PESHAWAR, Apr 21 2012 (IPS) – We have been spending sleepless nights without electricity and clean water. This place is not worth living in but we have no option and will remain here as long as the military operation continues in our area, said Gul Rahim, a former resident of Bara tehsil in Khyber Agency, currently languishing in the Jallozai refugee camp in the Nowshera district of Pakistan’s Khyber Pakhtunkhwa.

Like other children at Pakistan s Jallozai refugee camp, t…

TAIPEI, May 24 2012 (IPS) – Earlier this week a coalition of rights organisations issued a ‘shadow report’ on Taiwan’s compliance with two international human rights covenants, which it incorporated into domestic law in 2009, probing the country’s track record on human rights.

Liao Fu-teh, associate research fellow at the Academia Sinica Institute of Law, who edited the , said, The government itself thinks it is in fine health, but from the standpoint of civil society we find that its body may have high blood pressure and even some worrisome tumours.

The ‘Taiwan Human Rights Report 2011: Shadow Reports on the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR) and the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights (ICESCR) from NGOs’…

WASHINGTON, Jul 10 2012 (IPS) – Thirty-one years after the start of the HIV/AIDS epidemic in the United States, the country’s infection rates have not gone down in a decade, warned advocates speaking here on Tuesday ahead of a major international conference.

“When people think of AIDS today, most probably don’t realise that AIDS is still really in a crisis mode in (the United States),” Carl Schmid, the deputy executive director of the AIDS Institute, based in Washington, told journalists on Tuesday.

“The fact is, this country has more people living with HIV/AIDS than ever before – nearly 1.2 million people. Nearly 20 percent of those, some 200,000, don’t even know they are infected.”

Each year, the U.S. experiences 50,000 new cases of infection.

OUAGADOUGOU, Aug 31 2012 (IPS) – For far too many households in Burkina Faso, going to the toilet means heading for the bush. The Burkinabè government has launched a new campaign to change this, calling on prominent personalities as both sponsors and champions.

It s an initiative based on solidarity between individuals and communities in order to speed up construction of latrines and put an end to defecation in the open air – which is a widespread practice more or less everywhere in the country – and to reduce diseases linked to poor hygiene, explained Halidou Koanda, who works for the non-governmental organisation WaterAid.

In 2011, and the Burkinabè Ministry for Water and Agriculture carried out a survey of the home villages of 70 notable people from all walks …

People lining up for food has become a common sight in many major U.S. cities. Credit: Jeffrey Beall/cc by 2.0

UNITED NATIONS, Oct 16 2012 (IPS) – Against the backdrop of a spreading global economic crisis, exacerbated by changing climate patterns, the global aim of guaranteeing food security for all by 2015 appears to be far from being achieved.

As delegates and activists are addressing the lingering issues of world hunger, malnutrition and poverty on the occasion of World Food Day Tuesday, homelessness and hunger are spreading fast and affecting millions of people across the globe, with far reaching implications in the United States.

In the world s wealthiest nat…

View outside a U.N.-supported family clinic in Khovd aimag, Mongolia, providing immunisation and child care. Credit: UN Photo/Eskinder Debebe

UNITED NATIONS, Nov 14 2012 (IPS) – Since the 1966 International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights, the United Nations has consistently maintained that family planning is a basic human right to be exercised by all not just the wealthy and otherwise privileged.

The right of individuals to decide on the number of children they bear has been enshrined in at least seven other key treaties and U.N. declarations: the proclamation of the international human rights conference in 1968, the 1969 General Assembly r…

A youth smokes diamba (marijuana) at a gang base in Sierra Leone’s capital Freetown. Credit: Tommy Trenchard/IPS

FREETOWN, Jan 9 2013 (IPS) – The air is heavy with the smell of marijuana as Gibrilla (23) expertly rolls a large joint at the Members of Blood (M.O.B) gang base in a poor neighbourhood of Sierra Leone’s capital, Freetown.

He is part of a generation of young people faced with a chronic shortage of jobs, many of whom have turned to routine drug use as a way to pass the time and deal with the stresses of life in what is still one of the poorest countries in the world.

“Most of the young guys smoke diamba (marijuana) here,” says Gibrilla, gesturing to…

A young mother attends a training session on how to prepare ready-to-use therapeutic food with local and affordable ingredients. Credit: Naimul Haq/IPS

DHAKA, Mar 20 2013 (IPS) – When nine-month-old Borsha was admitted to the International Centre for Diarrhoeal Disease Research in Bangladesh last January, she was on the verge of death.

Suffering from a condition called severe acute malnutrition (SAM), which too many people in this South Asian country of 150 million are familiar with, Borsha was dangerously underweight.

Her 26-year-old mother, who had traveled 30 kilometres from her…

Shaheen Begum receives skills training at the PPC paraplegic centre in Hayatabad in northern Pakistan. Credit: Ashfaq Yusufzai/IPS

PESHAWAR, May 13 2013 (IPS) – Gul Shada thought it was the end of the road for her when she and her husband met with a road accident last year in the Nowshera district of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, one of the four provinces of Pakistan. Not only did the mishap leave Shada widowed at the relatively young age of 37, she also sustained an injury to her back that immobilised her.

It was then that she came to the country’s sole paraplegic centre (PPC) at Hayatabad, to the southwest of Peshawar, the capital of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa. And it was here…

Medical services are increasingly difficult to provide in Syria. Above, a field hospital. Credit: FreedomHouse/CC by 2.0

DAMASCUS, Jun 5 2013 (IPS) – It was nine in the morning when the shell landed in front of nine-year-old Hella al-Abtah s house in the Yarmouk Palestinian refugee camp in Damascus. Hella survived the initial blast but was critically wounded in the head, and her father rushed her to the Palestine Hospital, blood pouring from the laceration.

Doctors at the hospital managed to stabilise Hella, but the relief was short-lived. Because of a chronic shortage of critical medical supplies and frequent power cuts, they could not complete even routine pr…