The Fragile States Index, produced by The Fund for Peace, is a critical tool in highlighting not only the normal pressures that all states experience, but also in identifying when those pressures are pushing a state towards the brink of failure. By highlighting pertinent issues in weak and failing states, …
We are not starting from scratch. Our institutions have been substantially weakened. But they still exist,' says Hedayat Amin-Arsala, minister of finance of Afghanistan Interim Authority. Hidayat's statement has more meaning now when the interim government is struggling hard to convene the Loya Jirga and to chart out his country's …
life ravaged by war and drought has one hope: resilience of a people. "A good monsoon and a bit of peace will bring Afghan's life to normal,' says J Gabriel Campbell of icimod. Take Kohistan district of Kapisa province for example. Just after usa bombarded and damaged water channels in …
Iraq has accused Britain and the us of not only causing cancer but also blocking medical supplies crucial to the treatment of cancer to its people. In a letter to un secretary-general Kofi Annan, Iraqi foreign minister Naji Sabri said depleted uranium ammunition used by the us-led forces during the …
radioactive fallout from Cold War nuclear weapons tests throughout the world caused at least 15,000 cancer deaths in the us, revealed a us government study made public recently. The health and human services department study also indicated that 20,000 non-fatal cancers among us residents born after 1951 could be linked …
World opinion has been like a pendulum where us president George W Bush is concerned. If last week Bush was a rogue because of his extremely crazy nuclear policy, this week he is seen as a good guy after he promised at the just ended Monterrey conference on Financing for …
at least 11,000 us citizens died from cancer after being exposed to radioactive fallout from nuclear testing done during the Cold War. This was revealed in the report of a recent study conducted by the us Department of Health and Human Services (dhhs). The report further mentions that virtually every …
What is the general understanding of the term ‘pesticides’? In the Asian and South Asian countries, people often term pesticides as ‘medicines’. I have heard this in the Philippines, Indonesia, Thailand and India. This is a wrong notion that the pesticide manu facturers have succeeded in implanting in the minds …
Gulf War veterans are nearly twice as likely to develop Lou Gehrig's disease(a fatal neurological disorder) than military personnel who were not sent to the region, the US government recently admitted. The US departments of defence and veterans affairs (VA) compared medical data on almost 700,000 personnel who were in …
Given the lack of ability and desire around the world to get to the root of the global conflicts, it was clear to many of us a decade ago that bioterrorism and biological warfare would soon be upon us. Therefore, when Saddam Hussain said during the Iraq-Kuwait conflict in 1991 …
Following the conclusion of the un-sponsored talks on Afghanistan in Bonn, unep executive director Klaus Toepfer rightly said environmental issues should form part of the package being considered for the country's rehabilitation. Afghanistan today is at best a relic of years of war litters. The big challenge before the war-ravaged …
The UN world food body has reached a landmark agreement for saving the diversity of agricultural crops. Members of the body, including the US, have decided to make it mandatory for plant breeders and geneticists developing new crop varieties to pay for having access to public seed banks. The agreement, …
PRABHANJAN VERMA The film is a critical analysis of the left wing stand in Kerala on the sensitive nuclear arms issue. It portrays the tug-of-war between the official party line that has fallen prey to jingoism and a veteran Marxist who kills his conscience at the behest of his own …
the Balkan war in 1999 has left a deadly impact on North Atlantic Treaty Organisation (nato) soldiers who were deployed in the region. A 14-member team of United Nations Environment Programme found evidence of radioactivity in eight of the eleven sites in Kosovo that was struck with depleted uranium (du) …
About 830 million people around the world have not got sufficient food to eat because of natural disasters, armed conflicts and poverty, says the United Nations World Food Programme. "From generation to generation, people do not have enough food to eat,' said Catherine Bertini, the agency's executive director. The worst-hit …
Zimbabwean soldiers are plundering the natural resources of the Democratic Republic of Congo ( drc ), alleges John Makumbe of a corruption watchdog group. Zimbabwe has deployed almost 11,000-12,000 troops in drc since August 1998 to support president Laurent Kabila's government against the rebels in the civil war. "Others countries, …
When Mozambique fought a war of independence in 1975, its elephant population was over 60,000. When the war ended in 1992, there were only 15,000 left. The story is the same in many African nations
the Bhotiya villages of Lata, Reni, Jumma and Dunagiri wear a deserted look. Many houses are vacant. Most of the houses that are inhabited are managed by women as the men have migrated to neighbouring towns to earn a living. Migration and change is nothing new for these people. In …
