A temporary pause in the fighting between the Syrian government and rebels allowed emergency personnel to evacuate 83 civilians from the embattled city of Homs on February 7, according to the United Nations.
The evacuation of the civilians comes a day after the U.N. brokered a three day ceasefire, under which women, children, the elderly and injured people will be allowed to leave Homs. That day, buses were allowed to enter Homs’ Old City, where as many as 2,500 people are believed to be trapped. The trapped residents have been unable to leave because they are caught in the fighting between the government and the insurgents battling Syrian President Bashar al-Assad’s regime.
The departing residents will be greeted at a U.N. welcome center and will then give the authorities the names of people who want to stay behind. The provision of the names of citizens who do not want to leave was a key demand of Syria’s government, which wants to learn the identities of the men who reside there, the Washington Post reported.
In addition to the evacuation of these noncombatants, aid will be allowed to enter Homs’ Old City, parts of which have besieged by government forces since June 2012. Under the temporary ceasefire between the government and the rebels, medical aid and food should reach Homs on Saturday.
The three-day ceasefire covering Homs, which was one of the first cities to take up arms against Assad’s regime, comes nearly two weeks after United States and Russian-sponsored peace talks on ending Syria’s civil war opened in Switzerland. The talks, which began in the Swiss city of Montreux on January 22 before moving to Geneva on January 24, paused last Friday. The negotiations between Syria’s government and a western-backed opposition alliance known as National Coalition of Syrian Revolutionary and Opposition Forces are set to resume Monday in Geneva.
Assad’s government and the opposition had been expected to reach agreement early in the talks on localized ceasefires and on allowing humanitarian aid to be delivered to besieged areas, but the two sides were unable to even reach a deal on these issues.
The official agenda for the negotiations, known officially as Geneva II, is to reach agreement on the composition of a temporary government with full executive powers that would oversee Syria’s transition to democracy. Syria’s government rejects the idea that goal of the talks is the establishment of a government that doesn’t include Assad, whose family has ruled Syria since 1971, while the opposition has insisted that any transitional government exclude the Syrian president and leading members of his regime.
Syria’s nearly three-year long civil war, which pits rebels largely drawn from Syria’s Sunni majority against a government controlled by the country’s minority Alawite sect and supported by Shia Iran, has stoked Sunni-Shia tensions across the Middle East, particularly in the sectarian tinder boxes of Iraq and Lebanon.
Shia Iran and its Lebanese proxy force Hezbollah have backed Assad, a longtime ally of both Tehran and Hezbollah, while Sunni gulf states and Turkey have supported the Sunni insurgents, buttressing the rebels through the provision of light weapons and cash. Both sides seem to view the Syrian conflict as a proxy war between the Sunni and Shia branches of Islam.
– Eric Erdahl
Sources: BBC, BBC, Washington Post, New York Times
Sources: Elephant Journal
Uruguay Pioneers One Laptop Per Child Project
Uruguay was the first country in the world to provide a laptop to every primary school student. Plan Ceibal, Uruguay’s national One Laptop Per Child project, provided an XO laptop to each of the 395,000 children in first through sixth grades. The acronym Ceibal stands for Basic Informatic Educative Connectivity for Online Learning (Conectividad Educativa de Informática Básica para el Aprendizaje en Línea).
One Laptop Per Child, a non-profit based in Massachusetts, strives to provide each child in developing nations with a low-cost, low-power laptop. Through this technology, children become more engaged in their education and more connected to one another. The laptops are designed to be highly power efficient, with the ability to use solar power, generators, wind power or water power.
“This is not simply the handing out of laptops or an education program. It is a program which seeks to reduce the gap between the digital world and the world of knowledge,” Miguel Brechner explained, director of the Technological Laboratory of Uruguay and in charge of Plan Ceibal.
In Uruguay, the Plan Ceibal program has a cost of $260 per child, including maintenance costs, equipment repairs, teacher training and internet connection. The total figure represents less than 5 % of the country’s education budget.
The XO laptops, with Linux operating software, can connect directly to one another, meaning that a single point of access can be shared among a community of XO users.
Education in Uruguay is among the best of the Latin American countries. Uruguay has one of the highest adult literacy rates of all of Latin America. Elementary education is mandatory and free; secondary and technical education are also free. As the first country to implement a One Laptop Per Child program, Uruguay is setting the model for other countries, such as Rwanda, Nicaragua, Paraguay and Peru, which have all adapted a One Laptop Per Child program.
– Haley Sklut
Sources: One Laptop Per Child, Sources: BBC
Photo: Kit Guru
Wuhayshi Jailbreak and AQAP Resurgence
Long considered a vulnerably fractured nation, Yemen is home to one of the world’s deadliest al-Qaeda offshoots. Al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP) formed in January 2009 from an alliance between al-Qaeda branches in Saudi Arabia and Yemen. The organization, by carrying out attacks domestically while simultaneously acknowledging Western targets, instills fear over the world.
Recent developments have augmented this fear and made a necessity for action ever more apparent. Beginning with an exploding car bomb and followed by a grenade and gun assault, at least 14 inmates escaped from Yemen’s main security prison.
When in February 2006 23 convicted terrorists escaped from prison in Yemen’s capital of Sana’a, al-Qaeda experienced resurgence in the region. Nasser al-Wuhayshi, currently the leader of AQAP, played a vital role in the increased occurrence of attacks at the time.
Wuhayshi was among the escapees.
The connection between Wuhayshi and an al-Qaeda-heavy jailbreak is quite conspicuous. Including a vicious attack against the Yemeni Ministry of Defense a few months prior to the recent prison incident, in December 2013, AQAP has participated in and claimed responsibility for multitudinous attacks since its formation in 2009.
Extensive media and propaganda campaigns fuel the AQAP fire, keeping recruitment strong. The overarching goals of AQAP, of particular concern to the United States and other Western countries, is to rid Muslim countries of Western influence and to instead foster shari’a law under fundamentalist Islamic regimes. These intentions are dutifully carried out by a compartmentalized and decentralized hierarchy of power that enables AQAP to endure counterattacks and arrests without falling apart.
Despite this formation, it is important to note that Wuhayshi, over a period of four years, served alongside Osama bin-Laden in Afghanistan. Bin-Laden’s successor allegedly appointed Wuhayshi general manager of al-Qaeda fairly recently in July 2013. This position gives him extreme power and flexibility to do what he wishes with AQAP both regionally and internationally.
The main worry here is one of historical repetition. Wuhayshi, arguably one of the most powerful men in the world, especially in regard to terrorist and jihadist pursuits, earned his prestige as a result of escaping from jail. Now, once again, al-Qaeda affiliates have freed themselves from confinement. What this means for global security is yet to be seen.
– Jaclyn Stutz
Sources: Council on Foreign Relations, Al-Jazeera
Photo: Yahoo News
Child Labor in America
The Fair Labor Standards Act of 1938 had outlawed child labor in America; however, individuals have managed to find their way around the law, effectively enslaving children, the vast majority of whom are migrant workers, within these laborious jobs. While the 1938 Act outlawed child labor in settings such as an office or a restaurant, the law left the prospect of employing child laborers on farms completely legal. In the United States, many child laborers still toil away on farms, being left vulnerable to heat exhaustion, heavy machinery and dehydration.
According to NBC, thousands of children, some as young as 8 years old, are being exploited, forced to endure grueling hours and equally grueling conditions on farms. These children work for little to no cost in order for the produce industry to put food on America’s table.
Oftentimes, these children are told by their employers to lie about their age in order to circumvent any probing questions. NBC chronicles the exploitation of Ralph, a 15-year-old laborer who works on a Central Valley migrant labor camp with dozens of other children as young as or even younger than he. When asked what farm labor is like, Ralph states, “We get tired and like we get kind of tired and our arms hurt… It is too hard to be in the fields.” Indeed, these children are forced to work the fields even when temperatures skyrocket to 106 degrees.
Furthermore, the National Institute of Occupational Safety and Health (NIOSH) stated that up to 670 children had been killed while working during 1980 to 1989. Seventy percent of these deaths were initiated by violations of child safety laws. Additionally, a follow-up study by the NIOSH in 1992 reported that over 64,100 children were admitted to the emergency room due to injuries on the job.
As startling as these estimates may be, they under-report child labor-related death and injuries by 25 percent to 30 percent. It is difficult to pinpoint the precise rate of child labor in America since many exploitative employers do not report their mistreatment of children and many child laborers often fail to speak out due to fear.
Child labor remains an issue in America, a country that supposedly phased out the exploitation of children in the late 1930’s, largely as a result of a lack of effective legislation. According to Project Censored, the individuals who benefit the most from lack of legislation and awareness are the exploitative industries while young laborers remain perpetual victims.
– Phoebe Pradhan
Sources: The Nation, NBC, Project Censored
Photo: Bored Panda
Beyond Fair: Doi Chaang Coffee Beans and Development
Do you like to drink coffee? If you are like me and happen to need a cup every morning in order to function properly, here is a chance to drink your single-origin morning nectar and help to alleviate poverty all at the same time.
Some readers may have heard of the Golden Triangle, or the border area of Laos, Myanmar and Thailand. It is one of the largest opium-producing regions in the world.
One of the reasons that people resort to growing and selling opium is the grinding poverty experienced by the ethnic minorities that live across the borders of the three countries. Many of the minority groups have very few rights and are often discriminated against.
In the case of Thailand, many hill tribes members do not possess Thai identification documents—rendering them unrecognized as Thai citizens.
This consequently impedes them from accessing many basic public services such as health care and education. This combination of decades of poverty and disenfranchisement has driven minority groups towards illicit drug trade.
However, for the past few decades some tribes—among them the Akha of northern Thailand—have shifted to growing cash crops such as coffee. Nevertheless, the revenue they receive through trading with large companies was far from mutually beneficial. Enter Wicha Promyong—a successful Southern Thai entrepreneur—and his Canadian colleague, John Darch, who had spent many years in the banking sectors of Canada and England.
Together, they founded Doi Chaang Coffee with the goal of bringing development and sustainable prosperity to an Akha village on Doi Chaang Mountain.
What the Canadian-registered company does is unprecedented: 50% of the ownership of the company is given to the tribe, who also receives 50% of the profits as well as all of the money obtained from selling the green beans. Amazing!
What has this innovative and charitable form of a corporate-grower relationship achieved for the village so far? Well, they have done a good many wonderful things.
From an isolated village that was hitherto neglected by the authorities, left without paved roads, a hospital, schools, or even running water, the income from growing coffee allows the Akha tribe to become more self-sustainable. The village now has its own all those that it had erstwhile been lacking. It even has its own library and a coffee academy!
The business philosophy of Doi Chaang Coffee demonstrates that multinational commodity trades do not have to be exploitative in order to be profitable. It also suggests that perhaps the key component in establishing an equality and dignity based business model is simple and straightforward: the desire to be fair.
Readers in North America can purchase Doi Chaang Coffee both at their local Safeway and other supermarkets—if they are in Canada—as well as on their website if you happen to be in the U.S.
– Peewara Sapsuwan
Sources: Doi Chaang Coffee, Fair Trade , YouTube
Film Synopsis: Whores’ Glory
“Whores’ Glory” is Australian film-maker Michael Glawogger’s third documentary in a series including “Megacities” and “Workingman’s Death.” The film travels from Thailand to Bangladesh to Mexico into the lives of local prostitutes; three countries, three cultures, three religions – one profession.
At the Fish Bowl in Thailand, women sit behind a one-way glass fixing their hair and gossiping about their mothers until their number is called, signaling that their services have just been bought. On the other side of the glass a soon-to-be-client tells the camera how much he loves his wife and that he does this so he can respect her at home.
In the City of Joy, oral sex is forbidden since the mouth must remain pure for prayer. Contrary to their patriarchal religion, the madam’s word is law inside the ghetto, and women run every facet of life, from the adolescent girl flirting and laughing in the alley to the retired prostitute who now serves as a maid and cook. Indentured girls call up their ‘sweethearts’ to demand more visits and save their money to one day buy their own girls.
In the red-light district of Reynosa, Mexico, a prostitute and her john allow their entire interaction to be filmed, which proves to be, as one critic wrote, “as sexy as buying half a pound of roast beef at the deli counter.” Another woman describes how she no longer fears death because Lady Death is watching over her and promises smooth deliverance.
The film offers no judgment, neither on the prostitutes nor their customers. A young Bengali girl stares boldly into the camera asking if there is no other path for women to take; clients transform from misogynist cronies to shy romantics once doors are closed – suggesting that where women have the fewest options, it’s the men who are the most confused.
Glawogger believes that “the female/male relationship of any given culture can be depicted in prostitution,” but without interviewers or a concluding theme, the film is left largely open to interpretation.
The New York Times calls the documentary “a melancholy film that begins in an outer circle of hell and works its way to the depths,” while a writer of Salon thought it demonstrated “tremendous compassion, and more than a few moments of piercing clarity.”
The powerful documentary illustrated tenderness where none was asked for, powerless women who have held on to their faith and hope of a better future for women who had no reason to expect one.
– Lydia Caswell
Sources: Whores’ Glories, The New York Times, Salon
Photo: Mother Jones
Child Brides on the Rise Among Syrian Refugees
Early marriage has always been present in rural Syrian areas where the level of education is low and the rate of poverty is high, and refugees from these small communities have carried the practice with them into Jordan.
Marrying off an underage daughter is sometimes the best option for refugee families; when traveling cross-country or living in close quarters such as refugee camps, married girls are often safer with a husband than they would be with their parents. Impoverished families sometimes seek the mahr, or bride price that’s made to the bride’s family by the groom or his family. Some girls are married to mask sexual abuse or dishonorable pre-marital sex; while starvation grows among camps, many girls feed themselves through prostitution.
While the customs of a mahr are usually relaxed among Syrian refugees who can rarely afford a high price, foreign grooms from Jordan or Palestine are encouraged to seek child brides so that families may demand a higher price. This mix of culture is sometimes to the disadvantage of refugee families. Aisha al-Masri, a psychologist based in Jordan, said there have been several documented cases of foreign men abandoning their young wives after a few weeks never to be heard from again.
The legal age of marriage and consent is 18 in Syria, but a legal loophole allows the Sharia courts to approve a union so long as the girl is over 15. The number of marriages approved by the Sharia courts has grown considerably with the rising number of refugees, but some struggling families are unable to complete the necessary application to make the wedding legal.
An illegal underage marriage has lasting consequences: any children that couple has will be considered illegitimate, hugely damaging the child’s social status and complicating its application for nationality and documentation. For this reason, many underage and unregistered marriages are done in private and only filed years later once the couples are both adults.
Girls in poor families are nearly twice as likely to marry young; once they are married, the chances of their finishing school are very remote. For every year a girl stays in school, her future wage is raised from 15 percent to 25 percent. Therefore, when a girl drops out of school to marry, her potential to later provide for her family is greatly lowered, and while men typically invest 30 percent to 40 percent of their wage back into their family, women typically reinvest 90 percent.
So while it may be the answer to an immediate problem for some, early childhood marriage often warps a girl’s ability to educate her future daughters and encourages the cycle of poverty. Deprived of schools, refugees are at a colossal disadvantage, and for every child bride that escapes starvation there is an increased likelihood that the next generation will starve.
-Lydia Caswell
Sources: Daily Star, Girls Not Brides, The Nation
Photo: Foreign Policy Association
George Clooney Goes on a Date For Sudan
George Clooney is going on a date that someone paid over one million dollars for. Think that someone is getting one million dollars worth of wine and steak? Think again.
The money paid for the date with the eternal Hollywood Bachelor is going to Sudan, and no, that is not where the date is taking place. The date was part of a raffle auction that was launched on the internet, and the winner is a single-mom with an 8 year old daughter.
The winner gets to attend the premiere of The Monuments Men movie with George Clooney on the red carpet in New York City, and the one-plus million dollars spent on raffle tickets for the date goes to the Satellite Sentinel Project.
The Satellite Sentinel Project is a reconnaissance operation that observes Sudan from a satellite and reveals crimes against humanity and other violent actions like the decades-old genocide in Darfur.
Clooney has been recorded saying the cost of the Satellite Project is around three million dollars, just to operate the image monitoring. Clooney has given his payments for international advertisements to help fund the Satellite monitoring process. The satellite captures images of Sudan from three hundred miles above the earth and watches war criminals and leaders of genocide in their home territory and beyond.
The star works closely with John Prendergast, co-founder of the Enough Project.
The Enough Project, like the Sentinel Satellite Project, is a movement to stop violence and acts of terror and or genocide in Sudan. Prendergast has worked under the Clinton Administration, two different members of Congress, UNICEF, the U.S. Institute of Peace and more according to the Enough Project’s records.
He seems more than qualified to take part in the Sentinel Satellite Project. Preventing innocent citizens from horrible acts of mass terror and killing is something Prendergast has been working on for years.
Clooney became friends with Prendergast when he began working on the board of Not On Our Watch, an organization started by Clooney, Matt Damon and Brad Pitt. The two thought up the Satellite project as a way to turn the tables on warlords in Sudan. Clooney would become the paparazzi to the leaders of oppression, spreading their business all over the internet. Holding these types of corrupt leaders responsible in the public eye is the first step to getting the rest of the world involved.
With high-profile celebrities like George Clooney calling out criminals for their actions, it will be even more difficult for evil-doers to hide from foreign interference and consequences.
– Kaitlin Sutherby
Sources: SF Gate, Satellite Sentinel Project, The Enough Project
Photo: Design Trend
LGBT Rights in India
As awareness of homosexuality and Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, and Transgender (LGBT) rights circle around nation-states, some nations are less willing to accept the concept. In India, for example, there have been conflicts concerning the nation’s ban against homosexual marriages and connections. This is a serious issue as the banning of LGBT rights in India has violated a universal human right. According to the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, every individual has the right to their own marriage and family, freedom of expression and freedom of thought.
Homosexuality is a matter of concern for the country of India; to combat it, the government has put LGBT laws into place that ban the presence of homosexuality. These laws have caused citizens in India to seek freedom from political constraints by revolting against the government. The government has responded to this heightened homosexual presence by increasing regulations.
In 2009, the New Delhi high court established Section 377 of the Indian Penal Code, which punishes “carnal intercourse against the order of nature” with a penalty of life in prison. The Indian Penal Code is a moral code of conduct that all citizens of India must live by. The establishment of Section 377 led to serious discrimination against people engaging in homosexual acts, who were subjected to frequent beatings and blackmail by the police. NGOs working with sexual minorities have also been harassed and sometimes charged under Section 377.
By denouncing homosexuality and threatening to imprison gay men, Section 377 has likely impeded the battle against HIV. Graeme Reid, director of the LGBT rights program at the Human Rights Watch, argued, “The Supreme Court’s ruling is a deeply disappointing setback for basic rights to privacy, equality, and non-discrimination.”
New laws have led to increased violence and beatings of people in the LGBT community. People who oppose Section 377 of the Indian Penal Code are arrested and sentenced from 10 years to life in prison. Those who support LGBT rights, but are not gay, bisexual or transgender themselves, get beaten by Indian government officials. How would the United States react if American citizens were beaten for supporting LGBT rights?
Many human rights activists have revolted against the Indian Supreme Court, demanding that the Indian government review the Indian Penal Code and rewrite Section 377 to satisfy the people of India. By comparing LGBT rights in India with LGBT rights in America, it becomes clear the extent to which social justice is still evolving all over the world. Citizens that want to help the international LGBT community can take steps to advocate for human rights by volunteering with an NGO in their community.
– Kenneth Kleisner
Sources: Science Direct, Human Rights Watch
Photo: NPR
Temporary Ceasefire in Besieged Syrian City of Homs
A temporary pause in the fighting between the Syrian government and rebels allowed emergency personnel to evacuate 83 civilians from the embattled city of Homs on February 7, according to the United Nations.
The evacuation of the civilians comes a day after the U.N. brokered a three day ceasefire, under which women, children, the elderly and injured people will be allowed to leave Homs. That day, buses were allowed to enter Homs’ Old City, where as many as 2,500 people are believed to be trapped. The trapped residents have been unable to leave because they are caught in the fighting between the government and the insurgents battling Syrian President Bashar al-Assad’s regime.
The departing residents will be greeted at a U.N. welcome center and will then give the authorities the names of people who want to stay behind. The provision of the names of citizens who do not want to leave was a key demand of Syria’s government, which wants to learn the identities of the men who reside there, the Washington Post reported.
In addition to the evacuation of these noncombatants, aid will be allowed to enter Homs’ Old City, parts of which have besieged by government forces since June 2012. Under the temporary ceasefire between the government and the rebels, medical aid and food should reach Homs on Saturday.
The three-day ceasefire covering Homs, which was one of the first cities to take up arms against Assad’s regime, comes nearly two weeks after United States and Russian-sponsored peace talks on ending Syria’s civil war opened in Switzerland. The talks, which began in the Swiss city of Montreux on January 22 before moving to Geneva on January 24, paused last Friday. The negotiations between Syria’s government and a western-backed opposition alliance known as National Coalition of Syrian Revolutionary and Opposition Forces are set to resume Monday in Geneva.
Assad’s government and the opposition had been expected to reach agreement early in the talks on localized ceasefires and on allowing humanitarian aid to be delivered to besieged areas, but the two sides were unable to even reach a deal on these issues.
The official agenda for the negotiations, known officially as Geneva II, is to reach agreement on the composition of a temporary government with full executive powers that would oversee Syria’s transition to democracy. Syria’s government rejects the idea that goal of the talks is the establishment of a government that doesn’t include Assad, whose family has ruled Syria since 1971, while the opposition has insisted that any transitional government exclude the Syrian president and leading members of his regime.
Syria’s nearly three-year long civil war, which pits rebels largely drawn from Syria’s Sunni majority against a government controlled by the country’s minority Alawite sect and supported by Shia Iran, has stoked Sunni-Shia tensions across the Middle East, particularly in the sectarian tinder boxes of Iraq and Lebanon.
Shia Iran and its Lebanese proxy force Hezbollah have backed Assad, a longtime ally of both Tehran and Hezbollah, while Sunni gulf states and Turkey have supported the Sunni insurgents, buttressing the rebels through the provision of light weapons and cash. Both sides seem to view the Syrian conflict as a proxy war between the Sunni and Shia branches of Islam.
– Eric Erdahl
Sources: BBC, BBC, Washington Post, New York Times
Sources: Elephant Journal
Deaton’s “Great Escape” Maps Origins of Inequality
“Life is better now than at almost any time in history. More people are richer and fewer people live in dire poverty. Lives are longer and parents no longer routinely watch a quarter of their children die.”
So reads the first paragraph in “The Great Escape: Health, Wealth and the Origins of Inequity” by Angus Deaton, the Dwight D. Eisenhower Professor of Economics and International Affairs at Princeton University. Deaton’s “Great Escape” focuses on how sustained progress in the world opened up gaps, setting the stage for today’s inequality among people and nations.
Deaton accounts for both innovations and disasters in his book, examining the successes of antibiotics, pest control, vaccinations and clean water on one hand, and the disastrous famines and the HIV/AIDS epidemic on the other hand.
According to the World Bank, the number of people living in poverty fell by about 750 million between 1981 and 2008. But while many people make the “great escape” from poverty, others are left behind. Countries like China and India have proved to be success stories in the fight to end global poverty. On the other hand, countries in Sub-Saharan Africa have fallen behind.
Deaton notes that inequality is not always a bad thing, as long as it is not too acute. Inequality can inspire progress, such as when children realize the benefits of education and fight to attend school. It can also promote healthy competition.
Inequalities exist on a global scale and within countries. The wealth gap within countries can be seen in China, India and Brazil, where the rich are getting richer and the countrymen are falling behind.
– Haley Sklut
Sources: The New Yorker, Princeton University Press
Photo: Instablog