The Week With IPS

	Elections Offer Little Solace to Sri Lanka’s Poor Amantha Perera Priyantha Wakvitta is used to seeing his adopted city, Colombo, transform into a landscape of bright sparkling lights and window dressing towards the end of the year. This year, he says, he is having a double dose of visual stimulation, with publicity materials for the January Presidential ... MORE > >
	Indigenous Community Beats Drought and Malnutrition in Honduras Thelma Mejía In the heart of the Pijol mountains in the northern Honduran province of Yoro, the Tolupan indigenous community of Pueblo Nuevo has a lot to celebrate: famine is no longer a problem for them, and their youngest children were rescued from the grip of child malnutrition. The Tolupan indigenous ... MORE > >
	Democratising the Fight against Malnutrition Geneviève Lavoie-Mathieu There is a new dimension to the issue of malnutrition – governments, civil society and the private sector have started to come together around a common nutrition agenda. According to the Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO) and the World Health Organization (WHO), the launch of the “Zero ... MORE > >
	OPINION: All Family Planning Should Be Voluntary, Safe and Fully Informed Dr. Babatunde Osotimehin The tragic deaths and injuries of women following sterilisation in the Indian state of Chhattisgarh have sparked global media coverage and public concern and outrage. Now we must ensure that such a tragedy never occurs again. Dr. Babatunde Osotimehin. Credit: UNFPA The women underwent ... MORE > >
	Shale Oil Threatens the High Prices Enjoyed by OPEC Humberto Márquez Shale fever and the political chess among major oil producers and consumers have put OPEC in one of the most difficult junctures in its 54 years of history. “OPEC was spoiled for several years by high prices of around 100 dollars a barrel,” Elie Habalián, a former Venezuelan OPEC (Organisation ... MORE > >
	Women on the Edge of Land and Life Manipadma Jena November is the cruelest month for landless families in the Indian Sundarbans, the largest single block of tidal mangrove forest in the world lying primarily in the eastern Indian state of West Bengal. There is little agricultural wage-work to be found, and the village moneylender’s loan remains ... MORE > >
	Filipino Farmers Protest Government Research on Genetically Modified Rice Diana Mendoza Jon Sarmiento, a farmer in the Cavite province in southern Manila, plants a variety of fruits and vegetables, but his main crop, rice, is under threat. He claims that approval by the Philippine government of the genetically modified ‘golden rice’ that is fortified with beta-carotene, which the body ... MORE > >
	Civil Society Freedoms Merit Role in Post-2015 Development Agenda Mandeep S.Tiwana Nabeel Rajab, president of the Bahrain Centre for Human Rights, an advocacy NGO, is facing criminal charges for sending a tweet that said: “many Bahrain men who joined terrorism and ISIS have come from the security institutions and those institutions were the first ideological incubator”. Yara ... MORE > >
	Nuclear Weapons as Bargaining Chips in Global Politics Thalif Deen Has the world reached a stage where nuclear weapons may be used as bargaining chips in international politics? So it seems, judging by the North Korean threat last week to conduct another nuclear test - if and when the 193-member U.N. General Assembly adopts a resolution aimed at referring the ... MORE > >
	Jewellery Industry Takes Steps to Eliminate “Conflict Gold” Carey L. Biron Major U.S. jewellery companies and retailers have started to take substantive steps to eliminate the presence of “conflict gold” from their supply chains, according to the results of a year-long investigation published Monday. Rights advocates, backed by the United Nations, have been warning for ... MORE > >
	Gated Communities on the Water Aggravate Flooding in Argentina Fabiana Frayssinet The construction of gated communities on wetlands and floodplains in Greater Buenos Aires has modified fragile ecosystems and water cycles and has aggravated flooding, especially in poor surrounding neighourhoods. In the 1990s a high-end property boom led to the construction of private ... MORE > >
	Pakistan’s Paraplegics Learning to Stand on their Own Feet Ashfaq Yusufzai When a stray bullet fired by Taliban militants became lodged in her spine last August, 22-year-old Shakira Bibi gave up all hopes of ever leading a normal life. Though her family rushed her to the Hayatabad Medical Complex in Peshawar, capital city of Pakistan’s northern-most Khyber Pakhtunkhwa ... MORE > >
	Down With Sustainable Development! Long Live Convivial Degrowth! Justin Hyatt For anyone who recently attended the Fourth International Conference on Degrowth in Leipzig, Germany, listening in on conference talk, surrounded by the ecologically savvy, one quickly noticed that no one was singing the praises of sustainable development. Nonetheless, development per se and all ... MORE > >
	Refugees Between a Legal Rock and a Hard Place in Lebanon Oriol Andrés Gallart Staring at the floor, Hassan, a 21-year-old Syrian refugee from Idlib in northwestern Syria, holds a set of identification papers in his hands. He picks out a small pink piece of paper with a few words on it stating that he must obtain a work contract, otherwise his residency visa will not be ... MORE > >
	Will Myanmar’s ‘Triple Transition’ Help Eradicate Crushing Poverty? Amantha Perera Myanmar is never out of the news for long. This has been the case since a popular uprising challenged military rule in 1988. For over two decades, the country was featured in mainstream media primarily as one unable to cope with its own internal contradictions, a nation crippled by ... MORE > >
	AIDS Is No. 1 Killer of African Teenagers Sam Olukoya Two years ago, Shola* was kicked out of the family house in Abeokuta, in southwestern Nigeria, after testing HIV-positive at age 13. He was living with his father, his stepmother and their seven children. “The stepmother insisted that Shola must go because he is likely to infect her children,” ... MORE > >