The Week with IPS 5/30

	Small Farmers’ Loss of Land Increases World Hunger Stephen Leahy The world is increasingly hungry because small farmers are losing access to farmland. Small farmers produce most of the world’s food but are now squeezed onto less than 25 percent of the world’s farmland, a new report reveals. Corporate and commercial farms, big biofuel operations and land ... MORE > >
	Rural Communities Push El Salvador Towards Ban on Mining Edgardo Ayala Mining is not viable in this country, say Salvador Sánchez Cerén - who will be sworn in as the new president of El Salvador on Jun. 1 - and his team of environmental advisers. The struggle waged by many rural communities affected by mining lies behind the position taken by the left-wing ... MORE > >
	Ugandan Lawyer Revolutionises Access to Justice with Just an iPhone and Facebook Amy Fallon When Gerald Abila received an iPhone as a gift almost two years ago, the Ugandan law student didn’t just use it to text his friends. He used it to create what would eventually become the first entity of its kind in East Africa — a tech savvy, multi-award winning, organisation that uses Facebook, ... MORE > >
	Where Will The New Europe Go? Roberto Savio “An era can be said to end when its basic illusions are exhausted” is a phrase from Arthur Miller which applies well to the European elections that have just ended. What those elections showed was that disenchantment with Europe as an ideal has grown to a dangerous point. It is true that the ... MORE > >
	OP-ED: Why Ending Child Marriage in Africa Can No Longer Wait Julitta Onabanjo , Benoit Kalasa , and Mohamed Abdel-Ahad Just 17 years old, Clarisse is already a mother of two, who lives with her husband and his four other wives in rural southern Chad. Three years earlier, she had watched her mom and sisters preparing food for a party one day. At first she celebrated along with everyone else, not realising it was her ... MORE > >
	Offsets to Cushion South African Carbon Tax Brendon Bosworth To curb greenhouse gas emissions, South Africa wants to put a tax on carbon emissions from big polluters. The aim of making polluters pay for the carbon they pump into the atmosphere is to help South Africa, the world’s 12th highest emitter of greenhouse gas carbon dioxide, transition to a ... MORE > >
	Schools Reflect Segregation in Chile’s Educational System Marianela Jarroud The decentralisation of Chile’s public schools, which were handed over to the municipalities to run in 1981, gave rise to a de facto segregation that has cast a shadow over several generations of Chileans. Patricia Durán and Erna Sáez are the head teachers at two municipal schools in the region ... MORE > >
	The Evolution of Climate Legislation in Three Infographs IPS Correspondents The global canon of climate legislation has undergone significant changes over the last four decades. These changes in recent years have included a growing body of signature laws and initiatives spearheaded by countries in the global South, many of which are disproportionally affected by decades of ... MORE > >
	Somalia Warns Kenyan Refugee Expulsion Will Lead to ‘Chaos and Anarchy' Muhyadin Ahmed Roble Somalia’s State Minister for Interior and Federalism Affairs Mohamud Moalim Yahye has told IPS that the hasty repatriation and mass deportation of its citizens by Kenya could compromise recent, critical security improvements made by regional governments against the Islamic extremist group, ... MORE > >
	Burundi Headed for Election Turmoil as Ruling Party Allegedly Arms Youth Wing Bernard Bankukira Burundi could be heading for political violence ahead of the 2015 elections amid allegations that the ruling National Council for the Defence of Democracy-Forces for Defence of Democracy (CNDD-FDD) has been arming its youth wing. Pierre Claver Mbonimpa, the chairman of the civil society ... MORE > >
	Protests Threaten to Paralyse Brazil Ahead of World Cup Fabiola Ortiz As the FIFA World Cup approaches, the streets of Brazil are heating up with strikes and demonstrations, and there are worries that the social unrest could escalate into a wave of protests similar to the ones that shook the country in June 2013. Groups of public and private sector workers have ... MORE > >
	Seasonal Agricultural Workers Left Out of Chilean Boom Marianela Jarroud Tens of thousands of women employed as seasonal workers in rural areas of Chile suffer high levels of poverty and poor working conditions, even though their labour generates huge profits for agricultural exporters. In 2013, Chile’s agro-exports amounted to nearly 11.6 billion dollars. But most ... MORE > >