Region

Smallholder farmers, who produce up to 80 per cent of all food in some areas, mainly in Africa, “face the risk of exploitation under contract farming arrangements with processing or marketing companies,” according to UN Special Rapporteur on the right to food, Olivier De Schutter, who presented his annual report to the UN General Assembly’s Third Committee

In Bangladesh, the group completed the legalization process for ownership of the land which is about 55 kilometers from Dhaka, at Bitipara, Gazipur, and the members are now laying the brick-and-concrete foundations for the Centre of Studies. What is taking place in Bangladesh is being repeated across Asia with like Parks in various stages of completion.

Pakistani humanists organized a forum for dialogue on the “Existing Political Situation and Alternatives in Pakistan”, on 22nd October, 2011. The event was held at Hamdard Hall, Lahore, where around 60 people from Lahore participated, that figure including several lawyers. The seeds of a new Humanist Party were planted!

Ayyaantuu News Online reported October 28, 2011 that from mid-October, the Ethiopian army – under the control of the Ethiopian Prime Minster Meles Zenawihas – started forcefully relocating thousands of families in the rural areas around Obole in the restive Ogaden region in southeastern Ethiopia where government forces are engaged in fighting rebels of the ONLF

Here we publish the speech delivered by Dr. Edine von Herold Duarte to the General Assembly of PNND (Parliamentarians for Nuclear Non-proliferation and Disarmament), in Bern, Switzerland.
The next day, Dra. Edine von Herold Duarte, former Parliamentary from Costa Rica, was reelected in her condition of PNND board member.

The tensions has increased in the Gaza Strip after an Israeli airstrike
killed at least 9 Palestinians and injured 11 others on Saturday evening.
Gaza Health Ministry spokesperson Adham Abu Salmia said, the first airstrike on Rafah, south Gaza killed five members of the Islamic Jihad movement, while the others were killed in a separate strike.

Despite the big Egyptian efforts and intensive contacts led by senior
Egyptian intelligence service officials to activate the truce agreement and reach an informal mutual cease-fire between Palestinian militants and Israel, israeli aircrafts launched an airstrike on Gaza Strip, killed two men and also injured another.

Richard Wilkinson, Professor Emeritus of social epidemiology at the University of Nottingham, explains in a TED session how inequality harms society, not just the poor but also the rich. Not a moment too soon, in order to add to the discussion taking place globally by the Occupy/Indignados/ArabSpring movement about setting the basis of a new society.

The winds of change are blowing across the globe. What triggers such change, and when it will strike, is something that no one can predict.

Last Jan. 18, a courageous young woman in Egypt took a dangerous step. Asmaa Mahfouz was 25 years old, part of the April 6 Youth Movement, with thousands of young people engaging online in debate on the future of their country.

The often violent response to the Occupy Wall Street campaign that is growing in the United States and elsewhere is affecting the freedom to inform. Reporters Without Borders [campaigning for press freedom] condemns the arrests of reporters in recent weeks, especially in New York where the police assume the right to decide who are journalists.