Marwaan Macan-Markar
BANGKOK, Nov 29 2007 (IPS) – Thailand s reputation as a world leader in combating the spread of HIV and AIDS is being challenged by a new study which accuses Bangkok of ignoring those most vulnerable to the virus drug users.
Such marginalisation prevails despite the government being aware of the reality, adds the study released Thursday by the New York-based Human Rights Watch (HRW) and the Bangkok-based Thai AIDS Treatment Action Group (TTAG). The Thai government estimates that 40 to 50 percent of injecting drug users are living with HIV in Thailand virtually unchanged over the past two decades.
The hostile reception that HIV-positive Thais who inject heroin receive at health clinics across the country typifies the prevailing atmosphere, says Kr…
Paul Virgo
ROME, Nov 17 2009 (IPS) – There are two main ways the flop of this week s United Nations World Food Security Summit in Rome which has been snubbed by the world s top leaders, has failed to deliver binding aid commitments, or to set a target date for the eradication of hunger is being read.
At best it reflects the limits of the U.N. and its flagship body in the fight against hunger, the Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO), activists say.
At worst, they say it shows wealthy countries leaders lack the political will to really to put their backs into solving a problem that no matter how unjust and scandalous, in a world with more than enough to feed everyone generally does not directly affect the voters who put them into office.
Either way it is pro…
Charles Mpaka
LILONGWE, Sep 24 2010 (IPS) – In Ntcheu, a rural district in central Malawi, villagers have taken the fight against the country s high maternal mortality rate into their own hands. They have almost eradicated maternal deaths in the area by urging pregnant women to give birth in hospitals, under medical supervision.
Chief Kwataine, who has 89 villages in Ntcheu under his traditional authority, launched a maternal health campaign that first addressed common cultural beliefs associated with pregnancy, for example that a woman s first child should be born at home or that the men of the family decide when women need medical attention. Kwataine also banned all traditional birth attendants in his villages, compelling women to give birth in hospital.
These measu…
The proposed law banning same-sex marriages and civil unions is just the tip of the iceberg, activists say. Credit: Elizabeth Whitman/IPS
UNITED NATIONS, Dec 7 2011 (IPS) – The prospect of arriving home being arrested at the airport that s kind of scary, said Osazeme O., a dual citizen of Nigeria and the UK, in a wry understatement.
She was standing outside the Nigerian mission to the United Nations, on the sidewalk beside busy Second Avenue, where a small group gathered Monday to demonstrate.
Osazeme was referring to the Nov. 29 passage …
Water In Judean Desert – Credit: Bigstock
ROME, Mar 15 2018 (IPS) – This year, World Water Day, celebrated annually on 22 March, is themed “Nature for Water”, examining nature-based solutions (NBS) to the world’s water problems.
The campaign – “The Answer is in Nature” – promotes a sustainable way to normalize the cycle of water, reduce harms of climate change and improve human health through planting trees to replenish forests, reconnecting rivers to floodplains, and restoring wetlands.
An estimated 2.1 billion people have no access to drinkable water because of the polluted ecosystems affecting quantity and quality of water available for h…
BOGOTA, Colombia, Sep 30 2020 (IPS) – This week, Heads of State and Government from 64 countries announced one of the strongest pledges yet to reverse the loss of biodiversity and nature’s contributions to people by 2030. Advancing from powerful pledges to concrete policy and action, however, means that nature must be moved to the heart of global, national and local decision-making. It’s time for nature to be reintegrated into everything we do.
Ana María Hernández Salgar
The is an explicit declaration of a planetary emergency, driven by human actions that are degrading nature and our climate at rates and levels unprecedented in human history.
As…