Animal Lovers Unite! Adopt-A-Pet is here to save the day!

There are countless dogs and cats that desperately need adoption. www.adoptapet.com is a great resource where you can browse ads for your ideal pet. Most of these animals are in foster homes or temporary care, so the sooner they find a home the better!

 

Spreading the Word: Amnesty International

One of the largest and most powerful activists organizations, Amnesty International, has quite humble beginnings. AI began with the late Peter Benenson, who published an article titled, “The Forgotten Prisoners”, in 1961, as seen in the London Observer. This article would become the jumping off point and birthplace for Amnesty International. As an article which highlighted the unfair arrest of two Portuguese students who had made a toast to freedom in a Lisbon bar, Benenson’s article received a great response from the public. It was then he realized the need for the creation of Amnesty, as a public outcry for human rights.

Amnesty International (AI) focuses on issues that span throughout multiple countries of varying economic and politic status. While the organization is not particular to any religion or political stance, AI brings forth a concern for humanity that all of us should have and consistently be aware of.

They believe in these primary ideas:

Human rights are unalienable and universal.

Human rights are indivisible.

Human rights will not be protected by governments alone.

Defense of human rights requires individuals to act on behalf of others.

Independence and impartiality are necessary in the defense of human rights.

Through dedicated research and action, AI works toward protecting the physical and mental integrity, freedom of conscience and expression, and freedom from discrimination, for international human rights. With over 1.8 million members worldwide, they are continually growing and successfully liberating individuals all around the world.

Their current work includes:

• Abolish the death penalty
• End extrajudicial executions and “disappearances”
• Ensure prison conditions meet international human rights standards
• Ensure prompt and fair trial for all political prisoners
• Fight impunity from systems of justice
• End the recruitment and use of child soldiers
• Free all prisoners of conscience
• Promote economic, social and cultural rights for marginalized communities
• Protect human rights defenders
• Stop torture and ill-treatment
• Stop unlawful killings in armed conflict
• Uphold the rights of refugees, migrants and asylum seekers

Their Mission Statement is as follows, as stated on their web site:

“Amnesty International’s vision is of a world in which every person enjoys all of the human rights enshrined in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and other international human rights standards.”

Amnestyusa.org is their online address (for the U.S.A.), where you can check out their calender of events, learn how to get involved both internationally and locally, plus learn about the current projects and outreach programs they are working on and involved in. They offer varying membership opportunities and accept online donations, which is a great alternative if you are unable to physically volunteer.

Amnesty operates internationally throughout the U.S., Canada, South America, Africa, Australia, Europe, and Asia, among many others.

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Amnesty International USA
5 Penn Plaza
New York, NY 10001
phone: (212) 807-8400
fax: (212) 627-1451

Wake Up Accra! Highlighting Women’s Issues in the Media

“A day’s workshop on Gender Equality for Development and Peace has been held in Accra, Ghana. The workshop was to support the media to prepare action plans to ensure that Gender Equality (GE), Women Equality (WE) and Aid Effectiveness (AE) issues get adequate coverage in the press.

Mrs. Charity Binkah of the Aspect Advisory Group, one of the organizers, said though Ghanaian women form majority of the country’s population, they are put in a subordinate position. But this, she said, has not affected the morale and growth of women. “For instance, with regard to literacy, the 2003 Core Welfare Indicator Questionnaire for Ghana reveals that about 53.4% of the population aged 15 and above can read and write. At a national level, adult male literacy is 65.8% while that of female is 42.3%,” she said.

She said 90% of the country’s food chain, “from planting, to processing to marketing is managed by women whiles the men make the decisions on cultivation and marketing issues.” Mrs. Binkah commended the government for the free antenatal care, but questioned the quality of the service.

“Maternal and infant mortality rates remain high with 1 in every 10 children dying before reaching the age of 5,and 3 in 5 dying before 1 year. 67% of women in Ghana live with HIV/AIDS while 33% of the men have it …This indicates that women are at a higher risk of acquiring it than men,” she said.

The EC/UN partnership aims to identify approaches with which to integrate gender equality and women’s human rights into new aid modalities, in accordance with the Paris Declaration on Aid Effectiveness. It also aims to provide support for national partners’ efforts to fulfill international obligations on gender equality and to match their commitment to gender equality with adequate financial allocations in national development programmes and budgets.

The program will have a specific focus on the role of women in conflict and post-conflict situations, and especially on the proper implementation of UN Security Council Resolution 1325.”

Full Article via Accra Daily Mail http://news.accra-mail.com/

Via Australia: Women Still Face Sex Bias

“Australia’s progress towards becoming a truly equal society has stalled with “systemic” discrimination against women - as well as men who want to play a greater role at home - still rife.

The Federal Sex Discrimination Commissioner, Elizabeth Broderick, will today release the results of nearly a year of consultation on the state of gender relations, including the finding that many young women are still subject to harassment almost a quarter of a century after such behaviour was outlawed.

“Over the last 25 years we have been successful in getting rid of overt sexual discrimination,” Ms Broderick told the Herald. “The formal part has been done. But now we’re having difficulty getting rid of systemic discrimination.”

One of the revelations most shocking to Ms Broderick was the number of young women telling her of their experiences of overt sexual harassment in their first or second jobs.

“Half of the participants at a workshop in Adelaide could describe something that was sexual harassment … with women still being groped or being dragged into an office for a shag,” Ms Broderick said. “A girl on the check-out register in a supermarket was told to wear a see-through shirt.”

Ms Broderick also wants to see a national education campaign to inform employers and employees about inappropriate behaviour. “You still have people [employers] who either don’t understand or don’t care that it’s unlawful,” Ms Broderick said.

During a visit to Sydney Girls’ High School today Ms Broderick will launch the national action plan she hopes will overcome gender inequality once and for all.

It includes:

■ A public education campaign on sexual harassment

■ Boosting women’s retirement savings

■ Encouraging family-friendly work practices

■ A review of sex discrimination laws

■ Promoting women in leadership roles

The Productivity Commission is examining models for a paid parental leave scheme that the Federal Government hopes will go some way towards helping families to better manage their commitments.”

Full Article via The Age Austrailia http://www.theage.com.au/

Global Food Crisis: Honduras Promises To Invest In Its Farmers

 

NPR Morning Edition, August 4, 2008 

Honduras is seldom in the headlines. But inside its borders, you can see almost every aspect of the global food situation. The crisis is bringing farming in this small Central American country back into fashion.

When it comes to growing food, Honduras is a miniature version of the world. There’s even a little bit of Iowa in Honduras’ Comayagua valley. Just like the farmers in Iowa, Rodolfo Rubio is making good profits these days. His corn is tall and green — and genetically engineered. “With biotechnology, we feel like we’re part of first-world agriculture,” Rubio says. “We don’t have to be jealous of the cornfields of Iowa.”

But other cornfields in Honduras could just as easily be in some of the poorest parts of Africa.

On a rocky hillside near Lake Yojoa, Santiago Gonzales grows corn and beans. He says farmers plant by hand because they don’t have the resources to use machinery. And even though he grows food, Gonzales doesn’t grow enough to feed his own family year-round. When he goes to the market these days, rice costs twice what it did a year ago — and beans cost 50 percent more.

“Sometimes we eat and sometimes we don’t,” Gonzales says. “And when we eat, it’s very poorly, because our situation is very difficult here. And I can tell you this: We and our children and our grandchildren will have to eat each other when we’re hungry.”

The story is similar across the globe. Food is expensive and there’s not enough to feed empty stomachs. There have been food riots from Haiti to Egypt.

It has forced Honduran government officials such as Arturo Galo to reconsider a lot of things they thought they knew about food and farming. Galo is in charge of science and technology for the Honduran Ministry of Agriculture.

So the world’s smartest economists told the Honduran government: Growing corn and beans is for losers. Invest your money, they said, in things with a future: textile exports or tourism. And those subsistence farmers will get real jobs in the city. So the government of Honduras neglected its small farmers. The country now imports most of its corn and rice.

Porfilio Lobo, the leader of the opposition National Party, who’s running for president, says those policies now are changing. “It has to change,” Lobo says. “As bad as wars are, it’s even more dangerous not to have enough food.” Galo’s agency, housed within the Ministry of Agriculture, has begun a massive effort to distribute fertilizer and seeds to 250,000 of the country’s smallest farmers — the ones growing corn and beans.

“We believe, in this government, that the first thing we need to do is provide food for our population,” Galo says.

Robert Townsend, a senior economist at the World Bank in Washington, D.C., says governments, international organizations and private foundations around the world are putting money into food production.

“It’s a global response, and from our own part, we’re scaling up our support for agricultural development, particularly in Africa,” Townsend says.

The World Bank is sending out agricultural advisers, building roads into previously isolated areas and providing seeds and fertilizer for reasonable prices.

Full Article via NPR at http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=92872490

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