POLITICS: Sri Lanka Locks Horns with UN over Experts’ Panel
By Amantha Perera
COLOMBO - The war of words between the Sri Lankan government and the United Nations has begun all over again, this time over the creation of an experts’ panel on the island’s human rights record.
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FINANCE: Self-Policing of Extractive Industries a "Dismal" Failure
By Charles Fromm
WASHINGTON - An international initiative that seeks to reform how governments profit from their natural resources should not reduce its existing standards of membership solely because candidate countries have been reluctant or incapable of meeting them, Human Rights Watch (HRW) said on Tuesday.
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RIGHTS: "Famine Marriages" Just One Byproduct of Climate Change
By Thalif Deen*
UNITED NATIONS - The negative fallout from climate change is having a devastatingly lopsided impact on women compared to men, from higher death rates during natural disasters to heavier household and care burdens.
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HAITI: The Camp That Vanished
By Ansel Herz*
PORT-AU-PRINCE - Perched near the top of a steep hill, the fractured pink walls of Villa Manrese overlook the rest of the capital city. Both ends of the three-story compound have collapsed, spilling into mounds of rubble. The first floor was pulverised into a layer of dust. There are still bodies inside.
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RIGHTS: Middle East Women Ahead But Not Home
By Sanjay Suri*- IPS/TerraViva
UNITED NATIONS - Male leaders fail to break the Mideast impasse. Enter women from Israel and the Palestinian territories working together. And… it would have been nice to say they succeeded where the men failed.
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MALAWI: Patrilineal Inheritance Prevents Women’s Access to Land
By Claire Ngozo
LILONGWE - Mercy Gondwe, 51, from Rumphi in northern Malawi, was married for 34 years. When her husband died in 2008, she assumed she would inherit the land they had been cultivating together since they got married. But this was not the case.
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RIGHTS: Fewer Jobs, Less Money, Same Old Story
By Haider Rizvi
UNITED NATIONS - "What do I get from them? Nothing but bullsh*t," says Nupur Acharya, reflecting about how she is treated by her husband and two grown sons on daily basis.
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CAMBODIA: Rape Victims Need Better Protection from New Penal Code
By Marwaan Macan-Markar
BANGKOK - Cambodia’s new penal code, which comes into force later this year, should be accompanied by stronger law enforcement measures if the country’s women and girls are to be better protected from rape, says the global rights lobby Amnesty International (AI).
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MEDIA-NEPAL: Self-Censorship Creeping Up After Killings
By Bhuwan Sharma - Asia Media Forum
KATHMANDU - The climate of fear that has been growing in this Himalayan country since the murder of two media entrepreneurs and other attacks on journalists may well push them to turn to more self-censorship.
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MIDEAST: Israeli Left Emerges From Coma Amid Atrocities
By Mel Frykberg
SHEIKH JARRAH, Occupied East Jerusalem - Amid the wave of violence that swept through the occupied Palestinian West Bank, including East Jerusalem, over the last few days, there are signs that the Israeli left may be emerging from its collective coma.
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