20/11/2011
Human Wrongs Watch
Bali – UN secretary-general Ban Ki-moon challenged the Asia and Pacific region “to assume global leadership on issues of international concern, including climate change, sustainable development, access to food and energy, human rights and the empowerment of women.”
Image: Gunkarta Gunawan Kartapranata | Wikimedia Commons
“Now is the moment for Asia, and ASEAN [Association of South-east Asian Nations] in particular, to step into a truly global role,” Ban said on the occasion of the ASEAN summit in Bali, Indonesia.
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20/11/2011
Human Wrongs Watch
By Jutta Wolf* – IDN-InDepth News
Berlin – A new study on the extent of protection of women and girls has revealed that the risk of human rights abuses, such as sexual violence, discrimination, trafficking and sexual exploitation, are at “extreme” levels in more than 40 percent of the 197 countries around the world.
Rape victims receive treatment at Panzi hospital in Bukavu, DR Congo | Credit: UN
The Women’s and Girls’ Right Index (WGRI), released by risk analysis and mapping company Maplecroft, discloses that the rights of women and girls are at “extreme risk” in 80 countries, including 33 from sub-Saharan Africa, nearly all of the Middle East and North Africa region and many emerging economies.
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Posted in Africa, Asia, Latin America & Caribbean, Market Lords, Middle East, Others-USA-Europe-etc., The Peoples, War Lords |
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19/11/2011
Human Wrongs Watch
New York – The UN independent expert on access to water and sanitation as a human right urged States to allocate more resources to improving sanitation and promote efficient use of existing hygiene facilities, stressing that people are entitled to decent toilets.
Credit: UN
“Lack of sanitation implies the loss of millions of school and work days as well as enormous health costs,” said Catarina de Albuquerque, the UN Special Rapporteur on the Human Right to Safe Drinking Water and Sanitation, in a statement to mark the World Toilet Day, which is observed on 19 November each year.
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19/11/2011
Human Wrongs Watch
By Silvia Swinden* – Pressenza
London – New York, London, Zurich… Not a glamorous multinational but a seemingly coordinated action to evict protesters from campsites. “Health and Safety” reasons. Too many “vulnerable” people. Concerns from local businesses. Public Highway legislation… Why is it not spelt out? Occupations are drawing undue attention to the corrupt and dehumanising practices of the Financial Sector.
Image: Mrwho00tm | Wikimedia Commons
Apart from being spaces of interchange and learning – like Tent City University at Occupy the London Stock Exchange lectures and workshops – the Occupations have been keeping the behaviour of the financial sector in the public eye.
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19/11/2011
Human Wrongs Watch
Geneva – Over 12,000 refugees and migrants arrived in Yemen by boat in October, the highest monthly total since the United Nations refugee agency began tracking the flow of between the Horn of Africa and Yemen nearly six years ago. Many of them are victims of abductions, extortions, kidnappings and sexual assaults.
Credit: UN
The 12,545 arrivals last month brings the total so far this year to 84,656, according to the UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR). This exceeds the previous annual record of 77,000 in 2009.
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Posted in Africa, Market Lords, The Peoples, War Lords |
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18/11/2011
Human Wrongs Watch
By Corporate Accountability International – TRANSCEND*
The World Bank has launched a new partnership with global corporations including Nestlé, Coca-Cola and Veolia. Housed at the World Bank’s International Finance Corporation (IFC), the new venture aspires to “transform the water sector” by inserting the corporate sector into what has historically been a public service. The new partnership is part of a broader trend of industry collusion to influence global water policy.
Kim Hansen | Wikimedia Commons
The venture -called the 2030 Water Resources Group Phase 2 Entity- aligns global corporations that have major financial stakes in water governance with the World Bank, one of the world’s leading development institutions.
Nestlé Chairman Peter Brabeck-Letmathe has been appointed to chair the Water Resources Group, which has already received $1.5 million in IFC funding. Nestlé is the world’s largest water bottling corporation.
Advocates for people’s access to water point to this as the latest example of water corporations’ efforts to interfere in legitimate, democratic water governance.
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17/11/2011
Human Wrongs Watch
By Nathan Schneider* –WagingNonviolence
New York – Liberty Plaza (or Park or Square) looks an awful lot like Zuccotti Park again—aside from the damaged flower beds and a broken plastic peace sign lying in the gutter. At 1 in the morning, hundreds of police in riot gear stormed the plaza, shining floodlights and tearing down tents.
Source: WagingNonviolence
Sanitation workers loaded occupiers’ belongings into garbage trucks, including the books of the occupation’s library. LRAD sound cannons were on the scene, and as many as five police helicopters hovered high overhead, where airspace was closed to media aircraft.
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17/11/2011
Human Wrongs Watch
By Lee Suster* – SocialistWorker
The sleazy crook who dominated Italian politics for nearly two decades is gone–only to be replaced by an unelected “eurocrat” installed by bankers to make working people pay for Europe’s relentless financial crisis.
Mario Monti. Photo: ESMT | Wikimedia Commons
The comparable rate for German bonds is 2.25 percent. In other words, just to fund its operations, the Italian government must pay nearly three times the amount of interest that Germany does.
Italian government debt is already equivalent to 120 percent of the country’s gross domestic product (GDP), so the spiking interest rates have big international banks and European Union politicians worried that Italy won’t be able to repay its debts.
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14/11/2011
Human Wrongs Watch
Geneva – While the Syrian regime “brutal crackdown” on pro-democracy protesters continues unabated, with the death toll surpassing 3,500, the UN has now voiced concern over “shortages of food, water, electricity and medical services in Syria.”
Syria women protesting - Credit: UN
The UN World Food Programme, while reporting on this situation, requested that humanitarian agencies be allowed to go to all areas where people are in need of assistance.
The agency has not been able to carry out a full evaluation of the food situation in Syria, but plans to distribute 50,000 monthly ration packs this month, in addition to the 22,000 rations delivered in August, WFP spokesperson Gaëlle Sévenier said.
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14/11/2011
Human Wrongs Watch
By Raul de Sagastizabal* – PoliticaPress
With two years of failed plans, pseudo-plans and announcements of plans, Europe has acquired a huge pile of debt and a decade of agony.
Eurozone countries. Map: Glentamara | Wikimedia Commons
International media reports that the Italian 10-year bond yields exceeds 6.6 percent with a spread over the benchmark German bond of 400 basis points, percentage too close to 7% that triggered the debt bailouts in Greece, Portugal and Ireland.
The Spanish bond yield hovers around 5.64% with a spread of 390 basis points and it is assumed that European Central Bank would intervene in the sovereign bond markets to stem the rise of the bonds in both countries.
However, the news is not the rise in yields or spreads, the news is that Italy, as well as Spain, and other euro area partners continue to pay debts with more debt.
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HUMAN WRONGS WATCH 