The book documents an increasing trend towards the harassment and criminalisation of indigenous peoples and communities.
It also highlights the rising tensions between states and indigenous peoples, shrinking civil society space, loss of land rights and lack of access to justice for indigenous peoples to enjoy their rights.
“Indigenous peoples make up 5% of the world’s population, yet they represent 15% of the world’s poorest, and in 2017, half of the approximately 400 environmental and human rights defenders were killed.
KUALA LUMPUR and SYDNEY, Apr 16 2019 (IPS)* — The World Bank’s Enabling the Business of Agriculture (EBA) project, launched in 2013, has sought agricultural reforms favouring the corporate sector. EBA was initially established to support the New Alliance for Food Security and Nutrition, initiated by the G8 to promote private agricultural development in Africa.
Jomo Kwame Sundaram
The New Alliance has been touted as “a new model of partnership” for agricultural transformation in Africa.
The Bank has used the EBA to address the land issue in developing countries, particularly in Africa.
The effort is strongly supported by the US and UK governments as well as the Gates Foundation, all strong proponents of corporate agriculture.
Emulating the influential annual World Bank Doing Business report, the EBA scores countries on the ease of doing business in agriculture.
I will not address what I believe to be the horrifically gross injustices of incarceration here, but will instead direct my focus on that extra twist of the knife.
It is not enough to have deprived these two individuals of their liberties. No: the all-powerful State must also inflict a torture upon them while they are incarcerated.
To say that insult has piled onto injury would itself be insulting because it is far more: it is heinous, despicable, cruel and totally unwarranted.
DAYLESFORD, Australia, 15 April 2019 — On 11 April 2019, WikiLeaks editor Julian Assange was dragged from the Ecuadorian Embassy in London by UK police and arrested for breaching a bail condition. See ‘Arrest update – SW1’.
Demonstration in support of Assange in front of Sydney Town Hall, 10 December 2010 | Elekhh – Own work | CC BY-SA 3.0
Noting a 300 per cent surge in the number of measles cases during the first three months of this year, compared to the same period last year, two UN agency heads declared on Monday [15 April 2019] that we now stand “in the middle of a global measles crisis”.
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World Bank/Dominic Chavez | Nurse at Redemption Hospital in Monrovia, Liberia, prepares to vaccinate children. | Photo from UN News.
“Cases have soared across the world, including in places where measles had previously been eliminated, like the United States”, asserted Henrietta Fore, Executive Director of the UN Children’s Fund (UNICEF) and Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, Director-General of the World Health Organization (WHO).
The international community must support the real efforts of genuine organisations working for peace and reconciliation as the only way to change the Israel/Palestine political landscape.
Sign in front of the Galil school, a joint Arab–Jewish primary school in Israel (Image by Arikk (talk) • CC BY-SA 3.0)
LONDON, 14 April 219 — Following the elections Netanyahu is now making his deals with other ultra-right and ultra-religious groups to form his fifth government after failure from his closest opponent Benny Gantz, who by presenting himself as an alliance of centre and left wing ideologies in spite of his right leaning history managed to divert votes from the more pro Palestinian real left, and a partial boycott of the elections by the Israeli Arabs.
The glimpse of Julian Assange being dragged from the Ecuadorean embassy in London is an emblem of the times. Might against right. Muscle against the law. Indecency against courage. Six policemen manhandled a sick journalist, his eyes wincing against his first natural light in almost seven years.
The Greanville Post
That this outrage happened in the heart of London, in the land of Magna Carta, ought to shame and anger all who fear for “democratic” societies. Assange is a political refugee protected by international law, the recipient of asylum under a strict covenant to which Britain is a signatory.
WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange should never have been punished for working with a whistleblower to expose war crimes. Chelsea Manning, the whistleblower, has done more time in prison, under harsher conditions, than William Calley, a key perpetrator of the My Lai massacre.
Remarkably, Manning is in jail again, failed by organizations that should unreservedly defend her, as the US tries to coerce her into helping inflict more punishment on Assange.
We need a new vision for global economic governance that is guided by the principle of subsidiarity.
Image: Jonny Goldstein, CC BY 2.0
13 April 2019 (openDemocracy)* — The upsurge of progressive economic proposals over the past few years in the face of austerity, stagnating living standards and rising inequality is inspiring.
15 April 2019 (UN Environment)* — Africa is urbanizing fast, as its population grows and many flocks to cities in search of jobs, education and healthcare.
Studies show that hundreds of millions more Africans will live in cities over the next three decades.
Many of these new urban Africans, however, are likely to end up in informal settlements. Already an estimated 200 million Africans live in informal settlements—often without access to energy and sanitation.
