Raúl Gutiérrez
SAN SALVADOR, Sep 5 2006 (IPS) – Juan Carlos Merino, known during his days as a guerrilla fighter as Camilo , has undergone three operations on his spine since he was injured by right-wing paramilitaries in 1987, at the height of El Salvador s civil war. But despite the doctors best efforts, he can still just barely move his legs.
However, Merino doesn t let that get in his way. He drives a tractor, and rides out on horseback to supervise his crops and fish farming tanks. He also built pens for raising chickens and two pigs in his yard.
The 48-year-old campesino and former combatant with the leftist Farabundo Marti National Liberation Front (FMLN), who says his dream is to walk again, rides back to his house in the municipality of Cinquera, located 60…
Thalif Deen
UNITED NATIONS, Sep 18 2008 (IPS) – The Global Sanitation Fund (GSF), created last March with a 100-million-dollar target per year, is being billed as a key financing mechanism aimed at meeting one of the eight U.N. Millennium Development Goals (MDGs).
Boys use new latrines at Tulung Elementary School in Pundong Village in the…
The war against terrorism has left many Pakistanis disabled. Credit: Ashfaq Yusufzai/IPS
PESHAWAR, Pakistan, Jan 28 2012 (IPS) – The prolonged United States-led war against terrorism has left a large number of people disabled in Pakistan, compelling the government to institute a rehabilitation plan that will include imparting vocational skills.
The plan, to be put into action in March this year, will start with the compilation of data on people injured in the war in the Federally Administered Tribal Areas (FATA) and the Khyber Pakhtunkhwa (KP) province, says Mahboob ur Rehman, head of t…
Wounded veterans attend a May 22, 2013 Memorial Day ceremony at which they are given Segway personal transporters to improve their mobility and independence. Credit: Senator Claire McCaskill/cc by 2.0
WASHINGTON, Nov 4 2013 (IPS) – In his final letter to his family, 30-year-old Iraq war veteran Daniel Somers wrote of having never returned from war. “In truth, I was nothing more than a prop,” reads the suicide note dated Jun. 10, 2013, six years after his final deployment. “In truth, I have already been absent for a long, long time.”
As the U.S.-led war in Afghanistan draws to a close, Washington will tout the absence of combat troops in that country. Loo…
This is the second in a three-part series of about women and Option B+ in Africa
A Swazi mother with her baby. In July Swaziland will roll out Option B+, the latest treatment recommended by the World Health Organisation for HIV positive mothers. Credit: Mantoe Phakathi/IPS
MBABANE, Jun 5 2014 (IPS) – For months, Nonkululeko Msibi could not find her voice each time she wanted to share the news to her husband. She had learned that she was infected with HIV at the age of 16 when delivering her firstborn baby at Swaziland s Mbabane Government Hospital.
“Although I was shocked by the news, I accepted it,” Msibi told IPS. “But the most difficult pa…
Elderly people exercising in a city square as part of the municipal programme Healthy Stations in public parks in Buenos Aires, where health controls are also offered for people over 60. Credit: Fabiana Frayssinet/IPS
BUENOS AIRES, Dec 9 2014 (IPS) – The eternally young Latin America is also ageing, due to the rise in life expectancy and the drop in birth rates a demographic revolution that poses new challenges in a region that has begun to move slowly away from its status as the most unequal part of the world.
The report by the Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean (ECLAC), confirmed that this century there are fewer children per couple and more older adults, whi…
Hiroshima, Japan. Photo: Internet Archives 1945
NAIROBI, Kenya, Sep 11 2019 (IPS) – From the ashes of a tragedy that wiped out almost 90% of the city of Hiroshima on 6 August 1945, an institute called the (HPC) rose like a phoenix of hope that is pioneering the creation of a global pool of peacebuilders. It is driven by the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development declaration that there can be no sustainable development without peace and no peace without sustainable development.”
Hiroshima underwent miraculous post-war reconstruction after World War II, and it epitomizes speed, innovation, technology and efficiency which marks the Japanese character of utter disc…