Milagros Salazar

LIMA, Sep 25 2009 (IPS) – Leaders of the Achuar people are challenging a decision by the Peruvian government to declare that a clean-up effort by the PlusPetrol oil company in the northeastern Amazon jungle has been completed.
When PlusPetrol Norte, the Peruvian subsidiary of Argentina s PlusPetrol, took over oil block 1AB along the Corrientes River in Loreto province in 2000, part of the agreement was that it would clean up the environmental mess left by the U.S. Occidental Petroleum Corporation (Oxy).

But Achuar leader Guevara Sandi Chimboras, treasurer of the Federation of Native Communities of the Corrientes River (FECONACO), told IPS that the environmental damages in our territory have not been fixed. Not enough has been done, and there is still clear evidence of pollution in our rivers and lakes.

Sandi Chimboras, who was also environmental monitor of the impacts of the oil industry in his community, said that so far this year indige…

Kristin Palitza

CAPE TOWN, Oct 8 2009 (IPS) – One hundred African women and girls die unnecessarily from unsafe abortions every day because they have to rely on unqualified medical practitioners or self-induce abortion by ingesting poisonous substances or inserting tools into their uterus.
Africa has the highest percentage of maternal deaths due to unsafe abortion. 60 percent of abortion-related deaths occur in women and girls under the age of 25.

Abortions that have to be performed illegally translate directly to higher maternal mortality, warned Dr Anibal Faundes.

Faundes, who is professor of obstetrics at the State University of Campinas in Sao Paulo, Brasil, was speaking in Cape Town at the  World Congress of the Federation of Obstetricians and Gynecologists (FIGO), for which he chairs a working group for prevention of unsafe abortion.

International health experts argue that unsafe abortion is one of the causes of maternal mortality that coul…

NEW DELHI, Nov 13 2009 (IPS) – Here is a sobering thought on the eve of Children s Day celebrated across India on Nov. 14. Despite the country s impressive economic growth trajectory and growing geopolitical heft, the benefits of that prosperity are not percolating down to its children who constitute a sizeable 30 percent of the country s 1.2 billion population.
Hence, 6,000 children die in India every day—a shocking 3,000 due to malnutrition—which Prime Minister Dr Manmohan Singh recently described as a national shame . India also hosts a third of the world s child brides, according to the United Nations Children s Fund report, released in October, ‘Progress for Children: A Report Card on Child Protection .

Worse, India s infant mortality rate—an abysmal 53 per 1,000 births—trails far behind its Millennium Development Goal (MDG) target of 30. MDGs are eight international development goals to be achieved by 2015.

In addition, 53 percent of Indian kids …

VIENTIANE, Dec 4 2009 (IPS) – Lao women express their equality by being as mobile as men. The numbers astride motorbikes in particular, are the same as those of men. But there is a cost.

Girls dash across the road. Road users observe a sort of caste system where the motorised have right of way. Credit: Melody Kemp/IPS

As the number of fatalities and injured rise, so do the number of women victims, and those who find themselves caring for injured relatives. According to the Asian Development Bank s (AsDB) Road Safety Action Plan (2005-2010), 80 percent of accidents involve a motorbike. The road is an unforgivi…