Posted 1:50 PM by Mary

India PM calls aborted fetuses shameful
By GAVIN RABINOWITZ –

NEW DELHI (AP) — India's widespread practice of aborting female fetuses is a "national shame," the prime minister said Monday, insisting the country can no longer ignore the problem if it wants to be a modern nation.

Experts say up to 500,000 female fetuses are aborted in India every year because of a deep-rooted cultural preference for male children, who will help support their parents in old age and attract wives with substantial dowries.

"This is a national shame and we must face this challenge squarely here and now," Prime Minister Manmohan Singh told a conference on ways to "Save the girl child."

"No nation, no society, no community can hold its head high and claim to be part of the civilized world if it condones the practice of discriminating against one half of humanity represented by women," Singh said.

The British medical journal The Lancet recently reported that up to 500,000 female fetuses are aborted every year.

Singh said the number of girls per 1,000 boys declined nationally from 962 in 1981 to just 927 in the last census in 2001. Activists believe the problem has become even worse since the census.

The gap in the ratio between girls and boys is more extreme in wealthier urban areas where couples want fewer children and the pressure to produce a male increases. In the northern state of Punjab, there were only 798 girls for every 1,000 boys, Singh said.

For a recent report, the group ActionAid sent interviewers to 6,000 households in five north Indian regions. In Punjab, researchers found rural areas with just 500 girls for every 1,000 boys, and communities of high-caste urbanites with just 300 girls per 1,000.

Labels: Gender, India, infanticide

Posted 1:14 PM by Mary

Carter comes back from Hamas with an olive branch

Aijaz Ahmad: Carter including Hamas in peace process is itself a major development
Wednesday April 23rd, 2008

David Newman, professor of political geography at Israel’s Ben-Gurion University, tells The Real News Network that Hamas’ claim that it will respect a peace deal with Israel—if it is accepted in a vote by Palestinians—represents “a more moderate position” than what the group has previously expressed.

The Real News senior analyst Aijaz Ahmad concludes that Hamas’ new, slightly softened stance could represent “a major breakthrough” in the ongoing standoff between Israel and the Islamic militant group.

David Newman is a Professor of Political Geography and a Senior Research Fellow at Ben-Gurion University in Israel, where he founded the Department of Politics and Government. Editor of the international journal, Geopolitics, and former columnist for The Jerusalem Post.

excerpt:

AIJAZ AHMAD, SENIOR ANALYST, THE REAL NEWS: A very important thing to understand in this context is just who Jimmy Carter is. He's not only a former president of the United States, but the one president who negotiated between Israel and Egypt the most durable peace agreement that there has ever been between Israel and the Arabs. And it is because of that agreement that there has never been, since then, an Arab-Israeli war. So painting him today as somebody who's somehow opposed to Israel, particularly sympathetic to Palestinians, and so on is really contrary to historical fact. As the head of Carter Center, he has been intimately involved in observing the two key elections in Palestine, both 2005 and 2006, and therefore understands the political landscape.

The principal achievement of President Carter during this trip is that he has tried to establish the fact that it is both necessary and legitimate to speak to Hamas, contrary to the position taken not only by the Israeli government, but also all the western governments. The criterion for legitimacy for Carter is simple: you don't have to like Hamas; you don't have to agree with Hamas; you simply have to recognize the fact that Hamas won the elections of 2006 and thus represents a very vast amount of Palestinian public opinion. In talking to Hamas, President Carter seems to have extracted from them a very interesting public statement, namely that President Abbas has the right to negotiate any peace agreement with Israel that he considers appropriate, and if the Palestinian people accept that agreement, Hamas will accept it too. Finally, President Carter has also helped clarify and make public a position that Hamas has been expressing for a long time but has not been covered in the media. What it says is that Hamas would be willing to live side by side with Israel as a neighbor and would even offer a complete truce for ten years. This is a major breakthrough, I believe, and this should be taken up by the United States, the western powers, and anyone else who wants to see peace established between Palestinians and Israelis.

Labels: Carter, hamas, Middle East

Posted 1:18 PM by Mary

No Peace Without Hamas

By Mahmoud al-Zahar, WashingtonPost
Thursday, April 17, 2008; Page A2
GAZA -- President Jimmy Carter's sensible plan to visit the Hamas leadership this week brings honesty and pragmatism to the Middle East while underscoring the fact that American policy has reached its dead end. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice acts as if a few alterations here and there would make the hideous straitjacket of apartheid fit better. While Rice persuades Israeli occupation forces to cut a few dozen meaningless roadblocks from among the more than 500 West Bank control points, these forces simultaneously choke off fuel supplies to Gaza; blockade its 1.5 million people; approve illegal housing projects on West Bank land; and attack Gaza City with F-16s, killing men, women and children. Sadly, this is "business as usual" for the Palestinians.

Last week's attack on the Nahal Oz fuel depot should not surprise critics in the West. Palestinians are fighting a total war waged on us by a nation that mobilizes against our people with every means at its disposal -- from its high-tech military to its economic stranglehold, from its falsified history to its judiciary that "legalizes" the infrastructure of apartheid. Resistance remains our only option. Sixty-five years ago, the courageous Jews of the Warsaw ghetto rose in defense of their people. We Gazans, living in the world's largest open-air prison, can do no less.

Labels: Carter, Middle East, Palestine

Posted 1:15 PM by Mary

Stern takes bleaker view on warming
By Fiona Harvey and Jim Pickard in London

Published: April 16 2008 22:02 | Last updated: April 16 2008 22:02

The Stern report on climate change underestimated the risks of global warming, its author said on Wednesday, and should have presented a gloomier view of the future.

“We underestimated the risks ... we underestimated the damage associated with temperature increases ... and we underestimated the probabilities of temperature increases,” Lord Stern, former chief economist at the World Bank, told the Financial Times on Wednesday.

In retrospect, he said, he would have taken a much stronger view in the report on the drastic changes that would come about if greenhouse gas emissions were not abated.

In the report, he estimated the costs of climate change at between 5 per cent and 20 per cent of global gross domestic product.

But these costs would be much higher if the report had taken a more aggressive stance on the probable consequences of warming.

Lord Stern said data published since his report came out, in October 2006, had led him to change his mind.

Last year, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, the body of the world’s leading climate scientists convened by the United Nations, published the most comprehensive study of climate change science.

It predicted a temperature rise of 3 degrees Celsius within the next 100 years with catastrophic consequences for the planet, unless greenhouse gas emissions were stabilised and then cut within the next decade.

“The damage risks are bigger than I would have argued. Things like the damage associated with a 5 degree temperature increase are enormous. We can’t be precise about what it would be like but you can say it would be a transformation,” he said.

But he defended his estimates of the cost of taking action on emissions, which he put in the report at about 1 per cent of global GDP.

“Subsequent reports, [from] McKinsey, the International Energy Agency, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, have pointed to the [Stern report’s] costs of action being roughly in the right ball park. Nothing [since] has led me to revise the cost of action,” he said.

Labels: Climate change, World Bank

Posted 9:14 AM by Mary

To go green is glorious

From Tibetan monks to human rights activists, recent events have shown that China can still be a dangerous place to be vocal. But when it comes to environmental lobbying, there are signs the system may be changing, reports Mukul Devichand.

In the shadow of the Great Wall of China, I watch men in blue overalls hack at the soil of the forest floor and carefully plant new saplings.

They are trying to restore this depleted ancient woodland to the high international standards of the Forest Stewardship Council.

Sustainable forests like this are a symbol of how things are slowly being changed by the new kids on the political block in China: green activists.

Charismatic campaigner Wen Bo has lobbied against deforestation, which he says has caused violent dust storms and floods - and a host of other effects.

He is not like most Chinese politicos, with a stylish haircut and a fleece jacket rather than a Mao suit. But what really sets him apart is the language he uses.

"We are not passively being governed, being ruled by the government," he told me. "We have our rights."

This is electric stuff in the world's biggest one-party state. Some outsiders hope that movements like his will give birth to a civil society - and even democracy - in repressive China.

They hope that China's reaction to the epic environmental consequences of its growth - with a quarter of drinking water contaminated - will allow people power to break free and put a brake on pollution.

But on a visit to Beijing to meet activists and experts on the environmental movement, I found it hard to gauge the size and effectiveness of this new green political space.

The limits of tolerance

None of the environmentalists I spoke to risk lobbying for democracy or challenging the political system overtly.

"That would be like throwing an egg against a stone," says Wen Bo.

Instead they work together with officials who will listen. The activists say their ideas, such as "public participation," fit into a Communist Party framework.

It seems to be working somewhat on paper, with the central government recently upgrading the main environmental agency to a ministry.

Official statistics say there are now over 2,000 "green" NGOs. One unofficial study says there are up to two million informal groups of students, farmers or other activists. Several campaigns have received positive coverage in the state-controlled media.

But Wen Bo told me intelligence agents sometimes pose as green volunteers to keep an eye on what's going on.

And it's still not unusual to see activists arrested - one was recently charged with subversion. So is green politics making any real difference?

A Chinese Erin Brockovich

Zhang Jingjing, who works at a centre that helps pollution victims get legal aid, has been called the Erin Brockovich of China because of some famous victories in class action cases.

In 2005 she worked with the centre's boss, Wang Canfa, to help residents of a village in Fujian Province successfully sue a factory for compensation.

The factory was poisoning local crops with chromium - the same chemical Ms Brockovich fought in California.

But Ms Zhang sees limits to China's "green political space" because of the clout polluters have with local governments and judges.

In a country focussed on economic growth, factories and developers allow local officials to boost their area's GDP figures. The officials in turn pressurise judges.

"We have no independent judiciary, that is our problem," she says.

Because local officials and judges often side with polluters, the greens see central government as their ally. It's an internal power struggle in China that outsiders rarely see.

Outsourcing harm

So although the activists do challenge the government, they themselves say it would be premature to call them a democracy movement.

Instead they are seeking much more basic mechanisms of accountability, like planning law and public hearings, which still don't exist in China.

What's more, many Chinese green activists don't see their own system as the sole cause of the problem. Instead, they blame the West.

I met Xiao Wei, the popstar whose message of love and green harmony inspired several of the 30-something activists I'd met, back when they were teenagers.

Given his soft style and hippy lyrics, I expected him to rail against the consumerism of today's China, with its 10-lane highways and enormous shopping malls.

Instead he said: "Everybody has the right to pursue a good life, to buy a big house or a car if they want to."

He pointed out that China is still a developing country and that much of the pollution is actually caused by factories which make products for the West. The waste generated by "Made in China" products is left for Chinese people to deal with.

Chinese environmental groups call this "the outsourcing of harm".

Technological solutions

The basic dilemma for China is that polluting factories mean cheap exports, and potentially more jobs for the 300 million still living on less than $1 a day.

Chinese green groups often face the taunt that they put nature above the needs of the poor.

But Lo Sze Ping, the young director of Greenpeace's Beijing branch, thinks this very dilemma will force China's ecologists to come up with creative technological solutions.

"Imagine if China could produce solar panels just like China is producing DVD players now," he says.

"It would genuinely kick-start an energy revolution, not just in China but for the world."

Labels: China, environment

Posted 7:17 PM by Mary

Labels: food security, food suppl7

Posted 2:03 PM by Mary

ICRC on Iraq's Healthcare crisis

Very sick, and not getting better, By Alexander Casella

GENEVA - Five years after the American invasion of Iraq, the humanitarian situation is one of the world's most critical, according to a recent report issued by the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) in Geneva.

Currently, about 1 million Iraqis are reported missing and are considered as having either been killed or abducted. Some 2 million have fled to neighboring countries and an additional 2.5 million have been internally displaced - this in a population estimated at 27.5 million people. But the greatest level of deterioration had been the virtual collapse of the health care system. This was a process that started well before 2003.

From the early 1980s, the Iraqi health care system did not keep pace with the country's population growth and existing facilities became increasingly strained. Sanctions imposed after 1990 further compounded the problem and forced health authorities to shift their emphasis towards the provision of emergency services at the expense of public heath and infrastructure maintenance.

Thus, at the time of the American invasion, the Iraqi health care system was already under considerable stress. Rather than contributing to redressing the situation, the occupation and ensuring resistance only precipitated the crisis and brought the system close to a total collapse.

According to official Iraqi figures, of the 34,000 doctors registered in 1990, at least 20,000 have left the country. Since 2003, more than 2,200 doctors and nursed have been killed and more than 250 kidnapped. There are currently 172 public hospitals with 30,000 beds, well short of 80,000 beds needed, plus 65 private hospitals. Practically all are in sub-standard condition and are short of equipment and drugs. Interventions such as open-heart surgery are no longer practiced and the only choice, for those who can afford it, is to seek treatment abroad.

Lack of qualified staff, and in particular midwives, has had a direct impact on infant mortality rates in particular and on the level of care in general. Lack of medical facilities is compounded by the poor security situation. In many areas road checkpoints and curfews have restricted movements to the point in which access to a hospital in the event of an emergency has become impossible.

While private clinics provide marginal better services and security than public hospitals, most of the population can't afford the cost. A private sector doctor charges between US$2 and $7 for a consultation, a fee beyond the means of the average Iraqi who earns on average $5 a day when not unemployed.

Compounding the effects of the health care crisis is the lack of sanitation. Inadequate treatment of sewage, constant breakdown of water treatment plants due to equipment failure and electricity shortages, outdated piping and illegal connections have resulted in a major shortage of drinking water.

Restrictions on chlorine, essential for water sterilization but also an ingredient on the making of explosives, have further hampered efforts at water sterilization. With most Iraqis no longer able to rely on public services for clean water, the only alternative is bottled water at a cost of some $50 per month per family. It is an alternative that most can't afford, and the cholera outbreak of 2007 was directly attributed by the ICRC to the combination of a collapsing healthcare system and the increasing lack of sanitation.

The ICRC, as a matter of policy, has left the finger pointing to others and has chosen to focus on the facts rather than on their cause. Thus, the report not once refers to the "United States" and the invasion is qualified as the "outbreak of the war". This restraint, however, is only a matter of cosmetics and it is not even necessary to read between the lines to view the report as a damning indictment of the consequences of the US invasion of Iraq.

Labels: health, Iraq, Red Cross

Posted 3:38 PM by Mary

Communicating for the Future: ICTs and the UN
28 February 2008

In the spirit of technological advances at the United Nations, the briefing looked at the application of new media in the daily work at the Organization, more specifically the Department of Public Information (DPI). With the vision of “a stronger United Nations for a better world”, the Secretary-General appointed Mr. Choi Soon-hong to become the first Chief Information Technology Officer for the United Nations Secretariat. Mr. Choi immediately followed suit and offered his vision for "stronger ICT for a better United Nations" and is now developing an Organization-wide ICT strategy and leads its implementation. The briefing examined how this strategy applies to DPI, and more specifically to the Outreach Division and the NGO Section. With the upcoming Capital Master Plan and the uncertain future of the NGO Resource Centre, a Virtual Resource Centre may be one way to outreach and connect with clients in the future.

Speakers included Ms. Nathalie Leroy, Chief, Knowledge Sharing Section, Dag Hammarskjold Library, Outreach Division (OD), DPI; Ms. Sasa Gorisek; Information Officer, NGO Section, Civil Society Section (CSS), OD, DPI; Mr. Robert Pollard, NGO Committee Education; Mr. Juan Carlos Brandt, Chief, NGO Section, CSS, OD, DPI, moderated the briefing.

Ms. Nathalie Leroy discussed the efforts taken by the Secretariat to use new technologies more effectively and efficiently, and more specifically in its relations with the NGO community. Ms. Leroy noted that “one size does not fit all” and various needs had to be taken into consideration. She stressed the need for strategy first, and technology later: “we know who sends the message, we just need to know how to disseminate it and that’s how technology comes into play.” She introduced various outreach tools, including social networking websites and blogs, and noted the recent media accreditation of the Inner City Press blogger by the United Nations. She also noted the growth of mature populations using social networking websites and cited a senior UN official’s blog as an example of blogging at the UN (UNODC’s “Costa’s Corner). Ms. Leroy also spoke about “citizen journalism”, which encouraged freedom of expression and allowed members of the general population to create original content at no cost. Additionally, she discussed trends in the virtual community, such as the rise in usage of mobile devices to access the Internet; and the fact that one billion people worldwide will access the Internet from a mobile device in 2008. She also mentioned that one half of the world population was under the age of 25, which had an enormous effect on the use of new media.

Ms. Sasa Gorisek started by quoting Juan Carlos Brandt’s concept of “technology is like a sandbox and we’re inviting you to come and play.” She discussed the proposal for a Virtual Resource Centre during the upcoming Capital Master Plan and with an objective to reach a wider audience both geographically and demographically through the use of new technologies. She stressed that the Virtual Resource Centre would be in addition to and not instead of the existing ways of disseminating information to DPI NGOs. Furthermore, she discussed the usage of the Internet and social networking sites worldwide and showcased some examples of these tools, such as Delicious and Digg. She briefly mentioned podcasts and vodcasts. In conclusion, Ms. Gorisek encouraged the NGOs to go out and try out some of these tools, such as Facebook, as they offered countless opportunities to establish and maintain worldwide networks and thus influence public opinion in their area of work.

Mr. Robert Pollard began by noting the global transition to an information economy and mentioned the cost for generating information nowadays to be zero. Mr. Pollard then presented the temporary website for the annual DPI/NGO conference, a tiddly wiki, which is available at http://www.ngo-framework.net/. He noted the dramatic advances in technology to transcend national boundaries and discussed moving beyond PDF formats and creating visually enhancing documents specific for the Internet. In addition, Mr. Pollard spoke about the abundance of websites available for networking purposes, such as Google Groups. He concluded by noting the profound revolution of the freedom of the press in which free market mechanisms import and export in abundance.

During the question-and-answer period, a question was asked with regards to the rise of new media being a factor in decreasing personal meetings between people. In response, Mr. Brandt stressed that nothing could replace the importance of the eye-to-eye contact and the necessity of this human contact. Ms. Gorisek added that in the case of the proposed Virtual Resource Centre, the new media were not replacing any former means of communication, but building upon and complementing what was already in use. In answer to another question related to accessing UN documents, Ms. Leroy confirmed that the UN budget was public information that could be accessed online. Related to another question, Ms. Leroy noted the importance of managing email and said that only 15 per cent of emails sent through UN email accounts were actually related to official UN business. In conclusion, Ms. Leroy acknowledged the need to make information and resources more readily available to NGOs and stated the hopes of opening the UN more to the civil society.

Posted 3:34 PM by Mary

Global Witness pushes the issue of conflict resources up the international agenda

The UN should put in place systems to quickly close down natural resource extraction operations that profit from conflict and human rights abuses

Throughout our twelve years of investigative work, Global Witness has repeatedly illustrated how poor natural resource governance can precipitate and exacerbate conflict. We have recently begun an over-arching campaign to advocate for the international community to integrate good natural resource management mechanisms into all post-conflict development plans, which will put in place policies to ensure future natural resource revenues benefit ordinary citizens rather fuel corruption and political.

Our campaigning efforts paid off when 14 of the 15 members of the United Nations Security Council called for a Secretary General's report on the issue. Global Witness is continuing to work alongside key member states to prompt a UN Secretary General's report, ensuring that the UN addresses the issue of natural resources in conflict more systematically and effectively. Such a report would help the UN to assess its achievements, lessons to be learned and gaps in how it deals with this issue, making recommendations on how to improve its performance.

GLobalWitness.org

Posted 10:43 AM by Mary

At UN anti-trafficking forum, participants raise awareness of tainted goods
14 February 2008 – As couples celebrated Valentine’s Day around the world with gifts of chocolate and cut flowers, participants at a United Nations forum in Vienna on human trafficking today worked to raise awareness of how the problem is tied to these commodities.

Behind the romantic gestures of roses and chocolate “is often a chain of trafficked human beings delivering disposable commodities to affluent consumers. Many are children toiling in inhumane conditions or women trapped in near-slavery,” the UN Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC) said in a news release issued in conjunction with the Vienna Forum to Fight Human Trafficking.

Conference participants wore upturned heart lapel badges called the “upset heart” as a sign of solidarity with the victims. Their aim was to raise consciousness and affect the buying decisions of consumers just as the “blood diamond” and Fair Trade certifications have fostered ethical choices on diamonds. The campaign was also the subject of a press conference at UN Headquarters in New York this week.

“Take exploitation out of your bottom line,” said UNODC Antonio Maria Costa in his opening speech to the Vienna Forum yesterday. “Make sure that the supply chain is not tainted by blood, sweat and tears of modern slaves.”

“On this Valentine’s Day, spare a thought for those whose lives have been turned upside down by human trafficking,” he said.

Posted 1:53 PM by Mary

Gates Foundation’s Influence Criticized
By DONALD G. McNEIL Jr.

The chief of malaria for the World Health Organization has complained that the growing dominance of malaria research by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation risks stifling a diversity of views among scientists and wiping out the world health agency’s policy-making function.

In a memorandum, the malaria chief, Dr. Arata Kochi, complained to his boss, Dr. Margaret Chan, the director general of the W.H.O., that the foundation’s money, while crucial, could have “far-reaching, largely unintended consequences.”

Many of the world’s leading malaria scientists are now “locked up in a ‘cartel’ with their own research funding being linked to those of others within the group,” Dr. Kochi wrote. Because “each has a vested interest to safeguard the work of the others,” he wrote, getting independent reviews of research proposals “is becoming increasingly difficult.”

Also, he argued, the foundation’s determination to have its favored research used to guide the health organization’s recommendations “could have implicitly dangerous consequences on the policy-making process in world health.”

Dr. Tadataka Yamada, executive director of global health at the Gates Foundation, disagreed with Dr. Kochi’s conclusions, saying the foundation did not second-guess or “hold captive” scientists or research partnerships that it backed. “We encourage a lot of external review,” he said.

The memo, which was obtained by The New York Times, was written late last year but circulated this week to the heads of several health agency departments, with a note asking whether they were having similar struggles with the Gates Foundation.

A spokeswoman for the director general said Dr. Chan saw the memo last year but did not respond to it. It is “the view of one department, not the W.H.O.’s view,” said the spokeswoman, Christine McNab. The agency has cordial relations with the foundation, and the agency’s policies are set by committees, which include others besides Gates-financed scientists, she said.

Posted 1:52 PM by Mary

UN Chief Seeks Bush's Support

3 days ago

WASHINGTON (AP) — U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon told President Bush on Friday that "I need your strong support" to resolve global problems.

Meeting in the Oval Office, Bush expressed strong backing for Ban and his efforts "to make the United nations a constructive force for good."

Bush at times has had strained relations with the U.N., particularly when he sought unsuccessfully the U.N.'s blessing for the U.S.-led war in Iraq. At the time, Bush questioned whether the U.N. was relevant and said it was time for it "to show some backbone and resolve."

But Bush was unreserved in his praise of Ban, thanking him for his efforts to deal with the humanitarian crisis in Sudan, turmoil in Myanmar and violence in Kenya.

"I appreciate your vision," the president said. "And thank you for your leadership and your friendship."

Ban, in turn, thanked Bush for the support he has shown over the past year.

"I've been trying my best to make the United Nations more trustful, transparent and accountable and a more effective organization," he said.

"The United States is the country with the most ability for technology and financing capacities," the secretary-general said. "I count on your leadership and active participation."

He said a strong partnership between the U.S. and U.N. "is the crucial and important element in carrying out my duty as secretary general, and also making the United Nations organization more strengthened in carrying out the common challenges we share together."

Posted 2:17 PM by Mary

This week, US military prosecutors decided to seek the death penalty for six Guantanamo Bay detainees who are "to be charged with central roles" in the 9/11 terror attacks. One detainee, Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, allegedly "conceived the attack, got approval and funding from Osama bin Laden, and oversaw the training of the hijackers." Others aided in the training and financing of the hijackers. While the charges are serious, the detainees deserve fair trials. But under the Military Commissions Act (MCA), such justice appears unlikely. In 2006, a previous system was ruled unconstitutional by the Supreme Court in Hamdan v. Rumsfeld, but months later, President Bush and the conservative-run Congress "resurrected the tribunals in an altered form" in the 2006 MCA. Under this system, four other defendants have been charged by the military commission; only one has pled guilty. In place of military commissions, Ken Gude of the Center for American Progress advocates the use of the criminal justice system, which, "coupled with standard military trials when necessary, has and can further law enforcement, intelligence, and prevention efforts without undermining our fundamental liberties or our long-term efforts to combat
WFP, Vodafone to work on emergency communication
13 Feb 2008 09:46:00 GMT
Source: AlertNet
By Kate Holton

LONDON, Feb 13 (Reuters) - The United Nations World Food Programme (WFP) has joined forces with Vodafone to work on a standard telecommunications system for aid agencies around the world to improve logistics and response times to disasters.

In natural disasters or attacks such as the Sept. 11, 2001 attacks in the United States, communication systems can be damaged, destroyed or severely restricted due to heavy demand.

The two groups believe a system where all agencies are trained in the same way to work together to re-establish communications could improve response times to major emergencies and allow agencies to better reach those affected.

"In an emergency, the ability to communicate saves lives," WFP Executive Director Josette Sheeran told Reuters in an interview.

"To us this is central to our work, we're the global 911 and we have to be able to respond, we have to be able to active everyone who has these capabilities."

The WFP is the lead United Nations agency on providing communications in emergency situations.

The United Nations Foundation and the Vodafone Group Foundation have pledged $4.3 million between them while the WFP has pledged a further $1.8 million to develop a training programme open to all humanitarian relief organisations.

Over the next three years, 500 information and communication technology workers will be trained to deploy quickly. Sheeran said they would ensure that all the agencies were able to work on the same communication system, and this would also allow smaller, local agencies, to be involved quickly.

"Sometimes we'll have up to 2,000 partners working on any given situation and there's many local NGOs that are part of the network and can be called on as part of the response," she said.

Posted 10:48 PM by Mary

http://www.boingboing.net/
Global arms trade as an interactive map
see
http://armstrade.sipri.org/ at the Stockholm Peace Institute for data, and here is the map
http://www.sipri.org/contents/armstrad/output_types_TIV.html

Posted 3:23 PM by Mary

Reuters: Iraq Conflict Has Killed A Million Iraqis: Survey

LONDON - More than one million Iraqis have died as a result of the conflict in their country since the U.S.-led invasion in 2003, according to research conducted by one of Britain’s leading polling groups.0131 07

The survey, conducted by Opinion Research Business (ORB) with 2,414 adults in face-to-face interviews, found that 20 percent of people had had at least one death in their household as a result of the conflict, rather than natural causes.

The last complete census in Iraq conducted in 1997 found 4.05 million households in the country, a figure ORB used to calculate that approximately 1.03 million people had died as a result of the war, the researchers found.

The margin of error in the survey, conducted in August and September 2007, was 1.7 percent, giving a range of deaths of 946,258 to 1.12 million.