Stephen de Tarczynski
MELBOURNE, Aug 28 2011 (IPS) – Concern is growing for the mental health of thousands of people locked up indefinitely in this country s immigration detention system.
In July, the office of the Commonwealth Ombudsman, a statutory body handling complaints about investigations into government departments and agencies, outlined an inquiry into suicides and self- harm among immigration detainees.
I was alarmed that in the first week of June when I visited Christmas Island (detention centres), more than 30 incidents of self-harm by detainees held there were reported, said ombudsman Allan Asher.
The investigation was announced after an increase in such incidents was reported to International Health and Medical Services (IHMS), the contracted he…
Sana Altaf
SRINAGAR, Oct 14 2011 (IPS) – Fourteen-year-old Shafat Ahmad works as a domestic helper in the house of a Srinagar-based government employee in Kashmir. His younger sister embroiders shawls in an unregistered textile venture in her native village of Beeru.
When my father first brought me here, my employer promised to send me to school, Shafat told IPS. Though he is keen to pursue his education, he has yet to attend a single class.
The Ahmed siblings story is just one among thousands, as increasing numbers of children across the Kashmir Valley become mired in a child labour epidemic that strips them of their childhood and the chance for a decent education.
Kashmir s handicrafts industry, which has long served as the backbone of the state economy, ha…
Miriam Gathigah
Better Aid Can Save Millions of Lives in Africa. Credit: Miriam Gathigah/IPS
BUSAN, South Korea, Nov 29 2011 (IPS) – Although there has been considerable progress towards reducing maternal and infant mortality, millions of women and children in Africa are still in need of better health services, food and sanitation.
Better Aid C…
KARACHI, Jan 26 2012 (IPS) – He was a happy child, my younger brother, Mohammad Ramzan, 18, reminisced, his voice steeped in sadness.
A Pakistani child domestic worker. Credit: Fahim Siddiqi /IPS
Eldest among six siblings, Ramzan is still coming to terms with the murder of his 11-year-old brother, Shan Ali, who worked as a child domestic worker in a posh locality in the national capital, Islamabad.
Ali was allegedly strangled by his employer, Atiya Al Hussain, on Jan. 5, for neglecting her child.
She and her husband, Mudassar Abbas…
Thalif Deen
UNITED NATIONS, Mar 7 2012 (IPS) – When the U.N. General Assembly unanimously adopted a resolution back in September 2000 laying out eight Millennium Development Goals (MDGs), it specified 2015 as the target date to achieve them.
A young girl in Cote d Ivoire fills a clay pot from a nearby well refurbished by UNICEF to make clean water accessible …
GOROKA, Apr 16 2012 (IPS) – Papua New Guinea’s infamous track record on gender-based violence – with an estimated 75 percent of women and children experiencing some form of violence, primarily domestic abuse – is poised to worsen.
A Highlands-based non-governmental organisation is warning that unless the government takes immediate action to prevent the risk of increased cash flows from the nation’s largest resource extraction project, which is escalating alcohol consumption and eroding family cohesion, violence against women and girls will very likely increase.
Construction of the 15 billion dollar is underway at a gas production and processing site near Tari, Hela Province, in the Highlands, and at liquefaction and storage plant on the south coast of Central Provi…
Irrigation in Kakamas, South Africa. Credit: Patrick Burnett/IPS
WASHINGTON, May 18 2012 (IPS) – On the eve of the Group of Eight (G8) summit near Washington, President Barack Obama on Friday unveiled a major new initiative aimed at shoring up food security and combating global hunger.
Speaking at an event here, the president said that the new programme, focused on Africa, aims to lift 50 million people out of poverty within 10 years.
But aid agencies and watchdog groups worry that the new programme, which includes a significant new role for the private sector, could prove diversionary for donors, resulting in a return to relatively low, unfocuse…
Shumi attends school and does shifts at a brick factory. Credit: Naimul Haq/IPS
DHAKA, Jul 3 2012 (IPS) – At first glance the smart young women in white overcoats, black rubber boots and protective face masks seem out of place in impoverished Bangladesh’s dirtiest industry – brick making.
But this factory in Savar, 35 km outside Dhaka, is no ordinary brick kiln. It is a Hybrid Hoffman Kiln (HHK) which uses modified German technology that drastically cuts down the smoke and soot associated with firing blocks of clay into bricks.
HHKs also use semi-automatic machines that do away with heavy manual labour, allowing women to be employed in brick-making in…
Sofía Gatica, with a loudspeaker, at a protest against agrochemicals. Credit: Mothers of Ituzaingó
BUENOS AIRES, Aug 17 2012 (IPS) – After more than a decade of campaigning against toxic agrochemicals, a group of women from a poor neighbourhood in the northern Argentine city of Córdoba have brought large-scale soybean growers to trial for the health damages caused by spraying.
The trial began in June, and the sentence is to be handed down on Aug. 21. In the dock are two soybean producers, Francisco Parra and Jorge Gabrielli, and the pilot of a spray plane, Edgardo Pancello.
The prosecutors are seeking four years of prison for Parra and three years fo…
A three-day polio vaccination campaign kicked off throughout Darfur on Feb. 28, 2011 as part of the Sudanese Government’s efforts to eradicate the disease. Credit: UN Photo/Olivier Chassot
UNITED NATIONS, Oct 6 2012 (IPS) – It was early July 2004, and Darfur was looking like a war zone massive human displacements of an, ongoing skirmishes, inclement weather, a parched landscape due to the recurring droughts, and sheer misery everywhere.
The worst affected were women and children. Each passing day, the agony and suffering we witnessed was heartbreaking. There was an urgent need to quickly immunise all children in Sudan, and this included Darfur, to prevent , a life-thr…