A video of riots in Burma shows police standing by as Buddhist rioters violently attack minority Muslims. [BBC] Human rights activists in Taiwan express horror at the government’s increasing use of the death penalty in recent months. [BBC] At least 185 people are dead after fighting between the Nigerian government and Islamist extremists in the [...]
Tag Archives: Nigeria
Press Review: Burma Police allow violent riots against minorities & Executions on the rise in Taiwan
Press Review: Appalling conditions in Mali refugee camps & Genocide trials begin in Guatemala
Doctors Without Borders call conditions in Mali refugee camps “appalling.” Seventy-thousand refugees are currently living in the camps. [CNN] Genocide trials in Guatemala investigate killings and massive human rights violations during the 1980s as well as the involvement of the United States. [CNN] A four-year clean up project hopes to undo the devastating effects of [...]
Shell Nigeria case verdict & the war against oil pollution
“So just try to put yourself into somebody else’s gills/ You’re killing my ecosystem with fishing and oil spills/ Thank you BP/ Thank you BP/ The British are spilling, oil is killing/ Now I can’t see [...] Oceans are browning/ I think I’m drowning/ Thanks to BP” Whether you have children, or know the Disney [...]
No more impunity for oil giants?
If oil spills destroyed the land you depend on to feed your children, you’d want justice. Now, after years of legal wrangling, a Nigerian farmer whose livelihood was ruined by the negligence of Royal Dutch Shell has finally won against the oil giant. And even though a court in the Netherlands dismissed several similar complaints [...]
Signs of the NY Times: Ivory prices soar. Good riddance, Pope Benedict. Class castes in Nigeria. Homophobia in Ghana.
As African elephant populations began to severely dwindle in the 1980s, CITES, the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species, pushed through and implemented an ivory ban that worked wonderfully. Elephant populations increased continent-wide and ivory prices dropped. But then, inexplicably (although unfortunately I can imagine a few possible reasons), CITES permitted Zimbabwe, Botswana and [...]
Signs of the NY Times: Syria is becoming Iraq. Tuberculosis gains. Corruption in Nigeria. False start in South Sudan?
Op-Ed Contributors and film makers Florence Martin-Kessler and Anne Poiret have posted a video they made about the brand-new country of South Sudan. In documenting the rare happening of a country’s birth and first few years, they found much that they anticipated: exhilaration of the “good guys” having escaped the yoke of the “bad guys” [...]
Press Review: Tree census begins in Brazil & Nigeria takes action against lead poisoning
The Brazilian government will begin a four-year tree census to access how conservation, deforestation, and climate change impact the Amazon forest. [The Guardian] Nigeria will finally take action on a lead poisoning outbreak that killed 400 children and has endangered thousands more. [Reuters] Household air pollution caused by cooking fires causes four million premature deaths [...]
AFRICA’S AUDACITY OF HOPE? What might Africans expect from a second Obama Administration?
In the week that Barack Obama was sworn in for a second term as US president, Fairplanet asked five young Africans about their hopes for their country’s relationship with the US over the coming four years.
Press Review: Failing relief efforts in Haiti & Predictions for Syria in 2013
Despite billions of dollars donated and huge relief efforts, reconstruction after the powerful earthquake that devastated Haiti three years ago has hardly begun. [The Guardian] Based on the daily deterioration of the Syria’s civil war, the U.N. envoy to Syria predicts 100,000 more deaths in 2013. [CNN] Assassinations of civilians in Nigeria are being carried [...]
Press Review: Lead poisoning crisis in Nigeria & 25,000 missing in Mexico
Extreme poverty pushes 4 million African children into human trafficking rings each year. But social acceptance of the practice in Benin are adding to the problem, which groups like UNICEF are desperately trying to fix. [The Guardian] An impoverish region of northern Nigeria is experiencing the “worst lead poisoning crisis in recorded history” after its [...]
Press Review: Congo braces for humanitarian crisis & UK debates ending aid to Rwanda
Aid agencies are preparing for a humanitarian crisis in Congo as violence and unrest send half a million people fleeing from their homes. They warn that food shortages are becoming more severe and that cholera and other diseases will most likely break out due to unsanitary conditions. [The Guardian] An independent watchdog claims that a [...]
Nigerian farmers bringing Shell to justice
Nigerian farmers take on oil giant This court case could go down in history as one of the first rulings to hold a giant multinational accountable for its actions overseas. Imagine this: behemoth oil company Shell on one side and a handful of Nigerian farmers, backed by the non-profit environmental organization Friends of the [...]
