Organizers estimate that 15,000 people converged in Times
Square on Saturday afternoon, the culmination of a day of
marches and protests that covered much of lower
Manhattan. Actions from New York to Madrid, Rome,
London, Jakarta, Tokyo and Sydney were part of a
global day of action called for by the Indignados
movement in Spain and later joined by Occupy Wall Street.
‘In too many societies girls still face the double discrimination of being young and being female. They are pulled out of school, married early, and are more likely to be subject to violence.’
Recently independent South Sudan will face chronic food shortages next year due to internal and border insecurity, erratic rains and a huge influx of returnees from the North, UN agencies have warned.
The FAO said a Rapid Crop Assessment carried out in August showed South Sudan was likely to produce 420,000-500,000MT of food this year – half the required amount.
The UN High Commissioner for Human Rights says Syrian military and security forces have killed at least 2,700 people; but activists and human rights groups put that number as high as 5,300.
In the Week of Nonviolence in Mar del Plata, there was a debate on “Violence and Media. Contributions for a more inclusive communication”. Pressenza’s experience and contribution in the construction of an agenda relating to nonviolence was displayed, in contrast to the constant violent look emitted by the major media in Argentina.
While global spending on weapons is set up to further increase in spite of the economic recession, four major UN agencies and their aid partners have just appealed for $18.3 million to help tens of thousands of refugees who are fleeing into western Ethiopia to escape violence in Sudan’s Blue Nile state.
While very busy covering French president and British prime minister visits to Libya, and talking about the day when Libyan oil will feed again cars and industries, mainstream media has nearly ignored the continuing killings in Yemen and the growing hunger of which more than 7,5 million Yemenis are victims.
Population growth and water stress are driving Earth to a food and environmental crunch that only better farming techniques and smarter use of the ecosystem will avert, a UN report issued on Monday said.
To speak of nonviolence obliges us to review what we understand by violence. The great backing received by the 15-M movement in Spain is due, apart from their demands, to the fact that their actions and protests are peaceful and non-violent. Nevertheless, we still don’t know very well what nonviolence as a methodology of social struggle is.
While millions in East Africa are caught in the cobweb of a devastating drought that has spread its tentacles across Somalia, Kenya and Ethiopia, the government in Addis Ababa is snatching some of Ethiopia’s most productive farmland from local tribes and leasing it to foreign companies to grow and export food.
