IPS Articles of the Week

	"One Day in There Is Like 100 Years” Inés Benítez "It’s just like a prison. One day in there is like 100 years,” says Jennifer, a 35-year-old Nigerian woman, describing what her aunt went through in the Immigrant Detention Centre (CIE) in this city in southern Spain before she was deported. But perhaps it’s even worse than a prison. In ... MORE > >
	Mongolia’s Wild Asses Cornered From All Sides Michelle Tolson Decades of international and local collaboration have brought the Tahki or Asian Wild Horse back from the brink of extinction and reintroduced herds to Mongolia’s Gobi desert and grasslands. However, the country’s other wild equine - the Mongolian Wild Ass or Khulan - is fast disappearing. It ... MORE > >
	Sometimes, Sex Work is the Least Bad Michelle Tolson “We are not saying that all people become sex workers, but you make more money,” Virak Horn, a 32-year-old gay sex worker who works freelance in Cambodia’s capital Phnom Penh, tells IPS. He earns enough to support his family and pay for his college degree. It is an observation Melissa Hope ... MORE > >
	Private Initiative Finds Garbage Profitable in Cuba Patricia Grogg As self-employment and cooperatives expand in socialist Cuba, they are making incursions into new areas, such as waste picking and recycling – for many a means of subsistence, but for others, a gold mine. "Pitusa" said the trash thrown out by the people of Havana is an inexhaustible source of ... MORE > >
	'Civil War' Breaks Out Within Al-Shabaab Muhyadin Ahmed Roble For years the Islamist extremist group Al-Shabaab was seen as the most cohesive, united and powerful force in the failed state of Somalia. But it is now disintegrating like a house of cards because of internal divisions and power struggles within its leadership, according to Abdiwahab Sheikh ... MORE > >
	Mirror, Mirror – Who Is that Woman on TV? Fabiana Frayssinet Carla Vilas Boas is of mixed-race descent – African, European and indigenous - like a majority of the population of Brazil. But she spends hours straightening her hair, trying to look more like the blond, blue-eyed women she sees in the mirror of television. The 32-year-old domestic worker ... MORE > >
	The U.S.’s 64-Square-Foot “Torture Chambers” Pam Johnson He has not had human contact or a good night’s sleep in nearly three decades. Every single day, he wakes to the sound of metal doors clanging open and a pair of disembodied hands pushing a tray of food through a slot into his 64-square-foot cell. L to R: Kimberly Richardson (of the Peoples ... MORE > >
	The Afghan Dead Find a List Giuliano Battiston “My relatives and I tried many times, again and again, to find out what happened to my father. I searched constantly for 35 years, without success. Just a few days ago, I found out from the ‘death list’ that my father had been executed.” Mirways Yameen is among the thousands of Afghans who ... MORE > >
	Conflicts Over Water Rise in Tanzania Kizito Makoye Conflicts over water are increasing in the sprawling Pangani River Basin in northeastern Tanzania as farmers and herders jostle for dwindling water resources in the face of climate change. Over the past decade, Maasai pastoralists from the northern areas of Moshi and Arusha have been streaming ... MORE > >