Tous les articles et traductions

The Special Rapporteur on the right to food, Jean Ziegler, submitted to the Human Rights Council a report on his mission to Lebanon, which took place from 11 to 16 September 2006. The mission was undertaken at the invitation of the Government of Lebanon.
Read the (...)

Massive infrastructure damage and great social dislocation have been common consequences of natural disasters and social disasters like wars. Up until a few years ago, the aims of relief and reconstruction efforts were fairly simple: immediate physical relief of victims, reduction of social (...)

“Humanitarian intervention,” defined simply, is military action taken to prevent or terminate violations of human rights that is directed at and is carried without the consent of a sovereign government. While the main rationale for the invasion of Iraq by the United States was its alleged possession of weapons of mass destruction, an important supporting rationale was regime change for humanitarian reasons. When it became clear that there were in fact no WMD, the Bush administration retroactively justified its intervention on humanitarian grounds: getting rid of a repressive dictatorship and imposing democratic rule. The show trial of Saddam for human rights violations now taking place in Baghdad is part of this retroactive effort to legitimize the invasion.

Backyard or free-range poultry are not fuelling the current wave of bird flu outbreaks stalking large parts of the world. The deadly H5N1 strain of bird flu is essentially a problem of industrial poultry practices. Its epicentre is the factory farms of China and Southeast Asia and — while wild birds can carry the disease, at least for short distances — its main vector is the highly self-regulated transnational poultry industry, which sends the products and waste of its farms around the world through a multitude of channels. Yet small poultry farmers and the poultry biodiversity and local food security that they sustain are suffering badly from the fall-out. To make matters worse, governments and international agencies, following mistaken assumptions about how the disease spreads and amplifies, are pursuing measures to force poultry indoors and further industrialise the poultry sector. In practice, this means the end of the small-scale poultry farming that provides food and livelihoods to hundreds of millions of families across the world. This paper presents a fresh perspective on the bird flu story that challenges current assumptions and puts the focus back where it should be: on the transnational poultry industry.

"What was at stake in Hong Kong was the institutional survival of the World Trade Organization. After the collapse of two ministerials in Seattle and Cancun, a third unraveling would have seriously eroded the usefulness of the WTO as the key engine of global trade liberalization. A deal was needed, and that deal was arrived at. How, why, and by whom that deal was delivered was the real story of Hong Kong."

This report compares the ETC’s findings from 2003 to the current situation to reveal the dramatic increase in corporate concentration in 2005. Furthermore, it demonstrates how what looks like buying and selling between countries is very often the redistribution of
capital among subsidiaries of the same parent multinational corporation.

An introduction guide to some of the major issues which will be battled out during the WTO meetings in Hong Kong this December. As well as suggesting ways disrupting the meetings and explaining why it feels this action is necessary, the guide also presents an idea of what the alternatives to the current make-up might be.

This briefing examine how the US government uses USAID to actively promote GM agriculture, as part of a multi-pronged strategy to advance US interests with GM crops. This is effected by the use of bilateral and multilateral free trade agreements, high-level diplomatic pressure, and of course lobbying and funding by biotech networks.

Despite the introduction of the Cartagena Protocol in 2000, countries are increasingly facilitating the entry of GM crops. According the international NGO GRAIN and many other civil society groups, GM crops are completely incompatible with the principles of food sovereignty. This text argues (...)

In the beginning of the 1990s, Samuel Huntigton argued that the "third wave of democratization" would free the world from dictators, and spread the model of Anglo-American democracy worldwide. However, history took another path. Analyzing the recent democratic trends in countries like the Philippines, Brazil and Argentina, this article warns that "capitalism and democratic deepening are no longer compatible."

Résumé en français : Dans cette déclaration à l’occasion de la Conférence mondiale des télécommunications internationales qui s’est tenue à Dubaï du 3 au 14 décembre 2012, l’AMARC rappelle que "la radio doit d’être d’accès universel, gratuit et anonyme, et que l’accès au spectre pour les radios communautaires (...)

Next year, in June, world leaders will get together in the joyful city of Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, to mark 20 years of UNCED—the Earth Summit (see Down to Earth, May 15, 1992).
Unbelievably, it will be 40 years since the Stockholm conference, when the question of the environment first caught (...)

A ‘normal’ working week of 21 hours could help to address a range of urgent, interlinked problems: overwork, unemployment, over-consumption, high carbon emissions, low well-being, entrenched inequalities, and the lack of time to live sustainably, to care for each other, and simply to enjoy life. (...)

This isn’t a math quiz. To put the question in non-numerical terms: where are women in the global economic crisis?
The movement of the 99 percent that began in the United States made visible the human beings who suffer the brutal inequality and injustice of an economic system that, in crisis, (...)

The established democracies are accepting flawed and unfair elections for political expediency, Human Rights Watch said today in releasing its World Report 2008. By allowing autocrats to pose as democrats, without demanding they uphold the civil and political rights that make democracy (...)

Southeast Asia Civil Society Statement on Internet Governance
Firstly, we applaud and welcome the report by UN special rapporteur on freedom of expression, Mr Frank La Rue, at the 17th session of the UN Human Rights Council, which affirmed human right in the internet. Nothing the important (...)

Article archivé.
What is the name of a soccer-loving Swiss nonprofit that demands tax exemptions and concessions on workers’ rights wherever it goes?
The answer, as Brazil is discovering as it prepares to host the 2014 World Cup, is the Fédération Internationale de Football Association (FIFA) – (...)