Marcela Valente
BUENOS AIRES, Sep 6 2006 (IPS) – In an unprecedented move, Argentina s Supreme Court held a public hearing with the aim of securing commitments from the State and private companies to live up to the clean-up plan for the Matanza-Riachuelo basin, a byword for pollution in this South American country.
When exactly will the last remaining sewage drains be ready? asked the president of the Supreme Court, Enrique Petracchi, interrupting from the dais, when the secretary of the Environment and Sustainable Development, Romina Picolotti, was detailing aspects of the comprehensive project for the recovery of the Matanza-Riachuelo river, which runs across the city of Buenos Aires and into the Río de la Plata (River Plate) estuary.
Picolotti said that in 15 yea…
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…
Moe Yu May
RANGOON, Jun 4 2008 (IPS) – Ko Ko Aung remembers the moment when he thought he had lost his older brother, Wai Yan Soe, to the powerful waters that tore through their house on the night Cyclone Nargis struck, one month ago.
First Wai Yan Soe floated away from where he gripped a pole near our house, and later I [did], the 11-year-old said, in a hesitant voice.
By then, the brothers had given up calling for their parents and two sisters for help. They had seen all four drown when a giant wave struck their home in a village near Labutta, one of the townships that took the worst beating in Burma s Irrawaddy Delta.
Ko Ko Aung clung to a trunk of a palm tree all night to avoid being dragged off by the currents of the widening river. Many things floating …
District Manager, HRLS Program, conducts a client workshop in the presence of the Upazila Nirbahi Officer, Sakhipur Upazila, Tangail. Cedit: BRAC
DHAKA, Bangladesh, Mar 16 2021 (IPS) – The 410 Legal Aid Centers that I manage in Bangladesh for BRAC’s Human Rights and Legal Aid Services received approximately 35,900 requests for assistance in 2020. Almost all of them involve gender-based violence against women and girls.
In Bangladesh, gender-based violence comes in many forms: physical abuse; husbands throwing wives out of the home in domestic disputes; husbands demanding that their wives get more dowry money from their families, and child marriage, am…