News headlines in April 2019

NEW YORK, Apr 30 (IPS) - Nisha Varia is the women's rights advocacy director at Human Rights Watch.

I have been working to protect the rights of women workers for 25 years, and whether I speak to domestic workers, election workers, farmers, or activists, their experience of sexual harassment and violence has been a common thread. The other commonality? The almost complete absence of redress in any of those cases, spanning Asia, Africa, the Middle East, and the United States.

COTONOU, Benin, Apr 30 (IPS) - Théophile Houssou, a maize farmer from Cotonou, has spent sleepless nights lying awake worrying about the various disasters that could befall any farmer, often wondering, "What if it rains heavily and all my crops are washed away?" or "What if the armyworms invade my farm and eat up all the crops and I'm left with nothing?"

WASHINGTON DC, Apr 30 (IPS) - Daryl G. Kimball is Executive Director at Arms Control Association.

Smart U.S. leadership is an essential part of the nuclear risk reduction equation. Unfortunately, after more than two years into President Donald Trump's term in office, his administration has failed to present a credible strategy to reduce the risks posed by the still enormous U.S. and Russian nuclear arsenals, which comprise more than 90 percent of the world's nuclear weapons.

STOCKHOLM, Apr 30 (IPS) - Maduro or Guaidó? Neither, according to José Bodas. He is the former General Secretary of the FUTPV, Venezuela's main oil workers trade union, and according to him, neither the president nor the challenger from the opposition has the people's best interests in mind.

COLOMBO, Sri Lanka, Apr 30 (IPS) - Tisaranee Gunasekara is a political commentator based in Colombo*

"Unmindful are the walking dead
The known way is an impasse."
-- Heraclitus (The Fragments)

We have been here before. This blooded precipice is familiar, this looming abyss. What is unfamiliar, what renders the Easter Sunday massacre most vile and truly nightmarish is the total absence of any knowable rationality.

KUALA LUMPUR and SYDNEY, Apr 30 (IPS) - The World Bank has successfully promoted its ‘Maximizing Finance for Development' (MFD) strategy by embracing the United Nations' Sustainable Development Goals, internationally endorsed in September 2015.

It has also secured support from the G20 of twenty biggest economies, and effectively pre-empted alternative approaches at the third UN Financing for Development summit in Addis Ababa in mid-2015.

ROME, Apr 29 (IPS) - Journalists and media outlets worldwide have recently been subject to a subtle wave of vilification. Populist rhetoric and public indifference have begun to threaten the very foundation of our freedom.

NAIROBI, Kenya, Apr 29 (IPS) - Many years of internecine conflict is being replaced by a new narrative of peace along the Kenya-Ethiopia border. Communities that once fought each other are now dreaming of a joint journey towards a better future.

STOCKHOLM / ROME, Apr 29 (IPS) - Just before nine o´clock in the morning of April 21st, Christians in Sri Lanka were in their churches peacefully celebrating Easter Sunday, while tourists were waking up in their hotel rooms. Suddenly explosions blasted three churches and three hotels. Among the ruins lay hundreds of wounded people, as well as 253 corpses of men, women and children. They had been killed and maimed because some fellow human beings believed they acted in God´s name and out of promises of an unproven, heavenly bliss if they killed themselves after obliterating people they did not know; sowing death, lifelong suffering and sorrow.

KINGSTON, Apr 29 (IPS) - Jamaica and other Small Island Developing States (SIDS) are embracing renewable energy as part of their plans to become decarbonised in the coming decades.