AlertNet Blogs

Bangladesh: Spreading the Warmth

Mon, 30 Nov 2009 17:19:22 +0000

Bangladeshi blogger Sadiq Alam, who blogs at Inspirations and Creative Thoughts, has taken an initiative called Spreading the Warmth. The goal is to distribute winter clothes for those who live on the street in Dhaka, especially the children and the elderly.

West Bank Bedouins say they are facing drought and discrimination

Mon, 30 Nov 2009 15:46:00 +0000

Rows of houses stand sentry on the parched, barren hill. A water tower rises from their midst, irrigating lush greenery. But beyond this West Bank settlement's perimeter fence is a tiny Bedouin campsite where people are desperate for water.

Here at Umm Al Kher in the South Hebron Hills, there has been no rainfall for many months. Grey rock and dry, rugged earth spread off in every direction and the shepherds struggle to find pasture for their flocks. But the recent drought is exacerbating a man-made water crisis.

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Poppies and poverty in Afghanistan

Mon, 30 Nov 2009 13:53:00 +0000

Written by Martin Jelsma and Tom Kramer

Nangarhar province in eastern Afghanistan is traditionally one of the main opium producing regions. But since governor Gul Agha Sherzai was appointed, poppy cultivation has reduced significantly. We recently visited the province to find out how this has happened and how the population feels about it.

We drive from Kabul to Jalalabad, the capital of Nangarhar. The winding road takes us down a beautiful gorge. Nangarhar province partly consists of a fertile valley well-suited for agricultural production. The valley is surrounded by mountains, with the Spingar belt in the south which includes the Tora Bora cave complex, notorious for being a Taliban stronghold and suspected location of Osama bin Laden in the first days of the U.S. invasion. Those areas are very poor, due to lack of arable land and water. Farmers here struggle to eke out a living. Opium has been their main cash crop for buying food, clothes, and pay for access to education and health.

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Displaced villagers living with climate change

Mon, 30 Nov 2009 12:56:00 +0000

Bangladesh's Kalinagar village, crammed on an elevated dyke, is a landscape flooded with straw and clay huts covered in blue tarpaulin. Over 14,000 people displaced by a combination of Cyclone Aila and rising water levels struggle to survive there.

I had come to listen to their stories. And as the crowds gathered it seemed that everyone from a 14-year-old child to an elderly woman knew exactly how to discuss climate change without using acronyms - something well-educated people in the West struggle to do.

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I Will Not Give Up

Fri, 27 Nov 2009 16:54:00 +0000

By Bao Xiuhong

I met Xiaojing, a 27-year-old T'ai ethnic minority woman, in October 2009. Xiaojing, who did not wish for me to publish her real name, talked about her life over the past few years. Xiaojing used to see herself as an ordinary woman, an ordinary farmer, living in a village in Yunnan province. ...

No homes in sight for 900,000 Myanmar cyclone survivors

Wed, 25 Nov 2009 17:02:00 +0000

BANGKOK - For about 100,000 people in Myanmar who have been living in makeshift shelters since Cyclone Nargis hit 18 months ago, Wednesday's news of fresh donor money spells light at the end of the tunnel.

But for the remaining 900,000 people whose homes were destroyed or damaged, the prospects are dim.

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China: Children who are left behind

Wed, 25 Nov 2009 02:38:35 +0000

On November 12, several days before the International Childrens Day, an explosion erupted in an illegal fire cracker factory in Guangxi which resulted in 2 children workers dead and 11 others injured.

According to the Southern Weekends report, these children victims were left behind by their parents, who are migrant workers and have to work in cities all year long to earn money and support their families. They lived with their aging grandparents and struggled to work before and after school time to earn some pocket money for snacks.

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Trials not yet a deterrent to rapes in Congo

Tue, 24 Nov 2009 17:39:00 +0000

NAIROBI (AlertNet) - In the year since the start of the first trial at the international war crimes court involving an alleged Congolese warlord, rape on a mass scale has continued unabated in the Democratic Republic of Congo.

Thomas Lubanga, accused of training child soldiers to kill and rape, went on trial at the International Criminal Court in January and two more of his compatriots went on trial at the court on Tuesday, charged with crimes against humanity including rape and sexual slavery.

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Climate change and conflict: respecting complexity

Tue, 24 Nov 2009 11:29:00 +0000

The climate deal won't happen at Copenhagen in December. The work will continue. And as more people become aware of and motivated by the links between climate change on the one hand and conflict, peace and security on the other, both the possibility and the necessity of clarity about those links increase.

It is an area of discussion where making an extra effort of care and precision is justified.

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Afghanistan: Counting the cost of war

Mon, 23 Nov 2009 17:28:42 +0000

Nick Fielding reviews The Cost of War: Afghan Experiences of Conflict 1978-2009, a report by nine NGOs working in Afghanistan analyzing 30 years of war and a devastating impact they had.