Bernarda Claure

LA PAZ, Jun 8 2007 (IPS) – Bolivia s constituent assembly has just two months left to finishing rewriting the country s constitution. In 10 months of sessions, it has approved a single article, regarding the right to hold football matches at high altitudes, in response to the International Football Federation s (FIFA) ban on high-altitude international matches.
Among the thorny issues being debated by the 255 assembly members, 134 of whom belong to the leftwing governing Movement Towards Socialism (MAS), is the question of the right to life, linked to the subject of the legalisation of abortion.

A proposal set forth by the assembly s Committee on Rights, Duties and Guarantees to enshrine the right to life from conception in the new constitution has tri…

Patricia Grogg

SANTIAGO DE CUBA, Aug 5 2009 (IPS) – Arnoldo Ramón Virgilio s legs are of little use to him, but he has a way with words that more than makes up for any physical limitations. He s one of the outpatients at the América Labadí Arce Medical and Education Centre, which provides health care and rehabilitation for the disabled in this city in eastern Cuba.
I m president of the patients committee. I like poetry and making myself useful, Virgilio told IPS as he prepared the envelopes that will be used to pay the staff their wages at the end of the month.

And exactly what does the president of the patients committee do? Every once in a while, we meet with the Board to present our problems and needs, he explained. Right now our biggest problem is transportati…

Matthew Berger

WASHINGTON, Oct 28 2009 (IPS) – The story began almost 40 years ago, but when filmmaker Joe Berlinger saw villagers eating canned tuna fish because the fish in their rivers were too contaminated to eat, [he] knew [he] had to do something .

Cancer victim Maria Garofalo reflected in the stream behind her home in the Ecuadorean Amazon. From the film Crude . Credit: Juan Diego …

Daniela Pastrana

MEXICO CITY, Jun 17 2010 (IPS) – By 5:00 AM, dozens of women are already lined up outside of this clinic in the Mexican capital. Most come with their mothers, sisters, husbands, friends or boyfriends. A few show up alone.

Oriana López at the offices of the Fondo de Aborto para la Justicia Social MARÍA. Credit: Daniela Pastrana/IPS

Sitting on the sidewalk, the women and the people accompanying them try to catch a few winks, i…

Danilo Valladares

GUATEMALA CITY, Dec 13 2011 (IPS) – At the clinic we were attended to by a woman who criticised us and only talked to us about religious questions, says Carlos Valdez of Proyecto Unidos, an NGO in Guatemala that fights for access to HIV/AIDS prevention services by homosexuals and sex workers.
Lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender people face discrimination in health centres due to homophobia and transphobia, and do not receive treatment tailored to our needs. That s why we still represent the largest number of cases of HIV, Valdez told IPS.

Among men who have sex with men in the country, 7.6 percent were HIV-positive in 2010, according to the study Intensificación de las acciones de prevención y atención integral en VIH y sida en grupos vulnerab…

The writer is UN Secretary-General’s Special Envoy for the 2021 UN Food Systems Summit

NEW YORK, Sep 23 2021 (IPS) – With the world still counting the social and economic costs of the Covid-19 pandemic, amid a fresh “” on the climate crisis, food may not seem like the most pressing threat to humanity.

Yet transforming entire food systems around the world offers the solution to the challenge many have not yet realised we are facing.

The existential threats that appear to be looming on the horizon are in fact already silently costing the world in poor health, environmental losses and stifled economic growth, a toll that could reach $16 trillion by 2050.