IRIN - humanitarian news and analysis

CHAGHCHARAN, 30 July 2008 (IRIN) - The UN World Food Programme’s (WFP’s) food-for-education programme has been adversely affected by recent attacks on aid convoys: Some 300,000 primary school children, mostly in southern provinces, have not received vegetable oil and fortified biscuits over the past four months.
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Analysis by Adam Morrow and Khaled Moussa al-Omrani

CAIRO, Jul 31 (IPS) - For decades, the U.S. has jealously guarded its role of sole arbiter of the Arab-Israeli dispute. In light of recent shows of support for Israel by U.S. presidential hopeful Barack Obama, however, many Arabs fear that Zionist influence on the U.S. body politic – across the political spectrum – has made the notion of ‘U.S. even-handedness’ a contradiction in terms.
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Interview with Cecilia Alemany, Association for Women’s Rights in Development

VANCOUVER, Canada, Jul 30 (IPS) - For women’s rights and women’s empowerment groups, the 3rd High Level Conference on Aid Effectiveness in Accra, in September, and the U.N. Conference on Financing for Development in Doha, in December, are opportunities to advance financing for gender equality issues.

They will be there to pressure their governments to make sure that national representatives in these summits are accountable and making the needed connections to develop a holistic development approach, from the local to the global.
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Honorable European Governments and Parliamentarians

Some of our ancestors, a few, or many, or all of them, came from Europe.

The world received these immigrant workers from Europe with generosity.

Now, with the new European Directive on Forced Return of Migrants, dictated by the looming economic crisis, Europe is criminalizing the free circulation of people, despite this having been consecrated as a right in international law since many years ago.
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Sami Yousafzai and Ron Moreau
NEWSWEEK

The insurgents are closing in on Kabul, not in order to overrun the capital but to terrorize its residents and drive away investors. It’s working.

Faridoon stares in alarm at the two NEWSWEEK reporters who just walked into his shop. “You guys better get out of town fast,” the 21-year-old Afghan says as quietly as possible. “There’s Taliban everywhere.” Lying in the street outside are the burned-out hulks of a gasoline tanker and a shipping-container truck that someone set ablaze two nights before, right in front of Faridoon’s motor-oil shop in Maidan Shar, the tiny, dust-blown capital of Maidan Wardak province, barely 25 miles south of Kabul. Only days earlier and a few miles farther down Highway 1, Taliban fighters ambushed and burned a 50-truck commercial convoy that was carrying fuel and supplies for the U.S. military. Even during the day, Faridoon and other townspeople warn, it’s not safe to visit the area.
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By Tarjei Kidd Olsen

OSLO, Jul 29 (IPS) - Despite a reduction in the number of violent conflicts around the world, the number of internal refugees has soared to levels not seen since the end of the cold war.
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Interview with Mohamed Bassyouni, head of the Egyptian Shura Council’s Foreign Relations Committee

CAIRO, Jul 28 (IPS) - Sharing a border with both Israel and the Gaza Strip, Egypt has historically played a major role in Israeli-Palestinian affairs. Egyptian involvement in the longstanding conflict has deepened since June of last year, when resistance group Hamas wrested control of the Gaza Strip – having won legislative elections a year earlier – from the U.S.-backed Fatah movement of Palestinian Authority (PA) President Mahmoud Abbas.
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João Pedro Stedile

Lately, all over the world, we have witnessed an out-and-out offensive of big business and international capital and financiers to promote what they chose to call “biofuels”, referring to agrofuels. As we have pointed out at the World Forum on Food Sovereignty which took place in Mali (March 2007), the prefix bio (referring to life) is being used in a clearly manipulative sense. The correct thing to say is agrofuels as we are talking about fuel produced from agricultural products.
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By Julio Godoy

BERLIN, Jul 25 (IPS) - The extraordinary enthusiasm with which Germans greeted U.S. presidential candidate Barack Obama in Berlin Thursday may have concealed a fear: once the presidency of George W. Bush ends, Germans might be forced to close ranks with the U.S. and go back to playing the role of military junior partner of a superpower at war.
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BBC

Life expectancy for people with HIV has increased by an average of 13 years since the late 1990s thanks to better HIV treatment, a study says.

Researchers said it meant HIV was now effectively a chronic condition like diabetes, rather than a fatal disease, the Lancet reported.

The team, involving Bristol University staff, looked at over 43,000 patients.
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ANSA

Alfano law ends 14 years of ‘persecution’, PM says

(ANSA) - Rome, July 24 - Premier Silvio Berlusconi on Thursday said a law passed this week giving him immunity from prosecution while he holds office was ‘’the least that a democracy could do in defence of its freedom'’. The so-called Alfano law, which applies to Italy’s four institutional figures, was given the final green light by President Giorgio Napolitano on Wednesday, but has been criticised by opposition politicians as being tailor-made to help the premier wriggle free from ongoing corruption trials against him.
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By Petar Hadji-Ristic

ROME, Jul 24 (IPS) - Nine countries have taken major steps towards jettisoning the death penalty over the past 18 months, leaving just a quarter of nations left to abolish the practice, according to the 2008 report from the group Hands off Cain.
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Esther Vivas

During the last months, the impossibility to access food has thrown thousands of people in Southern countries, out of their home. Demonstrations, strikes and protests have repeatedly taken place from one end of the planet to the other. During the past year, rice has doubled in price in Bangladesh and food cost increased by 40% in Haiti and Egypt. The same situation has occurred in Côte d’Ivoire, Bolivia, Indonesia, Mexico, Philippines, Pakistan, Mozambique, Peru, Yemen, Ethiopia… And this list could go on.
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Analysis by Jonathan G. Dorn*

WASHINGTON, Jul 23 (IPS) - After emerging in 2006 from 15 years of hibernation, the solar thermal power industry experienced a surge in 2007, with 100 megawatts of new capacity coming online worldwide.

During the 1990s, cheap fossil fuels, combined with a loss of state and federal incentives in the U.S., put a damper on solar thermal power development. However, recent increases in energy prices, escalating concerns about global climate change, and fresh economic incentives are renewing interest in this technology.
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Interview with climate expert Sir David King

BARCELONA, Spain, Jul 22 (IPS) - Humanity faces enormous challenges at the start of the 21st century, says Sir David King, Britain’s former chief scientific advisor and now director of the Smith School of Enterprise and the Environment at Oxford University in England.
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By Hazel Henderson

President, Ethical Markets Media, USA

We all know the story of the tulip mania, a favorite but short-lived asset of Europeans in the 1700s. Gold has always been a favorite safe haven in spite of its volatility and recent efforts of central banks to devalue the yellow metal by leasing it and selling off their reserves. We have lived through bubbles in art, antiques, jewelry, junk bonds, dot.coms and housing, as investors continually search for safety and diversification.
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IRIN - humanitarian news and analysis

PHNOM PENH, 20 July 2008 (IRIN) - The production of sassafras oil, which is used to make the recreational drug ecstasy, in southwest Cambodia, is destroying trees, the livelihoods of local inhabitants and wreaking untold ecological damage, according to David Bradfield, adviser to the Wildlife Sanctuaries Project of Fauna and Flora International (FFI).
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By Tito Drago

MADRID, Jul 21 (IPS) - The participants at the World Conference on Dialogue in Madrid have proposed that the United Nations create an interreligious council.

The Jul. 16-18 conference, which was attended by 250 people representing Islam, Judaism, Christianity, Buddhism, Hinduism and other faiths, was opened on Jul. 16 by King Abdullah of Saudi Arabia and King Juan Carlos of Spain.
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By David A. Fahrenthold and Juliet Eilperin
Washington Post Staff Writers

Friday, July 18, 2008. Climate change will pose “substantial” threats to human health in the coming decades, the Environmental Protection Agency said yesterday – issuing its warnings about heat waves, hurricanes and pathogens just days after the agency declined to regulate the pollutants blamed for warming.
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Analysis by Gareth Porter*

WASHINGTON, Jul 18 (IPS) - The U.S. decision to send the State Department’s third-ranking official to sit in on the meeting between European Union foreign affairs chief Javier Solana and Iran’s nuclear negotiator Saeed Jalili Saturday has been hailed as a major diplomatic breakthrough, but it is too soon to pop the champagne cork.
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Analysis by Jim Lobe*

WASHINGTON, Jul 16 (IPS) - In the seemingly never-ending internal battle between hawks and realists in the administration of U.S. President George W. Bush for control of foreign policy, the realists appear to have chalked up another win over their once-dominant foes.
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By Carol Huang

The Christian Science Monitor
From the July 16, 2008 edition

Many of the unofficial groups lack know-how for training volunteers and keeping track of how donor money is pent.

Beijing - Two months after China’s devastating earthquake, where do Chinese unofficial nongovernmental organizations stand?

Two months after such volunteer groups won widespread praise for delivering urgent quake relief, the government has not adjusted its restrictive policies toward them, as people in the field had hoped.
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SPIEGEL ONLINE

Chaos has returned to Belgium’s capital: The government has collapsed, the prime minister has offered his resignation. German newspapers on Wednesday wonder if the linguistically divided country will ever get its act together.
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‘Belgium Is the World’s Most Successful Failed State’
SPIEGEL ONLINE
Chaos has returned to Belgium’s capital: The government has collapsed, the prime minister has offered his resignation. German newspapers on Wednesday wonder if the linguistically divided country will ever get its act together.

The Belgian Prime Minister Yves Leterme threw in the towel late on Monday night, saying he could not force through a consensus between the Flemish and French-speaking coalition partners.

Leterme offered his resignation to King Albert II, who has so far not formally accepted it. The king is now holding consultations with lawmakers expected to last several days.

In his statement, Leterme, head of the Flemish-speaking Christian Democrats, said the “federal consensus model has reached its limits” – raising the specter of Belgium breaking up for good. The prime minister had a self-imposed July 15 deadline to come up with an agreement on constitutional reform.

The nation’s two main regions – Dutch-speaking Flanders in the north, and Francophone Wallonia in the south – have enjoyed increased regional autonomy since the 1970s. The prosperous north now wants more autonomy. It has pushed for reforms that would shift responsibility for taxation and some social security down to the regional level. Francophone parties accuse their Flemish counterparts of trying to separate the north from the poorer south, where unemployment is three times as high.

Matters have been further complicated by a dispute over an electoral district that comprises largely Francophone Brussels and 20 Flemish-speaking towns near the capital.

German papers on Wednesday are concerned about the political crisis at the heart of Europe, but most hold out hope that the Belgians will save their government.

The center-left Süddeutsche Zeitung writes:

“There is a great sense of perplexity. No one knows how Belgium should go forward. New elections won’t bring any new power relations and so won’t bring any solution. Before one starts to criticize small Belgium for its political incompetence one should reflect on the fact that if the Flemish want more regional autonomy and the Walloons are fearfully fighting against that, as in all political conflicts, it is a question of the deep desire for self-determination, identity and belonging. Belgium’s search for a new internal balance is not simply about the country’s folklore. It concerns all of Europe.”

The center-right Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung writes:

“The vast majority of the six million Flemish and four million Walloons have nothing against living in the same state, even if it is often a parallel existence. What has pushed the country to the edge of a crisis of state are the provincial-minded politicians and the parties which have become mere lobby groups. Stubborn insistence on proportionality and the splitting of the party system along both political and linguistic lines have caused the art of compromise to slowly shrivel away. That is why there is no easy way out of the crisis. The voters should now speak.”

The left-leaning Die Tageszeitung writes:

“In terms of economics, Belgium is the most successful ‘failed state’ of all time. Its per capita income is way ahead of Germany, the world’s leading exporter …”

“Belgium can continue to flourish without a national government for the simple reason that the cabinet doesn’t have to decide much anyway. Most authority has devolved to the regions … The central government is left to deal with foreign policy, defense and finance policy – all issues that are increasingly taken care of at the EU level.”

“The Belgian government still controls spending on social welfare. And this is where the conflict has blown up between the two language groups, because rich Flanders wants to pay less for poorer Wallonia.”

“There is still no solution in sight. But part of the Belgian paradox is that there will be some sort of compromise at some stage. Belgium is not lost yet.”

The left-leaning Berliner Zeitung writes:

“In Belgium the word ’separation’ is rearing its ugly head again. But things are still not quite that bad. Belgians are masters of muddling through and reaching compromises. Once again King Albert II is playing a key role: He can reject Leterme’s resignation and force the coalition partners to work together for a transitional period. He could also ask someone else to form a government.”

“Snap elections are unlikely: that would require a compromise in the dispute over the bilingual electoral district in Brussels. This is the issue that forced the break-up of the government. It is possible that voters will be asked to elect a new parliament when they go to the polls for European and regional elections next June. Now it’s a question of playing for time. No one in Belgium believes in big solutions that will ease the conflict between the linguistic groups in the long term.”

The conservative Die Welt writes:

“Belgium had always prided itself on being a model for Europe: exemplifying, through the art of compromise and the virtue of tolerance, how nations and cultures can exist peacefully side by side. The country can no longer claim this. The latest political crisis sees the kingdom moving towards the limits of being governable. It is difficult to understand how a people can get so caught up in trifles that they allow the very existence of the country come under threat. On the surface the conflict seems to hinge on a small electoral district in Brussels that was supposed to be split up, ending its bilingual status. “

“In reality, however, the Belgians are arguing about much more. The question is how much solidarity people are prepared to show when times are tough. The rich north no longer wants to help out the south, which has been buffeted by globalization. In the end it’s all about money.”

By Aldo Ciummo*

ROME, Jul 16 (IPS) - Ernestine Kayindo fled Goma town in the northeast of the Democratic Republic of Congo in 1997 amidst fighting between the regular army and rebels of the National Congress for the Defence of the People (NCDP), a Tutsi armed group that is still active.

“All of us Congolese felt in danger of being killed,” says Kayindo, who now works in Rome with the Società Civile Congolese.
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by Eric Umansky

- July 15, 2008 Tags: al-Qaida, CIA, David Addington, Department of Justice, Detainee Treatment Scandal, Dick Cheney, FBI, George W. Bush, Jane Mayer

As much as any other reporter, The New Yorker’s Jane Mayer has helped expose the post-9/11 system of detention, rendition and abuse of ‘enemy combatants.’ Her book out today, “The Dark Side,” significantly expands on her reporting. We talked to Mayer about how the move to the system started with bureaucratic bungling and the curiously passive role of President Bush, who kept “disappearing from the frame.”

Editor’s Note: Umansky’s reporting is briefly cited in the book.
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By Irene de Vette

ROTTERDAM, Jul 15 (IPS) - Human rights organisations all over the world will celebrate the tenth anniversary Jul. 17 of the adoption of the Rome Statute establishing the International Criminal Court (ICC). The ICC is the first and only permanent international criminal tribunal to prosecute individuals accused of genocide, war crimes and crimes against humanity.
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By Edmund Sanders
Los Angeles Times Staff Writer

After a surge of reform in the 1990s, many countries have suffered setbacks, with ‘pseudo-democracies’ and incumbents who refuse to cede power.

July 13, 2008. NAIROBI, KENYA — Election-related meltdowns in Zimbabwe and Kenya are stark reminders of democracy’s fragile foothold in Africa, experts say, despite years of financial and diplomatic investment by the United States and other Western nations.
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By Teresa Robins

SEVILLE, Spain, Jul 14 (IPS) - The European Commission is still targeting those least developed countries that have resisted economic partnership agreements (EPAs) by opting for the Everything But Arms trade preference scheme.
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ANSA

UNICEF distances itself from govt in gypsy fingerprint row

(ANSA) - Rome, July 11 - Defence Minister Ignazio La Russa on Friday suggested that the government should take everyone’s fingerprints following a European Parliament (EP) vote that accused Italy of discrimination against gypsies.
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By Jim Lobe

WASHINGTON, Jul 11 (IPS) - China’s booming economy is on course not only to surpass that of the United States by 2035, and but to double its size by 2050, according to a new study released here this week by an influential former World Bank economist who also headed the China desk at the U.S. Treasury.
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IRIN - humanitarian news and analysis

KABUL, 9 July 2008 (IRIN) - The government of Afghanistan and the UN on 9 July launched a Joint Emergency Appeal for over US$404 million to provide an emergency safety-net for 4.5 million vulnerable Afghans who have been pushed into “high-risk” food-insecurity.
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Interview with Mohsen Bilal, Syrian Minister of Information

DAMASCUS, Jul 9 (IPS) - “There are no negotiations between Syria and Israel in Istanbul – what is happening is an indirect exchange of messages via Turkey, to explore ways towards a possible negotiation,” Syrian Information Minister Mohsen Bilal told IPS.
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Wim Dierckxsens

In the last few decades, the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund (IMF) together with the World Trade Organization (WTO) have forced the peripheral countries to decrease their investments in food production and their support of small scale farmers, who are the key players of food sovereignty. The rules of the game changed dramatically in 1995, when the WTO Agreement on Agriculture came into force.
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By Ramesh Jaura

TOYAKO, Japan, Jul 9 (IPS) - While the world’s major industrialised nations expressed satisfaction over their three-day summit meetings that concluded Wednesday, non-governmental organisations, after some early and limited approval, were deeply disappointed with the outcome on the whole.
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By Ramesh Jaura

TOYAKO, Japan, Jul 8 (IPS) - The Group of Eight (G8) will remain an exclusive club of major industrial nations at least for a year. Whether the next year’s summit in Italy will decide on its expansion – to include Brazil, China, India, Mexico and South Africa – is an open question.

This emerged Tuesday on the second day of the G8 summit meetings in Toyako on the northern Japanese island Hokkaido.
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By Hazel Henderson

President, Ethical Markets Media, USA

Debate is now raging in policy circles about the role of speculators in sky high oil prices , now in the $140 per barrel range. Yes, supply is tight and world demand is rising .In addition, 77% of the world’s proven oil reserves are now controlled by national governments.Political risks abound in the Mid-East, Nigeria and elsewhere. Peak oil is approaching and global warming is bringing a slow end to the Fossil fuel Age. We are entering the next industrial stage , the Solar Age, based on renewable ” green” technologies , solar , wind, geothermal and ocean energy .
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By Brandi Grissom / Austin Bureau

El Paso Times

07/03/2008 AUSTIN – The Environmental Protection Agency had serious concerns about how barrier fencing would affect habitat, animals and communities along the border near El Paso, according to recently released comments the agency prepared earlier this year.
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Analysis by Trita Parsi*

WASHINGTON, Jul 7 (IPS) - Conciliatory noises from Tehran over the nuclear issue have left Washington and Brussels baffled, and unconvinced of Iran’s intentions. Having grown accustomed to President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’s uncompromising language, Tehran’s new tone has raised more suspicion than hope among cynics in Western capitals.
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From The Economist print edition

Jul 3rd 2008

John McCain is veering off to the right—and making things too easy for Barack Obama

WHEN more than 80% of Americans tell pollsters that they think the country is on the wrong track, and when only 28% of them believe that the president is doing a good job, you don’t need a Karl Rove or a Dick Morris to tell you that the road to the White House involves steering well clear of the incumbent’s policies. So why is John McCain not doing it?
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Interview with film director Errol Morris

BRUSSELS, Jul 4 (IPS) - No matter how familiar they become, the photographs depicting abuse at Abu Ghraib prison never seem to lose their ability to shock.
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Frei Betto

Who would have imagined having to go to a boutique to buy rice, beans, vegetables, and meat? But perhaps this reality is not so far off. The average price of food has tripled in the last twelve months.

Last year, the owners of the world invested US$134 billion in the industry of death–arms manufacturing–a 45% increase from just ten years ago, according to the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute, SIPRI . Governments invested 2.5% of the global GDP in military spending. Worldwide, US $202 was invested per capita in feeding the beasts of the Apocalypse with missiles, bombs, mines, and nuclear arms. In summary: according to the FAO, compared to spending on food, the amount spent on arms surpassed it 191 times over!
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By Jim Lobe

WASHINGTON, Jul 3 (IPS) - Six and a half years after the ouster of the Taliban, U.S. media attention is returning to Afghanistan where more U.S. and NATO troops were killed in June than in any previous month.

Indeed, as noted by both the New York Times and the Washington Post Wednesday, June was the second month in a row in which U.S. deaths in Afghanistan approached the toll in Iraq.
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BBC NEWS

South American heads of state have ended a regional summit with a fierce attack on EU immigration policies.

Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez told the Mercosur meeting in Argentina that Europe had “legalised barbarism".
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By Thalif Deen

UNITED NATIONS, Jul 2 (IPS) - When the United Nations Security Council adopted a key resolution last month critical of violence against women, the condemnation was also directed at the increasing number of peacekeepers, mostly soldiers, expelled from U.N. missions on charges of rape or sexual abuse.
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IRIN

KABUL, 30 June 2008 (IRIN) - Conflict and natural disasters have caused a “serious” and “deteriorating” humanitarian situation in Afghanistan and the aid community must scale up its efforts to meet the needs of vulnerable people, John Holmes, the UN Under-Secretary-General for Humanitarian Affairs and Emergency Relief Coordinator, told IRIN in Kabul.
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By Abid Aslam

WASHINGTON, Jul 1 (IPS) - The International Energy Agency (IEA) has cut its five-year forecast for global oil demand, saying high prices are forcing consumers to leave gas-guzzling vehicles in the garage.

The agency, in a report released Tuesday as Congress weighs measures to rein in commodities speculators, added that it saw little evidence that speculative investment in oil futures has driven up oil prices.
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