Moyiga Nduru

JOHANNESBURG, Jan 27 2007 (IPS) – This year s rainy season has brought some mixed blessings to farmers and aid agencies operating in Southern Africa, which experienced a spell of drought and famine last year.
In most of the 14-member Southern African Development Community (SADC), the rainfall on which most farmers rely unable to afford irrigation starts in November and ends in March.

We had a poor start to the season. But since late December we have experienced some good rainfall. This doesn t mean that all is well. The southern and eastern parts of the country are not having good rainfall, Ajah Vashee, president of the Trustee of Zambia National Farmers Union, told IPS from the central town of Ndola by phone.

Some farmers, because rains started…

But Cristina de la Sotta, executive director of the Fundación Chile Unido (United Chile Foundation), an independent private organisation that supports women with unwanted pregnancies or who have had an abortion and regret it, told another story.

The women who come to the Foundation for help were unable to get over the impact of having an abortion, de la Sotta told IPS.

They tell us the abortion was a solution, but a bad one, she said. With the Foundation s support, many pregnant women decide not to terminate their pregnancies, because they discover that the feelings behind maternity and motherhood run deep, she added.

Nevertheless, she believes abortion should not be a crime for the woman involved, because she is a victim of circumstance, rather than a perpetr…

Dahr Jamail

NEW ORLEANS, Louisiana, Apr 15 2011 (IPS) – As the one-year anniversary of the record-breaking BP oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico approaches, mental health experts and social scientists warn of decades of impact on Gulf residents.

A fisherman and other Gulf Coast residents at a community meeting in New Orleans. Credit: Erika Blumenfeld/IPS

On Apr. 20, 2010, the oil rig exploded, triggering a months-long disaster that would end only after…