Thalif Deen
UNITED NATIONS, Jul 2 2007 (IPS) – The world s 22 rich nations, comprising the Paris-based Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD), grudgingly doled out about 104 billion dollars in official development assistance (ODA) to the world s poorer nations in 2006.
But just one solitary OECD member the United States has spent or allocated a staggering 456 billion dollars on the ongoing five-year-old destructive war in Iraq.
The financing of destruction has overtaken the financing of human development, says Yoke Ling of the Third World Network, a development-oriented non-governmental organisation based in Malaysia.
Every dollar spent on the Iraq war could have been used instead to bring us closer to the Millennium Development Goals (…
Emilio Godoy
MEXICO CITY, Aug 2 2007 (IPS) – Mexico City, one of the most populous cities in the world, could become the Venice of Latin America, although without the gondolieri to serenade tourists as they row them along.
Experts say the capital could be flooded by five metres of water for several weeks. The city proper has 8.7 million people, making it the 10th largest city in terms of population. However, as an urban agglomeration , it is the second biggest in the world, with more than 20 million people in the entire urban area.
The cause of the threatened flood is intensive pumping of groundwater in the Valley of Mexico, which has diverted the course of the main drainage system of the capital, already deteriorated because of a longterm lack of maintenance.
Sahana Singh*
SINGAPORE, Aug 30 2007 (IPS) – Government officials, sanitation experts, funding agencies and civil society representatives are unanimous that Asia s water delivery and sanitation problems should be tackled with the same urgency as disaster relief.
#39 #39People will not wait five to ten years for water. They will take it now, illegally if necessary. Time is of the essence, #39 #39 says K.E.Seetharam, water and urban development specialist at the Asian Development Bank (AsDB).
A team of water experts who are working round the clock to prepare a forward-looking document called Asian Water and Development Outlook (AWDO), funded by the AsDB, met in Singapore for three days of consultations, last week. The document is expected to act as a guide for policy m…
Dalia Acosta
HAVANA, Oct 3 2007 (IPS) – Two women set out nine years ago to help the barrio of Balcón Arimao, on the outskirts of the Cuban capital, tackle its numerous problems through community participation.
After an uphill battle, the Paulo Freire Community Centre has become the neighbourhood s main social centre, and the permanent home of the Taller de Transformación Integral del Barrio (Workshop for the Integral Transformation of the Neighbourhood) since July 2003.
The beginning was not easy, as the women had to earn the trust of the local community, and the problems of rundown housing, bad streets and poor water and sewage infrastructure, as well as a rise in violent crime and drug consumption among young people, seemed insurmountable.
The Taller has…
Anuradha Kher
NEW YORK, Oct 24 2007 (IPS) – Long after fighting in the Ituri region of the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) has largely subsided, civilian populations there continue to face high levels of violence from all sides, according to the global humanitarian group Doctors Without Borders/Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF).
A patient ward of Bon Marche hospital in Bunia, Democratic Republic of Congo. Credit:
The five-year conflict that raged in the country between government for…
Patricia Grogg
HAVANA, Nov 28 2007 (IPS) – While scientists devote their best efforts to developing an AIDS vaccine, prevention continues to be the most effective way of containing the pandemic which has already caused the deaths of 2.1 million people this year, and new infections in another 2.5 million people.
The world is doing its best to find an antidote, but the results of this work will clearly not be a short term solution, so prevention remains the only way to avoid infection with HIV, María Isela Lantero, head of the Public Health Ministry s National Programme for HIV/AIDS Control and Prevention, told IPS.
Lantero reported that as of October, there were 7,379 people living with HIV in Cuba, of whom 5,524 were asymptomatic and 1,855 suffered from full-blown A…
Alicia Fraerman
MADRID , Jan 9 2008 (IPS) – Abortion clinics in Spain went on a five-day strike Tuesday to protest arrests of clinic personnel in Barcelona, the capital of the northeastern region of Catalonia.
Peruvian Dr. Carlos Morín, the director of a clinic in that city, was imprisoned on remand in late December, along with two of his colleagues, on charges of performing illegal abortions.
Two other clinics have been closed since early December in Madrid, where abusive inspections are being carried out by the authorities, said Isabel Iserte, deputy head of the Spanish Family Planning Federation (FPFE).
In Spain, abortion is illegal except when a woman has been raped (the termination must be done in the first 12 weeks of pregnancy), in the case of foetal m…
Adrianne Appel
BOSTON, Feb 14 2008 (IPS) – Leading U.S. scientists called on Congress Thursday to make sure the next president does not do what they say the George W. Bush Administration has done: censor, suppress and falsify important environmental and health research.
The next president and Congress must cultivate an environment where reliable scientific advice flows freely, said Susan Wood, a former director of women #39s research at the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA). Wood resigned her post in 2005 in protest over the FDA s delay in getting emergency, over-the-counter birth control onto the market.
Serious consequences can result when drug safety decisions are not based on the best available scientific advice from staff scientists and experts, she said.…
David Cronin
BRUSSELS, Mar 13 2008 (IPS) – The European Union #39s efforts to promote gender equality in poor countries have been dubbed half-hearted by the bloc #39s only directly elected institution.
Around 17 billion euros (26 billion dollars) has been allocated to the EU #39s Development Cooperation Instrument (DCI) aid for Asia, Latin America, the Middle East and South Africa in the 2007-13 period. But though EU governments first declared in 1995 that advancement of women should be a core objective of the Union #39s development aid policy, gender issues are largely absent in the plans for spending the DCI #39s funds.
A new European Parliament report bemoans how most of the DCI plans for helping individual countries contain no specific targets for improving the lo…
UNITED NATIONS, Apr 25 2008 (IPS) – With a million people a year still dying from malaria, the United Nations is leading a new campaign to provide universal coverage of essential malaria control measures particularly bed nets in Africa by the end of 2010.
A female mosquito (Anopheles gambiae), feeding. Credit: US Centres for Disease Control & Prevention/Jim Gathany
There is currently funding for 100 million nets over the next year and a half, b…