Nergui Manalsuren interviews Catarina de Albuquerque, the U.N. Independent Expert on human rights, water and sanitation

UNITED NATIONS, Aug 28 2009 (IPS) – Some 1.6 million people die each year due to water and sanitation related diseases, millions of girls do not go to school because of lack of toilets, and prison detainees are denied access to adequate sanitation in some countries as a form of punishment, clear violations of the rights to health, education, and many other human rights.

Catarina de Albuquerque Credit: UN Photo

Yet the crisis is one of the least addressed by the …

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 …

Susan Anyangu

MOMBASA, Oct 21 2009 (IPS) – The United Nation Office on Drug and Crime (UNODC) claims that Kenya has more drug users than any other East African country. UNODC estimates there are 100,000 cocaine users, 200,000 using opiates like heroin and four million who smoke cannabis.
In the coastal city of Mombasa, Kenya s main port, which has the country s highest concentration of substance abusers, Masudi Omar of Reachout Centre Trust, a drug addiction treatment centre, says it s vital that AIDS prevention programmes reach this demographic.

A research done by our partners USAID in 2005 revealed that 50 percent of injecting drug users who were tested for HIV were found to be positive. The challenge here is passing HIV risk reduction messages to drug and alcohol …

Joel Chong

BANGKOK, Jan 25 2010 (IPS) – A staff member would use the cable to beat people. On each whip, the person s skin would come off and stick on the cable, said M noh*, 16, of his detention in Choam Chao Youth Rehabilitation Centre, a government-run facility for drug dependents in the Cambodian capital, Phnom Penh.
If anyone tried to escape, he would be punished some people managed to escape, some didn t. Most who were punished for escaping would be beaten unconscious. Beatings like this happened everyday, he added.

M noh is just one of the 53 Cambodians interviewed by the New York-based Human Rights Watch (HRW) for its 93-page report Skin on the Cable , launched Monday in this Thai capital.

Between February and July 2009, the HRW documented extensive p…

KARACHI, Pakistan, Mar 2 2010 (IPS) – The first time he and his wife had an ‘accident’, 40-year-old Kamran Rehman worried that they may have inadvertently paved the way for child number three. A chemist he consulted, however, recommended that his wife try the emergency contraceptive pill (ECP).
She did. Today, Rehman and his wife Aasia still have two daughters. Says Aasia Rehman: It was a big relief for both of us as we don’t plan to have another child.

It’s good to have a back-up in case of a mistake or an accident, she adds, confessing she has taken the drug when we were short of condoms at home and still had sex .

The ECP is essentially a high dose of female hormones – estrogen and progestin – that are normally in the daily-use oral contraceptive pi…

Milagros Salazar

LIMA, Apr 5 2010 (IPS) – A 200-km oil pipeline that Franco-British oil group Perenco aims to build in the heart of Peru s Amazon jungle region is at the centre of a controversy because of the reported existence of uncontacted native groups in the area.
In early 2008, Perenco acquired the exploration and production rights to Lot 67, which has total reserves of over 300 million barrels.

The firm plans to build a 200-km pipeline, which would connect to an existing one, in order to pipe the oil to Peru s Pacific coast.

A Perenco spokesman told IPS that the company plans to invest 1.5 billion dollars in the project and that oil would begin to be pumped in January 2011.

The oilfield is in Loreto, Peru s northernmost, and largest, region. A r…

Kristin Palitza

CAPE TOWN, May 5 2010 (IPS) – I sometimes drink alcohol because it makes things funny, 15-year-old Senelo* giggles shyly. I go to unlicensed taverns. They sell alcohol without asking questions.

Many South African teenagers are exposed to behaviour detrimental to their health. Credit: Kristin Palitza/IPS

The petite, pretty teenager from Mfuleni township 35 kilometres outside of Cape Town is far from being an exception. Thirty-five per…

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…

Marwaan Macan-Markar

Bangkok, Jul 15 2010 (IPS) – In a western corner of Cambodia known for battles waged by the genocidal Khmer Rouge decades ago, a new war is being fought. Its target, this time, is the lethal malaria parasite that is resistant to the most effective drugs available today.
In the frontline are teams of village volunteers who fan out across the mountainous province of Pailin, close to the Thai-Cambodian border, to supply free early diagnosis and treatment services to vulnerable communities in this malaria-infested region.

The village malaria workers in Pailin are part of 3,000 volunteers in the country who have been trained to help with early detection of malaria in the local communities, said Nguon Sokomar of the Phnom Penh-based National Centre for…