Monthly Archives: July 2011

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None Dare Call It Privatization

On the Commons

Dispatch from a high-powered conference spelling out a new strategy for raiding the commons

by Tom Tresser

At the Hyatt Lodge Hotel on the McDonald’s corporate campus in Oak Brook, Illinois, June 24, the other wingtip dropped.  It happened at a conference called “It’s Not Privatization: Implementing Partnerships in Illinois”, organized by The National Council for Public-Private Partnerships and the Chicagoland Chamber of Commerce with assistance from the Metropolitan Planning Council . Continue reading →

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Kenyans donate $200,000 by text for drought victims

Kenyans chat on mobile phones in Nairobi (archive shot) About half of Kenya's population has a mobile phone

BBC

Kenyans have donated nearly $200,000 (£122,000) via mobile phone banking for aid to victims of the worst drought in the region in 60 years.  The BBC’s Noel Mwakugu in the capital, Nairobi, says the money has been raised in the first 12 hours of an appeal launched by leading businesses.  Continue reading →

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Catherine Odongo: A Story of Patience and Resilience in the Face of Difficulty

News from Africa

Catherine’s confidence arrests any draws to her atrocious past, she is a portrait of typical girl child resilience turned an icon in the society. 

By Eric Sande

For Catherine Amondi Odongo , 21, light is finally at the end of the tunnel despite the tribulations she had to go through earlier in life. She exudes confidence that momentarily makes her forget her troubled past. At only 21, she displays a persona of one determined to make it in life, after her successful stint at Anita’s Home, the girl child centre run by Koinonia Community in Kenya. And as she waits to join university, not even the sky can be the limit. Continue reading →

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Nigeria’s Goodluck Jonathan proposes one-term limits

Goodluck Jonathan won April's election with nearly 60% of the vote

BBC

Nigeria’s leader Goodluck Jonathan has said he will ask MPs to amend the constitution so that future presidents serve a single, longer term in office.

The constitution currently limits presidents to two four-year terms.

There has been speculation in Nigerian newspapers that the proposed amendment would enable President Jonathan to extend his term in office. Continue reading →

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DRC: Children still in prison despite law

Photo: Zahra Moloo/IRIN The State Establishment for Care and Education has no running water, limited infrastructure and a dilapidated dormitory

KINSHASA, 29 June 2011 (IRIN) – Two years after the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) promulgated the Law on Child Protection, an estimated 3,000 children remain in prisons across the country.

The law, which came into effect in January 2009, replaced a 1950 colonial law on juvenile delinquency that set the age of criminal responsibility at 16, leading to a number of severe penalties against children, including life imprisonment and the death sentence. Continue reading →

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The right to determine their development

Latin American Press

Prior consultation: a right that ensures other indigenous rights.

Karin Anchelía Jesusi

The right to consultation for indigenous peoples in Peru has existed for the last 17 years, since the ratification of the International Labor Organization’s Convention 169 concerning Indigenous and Tribal Peoples; nevertheless, timber, petroleum, and mining concessions on indigenous lands are still granted without prior consultation in the communities, causing an increase in the number of social conflicts. Continue reading →

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Libya: archbishop protests after NATO bombs hit food stores

 Independent Catholic News

Mgr Giovanni Innocenzo  Martinelli, Apostolic Vicar of Tripoli has protested at NATO bombing of civilian targets in his diocese. “They are hitting civilian targets such as food stores” he said. “A few days ago, NATO warplanes hit a food store just outside Tripoli, which contained oil, pasta, tomato sauce. A river of oil came out of the warehouse which was destroyed. I know they have also hit a social centre. By what right does one hit a food centre? ” Continue reading →

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Facing the crisis: four principles and four virtues

Leonardo Boff
Theologian
Earthcharter Commission
Einstein’s phrase is very true today: «a crisis cannot be resolved by the mentality that created it.» It is too late to just make reforms; they do not change the mentality. We need to start from another frame of mind, founded in principles and values that can sustain a new form of civilization. Otherwise, we will have to accept a path that leads us to the precipice. The dinosaurs have already gone down that path. Continue reading →

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Gender Responsive Planning and Budgeting at Work

By Miriam Gathigah
NAIROBI, Jul 25, 2011 (IPS) – For the first time ever, the finance minister has allocated almost four million dollars from the current national budget to provide free sanitary pads to schoolgirls.  This comes after persistent pressure from women parliamentarians who took the issue of girls’ absenteeism from school, due to lack of sanitary pads, to parliament. It was a campaign that left their male counterparts speechless, for such matters are rarely spoken about in public, let alone in parliament, in Kenya’s conservative society. Continue reading →