PHNOM PENH, Oct 28 2009 (IPS) – Mey Chamnan has learned the hard way about the global economic crisis. Both she and her husband were fired from their 50 U.S.-dollar a month jobs in a local garment factory after declining overseas orders caused huge job losses across Cambodia s garment industry.
FRESNO, California , Oct 21 2009 – They call it Tortilla Flats a haphazard cluster of tents and tarps sprawling across a sidewalk and a vacant lot smack in the middle of Fresno, a city of 500,000 in California s Central Valley.
The tent city, reminiscent of the Depression-era Hoovervilles depicted by author John Steinbeck in his classic novel The Grapes of Wrath , is home to a shifting population of about 70 homeless people.
That s where I met a couple named Kerry and John. They asked me not to use their last names. They live in a cramped two-person tent strewn with blankets and clothes. Both are native to the Valley. And both are now homeless for the first time in their lives.
Kerry was a preschool teacher until a year ago, when her world caved in. I got sick, she …
PORT-AU-PRINCE, Jan 21 2010 (IPS) – Last week, the price of a small can of rice was two dollars. On Tuesday, it cost Haitians 3.50 dollars. A gallon of cooking oil that cost 10 dollars only days ago now fetches 20 dollars.
Haitians displaced by the massive earthquake that devastated their country form a long line to wait for UN-distributed meals. Credit: UN Photo/Log…
Emilio Godoy
SANTA MARÍA RAYÓN, Mexico, Feb 28 2010 (IPS) – The lives of many rural women and children in Mexico are changing, and the country s high deforestation rate could be reduced, as inexpensive fuel-efficient cook stoves are being distributed by non-governmental organisations with corporate and government support.
The open cooking fires replaced by the improved stoves cause respiratory and eye infections, as well as severe burns, which are especially frequent among young children who stumble or fall into their mothers fire pits.
Acute respiratory infections are among the main causes of childhood morbidity and mortality in Mexico and many other poor countries around the world.
The World Health Organisation (WHO), which has designated the issue as one …
Shailendra Singh
SUVA, Apr 1 2010 (IPS) – Two months after a new anti-prostitution law took effect, taxi driver Shiu Kumar says he sees fewer sex workers along Victoria Parade, the centre of Suva s nightlife. But while this has had a negative effect on his nighttime fares, he is nevertheless happy about the law.
This is a good law, he says, adding that he has been bothered by the sight of more and more young women taking to the streets.
It is not a view shared by many, though. Critics of the decree say that at best it is a stopgap measure. At worst, they say, it could increase the risk of contracting sexually transmitted diseases, including HIV, and of violence against sex workers.
Prostitution is a social redistribution mechanism and to try and forcefully s…
Marcela Valente
BUENOS AIRES, May 3 2010 (IPS) – Two years after a law was enacted that held out the promise of better road safety in Argentina, the country s death toll from traffic accidents is still one of the highest in Latin America.
Safety experts who hailed the law creating the National Road Safety Agency (ANSV) in April 2008 were pleased that the Agency secured an international loan this April to help implement the programme.
However, they concede that the ANSV has not produced the hoped-for results, and cast doubts on official statistics indicating a supposed fall in the accident rate so far this year.
The death toll from traffic accidents does not fall magically from one year to the next; that takes work over a longer timescale, Axel Dell Olio, a ro…
Jim Lobe*
WASHINGTON, Jun 16 2010 (IPS) – Thirty-five years after the end of the Vietnam War, a joint U.S.-Vietnamese panel endorsed a 10-year, 300-million-dollar plan of action to deal with the deadly health and environmental legacy of the U.S. military s widespread use of Agent Orange during the conflict.
The U.S. government, according to the panel, should provide most of the assistance, which would be designed both to clean up more than two dozen sites in southern Vietnam where contamination was particularly severe and to expand health and related care to people affected by Agent Orange and other dioxin-based herbicides.
We are talking about something that is a major legacy of the Vietnam War and a major irritant in this important relationship, said Walter Isaacso…
Stephen Leahy
BERLIN, Jul 14 2010 (IPS) – The failed war on drugs has not only badly damaged countries where it is waged, it is responsible for driving up HIV infection rates in some countries, says an official declaration endorsed Wednesday by three former Latin American presidents in advance of the XVIII International AIDS Conference that begins Jul. 18 in Vienna.
In Eastern Europe and Central Asia, injecting drug use is the primary cause of new HIV infections. Outside of sub- Saharan Africa, injecting drug use accounts for approximately one in three new cases of HIV, experts will report at the week-long meeting.
The war on drugs has failed Instead of sticking to failed policies with disastrous consequences, we must direct our efforts to the reduction of consumptio…
Susan Anyangu-Amu
NAIROBI, Aug 5 2010 (IPS) – Jubilant supporters say it is a new dawn for Kenya. Sixty-seven percent of votes cast endorsed a new constitution more than two decades after reform was first raised.
Speaking to IPS soon after the results were announced, Senior Counsel Paul Muite, a former member of parliament, expressed joy at the victory, equating it to the jubilation experienced when Kenya attained independence in 1963.
This is the rebirth of the state of Kenya in the sense that expectations of independence in 1963 were never realised. Those who took over then stepped into the shoes of the colonial masters and the socio-economic benefits ended up in the hands of a few, Muite said.
This is a dream come true for Kenya. It is the reason the Mau …
David Njagi
NAIROBI, Sep 3 2010 (IPS) – When 11-year-old Ronald Gathece was placed on antiretrovirals (ARVs) after being diagnosed HIV-positive, medical staff did not monitor his reaction to the treatment. But the side effects had been so bad that the young boy had contemplated suicide.
I would vomit and itch over my whole body after taking the drugs, the now 16-year-old Gathece remembers. This was made worse by the fact that there was barely anything to eat in the house because my grandmother was jobless. I stopped taking the drugs altogether and wished I could die since this was not an illness I had brought upon myself. Gathece had been born HIV-positive.
Fortunately, an HIV community outreach programme affiliated to the Kenya Network of Women with AIDS (KENWA) in …