19/09/2012
This isn’t the kind of record you wish to remember and tell your grandchildren about. This is no tale of great sporting achievement like Usain Bolt smashing his way into the Olympic record books. No, this is something entirely more sombre.
I’m in the Arctic as part of a Greenpeace crew to bear witness to this year’s sea ice minimum – the moment of the year when the extent of Arctic sea ice is at its lowest. And very soon we expect to hear news of a new record, breaking the one set in 2007 – the lowest ever recorded sea ice minimum.
If current trends continue, the Arctic Ocean – which some research suggests has not been ice free for many thousands of years – is likely to see ice free summers within the next decade.
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19/09/2012
Violence against women and girls and the indiscriminate extraction of natural resources are among the most pressing issues that indigenous peoples face today, a United Nations human rights expert said.
©UN Photo/Eskinder Debebe
“A recurring issue that has come to my attention in various contexts is that of violence against indigenous women and girls,” said the Special Rapporteur on the rights of indigenous peoples, James Anaya, in his statement to the UN Human Rights Council in Geneva on 18 September.
In the past year, Anaya has collaborated with various countries, UN agencies and indigenous peoples in several studies and country assessments on the challenges indigenous peoples face on a daily basis. He has also made recommendations to States of good practices and responded to cases of alleged human rights violations.
Anaya said that in his talks with representatives on indigenous issues, they had stressed the need for a holistic approach to combat violence against indigenous women and girls. The implementation of the Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples, he stressed, will be crucial to address this issue.
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18/09/2012
By Uri Avnery*, TRANSCEND – Noting could be more scary than this duo – Binyamin Netanyahu and Ehud Barak – is in a position to start a war, the dimensions and outcome of which are incalculable.
Netanyahu | Wikipedia
Ehud Barak | Wikipedia
It’s scary not only because of their ideological fixations and mental outlook, but also because of the level of their intelligence.
The last month gave us a small sample. By itself it was but a passing episode. But as an illustration of their decision-making abilities, it was frightening enough.
The routine conference of the Movement of Non-Aligned Nations was to take place in Tehran. 120 states promised to attend, many of them represented by their presidents or prime ministers.
This was bad news for the Israeli government, which has devoted much of its energies during the last three years to the strenuous effort to isolate Iran – while Iran was devoted to a no less strenuous effort to isolate Israel.
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18/09/2012
By Tony Henderson, Pressenza* – China’s voracious appetite for natural resources has driven a boom of investments and aid to African countries. In the Southern African country of Zambia, Chinese companies are building roads, hospitals, sports stadia as well as reviving copper mines abandoned in the country’s Copperbelt region.
**The major Nkana open copper mine, Kitwe. Photo: Per Arne Wilson | Wikimedia Commons.
The Chinese have also chosen Zambia as the place to set up its first out of five free trade zones in Africa. The Chambishi multi-facility economic zone on the Copperbelt is anchored by a 200 million US dollar copper smelter. It is also meant to manufacture “TV’s, mobile phones and other electronic items”.
According to government sources, over 5,000 local jobs have been created and at completion, the zone will have up to 60 Chinese companies, employing 60,000 local people.
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18/09/2012
Bangladesh’s discriminatory personal laws on marriage, separation, and divorce trap many women and girls in abusive marriages or drive them into poverty when marriages fall apart, Human Rights Watch says in a new report.
**Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina with the Prime Minister of the United Kingdom David Cameron in London in 2011.
The 109-page report, “‘Will I Get My Dues…Before I Die?’ Harm to Women from Bangladesh’s Discriminatory Laws on Marriage, Separation, and Divorce,“ documents how the country’s discriminatory and archaic personal laws impoverish many women at separation or divorce, and trap some women in violent marriages because they fear destitution.
“In many cases these laws contribute to homelessness, hunger, and ill-health for divorced or separated women and their children.”
The United Nations Development Program (UNDP) and the World Food Programme (WFP) have recorded significantly higher levels of food insecurity and poverty among female-headed Bangladeshi households, it adds.
“Bangladesh is world famous for programs meant to reduce women’s poverty, yet for decades it has ignored how discriminatory personal laws drive many women into poverty,” said Aruna Kashyap, Asia researcher for women’s rights and author of the report, which was released on Sept. 17, 2012.
“With many women precariously housed or struggling to feed themselves when their marriages break down, Bangladesh should immediately reform its personal laws, fix its family courts, and provide state assistance to poor women.”
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17/09/2012
Despite so many specialized reports (see section Read Also*, below)–some of them elaborated by the world body he leads, the UN Secretary-General is optimistic! In fact he has just “hailed” the efforts of the international community in “protecting the atmosphere, noting that with the global phase-out of 98 per cent of ozone-depleting gases, the ozone layer is now on track to recover over the next five decades.”
Photo: United Nations
“I urge Governments and all partners to apply the same spirit to the other great environment and development challenges of our times. Together, we can achieve the future we want,” Ban Ki-moon said in his message on the International Day for the Preservation of the Ozone Layer, observed annually on 16 September.
The Day commemorates the date of the signing, in 1987, of the Montreal Protocol on Substances that Deplete the Ozone Layer, which aims to protect the ozone layer by taking measures “to control total global production and consumption of substances that deplete it, with the ultimate objective of their elimination,” the UN reported.
The ozone layer, a fragile shield of gas, protects the Earth from the harmful portion of the rays of the sun, thus helping preserve life on the planet.
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17/09/2012
By IRIN*, Johannesburg – Small farmers in the developing world who are going hungry for long periods of time – in some cases for up to half the year in Ethiopia’s Borana region – are failing to find ways to adapt to an increasingly erratic climate, a new survey has found.
Photo: Jaspreet Kindra/IRIN. Most small farmers produce barely enough for their own consumption.
The survey, which was conducted just ahead of the severe drought in East Africa in 2011, interviewed 700 households in Ethiopia, Kenya, Uganda and Tanzania. It was designed to develop simple, comparable, cross-site household-level indicators to assess if small farmers were able to diversify, adapt and adopt new farming practices in the face of climate change.
The team of researchers involved in the survey found that households that were food secure for longer periods of time were able to experiment with new farming approaches and techniques, such as planting drought- or flood-tolerant varieties of seeds.
“When you are without food, you cannot really innovate,” said Patti Kristjanson, agricultural economist for the CGIAR Research Program on Climate Change, Agriculture and Food Security (CCAFS), which led the study.”
It stands to reason that households struggling to feed their families throughout the year are not in a good position to invest in new practices that include higher costs and risks.” Not being able to adapt is contributing to food insecurity, she added.
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17/09/2012
Arctic oil drilling is a dangerous, high-risk enterprise and an oil spill under these icy waters would have a catastrophic impact on one of the most pristine, unique and beautiful landscapes on earth. The risks of such an accident are ever present and the oil industry’s response plans remain wholly inadequate, Greenpeace reports*.
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**Oil and ice are mixed up – and booms appear mostly useless in the clean up of a small oil spill after Icelandic container ship Godafoss ran aground on the Southern Norwegian coast…© Jon Terje Hellgren Hansen / Greenpeace.
The Arctic’s extreme weather and freezing temperatures, its remote location and the presence of moving sea ice severely increase the risks of oil drilling, complicate logistics and present unparalleled difficulties for any clean-up operation.
“Its fragile ecosystem is particularly vulnerable to an oil spill and the consequences of an accident would have a profound effect on the environment and local fisheries.”
The Arctic is home to four million people, many of whom are descendants of Indigenous communities who have lived in the Far North for thousands of years, according to Greenpeace.
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16/09/2012
Geneva – Some governments unilaterally reformed collective bargaining arrangements at the height of the economic crisis. Reversing those decisions and providing policy support for collective bargaining would be key to recovery, according to the International Labour Organization.
*Protests in Spain. Photo: Rastrojo (D•ES) | Wikimedia Commons
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Weakening or decentralizing collective bargaining arrangements– as some countries have done during the crisis – is likely to lead to more wage inequalities and social instability,
(ILO) has warned.
Decentralizing the process and letting companies negotiate in the absence of strong national and sectoral agreements, puts downward pressure on wages and working conditions, says Susan Hayter, ILO’s senior industrial and employment relations specialist.
“The sharp rise in wage inequality in the United States and the United Kingdom in recent years can be directly linked to the decline in union membership and the associated decline in coverage by collective bargaining agreements.”
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15/09/2012
By Shahira Amin for RIA Novosti* – Having won the election by a mere 51 percent of the vote two months ago, Egypt’s new Islamist president Mohamed Morsi now has less than a month left to solve all the problems he promised to tackle in his first 100 days in office, and the Egyptian youth and press are not about to let him off the hook: a new Web site called the “Morsi Meter” has been launched to track the president’s performance.
Morsi. Credit: shirsoleiman20120614070613217.jpg. presstv.ir
The site’s findings leave much to be desired: the “Morsi meter” now shows Egyptians’ satisfaction with what Morsi has achieved so far at just 47 percent. Much of the evaluation has been negative, with critics lamenting that 61 out of a total of 64 electoral promises made by the president remain unfulfilled.
There is a “to do” list under each of the five areas outlined in Morsi’s “100-day plan,” but so far only three tasks have been ticked off as “accomplished,” while 23 out of the remaining 61 are marked “in progress.”
To be fair, Morsi is operating in dire economic conditions, as analysts warn that Egypt is on the brink of economic disaster.
A series of interruptions and strikes that have taken place since the revolution resulted in a marked drop in productivity, while political turmoil and the shaky security situation have scared off foreign investors and tourists. Unemployment in the country has soared to 20 percent, and foreign currency reserves are at a dangerous all-time low.
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HUMAN WRONGS WATCH 