REFUGEE DAY: One Million Wasting Away

The United Nations Security Council discussed them this week, as did the powerful U.S. Senate Foreign Relations Committee, but the world's arguably most at-risk refugees continue to starve waiting for help.

REFUGEE DAY: Pending Asylum, a Cat and Mouse Game With Police

A man who wishes to be identified as Soyu Mokili has discovered that the streets of South Africa's main commercial city, Johannesburg, are not paved with gold in the way he expected.

JAPAN: Audiences Switching from Western to Asian TV Programmes

Nothing will persuade Michiko Suda, a 38- year-old homemaker, to leave home on Saturday evenings when her favourite drama is showing on television.

REFUGEE DAY: The Long-Awaited Return Home

The number of refugees and others attended by the United Nations refugee agency fell dramatically in 2003 to 17.1 million people, the lowest total in a decade, according to figures released just days before World Refugee Day, Jun. 20.

REFUGEE DAY: A Third Time Homeless

Standing amid the rubble of their homes demolished during the latest fighting last month, they said it was the third time they had been made homeless by the conflict.

MIGRATION-SPAIN: Only for Argentines

Argentine immigrants in Spain are closer to obtaining residency and work permits than their counterparts from other Latin American countries, like Ecuador, or from Africa, who will still be trapped in jobs without contracts, living under the constant fear of being deported.

CHILDREN-BRAZIL: Hunger, Poverty Create Breeding-Ground for Social Ills

Every time Brazilian President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva speaks at an international forum, he underlines that his main objective is to fight hunger and poverty.

MIGRATION-LATIN AMERICA: Now It Is Europe That Beckons

Latin American and Caribbean migration to Europe is likely continue growing in the short term, despite its already extraordinary expansion during the past decade, says a new study by the International Organisation for Migration (IOM).

LABOUR-UAE: New System Offers Legal Cover for Domestic Workers

Foreign domestic workers in the United Arab Emirates do not often get to speak up for themselves, but a new system that authorities are putting in place might just give them that room - as well as a legal weapon against abusive bosses.

WOMEN-LATAM: ‘Pro-Life’ Pressure Fails to Thwart ‘Sexual Rights’

Washington and right-wing anti-abortion groups lost an important battle in Latin America and the Caribbean because despite their threats and pressure, they failed to keep the terms ''sexual and reproductive rights'' out of the final document of the regional conference on women.

LATAM: Menchu Says Conferences Do Not Touch Lives of ‘Real’ Women

Meetings like the Ninth Regional Conference on Women in Latin America and the Caribbean, which ends Saturday in Mexico, have lost significance because they fail to touch the lives of ''real women, the ones who suffer day after day,'' Nobel Peace laureate Rigoberta Menchú told IPS.

RIGHTS: Child Domestic Workers Are ‘Slaves’ Behind Closed Doors

"There are children in the world who are treated like slaves," says expert June Kane in a report for the International Labour Organisation (ILO) on the situation of minors working in domestic service.

WOMEN-LATIN AMERICA: Once-Unthinkable Progress, but Still Not Enough

Women in Latin America and the Caribbean achieved rights in the past decade that previously seemed impossible: they have greater access to education (but continue to earn less than men); they have more jobs (but remain in poverty); and enjoy greater legal protections (but still suffer discrimination).

RIGHTS-PAKISTAN: Old Islamic Laws Trigger New Round of Debate

Age-old discriminatory customs are not uncommon in Pakistan, where a three-man village jury can allow a landlord to rape a woman to take revenge, and a whole tribe can be forced to flee its village if a woman dares to marry outside the tribe.

/ARTS WEEKLY/JAPAN: Mystery Novel Gives Women a New Voice

The stunning success in Japan, and recently in the United States, of a mystery writer's novel, about a husband-killer and psychopath gangsters, has injected new life into the conservative Japanese publishing world that previously only carried works depicting women as loyal housewives devoted to their husbands.

MIGRATION-SPAIN: Doors Closed – By Right and Left

Spain's socialist government under Prime Minister José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero is maintaining the immigration policy of his predecessor, the conservative José María Aznar, in refusing to legalise the status of hundreds of thousands of foreigners living in the country without residency or work permits.

MIGRATION: ‘Uncoordinated’ Movements Undermine Labour Rights – ILO

The International Labour Organisation (ILO) this week is underlining its concern that migration movements amongst regions are increasing but there are no international agreements to regulate or protect the immigrants and their families.

THAILAND: Artists and Activists Unite to Thwart Violence

Thailand's artists and human rights campaigners have come together in a bid to promote peace and harmony in the country as tension simmers between Muslims and Buddhists, after a major bloodshed on Apr. 28 when Thai police and soldiers killed Muslim attackers, including some who had taken refuge in a mosque, in the southern province of Pattani.

CHILE: Mapuche Indians Protest APEC Ministerial Meet

Banners strung up all over the picturesque small town of Pucón in southern Chile proclaim 'Kumey Tamvn Akun', which means 'Welcome to Araucanía' in Mapudungún, the language of the Mapuche Indians.

BRAZIL: Inmates’ Families Want to Know if Loved Ones Are Still Alive

Dozens of Brazilian families still do not know if their menfolk - husbands, sons or brothers - are still alive in Benfica jail in Rio de Janeiro, where a prison rebellion left at least 31 inmates dead last weekend.

DEVELOPMENT-VIETNAM: Land Grabbing Factories Displace Farmers

The mushrooming of industrial zones in Vietnam, as the country rushes to join the market economy, is taking a heavy toll on farmers who have been forced off their land to make way for new factories.