Eulàlia Iglesias

UNITED NATIONS, Nov 25 2005 (IPS) – For the first time since 2001, Afghanistan has made a dent in its opium poppy cultivation, but experts warn that the illegal crop could easily flourish again next year unless the country makes real progress toward sustainable economic development.
According to the U.N. s 2005 Afghan Opium Survey, poppy cultivation fell 21 percent this year. One field out of five that had poppies in 2004 was planted with a legal crop in 2005, meaning that the total area of poppy fields fell from 134,000 hectares to 104,000 hectares.

According to the survey, some 50,000 Afghan farmers refrained from planting opium poppies last year because of fears of eradication, the civil and religious campaign against the drug, and stepped up law …

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จากภาพด้านบนนี้เรียกได้ว่าสวยงามโดนใจมาก ๆ แถมงานศิลป์ยังถือว่ามีเอกลักษณ์ไม่�…

Marwaan Macan-Markar

BANGKOK, Jan 7 2006 (IPS) – When United States negotiators fly into Thailand to thrash out a bilateral free trade deal next week, they will be greeted with jeers rather than this country s famed smile of welcome.
When United States negotiators fly into Thailand to thrash out a bilateral free trade deal next week, they will be greeted with jeers rather than this country s famed smile of welcome.

Activists opposed to the free trade agreement (FTA) view the sixth round of talks in the northern city of Chiang Mai from Jan. 9-13 as a defining moment, and in a bid to raise the ante will bring 10,000 people on to the streets to protest against the talks.

Thailand stands to lose much if the FTA with the U.S. is signed, Saree Ongsamwong, general s…

Marwaan Macan-Markar

BANGKOK , Feb 15 2006 (IPS) – Mounting evidence that more people in Asia and the Pacific will be dying of chronic diseases rather than infectious ones by 2015 will force the region s governments to redraw their public health budgets, say United Nations officials.
The stress in public health expenses is still weighted towards curative care than preventive efforts, say the officials from the Economic and Social Commission for Asia and the Pacific (ESCAP), a regional U.N. agency based in Bangkok.

That is because the thrust has been more towards a clinical approach than a public health approach, adds an official from ESCAP s health and development section.

And even here, the government expenditure on health when set against the gross domestic …

Antoaneta Bezlova

BEIJING, Mar 17 2006 (IPS) – Fixated on maintaining the country s high-powered economic growth, Chinese policy makers have been soliciting opinions from economists about how to avoid future labour shortages by relaxing and even scrapping the rigid one-child policy.
But the effort has generated a debate over a 25-year-old family planning policy that was once considered sacrosanct. Population experts have clashed with economists about what path China a nation of 1.3 billion with scarce farmland and water supplies, should take to maintain a healthy economic growth and delay the arrival of a greying society without creating another population explosion.

China s one-child policy, which the government started implementing from 1979, is widely unpopular ins…

Diego Cevallos*

MEXICO CITY, Apr 18 2006 (IPS) – Although many countries in Latin America have laws stating that sex education must be made available in primary and secondary schools, these are implemented in a haphazard way, and in some cases not at all.
An informal survey by IPS correspondents in Argentina, Brazil, Chile, Cuba, Mexico and Venezuela shows that sex education is patchy or nonexistent in the region, with the exception of Cuba.

There are girls who get pregnant because they get sick, so they need help, said Sara, a seven-year-old Mexican girl, in a conversation with her private school classmates.

The conclusion reached by Sara, based on a television ad not designed with children in mind, is an illustration of the lack of adequate information abou…

Sher Mohammad Jahesh and Sher Ahmad Haidar – Pajhwok Afghan News*

KABUL, May 22 2006 (IPS) – In Afghanistan, the most mined country in the world after Cambodia and Angola, landmines and unexploded ordnance kill or maim people almost daily.
The victim may be a boy sitting on the mountainside, tending the family s sheep or a truck driver who swerved to avoid a pothole. Or it could be a farmer who returned from a refugee camp in Pakistan to till his ancestral land.

Of Afghanistan s 20 million people, an estimated four percent (750,000 men, women and children) have been disabled by landmines. A legacy of the country s prolonged civil war and Soviet occupation, they were responsible for the deaths of 154 people and injuries to another 703 in 2005 alone. Many cases are beli…

Alberto Mendoza

GUATEMALA CITY, Jun 23 2006 (IPS) – Discrimination by society and employers against Guatemalans living with HIV/AIDS is deeply entrenched, say local and international non-governmental organisations (NGOs), which note that they are often deprived of their basic rights to work, education and health.
Upon the mere suspicion that a person may be HIV-positive they are dismissed or demoted, or their contract is not renewed, and their rights to health care and to education for their children are denied, said Cristina Calderón of the Fernando Iturbide Foundation, an NGO working in AIDS prevention.

Some companies force their employees to undergo HIV testing, or the company has the test done without the worker s permission, Claudia Arelí Rosales of Positive P…

Haider Rizvi

UNITED NATIONS, Aug 8 2006 (IPS) – As Israeli bombs continue to fall from the skies across Lebanon, destroying homes, parks, roads, bridges, forests, hospitals and power stations, scientists say the enormous amount of toxic waste unleashed by the attack will continue to affect human lives and the environment long after the fighting is over.
The destruction is so huge that it may take a decade to recover, Zia Mian, a researcher with the Programme on Science and Global Security at Princeton University, told IPS. The consequences of environmental destruction will be felt for a long time, especially the problem of unexploded bombs and munitions.

In recent days, United Nations officials and environmental groups based in Lebanon have made similar observations…

Diego Cevallos* – Tierramérica

MEXICO CITY, Sep 9 2006 (IPS) – With skyrocketing metal prices, revenues are flowing in some Latin American countries, but labour conflicts have intensified apace in the mining sector, where workplace dangers are shared by some of the region s best paid miners and by several million poor.
Chilean miners, who earn up to 2,000 dollars a month, and miners in Peru and Mexico, whose paychecks may be no more than 60 dollars a week, are demanding their share in the bonanza.

In Chile, a three-week strike in August hit the world s largest copper deposit, and in Peru, neighbourhood protests paralysed Latin America s biggest gold mine for several days last month.

Meanwhile, in Mexico a labour dispute between miners and the government conti…