None Dare Call It Privatization

On the Commons Dispatch from a high-powered conference spelling out a new strategy for raiding the commons by Tom Tresser At the Hyatt Lodge Hotel on the McDonald’s corporate campus in Oak Brook, Illinois, June 24, the other wingtip dropped.  It happened at a conference called “It’s Not Privatization: Implementing Partnerships in Illinois”, organized by The National [...]

Bishops to House: Budget Cannot Rely on Disproportionate Cuts in Services to Poor Persons, Requires Shared Sacrifice by All

USCCB WASHINGTON—In a July 26 letter to the U.S. House of Representatives, Bishop Stephen E. Blaire of Stockton, California, and Bishop Howard J. Hubbard of Albany, New York, called on Congress to remember the human and moral dimensions of the ongoing budget and debt ceiling debate.

Kenyans donate $200,000 by text for drought victims

BBC Kenyans have donated nearly $200,000 (£122,000) via mobile phone banking for aid to victims of the worst drought in the region in 60 years.  The BBC’s Noel Mwakugu in the capital, Nairobi, says the money has been raised in the first 12 hours of an appeal launched by leading businesses. 

Catherine Odongo: A Story of Patience and Resilience in the Face of Difficulty

News from Africa Catherine’s confidence arrests any draws to her atrocious past, she is a portrait of typical girl child resilience turned an icon in the society.  By Eric Sande For Catherine Amondi Odongo , 21, light is finally at the end of the tunnel despite the tribulations she had to go through earlier in [...]

Nigeria’s Goodluck Jonathan proposes one-term limits

BBC Nigeria’s leader Goodluck Jonathan has said he will ask MPs to amend the constitution so that future presidents serve a single, longer term in office. The constitution currently limits presidents to two four-year terms. There has been speculation in Nigerian newspapers that the proposed amendment would enable President Jonathan to extend his term in [...]

DRC: Children still in prison despite law

KINSHASA, 29 June 2011 (IRIN) – Two years after the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) promulgated the Law on Child Protection, an estimated 3,000 children remain in prisons across the country. The law, which came into effect in January 2009, replaced a 1950 colonial law on juvenile delinquency that set the age of criminal responsibility [...]

The right to determine their development

Latin American Press Prior consultation: a right that ensures other indigenous rights. Karin Anchelía Jesusi The right to consultation for indigenous peoples in Peru has existed for the last 17 years, since the ratification of the International Labor Organization’s Convention 169 concerning Indigenous and Tribal Peoples; nevertheless, timber, petroleum, and mining concessions on indigenous lands [...]

Libya: archbishop protests after NATO bombs hit food stores

 Independent Catholic News Mgr Giovanni Innocenzo  Martinelli, Apostolic Vicar of Tripoli has protested at NATO bombing of civilian targets in his diocese. “They are hitting civilian targets such as food stores” he said. “A few days ago, NATO warplanes hit a food store just outside Tripoli, which contained oil, pasta, tomato sauce. A river of [...]

Facing the crisis: four principles and four virtues

Leonardo Boff Theologian Earthcharter Commission Einstein’s phrase is very true today: «a crisis cannot be resolved by the mentality that created it.» It is too late to just make reforms; they do not change the mentality. We need to start from another frame of mind, founded in principles and values that can sustain a new form [...]

Gender Responsive Planning and Budgeting at Work

By Miriam Gathigah NAIROBI, Jul 25, 2011 (IPS) – For the first time ever, the finance minister has allocated almost four million dollars from the current national budget to provide free sanitary pads to schoolgirls.  This comes after persistent pressure from women parliamentarians who took the issue of girls’ absenteeism from school, due to lack [...]