Clare Nullis, spokesperson for the World Meteorological Organization (WMO), speaks to the press at the regular briefing in Geneva. Photo credit: UN Photo/Jean-Marc Ferré

Communities around the world now have access to a free weather information system that will help avert major disasters by providing warnings of impending extreme weather events. The system, implemented by the World Meteorological Organization (WMO), will also assist in water management, food security, and health issues.

The WMO Information System (WIS), will make accessible a number of meteorological observations and other data to a wide variety of agencies, communities and other stakeholders.

Dr. Wenjian Zhang, director of Observations and Information Systems at WMO, told MediaGlobal, “With WIS, emergency response teams can register to receive warnings, and once warnings of impending extreme events are issued, they can register for relevant weather, water, and climate information to be sent to them automatically to help with their planning.”

Just over a year ago, there were scales that measured hurricanes’ power and air quality, but none for floods, droughts, or heatwaves. Because of global warming, such droughts and floods are expected to become more frequent, as well.

The new system will be the first all-inclusive weather information source, stemming from data all over the globe. “The WMO Information System is the pillar of our strategy for managing and moving weather, climate, and water information in the 21st century,” said WMO Secretary-General Michel Jarraud.

“It will reduce the costs of information exchange incurred by national meteorological and hydrological services and maximize exploitation of advances in communications technology … it will allow users outside the meteorological community to have free access to this information for the first time.”

The WIS connects and integrates information from three types of data centers, including national centers, data collection and production centers, as well as global information system centers.

National centers collect and distribute data on a national basis, generating quality-controlled analysis and forecast products and services, including archiving national climate information. The National Meteorological or Hydrological Service National Meteorological or Hydrological Service will coordinate or authorize the use of the WIS by national users.

Data collection or production centers focus on thematic, regional or global collection, production of sets of data, forecast products, and processed or value-added information. They also provide archiving services.

Global information system centers connect to each other through a high-speed private network, rapidly sharing information for routine global dissemination. They also serve as distribution centers into their jurisdiction. Global information system centers provide entry points, through metadata catalogues, for any request for data exchanged within the WIS. They also provide the connection to other information systems such as the Global Earth Observation System of Systems.

The congress dictates that WIS provides routine collection and dissemination service for time-critical and operation-critical data and products, implemented through dedicated telecommunication means. This includes a dedicated service for the rapid international exchange of warnings and related messages.

Also, WIS must provide data discovery, access and retrieval service. This is based on a request/reply “pull” mechanism with relevant data-management functions, implemented online.

A timely delivery service for data and products is also mandated, and implemented through a combination of dedicated telecommunication means and the internet.

The global information system centers that have been approved by WMO’s governing World Meteorological Congress include Beijing, China; Tokyo, Japan; and Offenbach, Germany. These three have been running in pre-operational mode since the middle of 2011 and are now fully operational.

The WIS is an expansion of the Global Telecommunication System of the World Weather Watch (WWW), in use since 1963. The Fourth World Meteorological Congress approved the concept of WWW, which is the basis of the WMO programs. It combines observing systems, telecommunication facilities, data-processing, and forecasting centers.

The WMO is “a major contribution towards life-saving efforts at community level,” said Margareta Wahlström, UN special representative for Disaster Risk Reduction.

“This is a significant boost for disaster risk reduction and will have many practical benefits for communities which suffer from weather-related disasters,” said Wahlström. “For the first time, national disaster management offices and other responders will have free and direct access in real-time to weather observations and forecasts including tsunami alerts, tropical cyclone and storm warnings. Time and information save lives and this will make early warning systems more effective.”

Favela residents are constantly working to improve their homes and living environments. Photo credit: Catalytic Communities

Early in the morning on 22 January, approximately 2000 police officers entered a settlement in Pinheirinho, located on the outskirts of São Jose dos Campos in southern Brazil. With helicopters overhead, tear gas ready, and batons in hand, the officers cleared some 8,000 people from the community.

Under Brazilian law, if urban land is occupied for five years, those occupying should be granted ownership of the land.  The residents of Pinheirinho had been there for eight.  Yet urban land laws frequently fall by the wayside — particularly when the land in question becomes economically viable.

The Pinheirinho settlement was established in 2004 on the abandoned land of a wealthy businessman, Naji Najas.  While Najas was aware of the growing community, he chose not to interfere. But in 2008, Najas was arrested and declared bankruptcy.  The state of São Paulo, one of his creditors, reacted by seizing his assets, including Pinheirinho.

The Brazilian federal government offered to purchase Najas’ land from the state, hoping to regularize the community and establish social services.  São Paulo declined the offer.  Dr. Gabriel Ondetti, author of “Land, Protest and Politics,” has suggested that São Paulo’s refusal is a product of the site’s potential for economic development.

“Whoever’s collecting property taxes is going to do better from some kind of commercial development than from low income housing,” Ondetti tells MediaGlobal.  Ondetti speculates that while the federal government likely sought to avoid a scandal involving military brutality, the state of São Paulo was operating with different priorities.

The eviction of Pinheirinho is representative of a growing trend in Brazil: development projects are taking ideological, and thus spatial priority over well-established poor communities.  As Brazil prepares to host the 2014 World Cup and the 2016 Olympics, this trend is expected to escalate. The National Co-Ordination of World Cup Committees has estimated that 170,000 people will be displaced by these sporting events.

Favelas, a unique type of low-income urban community, will be the first targets.  Already, several favelas in Rio de Janeiro have been evicted, many more face eviction, and others have been subject to police occupation.  As tensions continue to mount, Pinheirinho’s forceful eviction has become a focal point for those concerned with urban reform, land rights, and social services.

The state of São Paulo maintains that the use of force at Pinheirinho was necessary and constitutional.  “The superiority of the police enables troops to avoid confrontation. In Pinheirinho, there was no resistance,” São Paulo’s Press Office of the Secretary of Public Security of the State (SSP) tells MediaGlobal.

Nevertheless, for Jeffrey Frank, spokesperson for Friends of the MST, the military force exercised in Pinheirinho is all too familiar. The MST, Brazil’s landless movement, establishes settlements through a provision in the Brazilian constitution requiring agrarian land to serve a social function.  When the MST finds land not fulfilling this requirement, they occupy the land until granted ownership.  “But the occupations are very hard,” says Frank. “They’re resisted by land owners who have at their command not only state and federal official police but also private militias.”

The violence facing the landless movement reached its peak under President Fernando Henrique Cardoso, when two massive military massacres,  the Corumbia massacre of 1995, and the Eldorado dos Carajas massacre of 1996, left dozens of landless peasants dead.

The current Brazilian government, headed by President Dilma Rousseff, has taken steps to aid the landless and urban poor. Included in its initiatives is “Bolsa Familia,” a social welfare program granting poor families monthly stipends encouraging education and healthcare.  But Ondetti stresses that there is a difference between simple cash handouts and necessary structural reform.

In many cases, the MST and other intentional communities in Brazil have picked up the slack, building infrastructures independent of the government.  Indeed, the widespread success of MST comes from its desire to “have people become citizens,” through self-governance, food production, and education.

Similarly, Theresa Williamson, Founder and Executive Director of “Catalytic Communities”, a Rio de Janeiro-based NGO, maintains favelas offer a similar potential.  According to Williamson, people in favelas are organizing themselves to improve their lives. As such, Williamson sees favelas as indispensable solutions to the hurdles facing the urban poor.

For Williamson, favelas are dynamic–energized by residents constantly improving their environment.  When you evict a favela, says Williamson, “You’re clearing working class neighborhoods, you’re clearing culture, you’re clearing architecture, there’s a sense of solidarity that you don’t see elsewhere in Brazilian society.”

The profits spurred by Brazil’s economic growth have the potential to propel social justice by leaps and bounds.  Williamson argues that it all comes down to a choice.  For her, Brazil’s economic boom and development projects, “Are opportunities to speed up whatever you want to speed up.  If you want to speed up inequality and centralization you can do that. If you want to speed up development and improve communities and participation in democracy, you can do that.”

Man in Bazaar looking at phone while others walk by: Photo by IMTFI ( creative commons)

Afghanistan’s Ministry of Communication & Information Technology is currently implementing the second wave of its World Bank supported Information and Communication Technologies (ICT) Sector Development Project. The project, approved last year, builds on the success of a series of programs and policies that have dramatically changed the telecommunication environment of Afghanistan over the past decade.

ICT development has increased exponentially in Afghanistan since the 2001 US invasion.  Due to government policies and extensive foreign investment, the telecommunication network now penetrates an unprecedented percent of the population as well as offering them mobile financial services.

“To say that in a country like Afghanistan we are able to bring world-class products and services, including BlackBerry, mobile money (M-Paisa) and social networking services, is something that we are extremely proud of,” says Karim Khoja, CEO of Roshan, the largest commercial wireless operator in Afghanistan.

There are currently over 17 million mobile phone subscribers and 15,000 Internet users in Afghanistan. By 2016, the ICT Sector Development Project, using the approved $50 million fund, plans to quadruple Internet users, lengthen the fiber optic network to connect most of Afghanistan’s provinces, increasing telephone penetration to 80 percent of the population. Kabul will even soon be launching its first telecommunication satellite and providing 3G Internet capabilities.

“Mobile phones have become the affordable luxury,” Khoja tells MediaGlobal.

This is in stark contrast to the Afghanistan of 2002, where 50 percent of landlines were located in Kabul causing less then 1 percent of Afghans to have access to telecommunication services. A phone could cost up to $500, a local call over $4 per minute, and an international phone call meant traveling 700 kilometers to a neighboring country.

“In Afghanistan, what we have seen is that the Ministry of Communications has been very supportive, which is why the telecommunications industry is the country’s biggest success story for the private sector,” Khoja tells MediaGlobal.

There is good reason for this. Beyond the government’s need to connect with rural Afghans, studies have shown that a 10 percent increase in mobile phone penetration in the public can have a 0.6 percent impact on GDP. While the Afghan Government is attempting to significantly invest in telecommunication infrastructure to reach out to penetrate into the rural areas, their efforts are dwarfed by the over $1.4 billion that private companies have invested in Afghanistan’s telecommunications network since 2002.

Roshan, a subsidiary of Aga Khan for Economic Development, has invested over $500 million into Afghanistan, contributes up to 5 percent of Afghanistan’s GDP, and employs over 30,000 Afghans.
 “Most importantly, these 30,000 jobs, in the second most corrupt country in the world, are all legitimate jobs,” says Khoja. “I cannot emphasize the word legitimate enough. These individuals are now the breadwinners for their families, feeding a typical household of 13 people.”

The mobile access has also created new economic opportunities. Lacking confidence in the country’s banking institutions, Afghans have taken advantage of the mobile money service provider “M-Paisa.” While its primary purpose is to assist microfinance clients by providing loan disbursements and repayments, the service also provides the 97 percent of Afghans without a bank with a range of fast and secure financial services through their phones. Consequently, entrepreneurs and business owners are benefiting from the new access.

“It has been very important for us to spur and build on the Afghan entrepreneurial spirit,” Khoja tells MediaGlobal. “Since bringing service to Bamyan in 2004…we have seen the bazaar flourish, the hospital reopen, and a vibrant tourism industry emerge.”

While a decade of market-liberal policies has corresponded with the rise of the telecommunication sector, Afghanistan is still struggling with corruption and an insurgency that ultimately threatens any progress. Ensuring proper lines of communication between provinces will continue to be of paramount concern for the Afghan government as it works toward developing its other sectors while extending its influence over the country.

Ban Ki Moon delivering the welcome address yesterday at "Business Perspective on Sustainable Growth: Preparing for Rio+20," hosted by KPMG International in New York. Courtesy of KMPG. Photo Credit: Alana Chloe Esposito

Recognizing the need for collaboration between the public and private sectors in order to achieve these goals, one of the world’s largest professional services networks, KMPG International – in collaboration with the World Business Council on Sustainable Development, the UN Global Impact, and the UN Environment Program – invited 400 international business leaders to participate in “Business Perspective on Sustainable Growth: Preparing for Rio+20.”

Opening today in New York, the three-day conference aims to serve as a forum for identifying and prioritizing key sustainability issues. To that end, distinguished panelists hailing from business, government, and academia share their best practices and lessons learned with respect to overcoming challenges related to energy security, climate change, and resource scarcity.

In his opening remarks, Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon acknowledged the success of some sustainable development initiatives, but warned the international community is nearing the point of no return on climate change. “I am here to ask you to do more,” Ban told attendees, urging them specifically to report publicly on their corporations’ sustainability, engage in responsible lobbying and advocacy, and avoid taking the hypocritical stance of proclaiming a broad commitment to sustainability while blocking green initiatives.

Highlights from the first day of the conference include a fruitful plenary session on global sustainability trends during which Ron Insana, CNBC senior analyst and commentator, moderated a discussion over to what extent technology can relieve food scarcity and how the public and private sectors might improve their risk mitigation. Overall, the need to address the risks and opportunities stemming from obstacles such as population growth and increased consumption by a burgeoning global middle class emerged as a central theme of the discussion.

Later in a session on “Ensuring an energy secure future,” panelists representing the entire spectrum of energy producers from fossil fuels to renewables debated over what incentives and regulations policymakers should implement to enable a stable transition to sustainability and energy security. John Gimigliano, Principal-In-Charge of KPMG’s Sustainability Tax, posed questions such as, “Do we need to establish a common, fixed definition of sustainability?” and “Is the emergence of shale gas a positive or negative development with respect to sustainability?” A consensus emerged around an answer to the first question (no, sustainability means different things in different contexts and imposing a rigid definition should not be a priority), while panelists remained split over the second one.

Ultimately, panelists proposed a long laundry list of the usual recommendations from capacity building in developing countries to phasing out inefficient uses of natural resources. More innovative or novel recommendations included phasing out renewable energy subsidies (at the right time, which is the key here) as well as eliminating fossil fuel subsidies, enacting energy policies that strategize progress over several decades at a time, improving marketing and communication about the benefits of sustainable growth, and overcoming the common perception of energy, water, and transport as separate sectors.

Coming up on the agenda, at Thursday’s highly anticipated closing session, former United States President Bill Clinton will deliver the keynote address.

The idea of cooperatives and other solidarity economy enterprises resonates with many, namely because their models prioritize people over profit. With the recent launch of the United Nations 2012 International Year of Cooperatives and FAO Director-General José Graziano da Silva’s emphasis on the importance of cooperatives and producer organizations to global food security at the 2012 Thematic Social Forum, held in Porto Alegre, Brazil from 24-29 January, such enterprises are increasingly being recognized as viable alternatives to mainstream business structures.

“We think cooperatives’ time has come,” Betsy Dribben, Director of Policy at the International Cooperative Alliance (ICA), a non-profit group representing some 1 billion cooperative members worldwide, tells MediaGlobal.

“There’s growing public recognition, certainly with the International Year of Cooperatives upon us,” says Dribben. “At the same time, we’re hearing people say, ‘We want something different, we don’t want to continue the old models.’ And they talk about cooperation a lot: you hear it in speeches, you hear it in statements, you hear it in frustration.”

Organized this year under the theme “Capitalist Crisis, Social and Environmental Justice,” the Thematic Social Forum is an offshoot of the World Social Forum, first held in Porto Alegre in 2001 and subsequently headquartered in Brazil as an alter-globalization alternative to the World Economic Forum.

The World Social Forum and its thematic corollaries annually bring together social movements, civil society organizations, and activists under the heading “Another World is Possible!” This past January’s Forum was a preparatory event for the People’s Summit for Social and Environmental Justice, to be held in Rio de Janeiro in June, parallel to the United Nations Conference on Sustainable Development (Rio+20).

Although the three are not exclusive to one another, at the root of the cooperative, solidarity economy, and World Social Forum movements is an attempt to provide viable and human-centered solutions to the challenges posed by prevailing economic practices. In Brazil, the contemporary solidarity economy movement took shape around the World Social Forum, forming a working group at the first occasion of the Forum in 2001 and gaining governmental approval for the establishment of a National Secretary of Solidarity Economy (SENAES) at the third Forum in 2003.

Meanwhile, the record of the nation’s cooperatives can be traced back much earlier, to the influx of European immigrants in the late 19^th century. This history is rendered doubly significant by the events of recent years, and particularly so by the worldwide financial and economic crisis.

“People have started to say, ‘Enough! I count!’” Maria Elena Chavez, Chief of the ILO Cooperatives Unit, tells MediaGlobal. “It’s all about people being part of the picture, and cooperatives give people that control over their destinies.”

In 2009, the UN General Assembly voted unanimously in support of declaring an international year of cooperatives. That same year, the Brazilian Cooperative Organization (Organização das Cooperativas Brasileiras, or OCB) estimated that Brazil is home to more than seven thousand cooperatives with over eight million members, and that the nation’s agricultural cooperatives alone earned $3.6 billion in export revenue and constituted 37 percent of the agricultural GDP.

Cooperatives have also been shown to be resilient in times of crisis, according to a recent report published by the ILO. “As the public demonstrates, literally demonstrates or verbally demonstrates, their frustration about the way things are going, cooperatives are advancing,” Dribben tells MediaGlobal.

As defined by the ICA, cooperatives are an autonomous association of persons united voluntarily to meet their common economic, social and cultural needs and aspirations through a jointly owned and democratically controlled enterprise.

Often cited as a model of successful solidarity economy enterprise, the Brazilian cooperative Justa Trama was founded in the wake of the 2005 World Social Forum. After a coordination of clothing, sewing, and silk-screening cooperatives successfully manufactured 60,000 handbags for distribution to the event’s participants, the idea for the Justa Trama product brand was born. Today, linking workers along the chain of cotton-related production, from planting to clothing, it brings together over 700 processors of seeds, farmers, spinners, weavers, and seamstresses from six Brazilian states.

“That cooperative is very important for the movement because it was the first one in the solidarity economy area. It is also an example that inspired other projects, such as the PET Binational Solidarity Chain,” Arildo Mota Lopes, President of the Union of Cooperatives and Solidarity Enterprises of Brazil (UNISOL), tells MediaGlobal. The Chain is a solidarity economy project that will unite numerous cooperatives in Brazil and Uruguay and benefit some 3,000 workers, according to Lopes.

However, there are still many challenges ahead. “In Brazil, we still need to convince the society and the government that there exists a fairer way of producing, distributing, and consuming, thereby promoting a new paradigm,” says Lopes. Dribben and Chavez cite similar obstacles for the cooperative movement as a whole, both noting that the potential of the cooperative model and its successes to date remain at the periphery of public and policymakers’ consciousness.

Flooded wetlands guarded by a pair of eagles. Photo Credit: Tom Brandt/Creative Commons

“Tourism in wetlands, when properly managed and developed, plays a major part in supporting those working in and around wetlands, through job and income creation,” Taleb Rifai, secretary-general of UNWTO, told MediaGlobal.

“The challenge is to ensure that sustainable tourism practices are being implemented and bring benefits for wetlands, their wildlife and people…tourism businesses, if well informed and prepared to adapt their operations, can certainly promote and support wetland biodiversity and the natural beauty of wetlands.”

UNWTO marked World Wetlands Day on 2 February, joining forces with the Ramsar Convention to promote responsible tourism and recreation in wetlands from the Great Barrier Reef to the Danube Delta.

The Ramsar Convention is an intergovernmental treaty that provides the framework for national action and international cooperation for the conservation and wise use of wetlands and their resources. It is the only global environmental treaty, adopted in 1971, that deals with a particular ecosystem.

“This has been an excellent opportunity for the Ramsar Convention to take advantage of UNWTO’s expertise in the sustainable management of tourism, and we appreciate the added value they have brought to our World Wetlands Day activities promoting the wise use of wetlands,” said Anada Tiéga, Ramsar’s secretary general.

Tourism is growing and diversifying, becoming one of the fastest growing economic sectors in the world. It is closely linked to development and includes more new destinations. These dynamics have turned tourism into a key driver for socio-‎economic progress.‎ Tourism has become a cornerstone in ‎international commerce, and is a main income ‎sources for many developing countries.

“The attention for the role of wetlands for tourism illustrates the importance of these water rich areas for mankind,” Alex Kaat, manager of advocacy for Wetlands International, told MediaGlobal.

“It is a matter of fact that the world lakes, rivers and beaches are the key areas for tourism,” Kaat continues. “Tourism is just one of the values, next to water regulation, flood control, or climate mitigation. It remains a challenge to communicate the message that wetlands are not just nice for nature, but key for our well-being.”

Wetlands can benefit directly from tourism through entry fees, sale of local products, public relations efforts and more. However, there is a risk that comes with promoting wetlands as tourism locations. The challenge is to ensure that sustainable tourism practices, known as “wise use” practices, are being implemented, and that is where UNWTO and Ramsar come in.

“Every year, millions of tourists fulfill their longing to see and experience the wonders of nature in the wetlands,” Rifai said. “Celebrating World Wetlands Day…offers the perfect occasion to recall the relevance of this unique natural scenery as one of tourism’s greatest assets, while stressing how tourism, when developed and managed in a sustainable way, can be instrumental in safeguarding it.”

The “wise use” of wetlands is defined as “the maintenance of their ecological character, achieved through the implementation of ecosystem approaches, within the context of sustainable development,” as defined by the Ramsar Convention.

The focus on wetland tourism will continue at the 11th Meeting of the Conference of the Contracting Parties (COP11) in Romania during the month of July. The theme will be “Wetlands, Tourism and Recreation.”

COP11 will debate a resolution to provide a formal framework for governments, NGOs and civil society for achieving wetlands sustainability. There will also be the launching of a case study-based report on tourism in and around Ramsar sites, looking at the direct and indirect impacts of tourism, while identifying opportunities and the threats that wetland tourism can bring.

Also coming up this autumn is the UN’s World Tourism Day 2012. Held 27 September every year, the commemoration aims to foster awareness among the international community of the importance of tourism and its social, cultural, political and economic values.

Many tourism organizations, government agencies, and groups with a special interest in tourism celebrate the day with various special events and festivities.

Courtesy of DFID - UK Department for International Development

For the second time in January, trade experts and environmentalists met together at UN Headquarters in New York to plan for more effective collaboration at Rio+20 in June.

“We are building a bridge between the two communities of trade and environment, which are usually separated in negotiations,” Eugenia Nunez, Economic Affairs Officer at the UN Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD), tells MediaGlobal. “It is indeed crucial that in Rio, discussions on necessary adjustments towards a green economy have a trade language.”

The UN Conference on Sustainable Development, or Rio+20, will be held this 20-22 June in Brazil for renewing political commitments toward sustainable development and a green economy. Along with other organizations, UNCTAD’s focus is on finding a balance between trade and the environment, while also highlighting specific issues of concern for developing countries.

“A green economy is already slowly taking place and offers numerous market opportunities,” says Nunez. “The challenge is how to allow and encourage developing countries to benefit from these opportunities.”

In any economic transaction, there can be losers and winners. Negotiators at Rio should ensure that the poor and marginalized are not made even worse off from a shift towards a green economy. “Some countries are now pursuing sustainable development objectives by raising trade barriers, for example by imposing specific import requirements that are sometimes very expensive and hard to implement for poorer countries,” says Nunez.

An essential trading opportunity offered by stronger focus on sustainable development is the production and export of environmentally friendly technologies. Marianne Schaper, in charge of the Rio+20 Secretariat at UN DESA, the UN Department on Economic and Social Affairs, highlighted some ideas and initiatives to be considered at Rio.

“Most developing countries will be followers in technological development and diffusion,” tells Schaper. “For this reason, it is crucial to accelerate and facilitate the spread of green technologies worldwide. That can only be done through a revision of international intellectual property rights (IPRs).”

As currently defined in the WTO’s Trade-Related aspects of Intellectual Property rights (TRIPS) agreement, that regulates international property rights, IPRs focus on promoting technological innovation. But this strict protection of property rights on clean technologies may simultaneously hamper their diffusion and affordable access in developing countries that do not have the capacities to produce them.

“Another focus should be on strengthening local capacity building and R&D in developing countries,” explains Schaper. “This is necessary to avoid a paternalistic model of owners so that, eventually, transfers of technologies will go in two-way flows.” These objectives can also be promoted through strengthened cooperation in R&D for accelerating innovation, or through the facilitation of a network of technology centers, as highlighted during the conference.

This preparatory meeting on the trade dimensions at Rio+20 was a way to share and brainstorm on the different ideas and initiatives to be further reviewed at the conference in June. “We do not yet have international consensus on the appropriate ways to pursue a green economy,” concluded Nunez. “But time is running very fast, and it is our duty to ensure that trade and environment are effectively addressed together at Rio for the benefit of the developing world.”

Children are among those displaced by a recent outbreak of ethnic violence in South Sudan's Jonglei State. Here children show off an improvised volleyball made from a balloon wrapped in bandages and plaster. Photo credit: Isaac Billy/UN Photo

Schools in South Sudan’s Pibor county were due to open their doors on 14 January but with the escalation of violence class has been postponed. In the last month, inter-communal clashes between the Lou Nuer and the Murle, two distinct ethnic groups, displaced tens of thousands of people in Jonglei state. The latest crisis in Jonglei is one of many challenges that the newborn country is facing, and as violence continues in South Sudan it is children that shoulder its worst consequences.

“Addressing psychosocial needs of children in a conflict zone is as important as addressing the physical needs,” Fatuma Ibrahim, UNICEF’s Chief of Child Protection in South Sudan, tells MediaGlobal. “If the emotional needs are not addressed, there is always a risk that this can result in more serious physical and emotional problems at a later date or time.”

Prior to the clashes in Jonglei state, 342 children had been abducted and 254 reported killed. The UN has called for the international donor community to step up as the number of people projected to need humanitarian assistance has gone from 60,000 to 120,000 in recent weeks.

Those caught in the middle of the conflict were forced to flee or hide in the bush for days at a time with scant access to food or water, and at high risk of infection or disease. A report issued by the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs in South Sudan, stated that the latest attack on 16 January resulted in at least 80 people killed and some 300 houses burnt to the ground in Duk Padiet in Duk County.

According to UNICEF, as of 1 February at least 144 children had been registered as unaccompanied in Pibor. While 99 of them have been reunited with parents or relatives, the number of children without a guardian is likely to increase as more and more people come out of hiding.

While life-saving support such as food and water is crucial, Dr. Unni Krishnan, Plan International’s Head of Disaster Preparedness and Response, emphasizes that people need emotional support and children are a good place to start. “They have been separated, they have witnessed the violence and many of them are living in a sense of shock,” Krishnan tells MediaGlobal. “Psychosocial care and support, and emotional first aid support should be a key component of the general humanitarian assistance.”

Due to this last surge of violence, Pibor Boys and Girls Primary Schools are being used to treat those who fled the violence in surrounding villages. UNICEF has supported the establishment of two temporary learning and child-friendly facilities for unaccompanied children.

These facilities are meant to “provide protection assistance focusing on provision of psychosocial assistance through creative activities such as singing, drawing, storytelling, indoor games, and other group activities designed to reduce anxiety and stress,” explains Ibrahim.  “Between 100 and 200 children participate in the child-friendly activities daily.”

Teachers need to be oriented in providing psychological first aid to children with simple activities such as play, that help children express themselves their emotions, explains Krishnan. “They should be allowed to express their emotions,  and feelings and fears,” says Krishnan.

“If emotional wounds and social tensions are not addressed in the reconstruction process, and are not addressed as part of the overall humanitarian response, this can undermine individual’s abilities to live productive, fulfilling lives and lay the seeds for future conflict,” explains Ibrahim.

One of the major concerns for the UN and its partners on the ground is that the rainy season is approaching and will likely bring floods in April and May, leaving many locations that are in need of assistance  inaccessible by road, and further complicating humanitarian relief.

“We have a window of opportunity right now, but this place will unfortunately be moving from one crisis to another in two months time,” says Krishnan. “It is a neglected crisis, it’s not much in the news and there are not many agencies around. It is extremely important that the donor community and the government start looking at this issue more seriously.”

As of now, school is set to start on 15 February. Whether or not schools open in the next weeks South Sudan is in a race against time, both in the short and long run. “You need to start providing emotional first aid from the very beginning when the relief work starts so that you stop the number of people who will need specialized care later on,” says Krishnan. “The human mind works like a balloon, if you keep on building pressure and if you don’t let the steam out it bursts.”

The body of an unidentified woman, found in a precipice in Nueva Chinautla Department of Guatemala. Photo credit: Walter Astrada

The term defined as “the killing of a woman because she is a woman,” was first introduced to United States by Dr. Diana E.H. Russell in 1976. Femicide identifies any female, young or old, who falls victim to a crime solely based on her gender. Femicide has become an everyday occurrence for women in the Global South, where more often than not, more than just sexual violence is used against them because of what they are, a female.

“This is not a cultural problem, it is not [solely] an African problem or a Congolese problem, this, unfortunately, is everywhere – it traverses history and geography,” Margot Wallström, the Special Representative to the Secretary General on Violence in Conflict, tells MediaGlobal.

Proving Wallström’s point, women the world over are fighting to be seen and heard as equals, though often their calls fall on deaf ears. Protests demanding justice for victims have erupted in Central and Latin America where the term is most commonly used.

Women worldwide find themselves either learning to deal with the threat, and finding ways to protect themselves. Thousands have fallen victim to femicide, often neglected by their governments or local police. Guatemala has become notorious for its increasing amount of crimes against women, as well as the lack of action of local police toward solving crimes that involve female victims – putting the country in direct violation of one of the basic human rights.

As the UN Universal Declaration of Human Rights reads, “All are equal before the law and are entitled without any discrimination to equal protection under the law.” An alarming 99 percent of suspected femicide cases remain in impunity (exemption from punishment, penalty, or harm) in Guatemala. According to the Guatemala Human Rights Commission/USA, the.vast majority of femicide cases go unsolved because of authorities’ failure to promptly open investigations,  preserve crime scenes and collect evidence, interview key witnesses, pursue leads, or make timely arrests.

Impunity being the largest obstacle toward justice, the 2011 General Assembly called again for renewed efforts to . Still, in Guatemala, those who are frequently attacked by spouses, boyfriends, or male family members are often seen as “nobody’s” by local police and their cases remain unsolved for years, even decades.

Guatemalan Maira Esperanza Gutiérrez, 42, lies dead after being shot 16 shots times by an unidentified man, in Boca del Monte Department of Guatemala, on November 19, 2006. Photo: Walter Astrada

Among them is the case of Maria-Isabel Veliz, which captured international media attention. Veliz was 15 years old when she was abducted while walking home from work, her lifeless body discovered days later, stabbed, beaten, and tied up with barbed wire. Her body was dumped in a ditch with another female that has yet to be identified. Veliz’ mother received no notification from authorities; she recognized her daughters’ shoes while watching the news.

PBS reported that semen and blood were found on Veliz’ clothes, but were never tested by local law officials, leaving the case unsolved for more than nine years. Consequently, her mother, Rosa, has become an advocate for violence against women in Guatemala, while she still waits for justice to be served in her daughters’ case.

Over the past decade, an estimated 5,500 Guatemalan women have fallen victim because of their gender. On 28 September, the Guatemalan Congress made a call to put an end to impunity on cases that involve violence against women.  According to the approved resolution 4-2011, “State institutions are to act with the greatest of speed and due diligence in cases of femicide.” However, the Guatemalan Congress’ call to justice seems to have had little effect, and gender based violence remains a serious problem.

“When women continue to walk in shame and perpetrators walk free,” Wallström pointed out, “I think this will always affect society, if it affects the woman it affects the whole family.”

Indigenous children from the Embera people in Colombia work and play in fields infected by pesticides. Photo credit: UN Photo/Mark Garten

For centuries, indigenous peoples throughout the world relied on hunting, farming, and fishing for their subsistence. Today, many traditional foods have become life-threatening dangers, contaminated by pollutants and pesticides. Over 355,000 people are poisoned every year, and hundreds of thousands more are made ill.

Andrea Carmen comes from a Yaqui Indian community in northern Mexico. Viola Waghiyi is a Yupik Eskimo born in Alaska. Thousands of kilometers apart, the two female activists combat the same injustice: the dramatic health effects of foreign toxics in their indigenous communities.

“We have scientific evidence that the pesticides and toxics exported by foreign countries into ours are causing disproportionate levels of cancers, birth defects, mental retardation, fertility, poisoned breast milk and various reproductive diseases,” Andrea Carmen, executive director of the International Indian Treaty Council (IITC), an organization of indigenous people from North, Central, and South America and the Pacific, tells MediaGlobal.

Industrial activity by foreign companies is the main cause of contamination, in particular the “Big 6” agrochemical giants from the United States, Germany and Switzerland (the Multi-national Corporations Monsanto, Syngenta, Dow, DuPont, Bayer, and BASF), the world’s six largest manufacturers of pesticides.

The 2004 Stockholm Convention on Persistent Organic Pollutants (POPs) aims at the elimination of the world’s most dangerous chemicals for the protection of the environment. The Convention specifically refers to the unique vulnerabilities of indigenous people. However, the Convention wasn’t ratified by the United States, a major global polluter, and has also to cope with strong opposition from the chemical industry, valued at over $3 trillion worldwide.

A second major source of contamination comes from former military activity. This is especially the case in Alaska, a territory that served as a US Air Force and Army base during the Cold War, and as a testing ground for nuclear, biological, and chemical weapons.

“Native communities in Alaska are particularly vulnerable because of their severe isolation and reliance on local fishing,” Waghiyi, Environmental Health and Justice Director at ACAT (Alaska Community Action on Toxics), tells MediaGlobal. “When the militaries shut down their basis in the 1970’s, they didn’t clean up their mess, and the 220,000 gallons of spilled fuel or other solvents and heavy metals that are now causing deaths and cancers among us.”

The process is further exacerbated by climate change and rising temperature that provoke more rapid dispersal of contaminants into freshwater and marine environments. Waghiyi has herself suffered three miscarriages, and both her parents died from cancers, with evidential links to the toxins.

Although the causes may differ from one country to another, indigenous people throughout the world are similarly suffering from the intrusion of foreign poisons in their lands. Gathering around a common cause, communities from around the world, including those of Carmen and Waghiyi, are now uniting their efforts.

It’s taken some time for Indigenous people to have their voices heard at the UN level. The first step was in 1982, when the Economic and Social Council (ECOSOC) established a Working Group on Indigenous Populations (WGIP) as a reaction against systematic discrimination. Eventually, after more than 20 years of work, and the appointment of a UN Special Rapporteur in 2001, the Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous people was adopted in September 2007.

More than their rights to health and self-determination, Article 29 of the Declaration is of particular importance in the present issue; it holds that “no disposal of hazardous materials shall take place in the lands or territories of indigenous people without their free, prior and informed consent.”

“Our right to free and pre-informed consent has been continuously violated in the last decades; no one ever told us about the presence and harmful effects of pesticides contained in our food,” Carmen tells MediaGlobal. “How could we possibly imagine that toxics banned in the US because of their severe health implications were deliberately sold and spread in poorer countries?”

The recent scandal of flowers’ production in Colombia and Ecuador is bringing attention to the issue. Columbia is one of the biggest producers of flowers for the US, employing more than 100,000 local workers, especially women from Indian communities. “Contrary to food exports, there is no analysis by American companies for chemical residue on flowers’ crops, which are not exported in the US for comestible purposes,” explains Carmen. But recent studies revealed the presence of highly toxic pesticides in the crops, causing cancers and other illnesses among thousands of local workers.

The upcoming UN Conference on Sustainable Development (Rio+20), to be held this June in Brazil, will be an opportunity for Indigenous people to voice their concerns. In a united effort, various indigenous organizations including IITC and ACAT have submitted a long list of recommendations to be considered at Rio.

“We want to see the environmental conventions and standards be assessed from a human rights perspective,” Carmen tells MediaGlobal. “More than a threat to the environment, the deliberate spread of toxics into the nature violates basic human rights of indigenous people, including our right to prior consent.”

While improvements and negotiations are slowly advancing on the international level, people on the ground are every day threatened with contamination, often unaware of the poison present in their food or on their clothes or in the crops. “Our priority is to inform and educate our communities about the risks they occur,” Waghiyi tells MediaGlobal. “We do not want to tell them what to do, but they have the right to take informed choices, and to eventually speak up themselves for their rights.”