Swazis should not see the ongoing nationwide one-month teachers’ strike as a movement capable of overthrowing the political regime here, despite the fact that civil servants and nurses have joined the action, according to political analyst Dr. Sikelela Dlamini.
Sitting in an airconditioned car along Road 60 in the heart of the occupied West Bank, Ovad Arad explained how he goes about his job: driving unannounced into Palestinian towns and villages, taking photographs, having coffee with families, and leaving almost as quickly as he arrived.
Agent Orange (AO), often called the ‘last legacy’ of the United States war in Vietnam (1955-1975), has popped up again thanks to its manufacturer Dow Chemical’s controversial sponsorship of the Olympic Games.
Bare-chested and beaming in the company of many like him, London-based male sex worker Thierry Schaffauser wipes the beads of sweat trickling down his face on a humid Kolkata evening, and slams U.S. President Barack Obama.
Eliane Negui knew just what to do when she got word that a group of inmates had escaped from Abidjan’s main prison, MACA, earlier this month. After all, the 24-year-old, who has lived across a dirt road from the facility for nine years, had witnessed the same scenario just two months before.
Wendy Hlophe* is still visibly grieving for her long-term friend, 28-year-old Sanna Supa, who was shot and killed outside her home in Braamficherville, a South African township, two weeks ago.
Each year, 16 million girls aged 15-19 give birth. 50,000 of them die from complications related to pregnancy and childbirth. And 95 percent of those births occur in developing countries.
At eleven years old, Thema, a native of Kumasi, hopes to be a nurse when she grows up. Currently, however, she is employed wandering between taxis and tro-tros or minibus taxis at rush hour, carrying packs of ice water on her head and selling them for 10 pesewas apiece. She manoeuvres through traffic in Ghana’s second-largest city with practiced ease; she has been doing this for four years.
During a march Saturday marking one year since social protests engulfed Israel, a man silently set himself on fire, leaving behind him a painful “I accuse!” letter that exposes widespread disillusionment in the face of the immense expectation for change, and the abyss between the people and the State.
“The human rights situation in Libya now is far worse than under the late dictator Muammar Gaddafi,” Nasser al-Hawary, researcher with the Libyan Observatory for Human Rights tells IPS.
Non-governmental organisations in the Democratic Republic of Congo province where Thomas Lubanga Dyilo used children as fighters in his militia in 2002 to 2003 have slammed his 14-year sentence as inadequate – and potentially dangerous.
Tens of thousands of residents in a Chinese city took to the streets last week to protest, forcing the government to scrap plans to build a copper plant. The incident is the latest in a rising number of localised protests as expression of public anger aimed at over-ambitious or corrupt officials in China over-boils.
The Summit on Family Planning that is taking place in London on Wednesday is a bid to get governments around the world to commit more resources to safeguarding women’s reproductive rights, according to the executive director of the United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA).
One year after the formation of South Sudan, the country’s women say that independence has not resulted in the positive political, economic and social changes that they had hoped for.
Almost unnoticed, Nepal’s burgeoning adult entertainment industry has been drawing young girls away from being trafficked across the border to the fleshpots of India’s big cities.
Paraguyan rights groups are disappointed at being denied access to a delegation of the Organisation of American States (OAS) sent in this week to discover the facts behind the impeachment and removal of President Fernando Lugo on Jun. 22.
Preparations for Angola’s second peacetime polls scheduled for August are being overshadowed by allegations of electoral fraud, state media bias and growing concerns about a violent crackdown on activists and protestors.
“The number will never come to zero and in a few months you will see as many captive fishermen, maybe even more to fill the prison barracks,” says Mohammad Ali Shah of the Pakistan Fisherfolk Forum (PFF), following the release of more than 300 Indian fishermen from Pakistani jails.
"We’ve been building a lot of new walls lately," says Polisario Front commander Ahmed Salem as he drives his 4 X 4 across Tindouf in Western Algeria. But the newly introduced security measures may not be enough to ensure the survival of the Western Sahrawis.
Graphic online photographs of seven month-pregnant Feng Jianmei lying prostrate on a hospital bed next to a bloody foetus have created outrage in China over the brutal enforcement of the controversial one-child-policy. The husband of the woman whose forced late-term abortion caused uproar worldwide has gone missing, according to his family.
Sudanese refugees have started dying as a camp in South Sudan ran out of water four days ago after a massive influx of people fled across the border to escape war and hunger.