Pax Gaea Human Rights World Post

TOPICS

• Extreme poverty fuels terrorism, economist Sachs tells UN
• Universal primary education goal of 2015 need reaching benchmarks
• Concerns of India's freshwater crisis addressable if technology applied now
• "Trojan Horse" immunization may provide medical breakthroughs for developing world
• Dozens of 'untouched' tribes in Amazon are at risk from increased Brazilian logging
• First Ladies unite in Paris to lobby for safer, less predatory internet for children
• Former Colombian death square commander gives testimony of atrocities, drug trafficking
• Signs of widening Darfur crisis warned by aid groups in Sudan
• Peace is Possible, says Carter in commentary about Middle East
• Peacekeepers for Mogadishu of key importance to UN envoy

Aid for poor guarantees security for rich - Sachs

By Jeremy Clarke

NAIROBI, Jan 17 (Reuters) - Curbing poverty in Third World countries will not only satisfy life and death needs for the poor but also provide security for rich nations, one of the world's best-known economists said on Wednesday. Jeffrey Sachs, special adviser to the United Nations on the Millennium Development Goals, said extreme poverty was fuelling conflicts in places such as Somalia and Sudan's Darfur region. "Instability will grow where poverty festers in an extreme form, that's what we're seeing in the Horn of Africa. This isn't a crisis about Islam, this isn't a crisis about geopolitics, this is essentially a crisis of extreme poverty," Sachs said. "Whether it's Darfur or Somalia or other conflict regions, people are in conflict because they're so poor they cannot stay alive -- that's what needs to be addressed for security for rich countries," he told a news conference in Nairobi. Sachs said it was targeted investments in tools like mosquito nets, medicines and fertilisers that would help in the fight against poverty. "Africa's small-holder farmers could double or triple their crop yield within even a single season if they have access to improved inputs," he said. World leaders have vowed to cut extreme poverty by half, ensure universal primary education and stem the AIDS pandemic by 2015. A key U.N. experiment is Sachs' Millennium Village Project in Senegal, Mali, Ghana, Nigeria, Ethiopia, Kenya, Uganda, Rwanda, Tanzania and Malawi. The project in 78 villages is a blueprint for quick rural development and is expected to reach 400,000 people at an annual cost of $50 per villager over five years. Reuters AlertNet (1/18)

World falling behind on 2015 education goal- study

By David Alexander

WASHINGTON, Jan 17 (Reuters) - Access to education increased dramatically over the past century but 323 million children worldwide are still not in school and efforts to achieve universal primary education by 2015 are likely to fail, a new study said on Wednesday. Despite the findings, the study by the American Academy of Arts and Sciences said the goal of providing a high-quality education to all children could be achieved at a reasonable cost with more support and funding from governments worldwide. "There's no question that it's possible," said David Bloom, one of the authors of the study. "It's a question of financial resources and it's a question of political will." "We have cost estimates, for example, of what it would take and we're looking at numbers that are less than what the U.S. is spending on an annual basis in Iraq and Afghanistan," he said. The United States is currently spending about $8 billion a month on the Iraq war. In the past century, the number of primary children enrolled in school has grown from around 40 percent in all regions to about 86 percent, but many areas are lagging behind, especially sub-Saharan Africa, the Middle East and South Asia. Universal primary education has been the goal of several international initiatives. A 1990 global conference in Thailand set the year 2000 as the target date for universal primary education. When that goal was not met, a global forum in Senegal in 2000 set a new target date of 2015. Reuters AlertNet (1/18)

India’s looming freshwater crisis

Hydrological imbalances can be addressed through sound and timely water management

ALOK SHEEL

With 80% of the earth’s surface comprising water, the majority of natural disasters are water-related. The devastating Asian Tsunami was a rude reminder of their intensity, reminiscent of folk memories of the ‘great flood’ in most ancient civilisations, of which the Biblical reference is just one example. While melting ice-caps and glaciers induced by global warming presage major water-linked disasters, the more immediate menace is the shortage, and especially contamination, of freshwater that threatens human existence. Freshwater is stored either in easily accessible surface water bodies and the (phreatic) water table, or locked in deep sub-surface aquifers permeating fractured rock, in huge ice masses in the polar regions and high altitudes, and in atmospheric moisture. While the hydrological cycle constantly converts seawater into freshwater, it is not so much the quantum of rainfall but the propensity to retain freshwater, and retard run-off into oceans through river systems, that has shaped civilisations. It’s no coincidence that the oldest and most dense civilisations are on vast alluvial flood plains in the river valleys of Mesopotamia, Egypt, China and India. Alluvium is a natural freshwater sink. India is endowed with good freshwater resources centered on the Monsoons, Himalayan ice and the Indus-Ganges-Brahmaputra alluvium, one of the largest groundwater reservoirs in the world. The Ministry of Water Resources has estimated that with 2.5% of global landmass India has 4% of the world’s freshwater resources. This has come under increasing demographic stress since India is home to about 16% of global population and the distribution of India’s freshwater is highly skewed. Financial Express (India) (1/18)

Vaccine hope for developing world

Press Association

Millions of people at risk from malaria, HIV and tuberculosis in the developing world could soon receive protection from a new type of vaccination, scientists said. The new "Trojan horse" vaccines use genetically-engineered viruses which get inside cells and stimulate a strong immune response by the body to the killer diseases. And they are being adapted to use technology which will allow them to be transported to remote parts of the developing world without needing refrigeration, making them cheaper and easier to distribute. The multi-million pound project is being funded by a grant from the Bill and Melinda Gates' Grand Challenges in Global Health initiative. It aims to find breakthroughs to major health challenges in the developing world.Professor Adrian Hill, director of the Jenner Institute at Oxford University, said the new generation of vaccines were different from traditional approaches which used a killed or weakened version of a virus to stimulate the production of antibodies - a method which has failed in the treatment of diseases such as HIV.Instead, these new vaccines are "virus-vectored" - carried in viruses into the cell. Incorporated into the DNA of the virus is genetic coding for antigens and molecules known as "adjuvants" which stimulate receptors to create a strong and prolonged immune response. The new method "could make a big change in the development of the vaccines for some of these very difficult and important diseases," Prof Hill said. The Guardian (United Kingdom) 1/18

Brazil sees traces of more isolated Amazon tribes

BRASILIA, Brazil (Reuters) -- Far more Indian groups than previously thought are surviving in Brazil's Amazon rain forest isolated from the outside world but they risk extermination at the hands of encroaching loggers and miners, experts said on Wednesday. A study by Funai, the government's National Indian Foundation, and seen by Reuters estimates that around 67 Indian groups live in complete isolation, up from previous estimates of around 40. "With the rate of destruction in the Amazon, it is amazing there are any isolated people left at all," said Fiona Watson, campaigns coordinator with Survival International, an advocacy group for tribal peoples. Funai reviewed old and new discoveries of footprints, abandoned huts, and other signs of human life in the thicket of the world's largest rain forest. "There are still vast unexplored areas and new indications of [Indian groups]," Marcelo dos Santos, head of Funai's department of isolated Indians, told Reuters. Brazil is likely to have the largest number of uncontacted tribes in the world, Watson said. With a few exceptions, most of the uncontacted tribes, generally live like they would have when Portugal's Pedro Cabral became the first European explorer to land in Brazil in 1500. Most hunt with blow guns or bows and arrows, dos Santos said. Their lives do not include televisions, microwave ovens or cars. CNN (1/18)

Top Wives Urge Barriers on Web to Child Abuse

By KATRIN BENNHOLD

PARIS, Jan. 17 — Their husbands may not always agree on issues like the Iraq war and global warming, but when Bernadette Chirac, Laura Bush, Lyudmila Putin and Suzanne Mubarak met here on Wednesday to discuss the fight against child pornography and pedophilia, they seemed safely on the same page. Worldwide, more than 100,000 Web sites are believed to publish child pornography and many of the children who are sexually solicited are reached online, said Mrs. Chirac, who convened the one-day gathering at Élysée Palace. Queen Silvia of Sweden, Queen Paola of Belgium and Margarida Sousa Uva-Barroso, the wife of the president of the European Commission, José Manuel Barroso, also took part. The anonymity and reach of the Internet poses an international challenge, they said, urging closer international cooperation among police officers and prosecutors and an exchange of technology to identify illegal content online. “This reality concerns us all because the threat hangs over each of our children,” Mrs. Chirac said. Mrs. Bush emphasized that only international cooperation could tackle the threat, saying, “The abuses of children on the Internet know no boundaries.”m The issue of child victimization shocked Europe in 1996, after Marc Dutroux was arrested in Belgium for kidnapping, torturing and sexually abusing six young girls, four of whom died. Last summer, the issue was catapulted into the headlines when an 18-year-old Austrian kidnapping victim, Natascha Kampusch, escaped her abductor after eight years in captivity. New York Times (1/18)

Testimony details death squad acts in Colombia

Ex-militia chief cites massacres, drug trafficking

By Indira A.R. Lakshmanan, Globe Staff

BOGOTÁ -- A former chief of Colombia's right-wing death squads testified in court this week about his role and the involvement of military and public officials in scores of massacres and assassinations of perceived political opponents. The testimony by Salvatore Mancuso in the northwestern city of Medellín is a key step toward clarifying and assigning blame for atrocities committed in the last two decades of Colombia's ongoing civil war between insurgents and the state. In two days, Mancuso, 48, detailed a nexus of collusion by army generals, police colonels, a state prosecutor, and politicians in planning the murders and seizing the land of scores of alleged leftists, local politicians, and peasants, according to lawyers and victims who were permitted to watch the closed-door sessions. Dressed in an expensive suit and reading quickly in a matter-of-fact tone from a prepared statement, they said, Mancuso testified that his men paid the army and police in one region $400,000 a month for their cooperation, and that paramilitaries coerced voters at gunpoint to support regional and presidential candidates who favored their right-wing agenda. Boston Globe (1/18)

Aid Groups Warn of Wider Darfur Crisis

Humanitarian groups warn Darfur crisis is reaching point of no return

By ALFRED de MONTESQUIOU Associated Press Writer

KHARTOUM, Sudan- In a sweeping call for help, a wide range of U.N. aid agencies appealed Wednesday to warring parties to end the violence in Darfur, warning the relief keeping millions alive will be "irreversibly jeopardized" if it does not stop. The humanitarian groups said a massive influx of foreign aid was the only thing "holding the line" for 2.5 million refugees and over 1 million other civilians in Darfur. "That line cannot be held much longer," warned the statement issued by 14 United Nations agencies working in Sudan. Aid groups and U.N. officials have for months been alarmed by the rapidly deteriorating conditions faced by civilians in Darfur, where over 200,000 people have been killed since rebels took up arms against the central Sudanese government in 2003, accusing it of neglect. The government is accused of having retaliated against civilians with air raids and by unleashing the janjaweed, militias of Arab nomads blamed for the worst atrocities in the conflict. "Villages have been burned, looted and arbitrarily bombed, and crops and livestock destroyed. Sexual violence against women is occurring at alarming rates. This situation is unacceptable," the statement warned. The humanitarian groups said what pushed them to issue the appeal Wednesday was the increased targeting of aid workers in the region. The splintering of rebel groups into lawless factions without clear leadership, as well as government restrictions, is making it ever more difficult for aid workers to operate, they said. CBS News/Associated Press (1/18)

A New Chance for Peace?

By Jimmy Carter

I am concerned that public discussion of my book "Palestine Peace Not Apartheid" has been diverted from the book's basic proposals: that peace talks be resumed after six years of delay and that the tragic persecution of Palestinians be ended. Although most critics have not seriously disputed or even mentioned the facts and suggestions about these two issues, an apparently concerted campaign has been focused on the book's title, combined with allegations that I am anti-Israel. This is not good for any of us who are committed to Israel's status as a peaceful nation living in harmony with its neighbors. It is encouraging that President Bush has announced that peace in the Holy Land will be a high priority for his administration during the next two years. On her current trip to the region, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice has called for an early U.S.-Israeli-Palestinian meeting. She has recommended the 2002 offer of the 23 Arab nations as a foundation for peace: full recognition of Israel based on a return to its internationally recognized borders. This offer is compatible with official U.S. policy, previous agreements approved by Israeli governments in 1978 and 1993, and the "road map" for peace developed by the "quartet" (the United States, Russia, the European Union and the United Nations). The clear fact is that Israel will never find peace until it is willing to withdraw from its neighboring occupied territories and permit the Palestinians to exercise their basic human and political rights. With land swaps, this "green line" can be modified through negotiations to let a substantial number of Israeli settlers remain in their subsidized homes east of the internationally recognized border. The premise of exchanging Arab territory for peace has been acceptable for several decades to a majority of Israelis but not to a minority of the more conservative leaders, who are unfortunately supported by most of the vocal American Jewish community. Washington Post (1/18)

UN envoy visits Mogadishu, discusses peacekeepers

Daniel Wallis

Mogadishu, Somalia- A top United Nations envoy flew to Somalia's capital on Thursday to discuss deploying African peacekeepers in order to avoid a security vacuum after the defeat of Islamist fighters over the New Year. It was the first visit by a senior UN representative since thousands of Ethiopian and Somali government troops last month ousted the Islamists who had run southern Somalia for six months. Ethiopia is eager to pull out its troops as soon as possible but there are fears of a return to anarchy in the failed state unless they are swiftly replaced by African peacekeepers. Francois Lonseny Fall, special representative of the UN secretary general, flew into Mogadishu from Nairobi and sped to talks with Somali President Abdullahi Yusuf, escorted by a heavily armed convoy of gunmen in pick-up trucks. Yusuf came to Mogadishu last week for the first time since taking office in 2004. Until the Christmas war the weak interim government was confined to the southern town of Baidoa and in danger of being overrun until Ethiopia intervened. "The government was in Baidoa, now it is in Mogadishu. We need to protect them and also facilitate the withdrawal of Ethiopian troops. This is what everyone expects," Fall told reporters after meeting Yusuf in the whitewashed Villa Somalia. He told Yusuf: "I want to congratulate you. To see the president in Villa Somalia is a very important step. We have to move step by step and we need all efforts to get this country rebuilt." Mail & Guardian (South Africa) (1/18)

posted by Dave Carroll @ 1/18/2007 07:06:00 PM