DEVELOPMENT: NGOs Confront EU Over Regional Deals

On his arrival at a Joint Parliamentary Assembly of EU and ACP countries in Slovenian capital Ljubljana this week, EU Development Commissioner Louis Michel was confronted with an array of parliamentarians and civil society activists carrying the message, 'Brussels-made EPAs will not fit ACPs'.

DEVELOPMENT- ANGOLA: Research Initiative Nets Interesting Discoveries

More than 50 species of fish have been recorded in the initial phase of a two-year joint research project on the Kwanza River in Angola.

TRADE: &#39&#39You Have to Be Rich To Live in This World&#39&#39

‘‘The globalisation train is moving. It is up to us as developing countries to run fast enough to catch it. Whether we like or not, globalisation is unavoidable. We should accept and adapt to it to be able to benefit from its advantages.’’

DEVELOPMENT-INDIA: Cotton Farmers in Distress – Relief Given Elsewhere

On Mar. 4, barely four days after Indian Finance Minister P. Chidambaram announced a mammoth loan waiver for farmers, 55-year-old Dattu Chaudhary, who owned 3 hectares (ha) of land committed suicide in Nara village in Maharashtra state.

DEVELOPMENT-INDIA: Subsidies Cornered by Politically Powerful

An intensifying agrarian crisis claimed the life of at least one cotton farmer every day last year in Maharashtra, western India. But government subsidies were monopolised by the state’s powerful sugar lobby.

DEVELOPMENT-INDIA: Two Villages, Two Very Different Stories

It is hard to find smiling farmers in Dorli, rural Vidarbha, a cotton growing belt in western India’s Maharashtra state.

NICARAGUA: Fighting Over Society’s Scraps

Thousands of people who eke out a living by selling recyclable trash scavenged from the municipal dump in the Nicaraguan capital are staging a protest over control of the city’s waste, blocking access to the dump by the garbage trucks.

RIGHTS-ANGOLA: Free Rein for Human Traffickers

There is little awareness on the problem of trafficking in persons, mainly women and children, in Angola, and no laws for cracking down on the growing phenomenon.

WORLD WATER DAY-SOUTH AFRICA: Celebrations in the Midst of Crisis?

South Africa is currently celebrating Water Week (Mar. 17-23) to coincide with World Water Day on Mar. 22. The week also coincides with a national crisis in confidence about the ability of government to provide citizens with safe drinking water.

ASIA: Sanitation – Experts Call For All-Out Efforts

New technology, religion and the market must be harnessed to secure basic toilet facilities for Asia’s rural and urban poor, sanitation experts from the region said here Thursday.

WEST AFRICA: Check Point &#39&#39Friendships&#39&#39 Hobble Regional Trade

''Give It To God''. These are the words inscribed on the front of the huge truck that goods transporter David Agbalanyo drives between the Ghanaian capital Accra and its northern neighbour, Burkina Faso’s capital Ouagadougou.

DEVELOPMENT: Climate Change Deepening World Water Crisis

When U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon addressed the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland last January, his primary focus was not on the impending global economic recession but on the world's growing water crisis.

POLITICS: Parliamentarians to Tackle Poverty

The link between global warming and poverty, and the effects of poverty on women, will be among the topics put in the spotlight during the 118th assembly of the Inter-Parliamentary Union (IPU), which takes place next month in the South African port city of Cape Town.

ECONOMY: Workers Will Pay the Costs of Global Crisis

International union leaders warned representatives of governments and employers, and World Bank President Robert Zoellick, that the burden of the current financial turmoil will fall on the world’s workers.

COLOMBIA: The Food Basket Is Running Out

Boyacá, known as the "food basket of Colombia", is currently the country’s second poorest province, and small farmers there say it is more expensive to raise crops than to buy pre-packaged food.

CLIMATE CHANGE: A Glacial Vanishing Act

Glaciers, the world's freshwater towers, continue their record-breaking meltdown, a new U.N. report shows.

Q&A: &#39China Is No Villain in Africa&#39

Instead of indulging in China bashing, major western industrial nations should listen to China and its partners in Africa and elsewhere, says Eckhard Deutscher, the new head of the influential Development Assistance Committee (DAC).

TRADE-AFRICA: Liberalisation Eroding Poor Countries’ Advantage

The trade liberalisation of the past couple of decades is eroding the advantage that least developed countries (LDCs) enjoy in export markets as duty and quota free access has become less valuable.

KENYA: Education Amidst Displacement

With the new academic year in Kenya underway, teacher Moses Simiyu Kalenda is once again instructing children - just not in the place where he expected to be doing so.

DEVELOPMENT: Women Seek to Put Equality at Core of Doha

When the second international conference on Financing for Development (FfD) takes place in Qatar come November, women activists are planning to pitch their tents in the capital of Doha in an attempt to demand concrete commitments for "gender equality" and "gender empowerment" from the 192 U.N. member states.

EL SALVADOR: Banging Empty Pots to Protest Food Prices

Some 400 protesters beat on pots and pans and blew whistles outside the Central Reserve Bank of El Salvador to protest the rise in prices of staple food items.