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Migrant construction workers building the “new Beijing” are routinely exploited by being denied proper wages, under dangerous conditions with neither accident insurance nor access to medical and other social services, Human Rights Watch said in a new report.
The 61-page report, “One Year of My (...)

Climate change is the biggest environmental threat faced by South Asia and may well be the biggest humanitarian and economic challenge that the developing world will have to face in the coming decades. While the world has woken up to the threat of climate change, the true enormity of what this (...)

Kjell Havnevik, Deborah Fahy Bryceson, Atakilte Beyene and Prosper Matondi look at the destructive role the world bank has played in African agriculture and food production
Agriculture’s dominant role in Sub-Saharan Africa’s local, national and regional economies and cultures throughout (...)

We, civil society activists engaged in a wide range of peoples’ movements and organisations in Africa and Europe met in Lisbon from 7-9 December 2007 to express our opposition and resistance to the neoliberal free trade and investment policies that European and African governments are (...)

The proliferation of bilateral agreements is a new and fascinating trend in the world trading system. The number of bilateral agreements has been steadily increasing since the creation of the World Trade Organization (WTO) in 1995 and the slow progress of the current Doha Round seems to have (...)

The US intelligence report saying that Iran had halted a nuclear weapons programme in 2003 is an important document. It does not prohibit the US military attack on Iran, but it may serve to deny the Bush administration enough public support in the US, or the diplomatic support from any other (...)

This position paper has been prepared by the International CSO Steering Group (ISG) coordinating the “CSO Parallel Process to the Ghana High Level Forum Network”. The ISG coordinating CSO Parallel Process to the Ghana High Level Forum network brings together various local, national, regional and (...)

Since January 2002, US Special Operations Forces (SOFs) have been stationed in the southern Philippines and have not left since then. Their deployment has significant implications for issues of peace and security in the southern Philippines, on democracy in the country and its sovereignty, on (...)

A new stage in the evolution of the global justice movement was reached with the inauguration of the World Social Forum (WSF) in Porto Alegre, Brazil, in January 2001.
The WSF was the brainchild of social movements loosely associated with the Workers’ Party (PT) in Brazil. Strong support for (...)

One of the terrible truths of the 20th century is that it was a blight on small farmers or peasants everywhere. Before looking at the question of whether Asia’s farmers need protection, it is necessary to consider this historical background.
In both wealthy capitalist economies and in socialist (...)

When it first became part of the English vocabulary in the early 1990s, « globalization » was supposed to be the wave of the future. Fifteen years ago, the writings of globalist thinkers such as Kenichi Ohmae and Robert Reich celebrated the advent of the emergence of the so-called « borderless (...)

Since January 2002, US Special Operations Forces (SOFs) have been stationed in the southern Philippines and have not left since then. Their deployment has significant implications for issues of peace and security in the southern Philippines, on democracy in the country and its sovereignty, on (...)

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.

"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.

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 (...)