What's New, February 1999

Date of Update

Description

February 27, 1999

1. Amnesty International have a great new site on Child Rights. Lots of powerful imagery and information that has to be checked out! Go There!
2. Two new resources for more information on the rights for women and other gender issues have been added... One is from ID21 which has links to a lot of research papers and the other is Womankind, a development agency... Go There!
3. Want to see a map of the world where the US has sold arms? A new source of information on Arms Trade has been added that shows how US arms sales have occurred in places where known human rights violations occur, where there is a conflict or an insurgency... Go There!
4. Is NATO action in Kosovo legal? This question is largely ignored in mainstream media. NATO should get authorisation from the UN Security Council before using force. Forget force, their peace pressure tactics have also come under scrutiny by some... Go There!
5. Iraq is still being bombed almost everyday... A couple of good sources of information on the crisis has been added... Go There!
6. Demobilisation of Child Soldiers and reintegration into society is often difficult and overlooked. Go There!
7. Child Labour needs to be erradicated gradually, rather than quickly as many families rely on the income their children bring in. A link to more information is also provided by Boes.org... Go There!
8. When regulations are applied corporations just move to places where there will be less pressure from the government or unions etc to provide fair working conditions... Go There!
9. What does it mean to be poor, developed or developing? Social expenditure, like health and education, are vital to a strong economy and healthy society, yet these very things are being cut back in the name of economic reforms which can reduce living standards and increase poverty if the people cannot afford alternatives... Go There!
10. A new section about the Biosafety Protocol that just ended in Colombia has been added. It was to tackle the safety issues of living modified organisms. However, just six countries, headed by USA who is not even a signatory to the underlying Biodiversity Convention, was able to undermine it in the interests of free trade... Go There!
11. Many conflicts today and in the future are over resource scarcity. People are fighting for basic needs... Go There!
12. Water, People, Land & Conflict is a good source of information, from the Center for Defence Information, about population strains and conflicts, etc with maps and transcripts about hot spot regions... Go There!
13. Tiger numbers have declined by a huge 95 percent in the last century. Some fear that they could be extinct by the year 2010... Go There!
14. A link to a general source for more information has been added. Activist Net is a huge web site with hundreds of links to web sites about many of these global issues and more... Worth checking out... Go There!

February 21, 1999

1. Turkey, a NATO ally, can get away with human rights violations. The recent eruptions in Europe regarding the arrest of a Kurdish guerilla leader has highlighted some of the problems the Kurds have faced there... Go There!
2. India and Pakistan meet to discuss important issues... India is also considering buying more military equipment, some of which will no doubt be used in and around Kashmir and the Pakistani border... Go There!
3. An additional source of information on Child Combatants has been added. This one is from the Center for Defence Information... Go There!
4. The Banana Wars in the Caribbean give us an indication of how free trade will affect many developing nations... Go There!
5. An additional source of information on poverty and debt has been added. This one is a link to the Jubilee 2000 campaign... Go There!
6. Monsanto has a lot of influence in Washington D.C and people in USA are less aware of some of the issues surrounding GE Food compared to other regions, like Europe... Go There!
7. The issue of genetically engineered food has seen another round of intense debate in Europe... Go There!
8. An additional source of information about GE Food has been added. This one is a link to a Guardian Newspaper section on this issue... Go There!
9. Food production can be important to preserving peace, according to a recent study... Go There!
10. A great quote from Bertrand Russel has been added. This one is about how people react to a piece of information. (Note that new quotes appear at the end of the list.) Go There!

February 13, 1999

1. The military budget of USA ($270 Billion, approximately) is larger than that of the remaining G7 countries combined. Over the next 6 years, the Clinton Administration has proposed to increase it by a huge $112 Billion... Go There!
2. Long after an internal conflict has ended, Small Arms contribute to a devastating role that hampers attempts to recover... South Africa has taken a positive step by attempting to tackle the problem which it has also contributed to itself... Go There!
3. What should be the future of NATO? Given that the Cold War is over, then the role of NATO is perhaps over too... Another issue is the authorisation to use military force and whether this decision should legally rely within the UN Security Council... Go There!
4. Transnational Corporations (TNCs) exert enormous influence in the World Trade Organisation (WTO)... Go There!
5. Multilateral Agreement on Investment -- some additional sources of information on this controversial trade proposal has been added... Go There!
6. The same causes of Global Warming also affects water. Most people, in fact, do not have access to fresh water. It is a political problem, and given the continual population increase, also a major social issue too... Go There!
7. Environmental damage from industrial waste can be extensive. The gold industry, for example, has created many environmental and social problems... Go There!

February 7, 1999

1. Human rights violations in East Timor continue... Since the invasion by Indonesia in 1975, people have estimated a conservative figure of 200,000 deaths in many massacres. It has taken a while for real reports to get out of East Timor, but slowly people are becoming more aware... Go There!
2. Tunisia's web site on human rights achievements was strongly criticised by Amnesty International, who therefore created a counter-argument web site! (The URL of the Tunisian site looks like it is a site that Amnesty International would have created.) Go There!
3. The Augusto Pinochet predicament shows some of the problems that something like the International Criminal Court would have to face... Go There!
4. Corporations and human rights violation stories are slowly becoming more and more frequent. A link has been added from Corporate Watch who provide an excellent feature on the links between the two. It has a great editorial page on the front of the section, too... Go There!
5. The Terminator technology will prevent farmers from saving their seeds for the following year's harvest, a traditional practice of over 12,000 years... Go There!
6. While the origins for AIDS may have been found, a cure may be harder to find. Extensive logging of the forests where the immune Chimpanzees (believed to be the cause) live, is leading to a slaughter of these animals and a destruction of their habitat, preventing further study... Go There!
7. A great quote about Freedom has been added. (New ones appear at the bottom of the list of quotes) Go There!

Check Out What Was New In:

• January 1999
• December 1998
• November 1998
• October 1998
• September 1998
• August 1998
• July 1998