Suvendrini Kakuchi

TOKYO, Sep 3 2011 (IPS) – The Fukushima disaster has thrown up the first opportunity in decades to bring justice to thousands of unskilled workers who risk radioactive contamination to keep Japan s nuclear power plants running.
Fukushima has created public awareness on a section of nuclear workers castigated as radiation- exposed people but forming the dark underbelly of an industry that depends on them, says Minoru Nasu, spokesperson for the Japan Day Labourers Union.

Nasu, a long-time labour activist, says that while nuclear industry relies heavily on unskilled workers it has left it to thuggish subcontractors to marshal them as daily wagers.

The common practice for the past several decades can best be described as human auctioning, Nasu …

Kristin Palitza

BUKAVU, DR Congo, Oct 17 2011 (IPS) – Angeline Mwarusena, 61, sits on a small wooden bench in front of her hut, head bent, shoulders slumped. Her voice is barely audible. Four years ago, three soldiers from the Democratic Forces for the Liberation of Rwanda (FDLR) entered her home, hit her and raped her repeatedly. One after the other.

The village of rape survivor Angeline Mwarusena continues to be threatened by militia. …

Miriam Gathigah

Iro-nsi Bose Credit: Miriam Gathigah/IPS

BUSAN, South Korea, Dec 1 2011 (IPS) – Gender champions have lauded the Fourth High Level Forum on Aid Effectiveness for providing gender equality and the empowerment of women a special session, but there is dissatisfaction with Thursday s Busan outcome document.

Iro-nsi Bose Credit: Miriam Gathigah/IPS

Although the document alluded to gender equality, experts feel that the scope is narrow …

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…

Cléo Fatoorehchi

1.1 billion people in developing countries have inadequate access to water, and 2.6 billion lack even the most basic sanitation. Credit: Mantoe Phakathi/IPS

AIX-EN-PROVENCE , Mar 7 2012 (IPS) – Back in 2001, Gérard Mestrallet, CEO of the transnational water giant GDF- Suez, highlighted his company’s commitment to fight for better access to safe water and sanitation throughout the world, in order to put an end to all deadly water-borne diseases, from children’s diarrhoea to parasitic diseases to dysentery…

HELSINKI, Apr 20 2012 (IPS) – When war-torn Somalia was also ravaged by a drought-induced famine last year, which killed tens of thousands and displaced over a million people, international media was quick to blame the Islamist Al-Shabaab for blocking humanitarian assistance from reaching its zone of control in southern Somalia.

Ke…

BUENOS AIRES, May 21 2012 (IPS) – Nearly 29 years after the demise of the 1976-1983 dictatorship in Argentina, successive democratic governments have failed to find a humane way of running the prison system. Preventable deaths, torture and appalling conditions for inmates continue to be reported.

Practices rooted in the dictatorship are still going on in prisons, such as torture, abuse and other mistreatment which must be eradicated, Paula Litvachky, a lawyer for the Centre for Legal and Social Studies (CELS), told IPS.

Of course, there is no real continuity with the seven-year regime that kidnapped, tortured and forcibly disappeared thousands of people, but abuses persist in prisons due to complicity, indifference and lack of accountability and oversight, she said.

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CAPE TOWN, South Africa, Jul 6 2012 (IPS) – Experts say that underfunded pilot universal healthcare sites to be set up by South Africa as part of its proposed national health insurance may be doomed to fail as debate rages about how the move to more equitable healthcare will be funded.

In March, South Africa announced 10 districts across the country that will pilot universal healthcare under its proposed national health insurance (NHI).

Pilot sites have only been allocated an additional R11 million (or 1.3 million dollars) to implement the NHI, according to Di McIntyre, professor at the School of Public Health and Family Medicine at South Africa’s University of Cape Town.

“The NHI is actually about comprehensive reform of the healthcare system…you can’t d…

The wall around the Rigolleau substation graphically reflects the opposition of local residents. Credit: Juan Moseinco/IPS

BUENOS AIRES, Aug 21 2012 (IPS) – Scientific uncertainty about the health impacts of electromagnetic fields is fueling worries among people in the Argentine capital who are demanding that energy power transformers be located far from their neighborhoods.

The World Health Organisation (WHO) does not rule out the possibility that exposure to extremely low frequency electromagnetic fields could pose a risk to human health, even possibly being linked to childhood leukemia. But it says there is not enough evidence to warrant strict recommendations.