Ángel Páez

LIMA, Aug 16 2007 (IPS) – The fishing port of Pisco, 167 kilometres south of the Peruvian capital, was the town worst hit by the devastating earthquake which shook nearly the whole country for two minutes late Wednesday, reaching a magnitude of 7 on the Richter scale. The death toll continues to climb.
Other cities damaged by the shock waves were Ica, Chincha, Paracas and Cañete, located along the Pacific coast. The epicentre was pinpointed under the sea, 60 kilometres west of Pisco and 33 kilometres deep, according to the National Geophysical Institute.

The most recent earthquake of similar magnitude in Peru was in October 1974, and reached 6.6 on the Richter scale.

The National Civil Defence Institute, which is directing rescue operations, repo…

David Cronin

BRUSSELS, Sep 13 2007 (IPS) – Old tyres might sound like the unlikely cause of a diplomatic row over potential implications for the level of protection poor countries can offer to the environment or public health.
Yet lawyers and civil servants representing the European Union and Brazil have spent a vast number of hours poring over the minutiae of a dossier on that precise subject.

In June, the World Trade Organisation (WTO) published the findings of a panel that had adjudicated a case between the two sides over Brazil s decision to restrict imports of retreaded tyres tyres which have been used and then reprocessed. According to the panel, Brazil was provisionally justified under WTO rules to curb those imports in order to protect human and animal life.

Fawzia Sheikh*

KANDAHAR, Oct 10 2007 (IPS) – Colourfully-clad Afghan villagers with dirty, barefoot children sit outside a makeshift coalition clinic in a tiny village in Kandahar province, impatiently awaiting their turn to see the medics.
Today, the common ailment medical staff report is children infected with worms, their distended stomachs and diarrhoea are tell-tale signs of a life lacking proper hygiene. Running water is scarce in this impoverished part of the country, which has seen the brunt of fighting in the six-year war.

By the end of the day, Capt. Maureen Sevilla of the South Carolina National Guard and her colleagues have dispensed several boxes of multivitamins to help alleviate the problem, often handing the supplements to children only slightly older …

Irfan Shahzad

KARACHI, Nov 2 2007 (IPS) – Access to safe water may be touted as a human right, but inadequate supplies, crumbling water systems and the galloping needs of growing populations are forcing experts, government utilities and funding agencies to ponder over devising sustainable water service networks in Asia s teeming cities.
At least 40 percent of poor people living in urban areas across the Asia-Pacific have no connection to piped water. Despite the region s record rates of economic growth over decades, the biggest challenges for them include the basic need of how to provide their people with sufficient quantities of safe drinking water.

This concern will be among the main areas of focus of a report, called Asian Water and Development Outlook , that the M…

Diego Cevallos

MEXICO CITY, Nov 30 2007 (IPS) – The United Nations presented the call for nominations for the Red Ribbon Award 2008 to honour community leadership and action against HIV/AIDS in the Mexican capital Friday.
Communities are at the forefront of addressing the core challenges of HIV, said Peter Piot, executive director of the Joint United Nations Programme on HIV/AIDS (UNAIDS). Honouring their work and encouraging the replication of community initiatives is essential for a successful global response.

The UNAIDS award, granted every two years, honours 25 outstanding community organisations that demonstrate leadership and action in curtailing the spread and impact of HIV/AIDS in five different categories.

The 25 awardees will each receive a monetar…

Thalif Deen

UNITED NATIONS, Jan 22 2008 (IPS) – The sharp decline in deaths among infants and children worldwide during the past century is one of the great success stories in international public health , the U.N. children #39s agency UNICEF said Tuesday.

UNICEF Goodwill Ambassador Roger Moore assists with polio immunisation in Elmina, Cape Coast, Ghana. Credit: UNICEF

The annual number of child deaths has been halved, from roughly…

Thalif Deen

UNITED NATIONS, Feb 26 2008 (IPS) – The United Nations has launched a multi-year global campaign to intensify its efforts to help eliminate violence against women, which has long remained hidden in a culture of silence .
With this campaign, we are breaking the silence, and ensuring that women s voices are heard, says Thoraya Ahmed Obaid, executive director of the U.N. Population Fund (UNFPA).

We need strong and sustained leadership such as yours, she told Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon, who shared the podium, to change norms and attitudes. It is time to end complicity and impunity.

The campaign, launched to coincide with the two-week session of the Commission on the Status of Women (CSW) ending Mar. 7, will continue through 2015, the target date …

David Cronin

BRUSSELS, Mar 28 2008 (IPS) – Rich countries have made patchy progress in honouring pledges to improve their contribution to the fight against global poverty, according to a new report.
In a declaration agreed at a 2005 international conference in Paris, 35 donor governments and many international agencies gave an undertaking to ensure that their development aid would become more effective. Among the commitments made were that poor countries would take the lead in determining how aid money is used, that aid activities by different governments or agencies would be better coordinated and that the often onerous bureaucratic procedures that recipients have to follow in order to obtain funds would be simplified.

Despite such promises, a report by the European …

Thalif Deen

UNITED NATIONS, May 9 2008 (IPS) – The military government of Burma (Myanmar), in a dramatic turnaround, has offered to cooperate with the United Nations in its massive relief efforts in the cyclone-devastated country where the death toll could exceed 100,000.

The ambassador from Burma joins the U.N. Flash Appeal for cyclone victims on May 9, 2008. Credit: UN Photo/Paulo Filgueiras

Our frustration levels ha…

Miriam Mannak

CAPE TOWN, Jun 12 2008 (IPS) – Children who live in communities with an HIV prevalence rate of 10 percent or more have half a year of schooling less than children in other communities.
In this way the negative consequences of HIV/AIDS are felt beyond the families that are directly affected.

These facts were presented at a World Bank conference in South Africa by Robert Greener, senior economic adviser at the Joint United Nations Programme on HIV/AIDS (UNAIDS).

Greener was speaking at the Annual Bank Conference on Development Economics (ABCDE), which ended in Cape Town yesterday (Jun 11). The theme for this year was People, Politics, and Globalisation . The conference was co-hosted by the South African government s treasury department.

Gre…