News headlines in January 2019, page 3

CAPE TOWN, South Africa, Jan 23 (IPS) - Long before Joy Daniels became the manager of a travel company she was cleaning rooms at a guesthouse. But after joining a Fair Trade-certified business, a place that valued its staff, in a few years she was soon promoted to manager. 

Jan 23 (IPS) - On December 6, the Australian parliament rushed to pass a bill that could weaken security on the phones and software people rely on every day, in Australia and worldwide. The sweeping law could force tech companies to take vaguely described actions to access encrypted data.

BARCELONA, Jan 23 (IPS) - José María Faura is the Executive Director of Educo, a global development and humanitarian action NGO with over 25 years' experience working to defend children and their rights, and especially the right to an equitable and quality education.

Children´s education is in a state of emergency when it comes to protracted crises. 75 million school-aged children and young people are in desperate need of educational support, are either in danger of or are already missing out on their education in countries facing war and violence (1*).

RÍO DE JANEIRO, Jan 22 (IPS) - "We can't work just to pay the electric bill," complained José Hilario dos Santos, president of the Residents Association of Morro de Santa Marta, a favela or shantytown embedded in Botafogo, a traditional middle-class neighborhood in Rio de Janeiro.

SYDNEY & KUALA LUMPUR, Jan 22 (IPS) - Despite all the evidence to the contraryand substantial opposition from community groups, public-private partnerships (PPPs) are still being promoted to deliver sustainable development.

Public-private hospital partnerships are supposed to ensure that the private sector will offer much needed efficiency in healthcare provision.

NORWICH, UK, Jan 22 (IPS) - Dr Martin Scott* is a Senior Lecturer in Media and International Development at the University of East Anglia, UK.

According to a recent poll of aid agencies by the Thomson Reuters Foundation, the most under-reported crisis of 2018 was the conflict in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC).

BRATISLAVA, Jan 22 (IPS) - "I've never known a time when it was as bad as it is now," says Beata Balogova, the Vice-Chair of the International Press Institute (IPI) and Editor in Chief of the Slovak Spectator Sme. "In terms of what's going on with journalists, we're in a very unique period," she adds.

UNITED NATIONS, Jan 22 (IPS) - One month on since the Global Compact for Migration was approved, civil society has highlighted the need to turn words into action, supporting those who have been displaced or forced to migrate as a result of environmental degradation.

BANGKOK, Thailand, Jan 21 (IPS) - Andrzej Bolesta is Economic Affairs Officer, Macroeconomic Policy and Financing for Development Division at the UN Economic and Social Commission for Asia and the Pacific (ESCAP)Structural economic transformation and the expansion of international trade are among the most pressing issues to be addressed, if Asia's landlocked developing countries (LLDCs) are to overcome the development challenges related to their geographical locations.

STOCKHOLM / ROME, Jan 21 (IPS) - A man walks down the street.
It's a street in a strange world.
Maybe it's the Third World.
Maybe it's his first time around.
He doesn't speak the language.
He holds no currency.
He is a foreign man.
He is surrounded by the sound.
The sound!
Cattle in the marketplace,
scatterlings and orphanages.
He looks around, around.

I thought about this song by Paul Simon while I in 2011 spent a few weeks in Kinshasa. I was a foreign man in a strange world, surrounded by sights and sounds, completely dependent on my new-found Congolese friends. When our taxi got stuck in a traffic jam and we had to walk to our destination I was stopped by a group of heavily armed youngsters, lead by a man who claimed to be a policeman, charging me with an exaggerated high fine for taking photos within a restricted area.