31/07/2014
By Antonio C. S. Rosa**, editor, TRANSCEND Media Service — Interview conducted on the occasion of IPRA’s 50th anniversary celebration at the Istanbul Conference, Turkey, August 11-15, 2014.
Q: Prof. Galtung, please compare IPRA’s relevance, impact and consequence in 1964 and 50 years later in 2014. What have been its influence and concrete achievements?
JG: I do not think IPRA as such has impact, but it has impact on participants from all over the world, and they may have impact, academically, in NGOs, in some case in foreign offices.
Q: What are the affinities between Peace Research and Conflict Resolution theories and practices? Their impact on the world both as a whole, upon leaders and people?
JG: There are many roads to peace, like to health; better travel all of them! Conflict resolution is one, so is reconciliation, so is a peace culture and many others. But conflict resolution has the advantage that if well done it can have immediate impact: conflict solved, less frustration, less aggression, less violence, more peace; from one day to the other. At the marital level, from one minute to the next.
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31/07/2014
By Earth Policy Institute, July 2014 — Water scarcity may be the most underrated resource issue the world is facing today.
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Seventy percent of world fresh water use is for irrigation.
Each day we drink nearly 4 liters of water, but it takes some 2,000 liters of water—500 times as much—to produce the food we consume.
1,000 tons of water is used to produce 1 ton of grain.
Between 1950 and 2000, the world’s irrigated area tripled to roughly 700 million acres.
Source: Earth Policy Instiute
After several decades of rapid increase, however, the growth has slowed dramatically, expanding only 9 percent from 2000 to 2009. Given that governments are much more likely to report increases than decreases, the recent net growth may be even smaller.
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30/07/2014
By Judith Cavanagh, Think Africa Press*, July 2014 — Research released by a coalition of African and UK partners reveals that Africa loses almost six and a half times the amount of money that it receives in aid.
President Ellen Johnson Sirleaf of Liberia with UK Prime Minister David Cameron and Bill Gates at an aid conference in London. Photograph by Ben Fisher/GAVI Alliance.
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“It says something about this country. It says something about our standing in the world and our sense of duty in helping others… in short – it says something about the kind of people we are… And that makes me proud to be British.”
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As exhibited by UK Prime Minister David Cameron, who made the above comment on 8 June 2013, governments of wealthy countries like to tell tales of generous aid spending and a common responsibility to help those less fortunate in the world.
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But there is another story to tell.
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30/07/2014
Today, on 30 July 2014, the international community commemorates the first World Day against Trafficking in Persons. Trafficking in persons is a grave human rights violation and a serious crime affecting societies worldwide. It victimizes millions of women, men, and children, including those most vulnerable amongst migrant communities, asylum-seekers, refugees and stateless persons, and is commonly associated with many other forms of exploitation, such as sexual exploitation, forced and bonded labour, forced marriages and all practices similar to slavery.*
**Photo: Afghan girl begging in Kabul. Credit:Evstafiev | Wikimedia Commons
The brutality and injustice associated with trafficking in persons is immeasurable for each and every victim. Their lives, dreams and expectations are shattered. Trafficking in persons is a very lucrative business.
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This is illustrated by the
most recent estimates published this spring by the International Labour Organization which suggest that forced labour in the private economy alone generates US$ 150 billion in illegal profits per year. .
Two thirds of this figure (US$ 99 billion) comes from commercial sexual exploitation, while another US$ 51 billion are a result of forced economic exploitation, including domestic work, agriculture and other economic activities.
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29/07/2014
Gambella, Ethiopia, July 2014, (UNHCR) — Twelve-year-old Nyawech Chuol can barely stop sobbing long enough to tell the story of the night South Sudan’s civil war came to her home. She and her eight-year-old sister, Nyalouk, traumatized into silence, lost their family after a gun battle – and now they are completely alone n a foreign land.
©UNHCR/K.Gebreegziabher | Two sisters who fled South Sudan alone (in yellow and red on left) pose with their “foster family” inside a UNHCR communal shelter on the border inside Ethiopia.
Nyawech says they were fast asleep some weeks ago when the conflict that has swept South Sudan for the last seven months reached her village, Matiang, in Upper Nile State.
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“It was very dark in the night and we were all sleeping when we heard heavy gun shots,” she says, speaking through an interpreter at a crowded reception centre on the Pagak border crossing just inside Ethiopia. “I only remember putting on my dress, grabbing my younger sister by the hand and running out of the house in the darkness.” The family ran in different directions, and she hasn’t seen any relatives since.
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“When day light came and I saw only Nyalouk with me, I realized that my father, my mother and my two elder sisters were not with me and I cried a lot,” she says, as the tears flow again.
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28/07/2014
By Maung Zarni*, 28 July 2014, TRANSCEND Media Service — The permanent members of the UN Security Council are certifiably sick entities suffering from bouts of psychoses.
United Nations Security Council on the UN Headquarters in New York City | Date: 6 January 2014 | Source: Own work | Author: Neptuul | Wikimedia Commons
Their discernible inability or lack of will to really promote the collective well-being of us humans and protect our own habitat (the eco-system – not that self-destructive and life-negating Capitalist economic system with no happy ending in sight) can be explained psychologically – in addition to through other lenses. They are all suffering from imperial syndrome of various versions.
1) Loss of Empire (not so great Britain) – The Sun has long set in the genocidal, racist British – actually only English – Raj, and British officials suffer from the delusions that Britain still matters in post-WWII.
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28/07/2014
Human Wrongs Watch
By Kristy Siegfried , Johannesburg, 28 July 2014 (IRIN)* – As the number of migrants and asylum seekers reaching southern Europe’s shores this year continues to climb – to about 75,000 at last count – so too does the death toll from attempts to cross the Mediterranean in over-crowded, unseaworthy boats.
**Photo: Sara Prestianni/Flickr. Many bodies of migrants recovered from shipwrecks are never identified
The UN Refugee Agency (UNHCR) estimates that more than 800 migrants have died trying to make the treacherous crossing from North Africa since the beginning of the year. Last week alone, the bodies of 29 migrants were found in the packed hold of a fishing boat where they are thought to have been overcome by engine fumes.
According to survivor accounts, 60 others who tried to escape from the suffocating hold were stabbed and thrown overboard by five fellow passengers. A day earlier, the Italian navy rescued 12 people after their rubber dinghy capsized off the coast of Libya.
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Another 109 who were on the boat are missing. An unknown number of other migrants who attempt the journey disappear without a trace, their bodies presumably claimed by the sea, leaving families back home desperate for news of their loved ones that never comes.
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28/07/2014
Despite knowing full well the dangers of mercury, millions of small-scale gold miners across the globe continue to use the metal to separate gold from ore – usually because they have little other choice.*
An Indonesian woman pans for gold while her family looks on, credit: Usman Tariq, UNEP
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The mercury is mixed into ore and combines with the gold in a compound that can easily be scooped out and squeezed into a small bar of amalgam.
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This is then burned so that the mercury evaporates, leaving behind the gold. The dangerously toxic mercury vapour is often inhaled by the miners and their families, since these activities are usually conducted in their homes, or by the owners of gold shops who will process the amalgam for the miners before buying.
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“When you burn off the amalgam – your head will feel like it’s going to explode and you’ll find it hard to breathe,” says Bapak Amit, a gold miner from Central Kalimantan, Indonesia. However, introducing miners to simple recycling technologies can dramatically reduce the impact of mercury on human health and the environment.
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28/07/2014
Rome – The United Nations on 25 July 2014, called on the international donor community to renew a commitment to fight hunger and food insecurity in the Sahel by protecting and strengthening the resilience of the poor and very poor families in the region.
Photo source: FAO
Various factors, including the impacts of several ongoing conflicts and recurring droughts are exacerbating food insecurity in the region, the UN Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) and the UN Assistant Secretary-General and Regional Humanitarian Coordinator for the Sahel, Robert Piper, said in a joint statement.
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In February, FAO appealed to donors for 116 million US dollars to assist more than 7.5 million vulnerable people in the Sahel. To date, only 16 million US dollars, or less than 14 percent, have been received.
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HUMAN WRONGS WATCH 