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February 2006, UN News Centre Despite a multitude of federal and state social benefit systems in the United States, a raft of problems ranging from the high cost of health care to lack of low-cost housing impede people struggling to get out of poverty and can been seen as a human rights abuse, an independent United Nations rights expert said today.
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14th November 05 - Frieda Berrigan, Tom Paine FebruaryPresident George W. Bush's foiled trip to Mar del Plata to attend the Summit of the Americas put Latin America in the spotlight. Bush was hoping to push his controversial free trade agenda, but the trade talks failed and the president was met with violent and widespread protest. Before the spotlight of media attention leaves Latin America, it is essential to underline that Bush?s free trade policy has gone hand in hand with rising U.S. military aid, training and arms sales to the region.
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February 2006, Los Angeles Times The group aims to make the giants of the organisation more accountable and open. Like Lilliputians trying to pin down Gulliver, a group of small nations launched an effort this week to pressure the U.N. Security Council to change its ways.
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9th November 2005, BBC High levels of illiteracy are hindering attempts to erase world poverty, the United Nations education agency warns. Not only is one fifth of the world's adult population illiterate, but 100 million children are not attending primary school, the Unesco report says.
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 Bush is branding Latin Americans' broad rejection of his trade agenda at last week's Summit of the Americas in Argentina as an attempt to "roll back the democratic process of the past two decades
What Latin Americans are actually rolling back is the US-driven economic process of the past two decades, which worsened poverty, income inequality, displacement, and cultural and environmental destruction. Working within and alongside the social movements that are sweeping the region, MADRE's Latin American sister organizations are putting forward their own reasons for rejecting Bush's trade agenda. Here are 10 reasons that Latin American women reject Free Trade Agreements (FTAs).
1. Free Trade Agreements Threaten Food Security
The US demands that Latin American governments cut tariffs on US-grown food staples like rice and corn, while the US continues to subsidize its own large-scale agriculture. The double standard allows US agribusiness to undersell family farmers in Latin America. Many of these farmers are women and Indigenous Peoples who are losing their livelihoods and being forced off their lands.
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ID21, 2005 Make Poverty History, the collective of international development organisations calling on the world's governments and leaders to achieve the Millennium Development Goals, caught the public's imagination. 2005 is an important year that demands we all back the campaign to institute fair trade, drop the debt and provide more aid. However, Latin America is a long way from achieving many of these aims by 2015. |
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 India's new right-to-information laws have drawn first blood -- secret deals involving the World Bank to privatise water supply and sanitation in the Indian capital.
Parliament passed a right to information bill in May but, by then, several states had already gone ahead with legislations of their own so that the culture of demanding to know what is going on is gradually taking root.
Credit for exposing the water supply and sanitation deal must go to 'Parivartan' (meaning 'change'), a voluntary organisation based in the capital, which obtained and publicised several official documents of the "Delhi Water Supply and Sewerage Project" that records deals between the state utility, Delhi Jal (Water) Board (DJB) and the Bank.
The project's stated aim is to make available reliable, 24-hour water supply but the documents obtained by Parivartan reveal that this does not include removing existing inequitites in water supply but offers plenty of scope for super-profits for a few water companies.
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 While President George W. Bush is in Latin America to push his controversial free trade agenda, there is another type of trade to be concerned about.
U.S. military aid, training and arms sales to the region have all increased sharply since the beginning of the war on terrorism and threaten to exacerbate conflict, empty national coffers and sidetrack development programs.
Through the Foreign Military Financing program, military aid has drastically increased during the Bush administration. In 2000, U.S. military aid to Latin America was $3.4 million, a tiny share of worldwide FMF spending of $4.7 billion. By 2006, overall spending on Foreign Military Financing actually decreased to $4.5 billion, after peaking at $6 billion in 2003. But military aid to Latin America increased to over 34 times its year 2000 levels, to $122 million.
After the Summit of the Americas in Argentina, President Bush will visit Brazil and Panama. Argentina is the third largest recipient of military aid in Latin America, with a total of $6.3 million between 2000 and 2006. Panama, where the United States long controlled the canal area, is also a major recipient of military aid, with a total of $5 million for the same period. Argentina's population is ten times that of Panama, making the near parity in their military aid levels striking.
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 With 90 per cent of all Internet users living in developed countries, governments must narrow the gap between North and South by expanding quality education for all.
With 90 per cent of all Internet users living in developed countries, governments must narrow the gap between North and South by expanding quality education for all, increasing community access to information and communication technology, and sharing scientific knowledge across borders, a United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) report released today says.
The report, "Towards Knowledge Societies," launched today on the eve of the World Summit on the Information Society (WSIS), analyses the increasingly important role played by knowledge in economic growth and advances that it can serve as a new springboard for development in the countries of the South.
"Those countries and communities that don't recognize this huge reliance on knowledge as a driving force will be left behind," Elizabeth Longworth, Director of UNESCO's Information Society Division, told a press conference at UN Headquarters in New York.
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2nd November 05, IPS Innovative crops offer far more hope for the development of Africa than money aid, says an expert working on new crop projects in Africa. "Everyone is talking about helping Africa, but the talk has no substance," Dr. Dov Pasternak, director of the International Programme on Arid Land Crops (IPALAC) told media representatives here.
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