By Mario Osava
SALVADOR, Brazil, Jan 31, 2010 (IPS)
One of the greatest challenges facing the world today is to attend to the urgent social needs of the planet’s population, and particularly the one billion people living “on the brink of survival”, while dealing with the equally urgent demands of the environment.
This warning came from Brazilian Social Development Minister Patrus Ananias at the Thematic World Social Forum meeting held here in the capital of the northeastern state of Bahia.
Meeting the basic needs of the one billion human beings suffering from hunger today will require the production of massive amounts of food and other goods, which will inevitably affect the environment, he noted. Read More »
Posted in Environmental Justice, Global Economic Justice, Global Poverty & the Poor, Solidarity & Globalization, World Social Forum | Comments Off
“The moment has come to discern the signs of the times, seize the opportunity, and expand the view.” – John XXIII
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BOGOTA, January 20, 2010 — El Salvador’s Petition of Forgiveness breaks 18 years of total impunity for serious human rights abuses committed during the country’s civil war, the International Center for Transitional Justice said yesterday.
“With this act, El Salvador takes a first step to overcome the state of neglect and denial that had characterized the state policy thus far, and, in this way, to move toward a more meaningful agenda on human rights issues,” said ICTJ Americas Director Javier Ciurlizza.
As a next step, El Salvador should fulfill the recommendations of the 1993 truth commission, in particular those related to criminal prosecutions for perpetrators of the most serious human rights violations, as well as those related to the need to exclude perpetrators from employment in public administration. Read More »
Posted in El Salvador, Meso America | Comments Off
BBC News
The leading US general in Haiti has said it is a “reasonable assumption” that up to 200,000 people may have died in last Tuesday’s earthquake. Lt Gen Ken Keen said the disaster was of “epic proportions”, but it was “too early to know” the full human cost.
Rescuers pulled more people alive from the rubble at the weekend, but at least 70,000 people have already had burials. Relief efforts are being slowed by bottlenecks, and many thousands of survivors are fending for themselves. Many Haitians are trying to leave the devastated capital city of Port-au-Prince, and there are security concerns amid reports of looting and violence. Read More »
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By Peter Hallward, January 14, 2010
[An earlier version of this article first appeared in the British Guardian.
If we are serious about assisting this devastated land we must stop trying to control and exploit it.
Any large city in the world would have suffered extensive damage from an earthquake on the scale of the one that ravaged Haiti’s capital city on the afternoon of January 13, but it’s no accident that so much of Port-au-Prince now looks like a war zone. Much of the devastation wreaked by this latest and most calamitous disaster to befall Haiti is best understood as another thoroughly manmade outcome of a long and ugly historical sequence. Read More »
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