RIGHTS-AUSTRALIA: ‘Pacific Solution’ for Boat People Rolled Back

While advocates of asylum seekers have supported the new Australian government’s plan to wind down part of the so-called ‘Pacific Solution’ for processing claims for asylum, they argue that the government should go further.

POLITICS-US: Congress Clears More Funds for Both War and Relief

Racing to adjourn for the year, the U.S. Congress this week approved a 560- billion-dollar omnibus 2008 appropriation that includes 70 billion dollars more for military operations in Iraq and Afghanistan and sizable increases in development, refugee, and disaster assistance.

SOUTH KOREA: Migrant Workers’ Rights Clouded by Race, Class

Since August, rights activists in South Korea have been fighting a crackdown on illegal migrant workers. But South Asian and South-east Asians are resentful that Westerners, particularly those in the country’s booming English language teaching industry, are seen differently.

RIGHTS-PHILIPPINES: UN Study Gives Voice to Children in the Ranks

For decades the Philippines has been embroiled in armed strife with communist and Islamist rebel groups resulting in the deaths and displacement of thousands. But the worst victims of these conflicts have been children, says a new United Nations sponsored study.

ENVIRONMENT-BRAZIL: Catholic Hierarchy Backs Bishop’s Hunger Strike

The upper echelons of the Brazilian Catholic Church have decided to lend their support to Bishop Luiz Cappio, who is on hunger strike against the diversion of water from the Sao Francisco river, after the government confirmed it would go ahead with the project.

HEALTH: Europe &#39Forgetting&#39 AIDS

AIDS has become a "forgotten disease" in the European Union, according to the man in charge of the bloc's public health policies.

POLITICS-US: Minority Solidarity Undercut by Mistrust

Serious tensions between major minority groups in the United States persist, but strong majorities of citizens of African, Hispanic, and Asian origin or descent believe that relations between their communities are likely to improve over the next decade, according to a new survey released here Wednesday by a consortium of minority media outlets.

HEALTH: Native Youth Suicides in Canada Reach Crisis Rate

Suicide rates are now five to seven times higher for First Nations youth than for non-aboriginal youth, according to Health Canada, and among Inuit youth, suicide rates are 11 times the national average. Some aboriginal bands have suicide rates over 800 times the national average.

LATIN AMERICA: The Hand that Rocks the Cradle… Forfeits Equal Pay

To avoid reproducing gender inequality, governments should implement integrated policies that recognise, for instance, the unpaid work done by women, according to an ECLAC report on the fulfilment of the third Millennium Development Goal (MDG).

CLIMATE CHANGE: NGOs Frustrated in Bali

Representatives of non-governmental organisations (NGOs) called for greater accountability on the part of industrialised countries and a firmer stance by developing nations in order to avert failure at the current conference on climate change in Indonesia.

GUATEMALA: New Law to End Adoption Business

The Guatemalan Congress approved a new law Tuesday that will regulate adoptions in the framework of the Hague Convention, which goes into force in this Central American country on Dec. 31.

ENVIRONMENT-BRAZIL: Bishop Fasts Again for Sao Francisco River

Brazilian Catholic Bishop Luiz Cappio has entered the third week of his hunger strike against the diversion of water from the Sao Francisco river, in the arid northeast of the country, amid expressions of support.

LATIN AMERICA: Prizes for Communities Fighting Exclusion

They work in the deep heartland of Brazil, or in urban slums. They all seek social inclusion, and their starting point is the bottom of the social ladder, with people who have a wide experience of life, contrasting with their short years.

Q&A: “It Can Be Hard to Deal with Subtle Xenophobia”

With waves of opposition to tides of immigrants in Europe, Peter Schatzer has his job cut out. And seeing that the Mediterranean is the favoured route for migration into Europe, whether documented or not, he is at the forefront of presenting the human face of migration before political opposition to it.

Q&A: “In Most Conflicts We Know What Needs to Be Done”

There is hardly a trouble-shooter in the world today more trusted than Martti Ahtisaari, Chairman of the Crisis Management Initiative. Kosovo, the disputed southern province of Serbia, is the latest challenge he has taken on.

DEVELOPMENT-LATIN AMERICA: Local Innovation – Fresh and Fair

This is no ordinary contest. The participants are from the most vulnerable areas of Latin America, and they are already winners because they have been selected out of 900 projects applying for the Social Innovation Fair organised by ECLAC in this southern Brazilian city.

TANZANIA: Balancing Refugee Camp Closure and Voluntary Repatriation

Tens of thousands of Burundian refugees staying in Tanzania returned home this year; however, the Tanzanian government will miss its target to empty all camps by mid-2008, the United Nations said Friday.

RIGHTS-CUBA: Incident Could Hurt Relations With Catholic Church

A police raid on a church in the eastern city of Santiago de Cuba to arrest a group of dissidents was called "a deplorable incident" by a member of the ecclesiastical hierarchy, who said it could harm the good relationship between the Catholic Church and the Cuban government.

POPULATION: Awards Highlight Media Impact

A U.S. Pulitzer Prize-winning cartoonist, a television news reporter from the Philippines and a radio show host from Cameroon were among the 12 recipients of the Population Institute's 28th Annual Global Media Awards for Excellence in Population Reporting Wednesday.

RIGHTS: World Social Forum and World Economic Forum – A Bridge Too Far?

A group of human rights organisations will attempt to bridge the gap between two antagonistic camps in January: the World Economic Forum which meets in the Swiss ski resort of Davos, and the World Social Forum, generally held in the southern Brazilian city of Porto Alegre.

CUBA: (Some) Men Renounce Violence Against Women

Orlando Berrios, 53, works over eight hours a day as a barber in the Párraga district in the Cuban capital, and shares household tasks with his wife, to the astonishment of their neighbours, who regard him as an "odd character."