By Dimity Hawkins (*)

MELBOURNE, Mar (IPS) History has never provided a better time to act on nuclear disarmament. The desire to free the world of the 23,300 nuclear weapons currently in global stockpiles has come vividly into the spotlight as both global leaders and civil society groups lead the charge toward abolition.
(more…)

By Robert Scheer *

March 31, 2010. Judge them by their enemies. More evidence that Barack Obama might be shaping up as a good president is that Norman Podhoretz hates him so much. In a Wall Street Journal column Monday the guru of the neoconservatives declared: “I would rather be ruled by the Tea Party than by the Democratic Party, and I would rather have Sarah Palin sitting in the Oval Office than Barack Obama.”
(more…)

By Wangari Maathai (*)

NAIROBI, Mar (IPS) While the normalization of diplomatic relations between Chad and Sudan and the signing of a cease fire and framework for peace negotiations between the Sudan government and the Justice and Equality Movement (JEM) are being heralded as critical steps towards peace in Darfur, there is still a long way to travel to resolving the ongoing crisis in Darfur.
(more…)

By Clive Banerjee

IDN-InDepth NewsAnalysis

VIENNA (IDN) – Countries that are members of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) and need uranium for peaceful purposes do not have to worry any more. They can draw on a reserve of 120 tonnes of low enriched uranium (LEU) valued at about 250 million U.S. dollars that the United Nations agency has set up.
(more…)

By Roberto Savio (*)

ROME, Mar (IPS) The victory of the right in January’s elections in Chile has stirred reflections on the crisis of the left. Of the 15 countries in Europe that had leftist governments in 1992, only five do today, and of these three -Portugal, Spain, and Greece-presently find themselves in grave financial and social difficulty. For people under fifty, it is hard to grasp how deep the roots of this crisis go. The solution does not seem to be a quick one.
(more…)

By Babukar Kashka

IDN-InDepth NewsAnalysis

NAIROBI (IDN) – The number of people residing in slums has climbed from 777 million in 2000 to almost 830 million in 2010 and will likely reach some 900 million by 2020. However, their life conditions are an open violation of all basic human rights.
(more…)

Analysis - By Marwaan Macan-Markar

BANGKOK, Mar 26 , 2010 (IPS) - Is pro-democracy icon Aung San Suu Kyi condemning the opposition party that she heads in military-ruled Burma to political irrelevance or, worse still, a burial ahead of forthcoming elections?

That is the question gnawing at the National League for Democracy (NLD), whose 20-member central executive committee and 110-member central committee are set to decide on Mar. 29 if the party will contest this year’s poll.
(more…)

By Jaya Ramachandran

IDN-InDepth NewsAnalysis

BRUSSELS (IDN) - The European leaders failed to agree on the introduction of a levy on financial trading to compensate taxpayers for bank bailouts at the Spring Council meeting of the European Union (EU), which concluded March 26. The Heads of State or Government of 27 nations stressed instead that they must reach an agreement before the G20 Summit June 26-27 in Toronto.
(more…)

IUCN

Doha, Qatar, Thursday 25 March 2010 (IUCN) – It’s time for joint action and for regulatory bodies to work together to ensure the continued survival of species threatened by wildlife trade, says IUCN at the end of the 15th Meeting of the Conference of the Parties (CoP15) to the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora (CITES), in Doha, Qatar.
(more…)

By Stephen Leahy

IPS interviews science historian NAOMI ORESKES

PARIS, Mar 24, 2010 (IPS) - Even though 2009 was the fifth warmest year since 1850, and 2000-09 the warmest decade ever, according to the World Meterological Organisation, surveys show that public concern about global warming in the United States and Canada has dropped sharply in the past 18 months.
(more…)

By Stefano Colombo

IDN-InDepth NewsAnalysis

ROME (IDN) – When top managers of giant oil and industrial companies or major car-makers eat a good steak, they probably rejoice twice – thanks to the meal of course but also because cows are now blamed for being the major single source of greenhouse gases.
(more…)

By Mel Frykberg

RAMALLAH, Mar 24, 2010 (IPS) - In early February, 41-year-old Fayez Ahmed Faraj, a father of nine from the city of Hebron, 30 miles south of Jerusalem, in the southern West Bank, was shot dead in his home town by Israeli soldiers after he allegedly tried to stab one of them.
(more…)

By Chryso D’Angelo

IPS interviews RANA HUSSEINI, author of “Murder in the Name of Honor”

NEW YORK, Mar 23, 2010 (IPS) - Thirteen women are murdered in “honour killings” by their own relatives every day, according to Rana Husseini, a human rights advocate and journalist who has devoted her career to fighting the barbaric and widespread practice.
(more…)

By Jeffrey Owens and Richard Carey*

IDN-InDepth NewsViewpoint

PARIS (IDN) – People in developed economies struggling to close burgeoning deficits incurred in the crisis by raising taxes or cutting spending could be forgiven for thinking that developing countries are concerned with the same priorities. But even in good times, dealing with fiscal challenges is an ordeal.
(more…)

By William Fisher

IPS interviews Guantanamo defence counsel DAVID FRAKT

NEW YORK, Mar 22, 2010 (IPS) - David Frakt is a professor at the Western State University College of Law and a lieutenant colonel in the U.S. Air Force Reserve JAG Corps.

He is widely known for his defence of former Guantanamo detainee Mohammed Jawad, an alleged “unlawful enemy combatant” who previously faced charges in the U.S. military commissions for events alleged to have taken place when he was a minor in December 2002.
(more…)

By Babukar Kashka

IDN-InDepth NewsAnalysis

NAIROBI (IDN) – Every year, more people die from unsafe water than from all forms of violence, including war.

This simple but shocking statement has been launched by UN secretary general Ban Ki-moon on the occasion of the World Water Day 2010, which is commemorated on March 22 each year.
(more…)

By Ronald Joshua

IDN-InDepth NewsAnalysis

BERLIN/PARIS (IDN) - Though developed and developing countries decided about one-and-a-half years ago to take bold steps to reform the way aid is given and spent, the agreement has yet to be put into practice.
(more…)

By Chryso D’Angelo

UNITED NATIONS, Mar 19, 2010 (IPS) - Despite numerous factors that threaten the achievement of the Millennium Development Goals by 2015 - a global financial crisis, a food crisis, climate change, natural disasters – U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon said this week that his main concern is “political will".
(more…)

By Matthew Duss*

This article appeared in the April 5, 2010 edition of The Nation.

I’m sure not many fathers think about whether their children will defend them one day from accusations that they ordered torture. Dick Cheney would probably be one of the few who has–and how nice that he got that lucky. Since her father left office, Liz Cheney has been his most visible and effective advocate. She’s given speeches at conservative gatherings, written op-eds for publications like the Wall Street Journal and made dozens of television appearances, all aimed at defending her father’s record and carrying his standard. And occasionally she finds herself having to claim that a technique developed by torturers as a method of torture (waterboarding) was not really torture when her father approved it.
(more…)

By Paul Virgo

IPS interviews YUKIKO OMURA, new vice president of the International Fund for Agricultural Development

ROME, Mar 18, 2010 (IPS) - Employees at the International Fund for Agricultural Development (IFAD) may have cause to fear for their jobs after Yukiko Omura was appointed vice president of the United Nations’ rural poverty agency in February.
(more…)

By Dr. Peter Wolff*

IDN-InDepth NewsViewpoint

BONN (IDN) - Microfinance has in recent years evolved into a popular instrument of poverty reduction. At the latest since the Nobel Peace Prize was awarded to Muhammad Yunus and the Grameen Bank in 2006, even the broad public has been aware that microcredit may offer even the poorest of people a chance to escape absolute poverty.
(more…)

By Marwaan Macan-Markar

BANGKOK, Mar 17, 2010 (IPS) - As the water level in the Mekong River dips to a record 50-year low, a familiar pattern of fault-finding has risen to the surface. China, the regional giant through which parts of South-east Asia’s largest waterway flows through, is again at the receiving end of verbal salvoes from its neighbours.
(more…)

The Microfinance Crisis
IDN-InDepth NewsViewpoint

BONN (IDN) - Microfinance has in recent years evolved into a popular instrument of poverty reduction. At the latest since the Nobel Peace Prize was awarded to Muhammad Yunus and the Grameen Bank in 2006, even the broad public has been aware that microcredit may offer even the poorest of people a chance to escape absolute poverty.
(more…)

By Hazel Henderson (*)

ST. AUGUSTINE, FLORIDA, Mar (IPS) Icelanders, on March 6, 2010, rejected by 90% the referendum on paying $5.3 billion (45% of national output in 2009) of odious debt incurred by their privatized bank Icesave. This opens the way for a plan proposed by Dutch businessman/philanthropist Gijs Graafland’s Planck Foundation. This ingenious, well-researched Energy for Debt plan invites private and public investors to develop Iceland’s boundless geothermal energy and send its electricity to Britain and the Netherlands via a high-voltage DC transmission line.
(more…)

IRIN - humanitarian news and analysis*

ADDIS ABABA, 16 March 2010 (IRIN) - Human traffickers and smugglers in Ethiopia have taken advantage of the upcoming World Cup, duping victims into believing that South Africa has created huge employment opportunities, says a government report, Illegal Migration: Causes, Consequences and Solutions to human trafficking and smuggling in Ethiopia.
(more…)

By Ignacio Ramonet (*)

PARIS, Mar (IPS) Ideas die too. The cemetery of political parties overflows with the remains of organisations that at one time
ignited passions and roused multitudes but are now relegated to oblivion. Who in Europe today agrees with Radicalism, though it was one of the most important political forces (centre-left) of the second half of the 19th century? Or Anarchism? Or Stalinist Communism? What happened to these formidable mass movements that in their day could mobilise millions of workers and peasant farmers? Were they just passing fashions?
(more…)

By Fareed Zakaria | NEWSWEEK

From the magazine issue dated Mar 22, 2010

President Obama gets much credit for changing America’s image in the world—he was probably awarded the Nobel Prize for doing so. But if you asked even devoted fans to cite a specific foreign-policy achievement, they would probably hesitate. “It’s too soon for that,” they would say. But in fact, there is a place where Barack Obama’s foreign policy is working, and one that is crucial to U.S. national security—Pakistan.
(more…)

By Gareth Porter*

WASHINGTON, Mar (IPS) - For weeks, the U.S. public followed the biggest offensive of the Afghanistan War against what it was told was a “city of 80,000 people” as well as the logistical hub of the Taliban in that part of Helmand. That idea was a central element in the overall impression built up in February that Marja was a major strategic objective, more important than other district centres in Helmand.
(more…)

From The Economist print edition

In the aftermath of fighting or repression, people are often told to forget things. But in free societies, selective memory cannot be imposed for ever

Mar 11th 2010 | BELFAST, MADRID AND NAIROBI
THE 15 boxes of bones were wrapped in the red, yellow and purple flag of the Second Republic. Each held the remains of a man whose support for a brief political experiment in the 1930s had proved fatal. At a ceremony in Madrid on March 6th the bones were given to descendants: mostly middle-aged grandchildren, but sometimes already aged sons or daughters.
(more…)

By Thalif Deen*

UNITED NATIONS, Mar 10, 2010 (IPS/TerraViva) - Whenever gender empowerment is a vibrant topic of discussion internationally, some of the countries in Europe, Asia and Latin America are invariably singled out for their success stories in politics, education, health care or civil liberties even as Africa is mostly left out of political reckoning - and wrongly so.
(more…)

By Julio Godoy

IDN-InDepth NewsViewpoint

BERLIN (IDN) - Between the end of World War II and 1979 it was conventional wisdom in North America, Western Europe, and the industrialised countries of Asia and Oceania that taxes were the best way to make social justice dreams come true.
(more…)

By Walden Bello (*)

MANILA, Mar (IPS) On January 1, 2010, the China-Asean Free Trade Area (Cafta) went into effect. Touted as the world’s biggest Free Trade Area, CAFTA is billed as having 1.7 billion consumers, with a combined gross domestic product of $ 5,93 trillion and total trade of $ 1.3 trillion.
(more…)

By Baltasar Garrido

IDN-InDepth NewsAnalysis

MADRID (IDN) – Experts and decision-makers have followed with deep concern the Global Consultation on Migrant Health in Madrid. No wonder. Reports show that a high percentage of the one billion migrants worldwide lack access to health care, while their poverty and exploitative work conditions have worsened.
(more…)

By Stephen Leahy*

UXBRIDGE, Canada, Mar 9, 2010 (Tierramérica) - Climate change science has come under full-scale attack in a last-ditch effort to delay or prevent action by the U.S. government against global warming, experts warn.

U.S. Senator James Inhofe, Republican from Oklahoma and climate change denier, in late February released a list of leading climate scientists he wants prosecuted as criminals for misleading the government. Those scientists are receiving hate mail and death threats.
(more…)

By Thomas Hammarbeg*

IDN-InDepth NewsViewpoint

STRASBOURG (IDN) - Prohibition of the burqa and the niqab would not liberate oppressed women, but might instead lead to their further alienation in European societies. A general ban on such attires would constitute an ill-advised invasion of individual privacy. Depending on its precise terms, a prohibition also raises serious questions about whether such legislation would be compatible with the European Convention on Human Rights.
(more…)

By Katha Pollitt* -The Nation

The WEF measures the gap between women and men in four areas–economic activity, education, health and political representation–regardless of the absolute level of resources. Thus South Africa (6) and Lesotho (10) make the top ten, despite widespread poverty, illiteracy and a raging AIDS epidemic.
(more…)

By Sabina Zaccaro*

UNITED NATIONS, Mar 8, 2010 (IPS/TerraViva) - “Seven Burmese military soldiers attacked me and three of my friends,” said Chang Chang, from the northern Kachin State of Burma.

That was when her life going to school and working on the family farm was shattered.
(more…)

By Stephen Leahy

UXBRIDGE, Canada, Mar 5, 2010 (IPS) - The frozen cap trapping billions of tonnes of methane under the cold waters of the Arctic Ocean is leaking and venting the powerful greenhouse gas into the atmosphere, new research shows.

It is not known if this may be one of the first indicators of a feedback loop accelerating global warming.
(more…)

By Badriya Khan*

IDN-InDepth NewsAnalyisis

BARCELONA (IDN) - Things are worsening for Israel from moral and legal perspectives. In fact, one year after the Goldstone Report on its ‘war crimes’ during its war on Gaza and amidst growing suspicions of its direct responsibility in the assassination of a Palestinian leader in Dubai, an international court has now concluded that Israel is violating international law with Europe’s complicity.
(more…)

By Ranjit Devraj

IPS interviews AMMU JOSEPH, Indian journalist, author and media watcher.

NEW DELHI, Mar 4, 2010 (IPS) - Young Indian women are taking to journalism in droves, but Ammu Joseph, author of several authoritative books on women in media, believes that these numbers do not necessarily translate into gender awareness.
(more…)

Comment - By Jessica Arons

President Obama’s healthcare proposal adopts language on abortion from the Senate health reform bill that requires insurers to segregate public and private premiums and use only private money to pay for abortion services. But Representative Bart Stupak will have none of it, claiming that the legislation still allows public funding of the abortion. In fact, the legislation very clearly prohibits direct government funding of abortion. But Stupak also objects to “indirect” funding, refusing to vote for a reform bill unless it prohibits taxpayer money from “subsidizing” health plans that cover abortion care.
(more…)

By Charles Fromm

WASHINGTON, Mar 3, 2010 (IPS/TerraViva) - Last year, Kuwaitis elected their first female members of Parliament. Yet in countries like Yemen, child marriage remains common and personal status laws still discriminate against women in matters concerning marriage, divorce and child custody.
(more…)

By Fareed Zakaria* | NEWSWEEK

From the magazine issue dated Mar 8, 2010

Everyone seems to be pessimistic about America these days. In poll after poll, Americans worry about their future. Pundits, myself included, write despairingly about the monumental challenges we face. Academics plan seminars on America’s decline.
(more…)

By Marguerite A. Suozzi

UNITED NATIONS, Mar 2, 2010 (IPS/TerraViva) - Despite having equality on paper, women continue to be shut out of most leadership positions in the United States, and some experts say that the persistence of language in which male is the default gender is an overlooked factor.
(more…)

Ramesh Jaura talks to UN Assistant Secretary General Luc Gnacadja

IDN-InDepth NewsInterview

BERLIN (IDN) - “Enhancing soils anywhere enhances life everywhere,” says UN’s top official Luc Gnacadja, who is tasked with combating land degradation and drought – not only in Africa, the most vulnerable continent, but all along the drylands belt running from Latin America through Sahel and Asia.
(more…)

By Leonardo Boff (*)

RIO DE JANEIRO, Feb (IPS) There is no political formulation of the interests of humanity or mother earth that protects their nature and cultures. For centuries we have lived under the jurisdiction of nation states and their assorted forms of sovereignty and autonomy. But as all problems become increasingly global, this political model is proving incapable of offering the solutions needed by humanity and the planet as a whole.
(more…)

By Thomas Hammarberg*

IDN-InDepth NewsViewpoint

STRASBOURG (IDN) - European governments are not giving Roma migrants the same treatment as others who are in similar need of protection. Roma migrants are returned by force to places where they are at risk of human rights violations.
(more…)