HUMAN WRONGS WATCH

Human Wrongs Watch

By Vandana Shiva* | Asian Age

19 May 2016 – May 22 has been declared International Biodiversity Day by the United Nations.

It gives us an opportunity to become aware of the rich biodiversity that has been evolved by our farmers as co-creators with nature.

It also provides an opportunity to acknowledge the threats to our biodiversity and our rights from IPR monopolies and monocultures.

Just as our Vedas and Upanishads have no individual authors, our rich biodiversity, including seeds, have been evolved cumulatively.

They are a common heritage of present and future farm communities who have evolved them collectively. I recently joined tribals in Central India who have evolved thousands of rice varieties for their festival of “Akti”.

Human Wrongs Watch

By Baher Kamal*

Human Wrongs Watch

By Baher Kamal*

ISTANBUL, Turkey, May 24 2016 (IPS) – The World Humanitarian Summit (WHS) held in Istanbul on May 23-24, managed to send a strong wake-up call to the world about the unprecedented human suffering now in course, but failed to achieve the objective of attracting the massive funds needed to alleviate the humanitarian drama, as none of the leaders of the Group 7 of the richest courtiers nor of the five permanent members of the UN Security Council attended, with the exception of the German Chancellor Angela Merkel.

At the summit’s closing session, while recalling that the WHS achieved its main objective of addressing the conscious of the world towards the growing human drama, both Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan and the UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon expressed strong “disappointment” on the absence of leaders of the most powerful countries.

Though they reiterated their appeal for solidarity to rescue the most vulnerable people on Earth–130 million victims of conflicts and natural disasters and growing, none of them could hold out or offer any hope soon.

Human Wrongs Watch

By Thalif Deen*

A Maternity ward in Port Loko, Sierra Leone. Credit: Mohamed Fofanah/IPS.

Arthur Erken, Director of the Division of Communications and Strategic Partnerships at UNFPA, told IPS some key donors are reducing contributions not only to UNFPA but also to the entire international development community.

Others have indicated their cuts are partially motivated by the cost related to integrating refugees into their host communities, he added.

Human Wrongs Watch

By Baher Kamal*

In fact, while the United Nations reports that the international community spends today around 25 billion dollars to provide live-saving assistance to 125 million people devastated by wars and natural disasters, the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI). estimates world’s military expenditure in 2015 was over 1.6 trillion dollars.

Human Wrongs Watch

By Roberto Savio*

ROME, May 16 2016 (IPS) – A new spectre is haunting the world. It is not the spectre of communism, as Marx’s Manifesto famously proclaimed. It is the spectre of fear, which has increasingly become the rationale behind politics. And, as the old proverb says, fear is not a good counselor.

Let us take, for example, the last elections in the Philippines. In a country where the of memory of the Marcos dictatorship are still relatively recent (Marcos was forced by a popular revolution to quit in 1986), people have elected by a large margin as their president Rodrigo Duterte, who made his campaign motto: “Let us kill them all”.

He was referring to criminals, thieves, drug dealers and others whom he prosecuted using paramilitary gangs, when he was mayor of Davao City.

In his campaign, he said that once president he would kill some of them himself. The outgoing President, Benigno S. Aquino III, tried to stop him, saying that was tantamount to return to the dictatorship of Ferdinando Marcos. He asked the other candidates to unite to defeat Duterte, but nobody agreed.

Despite strong economic growth, the Philippines still has a high level of poverty and unemployment, a raging war in the southern part of the country against insurgents and kidnapping gangs.

Human Wrongs Watch

By Tharanga Yakupitiyage*

The UN Population Fund (UNFPA) published a report this week ahead of a UN meeting to review progress made in developing countries over the past five years. Known as the midterm review of the Istanbul Programme of Action (IPoA) the meeting will take place in Turkey on 27 to 29 May.