Overseas news archive

23.03.2006 The investigation into the 2004 disappearance of Thai human rights lawyer Somchai Neelaphaijit "hangs in the balance", with his family threatened and the Thai government not doing enough, the Asian Legal Resource Centre has complained.

23.03.2006 In the midst of a row over remarks by British Baroness Jenny Tonge that evictions from ancestral lands have benefitted Botswana's Bushmen, at least 15 Bushmen are reported to have died suddenly of unknown causes this year in a resettlement camp and three others remain in a critical condition.

23.03.2006 Thousands of lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender people across the US are victims of a system that fuels discrimination and facilitates torture, ill-treatment and impunity, according to a report on sex- or gender-based police abuses.
* Award for Rauda Morcos

22.03.2006 With the UN facing a growing financial crisis for peacekeeping activities, the US Congress is urged to provide funds to help support peace in conflict areas around the world.

22.03.2006 Children must be at the centre of a dramatically scaled up response to HIV and AIDS in East Asia and the Pacific, organisers of the first high-level regional meeting focusing on children and AIDS said.

22.03.2006 Protests demanding the closure of a US-owned mine in Papua have led to the death of two students, three police officers and a soldier, initial reports suggest.

22.03.2006 A five-day census launched in Nigeria yesterday seeks to end the guessing game over the number of people who live in Africa's most populous country.

22.03.2006 Indigenous farmers in Peru - birthplace of the potato - have pleaded with agribusiness Syngenta International to abandon its patent on "terminator" technology which they say could endanger more than 3,000 potato varieties in the region and undermine efforts to reduce poverty.

22.03.2006 The ABC formula for fighting HIV/AIDS fuels discrimination and "is not suited to the complexities of human life", Christian Aid has warned.

22.03.2006 TB is reported to be up to 100 times more prevalent in prisons than among the general population, the Red Cross said in a statement to mark World Tuberculosis Day.

22.03.2006 Freshwater shortages are likely to trigger increased environmental damage over the next 15 years, according to an international report on the world’s waters.
* International water forum fails to tackle world water crisis
* UK 'must do more' to solve the world water crisis
* 400 Million Children Deprived of Safe Water
* World Water Day
* Clean water and reasonable living conditions for war victims
* Not inevitable, not acceptable
* EU water plan makes feeble progress in four years
* OneWorld UK Water and Sanitation Guide

22.03.2006 The UN's top UN envoy to Sudan has called for a swift peace agreement to end the killings, rapes and other rights abuses in Darfur and a peacekeeping force large enough to cover the region and strong enough to deter any attack.
* Darfur funding crisis threatens children
* Health needs already start to dwarf the new peace accord

22.03.2006 Nine years of Labour rule have failed to the improve conditions of Black communities in Britain, a new report claims.

21.03.2006 Burundi must be closely monitored in the countdown to the UN's planned withdrawal by the end of this year, Secretary-General Kofi Annan warned.

21.03.2006 Women must wear headscarves in official institutions, Chechnya's Prime Minister Ramzan Kadyrov announced.

21.03.2006 A global citizens' movement is needed to end the "silent holocaust caused by lack of water and sanitation", a leading water charity said ahead of World Water Day on 22 March.
* UK Government must do more to solve the world water crisis say campaigners

21.03.2006 Children in the world's poorest countries are dying because developing countries are subsidising UK health services, a leading children's organisation said as African health ministers and over 300 healthworkers gathered in London to discuss the migration of African medical staff to rich countries.

21.03.2006 As talks on the northern Uganda crisis opened in Geneva, 10 leading NGOs called for pressure on the government to resolve the conflict peacefully and give immediate protection and assistance to the 2 million people who have been forced to leave their homes.

21.03.2006 Morrisons has agreed to review its practices following Greenpeace's "day of action" that highlighted the supermarket chain's failure to stop selling seafood species caught in highly destructive ways.

21.03.2006 The latest "murderous assault" by government officials in Myanmar (formerly Burma) demonstrates that its government has failed even in its stated objective of creating a disciplined society, the Asian Human Rights Commission said yesterday.