Overseas news archive

13.03.2006 Free speech defenders at Russian PEN Centre have been hit with an order freezing their organisation’s assets and threatening the group’s future.

13.03.2006 The Singaporean authorities have rejected calls for foreign domestic workers to be given a mandatory day off each week.

13.03.2006 Consumer groups around the world are planning protests on 15 March, World Consumer Rights Day, against unsustainable, unaffordable and unjust access to energy.

12.03.2006 The UN refugee agency is halving its spending in Sudan's Darfur region because of continuing violence.
* SUDAN: AU discusses proposed transfer of peacekeepers to UN

12.03.2006 A disturbing picture of widespread contamination, illegal planting and negative agricultural side-effects is unveiled in what is claimed to be the first report into the extent to which genetically engineered organisms have "leaked" into the environment.

10.03.2006 Calls have been made for the release of Burma’s best-known journalist, U Win Tin, as he prepared to spend his 76th birthday on 12 March in his special cell in Rangoon’s notorious Insein prison.

10.03.2006 The UK-based Judicial Committee of the Privy Council - the highest court of appeal for most English-speaking Caribbean countries - has decided to abolish the mandatory death sentence for murder in the Bahamas.

10.03.2006 Campaigners today slammed the forthcoming meeting of the G6 group of World Trade Organisation members as both anti-democratic and anti-development, and called for an end to the global trade negotiations.
* London trade talks will offer nothing for world's poor

10.03.2006 The UN has formally launched a $500 million fund to jump-start relief operations in natural and man-made disasters.
* UN emergency fund: distribution is key

10.03.2006 The grievances of French Muslims arise more from a lack of political channels for articulating interests and grievances than with the exploitation or exacerbation of religious feelings, says a new report from the International Crisis Group.

09.03.2006 Brazil will contribute $20 million over 20 years to the International Finance Facility for Immunisation, President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva announced today.

09.03.2006 Proposals for a new-look UN Human Rights Council are a half-measure that will block serious reform for years, according to an international media freedom group.

09.03.2006 The European Commission's new energy strategy immediately came under fire yesterday for lacking a long-term vision for a sustainable and efficient use of resources.

09.03.2006 Sudan's intelligence agencies continue to target activists, curtailing fundamental freedoms of expression and association, according to a UN independent human rights expert.

09.03.2006 Poor countries still lag behind in installing information and communication technologies (ICT) in governments, schools and business, says a new World Bank report.

09.03.2006 World trade talks will fail poor people unless rich countries change their offers and reduce their demands at a key meeting starting tomorrow in London, a prominent development charity said today.
* Trade ministers must not sell out world's poorest people

09.03.2006 Inaction over the death of one of Indonesia's leading human rights activists, Munir, was condemned today by a leading Asian rights group.

09.03.2006 More than a year after the Sudanese government and southern-based rebels signed the peace agreement that ended their 21-year war, Sudan’s ruling party has failed to undertake promised reforms that would help end human rights abuses, an international rights group charged yesterday.
* Sudan’s intelligence apparatus targets activists – independent UN rights expert

09.03.2006 The World Bank admits it has failed to ensure proper protection of the environment and local peoples in its programmes to "develop" the rainforests of the Democratic Republic of Congo, according to a forest protection group.

08.03.2006 If world leaders continue their "unacceptably slow progress on girls' education", the price will be "a grim future of underdevelopment and dependence", the Global Campaign for Education warned in a statement marking International Women's Day.
* Sheffield to give Aung San Suu Kyi freedom of the city
* Act on violence against Iraqi women, UN urged
* Women's Day, Wednesday - and the UN is accused of lip service
* Women on the front line
* New campaign invites American women to help tackle global poverty
* Sri Lanka to support 'We Can' campaign to end gender violence
* International Women’s Day: Cutting through the crap
* Closing gender gaps - why it matters