Articles by Inter Press Service
We found 332 results.
‘Women Are Shackled During Childbirth’
Mehru Jaffer – Inter Press Service-IPS,
14 Mar 2011
Interview with Fabrizia Falcione, UN Women – Female Palestinian prisoners detained in Israel are often denied legal representation and medical care while being housed in squalid conditions that can include sharing cells with rodents.
→ read full articleJapan: Whaling Policy in Choppy Waters
Suvendrini Kakuchi – Inter Press Service-IPS,
7 Mar 2011
After years of stiff resistance, the Japanese government has announced a temporary halt to its controversial research whaling programme in the Antarctic Ocean, a decision that will finally stir the debate to promote sustainable fishing, say conservationists here.
→ read full articlePatriarchy and Fundamentalism Two Sides of the Same Coin
Cléo Fatoorehchi – Inter Press Service-IPS,
28 Feb 2011
While “fundamentalism” has become something of a buzzword in the past few years, particularly in the West in connection with Islam, it in fact exists in every region and religion, and has a set of common characteristics, say activists who have studied the question for years.
→ read full articleEgyptians Can Claim Mubarak’s Stolen Billions
Julio Godoy - Inter Press Service,
14 Feb 2011
For decades, European bank accounts and trusts and the real estate market were havens for dictators seeking safe places to deposit billions of dollars they were stealing from their countries of origin… In Switzerland, the government just approved a law that eases the historical secrecy of Swiss private banks. The law allows for money deposited here by Third World dictators to be reimbursed to the legitimate governments of the dictators’ countries of origin.
→ read full articleDoes it Matter if the Torturer Is Right-Handed or Left-Handed?
Thalif Deen – Inter Press Service-IPS,
7 Feb 2011
Jeanne Kirkpatrick, a former U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, once made the highly-debatable distinction between “friendly” right-wing “authoritarian” regimes (which were mostly U.S. and Western allies) and “unfriendly” left-wing “totalitarian” dictatorships (which the U.S. abhorred). Kirkpatrick’s distinction between user-friendly right-wing regimes and unfriendly left-wing dictators prompted a response from her ideological foe at that time, former Secretary of State Cyrus Vance, who shot back: “It seems to me that if you’re on the rack (and being tortured), it doesn’t make any difference if your torturer is right handed or left-handed.”
→ read full articleNamibia Embarks on Nuclear Policy
Brigitte Weidlich – Inter Press Service,
10 Jan 2011
Namibia is set to develop its rich uranium resources and intends to pursue uranium enrichment locally. It also plans to build its own nuclear electricity plant.
→ read full articleSouth America: Closer to a Palestinian State
Marcela Valente – Inter Press Service,
10 Jan 2011
After Brazil announced in early December that it recognised a Palestinian state, Argentina, Bolivia and Ecuador followed suit, and Paraguay and Uruguay said they would do the same in early 2011. Chile and Peru are also expected to reach a similar decision. Before this month, Venezuela was the only country in South America to have done so.
→ read full articleScientists Focus on Male Mosquitoes in Bid to Control Malaria
Timothy Spence – Inter Press Service,
27 Dec 2010
After successfully suppressing scourges of fruit, tsetse and screwworm flies in the Americas, researchers are exploring whether the same sterilised insect technique can be used to control malaria, which kills some one million people every year, many of them in Africa.
→ read full articlePortugal: Economic Crisis Looms, But Clean Energy Shines On
Mario de Queiroz – Inter Press Service,
27 Dec 2010
While the shadow of a speculative assault looms over Portugal, similar to the economic crises that hit Greece and Ireland, this Iberian nation manages to hold up the beacon of renewable energy.
→ read full articleClimate Change: Summit Ends Without Solving Emissions Puzzle
Diana Cariboni – Inter Press Service,
13 Dec 2010
“We are the coldest country in the world… so global warming is good for us. The warmer it is, the bigger the harvests… They talk about stopping deforestation of the tropical jungles to fight climate change, but we don’t have tropical jungles.” The frankness of Russian lawmaker Viktor Shudegov revealed an “inconvenient” truth, the ongoing lack of awareness about global warming, in a parallel meeting to the climate change summit hosted by Mexico in the resort city of Cancún, Nov. 29 to Dec. 10.
→ read full articleAfrica: Food Versus Biofuels Debate Continues
Mantoe Phakathi – Inter Press Service-IPS,
6 Dec 2010
“We’re going to Cancún no better off than we were in Copenhagen,” said Thuli Makama, the director of Friends of the Earth Swaziland, as she prepared to leave for the climate negotiations in Mexico. She feels industrialised countries are promoting the production and use of biofuels to fulfill their energy needs, but this will leave more people in the developing world without food. “We face the danger of growing food for the machines instead of our stomachs,” Makama told IPS. Swaziland faces serious shortages of food, with 170,000 of its million-strong population in need of food aid this year.
→ read full articleThe Roof Is Now the Field
Eva Bartlett – Inter Press Service-IPS,
6 Dec 2010
“We grow on our roof because we are farmers but have no land now,” says Moatassan Hamad, 21, from Beit Hanoun in northern Gaza Strip.
→ read full articleUN: Defining Terrorism
Thalif Deen – Inter Press Service-IPS,
29 Nov 2010
The UN remains unable to draw a distinction between “freedom fighters” and “state sponsored terrorism”…. terrorism has become a political epithet designed to place enemies beyond the pale as opposed to a technical term the purpose of which is to define certain criminal acts that violate the laws of war and for which the perpetrators can be held accountable. “Thus, in the Middle East, it has reached the point where Palestinian or Arab armed activities that target Israeli military personnel are characterised as terrorist acts, while Israeli armed activities that deliberately target civilians are characterised as legitimate acts of self- defence,” he said.
→ read full articlePaulo Freire in Cuba: Popular Knowledge Can Transform People’s Worlds
Dalia Acosta – Inter Press Service,
22 Nov 2010
Valuing and sharing common people’s knowledge and experience, awakening critical consciousness and finding paths for effective social participation are the processes used by more than 1,000 people in Cuba working in Popular Education, a liberating approach to education developed by Brazilian educator Paulo Freire in the 1960s.
→ read full articleEast Timor Extends a Hand to Troubled Portugal
Mario de Queiroz – Inter Press Service,
22 Nov 2010
With the announcement that his country is ready to buy Portuguese debt, the president of East Timor, José Ramos-Horta, set a precedent in international economic relations that was universally praised in political and financial circles in this southern European country.
→ read full articleAgriculture: U.S. and EU Subsidies Still Out of Bounds
Isolda Agazzi – Inter Press Service,
22 Nov 2010
The United States’ policy to double agricultural exports shows that its government “has learnt nothing” from the last food crisis, a problem reflected in the dramatic increase in that country’s trade-distorting farm subsidies between 2007 and 2008.
→ read full articleLaos: For Cluster Bomb Survivors, War Far From Over
Irwin Loy – Inter Press Service-IPS,
15 Nov 2010
Eighteen-year-old Phongsavath Manithong rubbed his eyes with the back of his arms as he described how his life changed forever. He was not even born yet when U.S. military pilots dropped millions of tiny explosives onto Laos. But almost four decades after war ended for this South-east Asian nation, it is people like him who still suffer.
→ read full articleBurma: After Suu Kyi’s Release, Dangerous Time Sets In
Marwaan Macan-Markar – Inter Press Service,
15 Nov 2010
Suu Kyi, the daughter of Burma’s independence hero Aung San, has been granted freedom twice before since her first imprisonment in her ancestral home in July 1989. The freedoms granted to her by the military leaders of Burma, or Myanmar, were never permanent. Thus, this early, as Suu Kyi takes her first tentative steps as a free Burmese citizen after spending 15 of the past 21 years as a prisoner in her home, concern is already being expressed about whether her freedom will be short- lived.
→ read full articleSri Lanka: Widows Struggle to Put Life Back Together Again
Adithya Alles – IPS-Inter Press Service,
1 Nov 2010
Having to take care of eight teenage children is not an easy task for 70-year-old Yamunadevi (not her real name). But these youngsters are her grandchildren, orphaned by Sri Lanka’s civil war of more than two decades. “I have no option. I have to take care of them, otherwise they don’t have anyone else,” said Yamunadevi, who hails from Alampiddi, Mullaithivu district in the north.
→ read full articleThis Peaceful Position Takes Courage
Mel Frykberg – Inter Press Service-IPS,
25 Oct 2010
A former captain in the Israeli Air Force, previously an ardent Zionist who lost many members of his family in the Holocaust, has been labelled a psychopath and denounced by many Israelis for the moral stand he has taken against the Israeli occupation.
→ read full articleBiodiversity at the Cliff’s Edge
Stephen Leahy – Inter Press Service-IPS,
25 Oct 2010
What nature gives us is often taken for granted, but if its basic elements disappear, human life on Earth would not be possible. The mission of the biodiversity summit under way in Nagoya is to reverse the headlong rush towards the precipice
→ read full articleEurope: Citizen Rights Don’t Apply to Roma
Claudia Ciobanu – Inter Press Service-IPS,
16 Aug 2010
All major European countries plan mass expulsions of Roma or demolitions of Roma settlements. Rights groups warn that these measures entail the criminalisation of an entire ethnic group, and break EU law.
→ read full articleWhen Agrochemical Corporations Invented Nature
Julio Godoy – Inter Press Service,
9 Aug 2010
A civil society protest against a British agrochemical company that claims it has invented a particular sort of broccoli has again focused attention on the question who owns natural biodiversity, especially vegetables, seeds, and many forms of meat and animal food products.
→ read full articleNow a Global Player, the South Must Develop Its Media
Mario Lubetkin – Inter Press Service,
10 May 2010
There is a striking asymmetry between the new political and economic world order that has been emerging from the South over the last five years and the relative immobility of the international system of information, which only partially reflects the major transformations of our age.
→ read full articleSPAIN’S MOST FAMOUS JUDGE MAY BE SUSPENDED
Tito Drago – Inter Press Service-IPS,
5 Apr 2010
MADRID, Apr 2, 2010 (IPS) – Spanish Judge Baltasar Garzón, who became world-famous when he issued the warrant that resulted in former Chilean dictator Augusto Pinochet’s arrest in London in 1998, is now facing legal charges himself, which could cost him his job. Garzón, who sits on the Audiencia Nacional, Spain’s highest criminal court, is […]
→ read full articleACTIVISTS WORRIED ABOUT “SECRET” INTERNET TREATY
Emilio Godoy – Inter Press Service,
12 Jan 2010
MEXICO CITY, Jan 12 , 2010 (IPS) – An international treaty to combat copyright infringement and piracy, being negotiated by Mexico and other countries, could curtail expansion of the internet, violate people’s rights to privacy and freedom of expression, and undermine multilateral accords on intellectual property, activists warn. Canada, the European Union, Japan, Switzerland and […]
→ read full articleBRAZIL: WOMEN ‘PEACE WORKERS’ IN THE FAVELAS
Fabiana Frayssinet - IPS-Inter Press Service,
6 Jul 2009
It’s another day marked by gunfire in the Morro da Providencia “favela”, one of the most dangerous slums in this Brazilian city, and the only area where people can move around in relative safety is in the lower part of the neighbourhood, towards the foot of the hill. Alessandra da Cunha is one of the […]
→ read full articleCUBA: “PARTICIPATORY SOCIALIST DEMOCRACY IS ESSENTIAL”
Dalia Acosta, Inter Press Service (IPS),
4 Jul 2009
Interview with Mariela Castro, daughter of President Raúl Castro and activist for sexual diversity rights. Renowned for her work for the rights of gay, lesbian, bisexual, transvestite and transgender people, Mariela Castro advocates a fairer, more inclusive, and above all more participatory socialism in Cuba. Castro is head of the National Sex Education Centre (CENESEX) […]
→ read full articleAFRICA: WHO’S HARMING FISH STOCKS? TRAWLERS OR ARTISANAL FISHERS?
Inter Press Service,
2 Jul 2009
Geneva (Switzerland) — Red tunas, sharks, rays and cods may soon disappear from our tables. Negotiations are ongoing at the World Trade Organisation (WTO) to reduce the subsidies that contribute to this catastrophe. These talks foresee exceptions for developing countries, but small fishers may have to turn to other sources of livelihood. Some 80 percent […]
→ read full articleA NEW MEMBER OF THE UNITED NATIONS?
Hazel Henderson – Inter Press Service,
3 Jun 2009
An outside-the-box approach is needed for the worsening problems of Afghanistan and Pakistan. US official policy in its war in Afghanistan is to combat al-Qaeda and make sure there are no further attacks on the USA from their safe havens. Yet, on his recent visit to the United States, Afghan President Hamid Karzai said there […]
→ read full articleAFRICA: CONTINENT WILL HAVE TO FEED EU’s ARTIFICIAL BIOFUELS DEMAND
Inter Press Service-IPS,
21 Apr 2009
Earlier in the decade, biofuels were hailed as the energy panacea, the silver bullet to solve oil shortages and abide by environmental concerns. The European Union recently took the lead in imposing the use of these liquid or gaseous fuels made from plants. But the green credentials of biofuels have since been disputed. The total […]
→ read full articleISRAEL BOYCOTT MOVEMENT GAINS MOMENTUM
Mel Frykberg - Inter Press Service,
3 Mar 2009
"Standing United with the People of Gaza" is the theme of this week’s Israel Apartheid Week (IAW), which kicked off in Toronto and another 39 cities across the globe Sunday [Mar 1st]. A movement to boycott Israeli goods, culture and academic institutions is gaining momentum as Geneva prepares to host the UN’s Anti-Racism Conference, Durban […]
→ read full article