Labour

Staff Accuses U.N. of Violating Human Rights

By Thalif Deen
The United Nations will commemorate Human Rights Day next week amidst charges the world body is unilaterally proposing drastic changes to working conditions and salaries of staffers without due consultation - and in violation of their basic rights.

U.N.’s Post-2015 Agenda Needs a Triple Play

By Thalif Deen
As the international community fleshes out a new set of Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) to be unveiled next year, civil society activists and U.N. officials agree their success will hinge on policies that address the nexus of poverty, hunger and environmental degradation.

Off-Radar Gold Mine Sustains Kyrgyz Mountain Village

By Asel Kalybekova
A generation after independence from the Soviet Union, most villages in Kyrgyzstan are ramshackle, broken places, scenes of hopelessness and despair. Able young people leave – for Bishkek, the capital, or for menial jobs in Russia. But thanks to a secret gold mine, one little mountain hamlet is different.

Wage Hike in Haiti Doesn’t Address Factory Abuses

By Jane Regan
Haiti’s minimum wage will nudge up 12 percent on Jan. 1, from 4.65 to 5.23 dollars (or 200 to 225 gourdes) per day. Calculated hourly, it will go from 58 to 65 cents, before taxes.

Saving Children From Loggers

By Catherine Wilson
Logging is the largest industry in the Solomon Islands, an archipelago located northwest of Fiji, where 80 percent of the islands are covered in tropical rainforest. But, although timber accounts for 60 percent of this South Pacific nation’s export earnings, most local communities have experienced no beneficial development.

Skateboarding Can Be Empowering

By Simba Shani Kamaria Russeau
An array of colourful quarter pipes, bank ramps and a fun box come to life as a clutch of Cambodian youngsters do balancing tricks, kick-flips and kick turns. The all-girl session at a skating facility near the Russian Market here is facilitated by 20-year-old Kov Chansangva, popularly known as Tin.

In Haiti, Planting Trees Is No Simple Matter

By Correspondents
Reforestation and soil conservation programmes costing many thousands of dollars in this rural community have resulted in hundreds of small ledges built of straw or sacks of earth. In certain areas, the earthworks seem to be lasting, but in others, they are disintegrating.

Green-Friendly Enterprise Helps Save Biggest Caribbean Wetlands

By Ivet González
The 18 communities in Cuba’s Ciénaga de Zapata, the largest wetlands in the Caribbean, have long survived on the abundant local hunting and fishing and by producing charcoal. But that is no longer possible, due to climate change.

Today’s Forecast Is for Climate-Proof Farming

By Jewel Fraser
Even as weather extremes bedevil Caribbean farmers, Ramgopaul Roop has turned his three-acre fruit farm into a showcase for how to beat climate change.

Jobless Growth, the 21st Century Condition

By Samuel Oakford
The world’s poorest countries are rethinking economic policies that - even during periods of breakneck growth - have failed to provide quality employment capable of matching a demographic boom.

Oil Palm Changes Rural Culture in Brazilian Amazon

By Fabiana Frayssinet
Thousands of small farming families in Pará, in the Amazon jungle in northeast Brazil, have turned to the African oil palm as a new source of income, through contracts with biofuel companies. Strange bedfellows, which poses cultural and economic challenges.

Widening Inequality Shatters Mirage of Social Mobility

By Ramy Srour
Growing income inequality will pose a major threat to social stability in countries around the globe, according to a new report by the World Economic Forum.

More Chileans Want the Benefits of Living in Latin America’s ‘Tiger’

By Marianela Jarroud
Hugo Hurtado, 47, is a chef. Anyone would say that in his country, Chile, the Latin American “tiger”, his profession would be synonymous with success and even fame. But unfortunately that’s not true.

Bank Crash Hits Women Harder

By Lowana Veal
Women in Iceland have been more badly affected by the economic collapse in 2008 than their male counterparts, both in terms of physical and mental health, studies show.

Las Pavas Extracts a Miracle from God

By Constanza Vieira
The rural community of Las Pavas in northern Colombia received this year’s National Peace Prize Wednesday in recognition of its peaceful struggle for land that is claimed by an oil palm company, in a case that became an international symbol of the conflict over land in this country.
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