Marwaan Macan-Markar

BANGKOK, May 27 2009 (IPS) – A special investigative arm of Thailand s criminal justice system is set to mount a fresh probe into a massacre of civilians during a brutal war on drugs launched six years ago, when the authoritarian Thaksin Shinawatra was the country s prime minister.
Kalasin, a province in the rural northeast, will feature in this fresh probe by the department of special investigations (DSI). Kalasin s existing policy of x- raying every community to keep it narcotics free had inspired the Thaksin administration to mount its nation-wide war on drugs, beginning in early 2003.

The neighbouring province of Roi Et, which, like Kalasin, is home to this Southeast Asian nation s poor, farming communities, is also due to come under scrutiny. The northwestern province of Tak, close to the Thai-Burma border, may also face fresh probes, says a source familiar with these investigations.

It has taken more than five years for the DSI …

Ignatius Banda

BULAWAYO, Jul 30 2009 (IPS) – A functioning public toilet has become a rare sight in Bulawayo. Across this southern Zimbabwean city of about two million residents, public toilets have all but stopped functioning, the buildings now more useful as platforms for graffiti and campaign posters than as public conveniences where people answer the call of nature.

Community-led initiatives have so far not extended to maintaining public toilets like this one. Credit: Ignatius Banda/IPS

Some daring members of the public relieve themselves outside the locked doors of the colonial-era facilities in what …

Jerrold Kessel and Pierre Klochendler

JERUSALEM, Aug 20 2009 (IPS) – Thanks to Clint Eastwood s blockbuster film Million Dollar Baby , his heroine Hilary Swank helped raise significantly the profile of women who climb into the boxing ring.
And, when Muhammad Ali s daughter Laila took up her father s cloak, she lit up a whole new generation of boxing fans around the world, especially when she battled the daughter of her father s great adversary, Joe Frazier.

As people around the globe sit leisurely around their TV sets watching athletes breathing hard, running and jumping and throwing for gold at the World Athletics championships in Berlin, no one currently cuts a greater figure than Jamaican sprinter Usain Bolt.

Bolt is definitely a phenomenon, and he is re-writing the record books. Still, one half of the world may well ask what about our half, why is less TV attention in Berlin being paid the female champions?

So, it was no coincidence that also i…

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…

Vusumuzi Sifile

HARARE, Jan 15 2010 (IPS) – Eleven-year-old Memory s grandmother wanted her to drop out of school because she is not going to live long enough to complete her studies. And the ridicule and stigma Memory endures at school because of her HIV status does not make her education seem worthwhile. Especially since this ridicule comes from her teacher.

In some Zimbabwean schools students are not allowed to speak openly about HIV/AIDS or condoms. Credit: IRIN

In a country where aids agencies estimate 120,000 children are HIV-positive, school teachers are finding themselves increasingly in the frontline of the epidemic.

The Natio…

Marwaan Macan-Markar*

TRAT, Thailand, Feb 19 2010 (IPS) – Veena Panudej makes a living in the night like so many other women and men in this quiet eastern corner of Thailand. They work under the light of the stars in rubber estates spread beyond this city close to the Cambodian border.

Veena Panudej at her workplace Credit: Marwaan Macan-Markar/IPS

By sunrise, Veena takes stock of what she has finished in her nocturnal job, tapping rubber trees for the white sap that is collected in coconut shells attached to the slender trunks of each tree.

The 34-year-old was hardly disappointed on a recent Tuesday by a ritual that began shortly after midnight. The tools she used as she made her way in her family-owned plot of rubber trees were …