EL SALVADOR: Small-Scale Fishers Want a Slice of the Sea

For the third time in 10 years, small-scale fishers in El Salvador are trying to get Congress to modify the country's fishing law, to create a five-mile exclusion zone along the coast where the industrial fleet would be banned from fishing.

TRADE: China Opens New Markets for Asian Economies

In response to growing labour costs, China is increasingly turning to its neighbours to supply what it once produced locally - raw materials and intermediate goods, such as machine components and parts - to retain its international reputation as the ‘factory to the world’.

SRI LANKA: Economy Going Nuts

At a marketplace near Colombo, consumers scramble for coconuts being sold from a state-owned truck. Sri Lanka is the world’s fourth largest coconut producer and a major exporter; but a crop shortfall and a drought have forced the country to import coconuts.

NICARAGUA: Lobster Divers in Deep Trouble

Edgard Walters, who belongs to the Association of Disabled and Active Divers of the Atlantic Coast of Nicaragua, has been in a wheelchair since 2003, when he made his last dive for lobster in the waters of the Caribbean.

CHILE: Clouds on the Horizon in Fishing Industry

Unemployment in Chile's fishing industry will rise this year, experts and the association of small-scale fishers warn, due to the reduction in catch quotas adopted in response to overfishing and plunging stocks of key species, particularly jack mackerel.

ECUADOR: Delayed Return of Fishing’s ‘Golden’ Years

"This year there haven't been many 'dorados', but they're beginning to appear now," Ramón Díaz says hopefully as he disembarks with his fellow fishermen after spending the entire night out on the water.

RIGHTS-CHINA: Crackdowns Do Little to Address Sex Work

Authorities in China are lauding a sweeping crackdown on prostitution across the country in recent months. But the sex trade continues to thrive in this booming nation, while services and support for women working in the industry remain inadequate, experts say.

Street Vendors Defend Right to Make a Living in San Salvador

Juan Antonio Gallegos sells Mexican tortillas in Cuscatlán Park in the capital of El Salvador. Like other street vendors who work in the area, he has one thing on his mind these days: how to resist the imminent eviction that forms part of the city's government's urban renewal plan.

Caribbean Lagging on EPA Deadlines with Europe

Two years after Europe signed an Economic Partnership Agreement (EPA) with the Caribbean Forum countries, concerns are being raised in the region about the timeline for future negotiations in a number of areas.

U.S.: Prisoners Coordinate Statewide Strike via Cellphones

In what some are calling the largest prison strike in U.S. history, inmates in the state of Georgia coordinated a strike across multiple prison facilities using pre-paid cell phones.

CUBA: Socialism Needs More Taxes, Fewer Subsidies

Cubans are delving deeper into economic change, which means new taxes and an end to the state subsidies that for decades were a symbol of the equality so highly extolled under the Cuban Revolution.

LATIN AMERICA: Quality Jobs Urgently Needed for Rising Generation

Programmes to reduce the unemployment rate among young people in Latin America and the Caribbean should be a priority for countries in the region, said experts, trade unionists and government representatives meeting in the Chilean capital.

LABOUR-ZIMBABWE: Redundancy Discrimination Fears for Women

Unskilled female workers employed in Zimbabwe’s struggling textile, security and other industries say they are increasingly finding themselves at the front of the redundancy line in cases that the affected women say reek of gender discrimination.

BRAZIL: Building a “Reforestation Economy” in the Mata Atlantica

In one of the most environmentally damaged areas of Brazil's Mata Atlântica forest, work is under way to reforest a watershed that supplies Rio de Janeiro, while also establishing a "reforestation market" that stimulates local job creation and local consumption.

LATIN AMERICA: Rural Women, Success Stories and Exploitation

The traditional image of rural women in Latin America is shifting, from one of subsistence farmers raising their families to that of women playing a growing role in small- and large-scale commercial and productive activities. But behind that change lie both success stories and exploitation.

VENEZUELA: More Protests – and More Crackdowns

Rubén González, a 51-year-old welder who is the secretary general of the Sintraferrominera ironworkers union, has spent over a year in prison in Venezuela for leading a strike by hundreds of workers outside the San Isidro mine in Ciudad Piar, 550 kilometres southeast of the capital.

Brazilian Economy Booming, but Sliding Backwards

Although the Brazilian economy is now one of the fastest growing in the world, it cannot claim an entirely clean bill of health. Declining industrial output threatens to put the country's development into reverse, and no short term remedy is in sight.

OP-ED: Stimulate the Green Race to Tackle Climate Change

While negotiators in Cancún are struggling to make progress, there is something interesting happening in the world. And, it is good news. Countries have started to recognise and act upon the economic value in meeting the demand for green technology.

30 Million Lost Jobs Drag Down Global Economic Recovery

The global economic recovery is being stymied by a hefty rise in unemployment in industrial economies, including the United States, Japan and Western Europe, according a new U.N. report released here.

MIDEAST: Labour Rights Slow to Catch on for Domestic Workers

Recent revelations of domestic worker abuse may be grotesque and horrifying, but they are only the most visible aspect of the many difficulties faced by these predominantly female workers, activists say.

SOUTH AFRICA: Violence, Exploitation Fail to Dissuade Female Migrants

Since arriving in Cape Town five years ago, Erina Manyene (not her real name) has eked out a meagre living picking up shifts doing laundry and cleaning other people's homes in the city's leafy southern suburbs.