Female Trafficking Soars in Iraq

Rania was 16 years old when officials raped her during Saddam Hussein’s 1991 crackdown in Iraq’s Shia south. "My brothers were sentenced to death, and the price to stop this was to offer my body," she says.

Palestinians Thirsting for Justice in Water-Starved Occupied Territories

In the strife-stricken Middle East, oil has always been in the realm of politics. But in the Israeli-occupied territories of Gaza and the West Bank, oil has been supplanted by water.

Q&A: NGOs Must Play Key Role in Rio+20 Summit on Sustainable Development

As the United Nations readies for a major international conference on sustainable development next June in Brazil, non-governmental organisations (NGOs) are preparing to play a key role in the run-up to the summit meeting and are preparing a plan of action to be adopted by world leaders.

IRAQ: Trafficked to Baghdad’s Green Zone

Ukrainian and Bulgarian workers are currently camped out on a construction site of half-built luxury villas in Baghdad’s elite "Green Zone" – a vast security enclave housing government offices, embassies and international NGOs - demanding their salaries before being shipped back home.

Africa Remains Hamstrung in Battle for Water and Sanitation

The statistics coming out of Africa are staggering: 40 percent of Africa’s 1 billion people live in urban areas and 60 percent live in slums, where water supplies and sanitation are "severely inadequate", according to the Nairobi-based U.N. Environment Programme (UNEP).

Refugees Tossed Between Iraq and Syria

At the height of Iraq’s sectarian war in 2006, 30-year-old Samer escaped his Baghdad neighbourhood to join a flood of refugees arriving in Syria. A young man of military age, he was at high risk of being targeted by armed forces that roamed the capital’s streets.

Haiti’s Earthquake Victims: ‘Abandoned Like Stray Dogs’

Eighty thousand tiny houses dot the countryside near this coastal city, located just west of the epicentre of the Jan. 12, 2010 earthquake that killed some 200,000 and displaced over one million.

‘Sustainable Development Must Start with People’

When world leaders meet in Brazil next June for a U.N. Conference on Sustainable Development, the third since the landmark 1992 Earth Summit in Rio de Janeiro, the question lingering in the minds of many is: what really is "sustainable development" in the context of a fast-changing world of growing poverty, hunger, pollution, political repression and social unrest?

PAKISTAN: Democracy Follows Drones

Along with the devastating drone strikes the United States-led ‘war on terror’ in Afghanistan is bringing changes to punitive laws imposed by British colonialism on Pakistan’s Pashtun areas more than a century ago.

Mega Cities Could Trigger Water Shortages and Social Unrest

The rapid growth of urban population - described as one of the world’s major demographic trends - has triggered an explosion of "mega cities" in Asia, Latin America and Africa, causing a breakdown in basic services, including water supplies and sanitation facilities.

OP-ED: Expanding Deserts, Falling Water Tables and Toxins Driving People from Homes

People do not normally leave their homes, their families, and their communities unless they have no other option. Yet as environmental stresses mount, we can expect to see a growing number of environmental refugees. Rising seas and increasingly devastating storms grab headlines, but expanding deserts, falling water tables, and toxic waste and radiation are also forcing people from their homes.

PORTUGAL: Young Professionals Flee Crisis – to Former Colonies

Thousands of young people from Portugal are joining an emigration flow that never trickled to a stop but is turning into an exodus now due to the severe economic crisis plaguing this southern European country. And the main destinations of those looking for a better future abroad are former colonies, especially Brazil.

Sri Lanka Ducks International Probe

Although the Sri Lankan government has evaded calls for an international probe into alleged excesses while militarily defeating Tamil separatism in 2009, it may yet be called to account at the September session of the United Nations Human Rights Council (UNHRC).

Q&A: Water Will Be Lifeblood of Smart Urban Expansion

The world's water map is being significantly redrawn due primarily to the mass migration of people into urban centres, threatening one of life's vital resources.

SOMALIA: City in Need of More Aid

The shelling and gunshots, once a common sound in Mogadishu, no longer ring out in the city's streets. The surprise withdrawal on Aug. 6 of the Islamist extremist group Al Shabaab from their stronghold in Mogadishu has meant that people now move about the city, for the first time in two years, without fear of constant attack.

Q&A: Climate-Driven Migrants Raise Thorny Legal Issues

As the effects of accelerating climate change ripple outward, pushing millions from their land and homes, experts warn that international human rights and refugee law needs to catch up to the reality on the ground if migrants are to be given adequate protection and support.

EUROPE: ‘Rethink Rhetoric Against Islam’

Conservative governments and centre-right parties in Europe were attacking multiculturalism and denigrating Muslim immigrants long before Norwegian right-wing extremist Anders Behring Breivik used similar arguments to justify mass killings in Oslo and Utoya Island.

JAPAN: Divorced Men Lose Children Along With Visas

Shahdul Huq, a Bangladeshi national living in Japan for more than 20 years, last saw his daughter almost three years ago when he lost his ‘spouse visa’ following divorce from his Japanese wife.

TUNISIA: War Strangles Livelihoods on the Border

Tunisia’s border with Libya has been a major lifeline, keeping residents in Ben Guerdane economically afloat - so when the vital trade route is blocked by the municipality or by protestors, tempers flare.

ARGENTINA: Needs Outstrip Efforts to Build Affordable Housing

The Argentine economy has grown steadily since 2003, and hundreds of thousands of social housing units have been built. Nevertheless, the protests and conflicts that periodically break out make it clear that the solutions have failed to keep up with the need for affordable housing

CLIMATE CHANGE: “Last Straw” Pushes Millions from Their Homes

With political will to dramatically cut the world's greenhouse gas emissions failing to materialise, a multi-pronged approach is needed to protect the millions of people who are being displaced as a result of environmental factors driven largely by climate change, experts say.