No more delays. No more reports. No more meetings to agree upon what was already agreed years ago. Meetings to decide additional practical aspects, yes. But the diagnostics have largely already been made, and are quite accurate. And most of the credit should go to the United Nations that, despite being ignored by the superpowers, from the 1990s to the present have put forth excellent action programs, including the 2000 Millennium Objectives, ratified five years later at the September 2005 Summit. For this reason, when new meetings are scheduled to discuss what has already been decided, when putting into practice what has been decided is constantly postponed, when the lack of political will is disguised by conducting additional studies, the international community, and especially intellectuals, scientists, academics… must oppose these maneuvers and demand that governments assume their responsibilities, particularly when many physical and social phenomena may soon reach the point of no return.
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Kwamboka Oyaro

JOHANNESBURG, Dec 2 (IPS) - The challenges confronting women politicians in Africa were given an airing recently during a press conference in South Africa’s commercial hub, Johannesburg.

Four politicians – from Cameroon, Ghana, Kenya and Lesotho – fielded questions Nov. 28 by reporters from South Africa and other African states, at the Nelson Mandela Foundation. The politicians were in South Africa at the invitation of Inter Press Service (IPS) and the United Nations Development Fund for Women for a three-day workshop with journalists.
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Editorial

December 3, 2007
So far, this has been an encouraging year for people who care about global warming. Governors have signed regional agreements to cap greenhouse gas emissions. The federal courts are pressing Washington to take action. Venture capitalists have poured money into cleaner fuels. Polls show rising public concern.
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