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Perhaps a 'dirty bomb' made out of a handful of plutonium or other radiological material forms the most significant 'nuclear' threat to the US. But outside of this Western-centric world-view, it is the threat of nuclear attack or exchange in the Middle East and South Asia - home to nearly a fourth of the world's population - that clearly remains the largest global nuclear threat.

AMERICAN President Barack Obama gathered 47 national delegations for the first Nuclear Security Summit in Washington on April 12 and 13. It was the largest gathering of world leaders in Washington since the close of World War II. The scale of the summit was meant to impress the gravity of the subject matter.

In Obama's words, 'This is an unprecedented gathering to address an unprecedented threat': the prevention of nuclear terrorism. In trademark style, Obama offered rhetorical flourishes to fit the occasion: 'Two decades after the Cold War we face a cruel irony of history. The risk of nuclear confrontation between nations has gone down, but the risk of nuclear attack has gone up.' The president said that a tiny scrap of plutonium the size of an apple was now the biggest threat to world stability, with 'just the tiniest amount of plutonium' in the wrong hands posing potential for catastrophe.

However, the president's assessment of global nuclear threats paper over some basic realities. The threat of nuclear confrontation remains dangerously high despite the New START (Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty) with Russia and America's passive-aggressive Nuclear Posture Review. This is particularly true along the nuclear fault-lines in the Middle East and South Asia which have existed since the Cold War. Perhaps a 'dirty bomb' made out of a handful of plutonium or other radiological material forms the most significant 'nuclear' threat to the US. But outside of this Western-centric world-view, it is the threat of nuclear attack or exchange in the Middle East and South Asia - home to nearly a fourth of the world's population - that clearly remains the largest global nuclear threat.

IN ACTUALITY, the threat of terrorists acquiring a working nuclear device is relatively remote. Building nuclear weapons is a complex and resource-intensive business; if it were not more countries would already possess them.

That leaves the option of stealing a weapon. But pilfering a nuclear weapon is not simply a case of planning a sophisticated smash-and-grab operation. Nuclear weapons have multi-layered security systems, both technological and human. For example, access to nuclear facilities and weapons follows strict chains of command. Warheads are usually stored in several different pieces that require a cross-expertise and technical sophistication to assemble. In addition, they employ security features called Permissive Action Links that use either external enabling devices or advanced encryption to secure the weapon. Older security systems include anti-tamper devices capable of exploding the device without a nuclear chain reaction. Not to mention that effectively delivering a nuclear device comes with its own hefty challenges. Thus, there are many serious obstacles to terrorists actually obtaining and setting off a nuclear bomb.

There is, however, a distinct possibility that fissile materials could fall into the hands of terrorists. It would not be a first. Chechen rebels planted crude 'dirty bombs' as early as 1995 and 1998. Neither device was detonated and the rebels provided advance warning to the authorities. But they did succeed in terrorising the general population. Further, in 2007 a nuclear facility in South Africa was attacked twice, but the attackers were repelled before they were able to get any nuclear materials or intelligence on the computer systems. The prime suspects for the end buyers in these attacks are states - primarily Pakistan. Still, an active and lucrative trade in smuggling nuclear materials and technologies makes further such attacks likely.

But strictly speaking, setting off a dirty bomb is not the same as 'nuclear terrorism'. A dirty bomb does not involve a devastating nuclear chain reaction. It simply disperses (usually with the aid of conventional explosives) fissile or radiological materials. Such a bomb could potentially cover a relatively large area with radiological material. However, many experts, including the US Department of Energy, have noted that the fallout from such a bomb would not necessarily lead to fatal radiation exposure.

Yet clearly a dirty bomb is a terror weapon simply because it so easily inspires terror. It has the potential to induce serious ill-health in a large population in the medium and long term, render areas inhabitable and unproductive for long periods of time and would produce psychological effects in the victims and for anyone wanting to resettle in the affected areas.

But the effects of such a bomb would pale in comparison to even a limited exchange of nuclear weapons. Such a nuclear war still remains plausible.

ISRAEL is the only country in the Middle East to possess nuclear weapons, though it does not officially admit to having any under a policy of 'nuclear opacity'. Israel acquired the capacity to manufacture nuclear weapons in the mid-1960s. An intelligence estimate by the Central Intelligence Agency from 1967 - the year of the Six Day Arab-Israeli War - states that Israel had already acquired the capability to manufacture a number of nuclear warheads. Israeli warplanes were fitted for delivering nuclear weapons during the 1973 Arab-Israeli war. Of course, this war also generated a nuclear stand-off between the US and the Soviet Union.

Israel's proliferation record is also on par with or perhaps even surpasses that of Pakistan. In addition to joint testing, Israel is thought to have provided South Africa with up to six functional nuclear warheads in the 1970s - the only known instance of a country simply giving nuclear weapons to another.

Israel presently possesses an estimated 400 nuclear weapons, from powerful thermonuclear devices to tactical or 'battlefield' nukes. Its nuclear doctrine embraces not only a 'first strike' posture but also one of 'pre-emptive strike' against a conventional or unconventional attack on any of its weapons of mass destruction (nuclear, chemical or biological). It is also committed to maintaining nuclear superiority by preventing any other Middle Eastern country from obtaining nuclear weapons. It has already employed conventional attacks and assassinations to prevent such an outcome.

Further, according to investigative journalist Seymour Hersh, faced with an existential threat Israel's nuclear doctrine includes the so-called 'Samson Option': a massive nuclear assault against the nations threatening Israel. It was thus named by Israeli leaders of the stature of David Ben-Gurion, Shimon Peres and Moshe Dayan for the Biblical figure of Samson who brought down a Philistine temple, killing himself and hundreds of Philistines gathered there.

Israel remains in constant conflict with its neighbours, providing any number of potential triggers of nuclear conflict. It barely disguises its intention to reject any peace plan with the Palestinians that would require it to end its occupation. Tensions between Israel and the Hezbollah militia in Lebanon remain high. Israel recently attempted to goad negotiations with Syria over the occupied Golan Heights by threatening to go to war with it. This brought on a joint declaration of mutual assistance by Syria and Iran to intervene if either one of them is attacked. And of course, Israel remains unconvinced that 'crippling sanctions' against Iran's nuclear program will materialise and thus, has pushed for attacking Iranian nuclear facilities both publicly and privately. With Iran forging ahead with its programme despite American pressure, it remains to be seen how a nearly-nuclear Iran will interplay with Israeli nuclear doctrine.

THE other likely region for a nuclear exchange is in South Asia, where regional rivals India and Pakistan possess the world's fastest growing nuclear arsenal.

India conducted its first nuclear test in 1974. This prompted Pakistan to publicly own up to its own nuclear weapons programme that had secretly begun two years prior. Pakistan acquired nuclear weapons capability in the late 1980s with the quiet acquiescence of the US. The US found it convenient to ignore Pakistan's nuclear weapons programme while the country was the 'frontline' state in the American-sponsored jihad against the Red Army in Afghanistan. Washington imposed sanctions in 1990, only after credible intelligence assessments indicated that Pakistan had already manufactured a bomb. India conducted another series of nuclear tests in 1998 and this time Pakistan was able to follow suit.

Both India and Pakistan possess an estimated 80 to 120 nuclear warheads, though the actual numbers may be higher, particularly for India. Pakistan has a 'first use' policy in the face of large conventional losses, whereas the more powerful India prescribes to a 'no first use' nuclear doctrine.

Pakistan has already displayed the most reckless nuclear brinkmanship since the Cuban Missiles Crisis. In 1999, its army incited a war in Kargil in Indian-occupied Kashmir. As the conflict escalated with the Indian Air Force being engaged, Pakistan's mobile nuclear missile launchers were allegedly put on alert. Then army chief General Pervez Musharraf believed that a potential nuclear conflict would successfully 'internationalise' the Kashmir imbroglio (he was dangerously wrong). Both countries' nuclear arsenals were similarly put on alert during their tense 2002 stand-off brought on by a terrorist attack on Indian parliament.

Unlike Israel and South Africa, which officially stayed mum about their nuclear weapons, both the Indian and Pakistani tests were publicly celebrated as VIP passes into the exclusive nuclear club. Except neither country was accepted as a legitimate nuclear power. International sanctions quickly followed against both countries, with Pakistani sanctions being more stringent.

But this changed with a deepening America-India alliance under former US president George W Bush. India became the most prominent counter-point in designs to ring China with American allies. This resulted in a civilian nuclear deal under the so-called 123 Agreement, making India the only country in the world that can engage in nuclear commerce without being a signatory to the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty. India can now use its older reactors not covered by the deal almost exclusively for its weapons program.

This has fuelled a renewed nuclear weapons race with Pakistan, which has been seeking a similar civilian nuclear deal from the US and China. The topic figured prominently in the recent Pakistani delegation to Washington for the US-Pakistan 'Strategic Dialogue' and the issue has taken on a greater urgency for Pakistan since the 'leak' of India's new 'Cold Start' military doctrine late last year. Cold Start involves rapid and massive offensives against Pakistan (and China). Pakistan's army chief has responded with a veiled but unambiguous threat that the country would use nuclear weapons in the case of such a conflict. Just as terrifying as Pakistan's response is that Cold Start actually anticipates a nuclear war. Thus, the South Asian region teeters along the precipice of an unimaginable conflict even as the nuclear arms race is being escalated through the US-India partnership.

THIS week's nuclear summit in Washington is a big summit about a relatively little problem when it comes to the question of nuclear disarmament. It is no doubt a positive achievement and will be all the more so if it leads to some kind of treaty to regulate and limit fissile material. But this essentially sets up and then effectively knocks down a straw man - that of 'nuclear terrorism', an issue that everyone already agrees upon anyway. The fanfare of the summit effectively deflects the problem of nuclear disarmament and locates the threat of nuclear Armageddon in the wrong place. When it comes to nuclear weapons, the threat of inter-state conflict far outweighs the dangers posed by non-state actors.

But perhaps this is the intent. In dealing with foreign relations, Obama's presidency has simply brought a new style to a substantively same policy direction. The nuclear arsenals of Israel, India and Pakistan maintain strategic balances that are favourable to the US. Little surprise that conversations about the clear and present danger that these strategic American allies present are kept on the back-burner.

Ten years ago, world leaders agreed at the UN on the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs), 8 Goals to significantly reduce extreme poverty, disease and illiteracy by 2015. World leaders met to take stock of progress at the mid-point. The first nine years have seen some important successes at the aggregate level, 40 million more children are in school, hundreds of millions of people have come out of extreme poverty, some deadly diseases like tuberculosis and measles have been contained, and fewer people are dying from HIV/AIDS. But the UN Secretary-General warned that if the world has to meet the MDGs by 2015, the speed of implementation needs to be substantially accelerated. Paradoxically, foreign aid levels have actually fallen in the last four years and some of the richest countries are cutting back even further. It is no surprise then that virtually every leader from a developing country spoke during the summit about rich countries breaking their aid promises to the poor with the consequence being schools and health centres left without staff and equipment.

But turn our attention to the street conversation from Dhaka to Dakar, from Manila to Mexico City and we shall hear a different discourse on why the MDGs are not being met.

For the poorest people living in rural Africa or Asia or the sprawling slums of Latin American cities, their daily experience is of being powerless in the face of being denied basic public services. The economic boom that many countries in the developing world are yet to translate into MDGs for the poor. Whether it is privatisation of basic services, social exclusion, or plain inefficiency and corruption, the net effect is the same - more poverty, unemployment and deprivation for those at the bottom of the pile.

Those who can afford it have long since moved to private providers of health, education, water, power, housing and even in many places policing. The expectations from the state have been reduced to almost nil.

Despite more countries opting to become electoral democracies, citizens' trust in government is at an all-time low. Clearly the abuse of power for personal gain, the siphoning off of public or common resources into private pockets is unacceptable in any situation but when this is public money gathered in the name of the poor, the criminality is repugnant. The global movement in support of the MDGs is growing. Last year, 73 million people stood up against poverty. This year, the number is to become even bigger.

On the above issues, I would like to add the quote from our Nobel Laureate, Dr. Muhammad Yunus told the right word: I was teaching in one of the universities while the country was suffering from a severe famine. People were dying of hunger, and I felt very helpless. As an economist, I had no tool in my toolbox to fix that kind of situation.

In fact, solidarity is not a matter of sentiment but a fact, cold and impassive as the granite foundations of a skyscraper. If the basic elements, identity of interest, clarity of vision, honesty of intent, and oneness of purpose, or any of these is lacking, all sentimental pleas for solidarity, and all other efforts to achieve it will be barren of results.

It's refreshing for us to hear that from now on we won't have to bear anymore the stigma attached to being a man or a woman from the Third World.

Slavery in its traditional sense is almost nonexistent today though faint sounds of the oppressed slaves are still heard from a few closed societies at different corners of the world. Slavery has been around since ancient times and it has gradually been abolished with voices of human rightists growing louder. Discriminations on the grounds of race, religion, gender, age, colour etc. are on the wane for some time since the later part of the last century though today the weak are still discriminated against in favour of the strong, the frail in favour of the burly.

Slavery and discriminations are still there, only in different garbs. Financial institutions, for example, are still holding us to slavery. One in need of money today capitulates to any demand from one who holds money, much more abjectly than the way a slave in the 18th century used to supplicate to his master.

Machines have taken over the slavery and the moneyed have taken over the machineries. Men have been dependent on machines and have thus become slaves to machineries. The student who left his calculator at home and failed a test in math when he was asked about the sum of 2+2 is also a slave. His slavery ironically is to an electronic calculator.

Today, the humanity is divided by a line drawn between the haves, the masters and the have-nots, the slaves. The globe too is demarcated by a clear streak between the north, the richer and the south, the poorer. The world was also categorised into three blocks: 'First World', 'Second World' and 'Third World'. The First World belongs to the rich, the United States and its allies, who proclaimed themselves democratic, the Second World, the Soviet Union and its allies, to the proletariat who fought against the bourgeoisie to establish communism and the Third World, the non-aligned and the neutral countries, to mainly the poor nations who were sidelined as developing democracies or despicable autocracies.

Some people disparage the term 'Third World' and fancy to call the group of the poor as the 'Developing World', the 'Global South' or the 'Majority World'. The growing use of the term 'Developing World' led to a growing sense of solidarity among the nations blessed with lesser fortunes to unite against the dominance of the wealthier and the more powerful. Our Bangladesh is deemed a member of the 'Majority World'- a decent metaphor for the term 'Third World'

Perhaps for the first time in history Robert B Zoellick, the World Bank Group President, last Wednesday has gone on record to dismiss the term 'Third World' publicly, stating that the world economic crisis of 2009 vis-à-vis the rise of developing countries in the global economy was the 'death-knell' of the old concept of the Third World. The World Bank has thus finally acknowledged, what it should have done 60 years ago when it was founded, that the idiom 'Third World' was a wrong, and perhaps an immoral term smelling something like slavery in reference to developing countries in the world. 'If 1989 saw the end of the 'Second World' with Communism's demise', said Zoellick in a speech at the Woodrow Wilson Centre for International Scholars in Washington, DC, 'then 2009 saw the end of what was known as the 'Third World''.

It's refreshing for us to hear that from now on we won't have to bear anymore the stigma attached to being a man or a woman from the Third World. It's a victory for the 'Majority World', a pleasant outcome of the team spirit among the developing countries who of late have been doggedly determined not only to remain non-aligned but also to run in competition with the West.

In triumph, we should recall today what in 1955 the First Prime Minister of India Jawaharlal Nehru said in the Bandung Conference of 29 countries from Asia and Africa: 'I propose to belong to neither the First nor the Second World, whatever happens. If we have to stand alone, we will stand by ourselves, whatever happens. We do not agree with the communist teachings, neither do we agree with the anti-communist teachings, because they are both based on wrong principles'. With the end of the Second World in 1989 and with the concept of the Third World declared outdated by World Bank, Nehru is today proven right in his assertion that political teachings espoused by the First World and the Second World were based on wrong doctrines.

Countries of the 'Majority World' have shown during the recent global recession how to remain stable and maintain growth in spite of their poverty and fragility. It is the countries of the so-called Third World who are capturing an ever increasing share of global economy. Not only in China and India, but also in South East Asia, Latin America and the Middle East the economies are vibrating with vigour and verve. The day is not perhaps far away when China, once a country belonging to the Second or the Third World, will be the strongest locomotive to pull the world economy ahead. And the day is not perhaps very distant either when a country like Bangladesh in Asia or Cameroon in Africa will become a very powerful engine to help the world economy grow if only the world instead of remaining divided between poles belonging to the haves and the have-nots rather turns into a unipolar world for the sake of homogenous growth of the global economy.

Will the world ever be unipolar or classless? Will slavery in its present disguised form disappear from this planet? Will the strong leave their spaces for the weak? Will the rich empathise for the poor? Will the vital and basic technical know-how be transferred from the North to the South? Will the stark digital divide blur in near future? Will the humanity be unleashed from their dependency on machines? 'No' is the answer to all these temporal questions. Still, that we can boldly raise these questions is itself a victory of the masses of the world. That the slaves are no more flogged by their masters is an outstanding feat achieved by the humanists. That we are afraid of only God, not of the super powers, is a triumph of the universalism. That we are fighting for the greener environment is the supremacy of the nature over the artificiality of the machines.

An idea of a classless world should not be conjured up as a communist world. A classless society is a culture ordained by divinity and a concept that is capable of defeating the atheism of communism, if applied with courage and vision. Islam, Christianity, Judaism, Buddhism or for that matter any other religion or Gnostic philosophy teaches us that there should not be classes among people, that there should not be a divide between the strong and the weak.

The planet Earth which was originally designed to be the land of the free has tragically been fragmented into millions of blocks and homes constituting acquisitive societies full of greed and 'lust for money', ultimately determining a singular course for the rich and the strong on how to exploit the poor and the weak.

Poverty anywhere is a threat to prosperity everywhere. Unless the affluent in one section of the world endeavour to alleviate the poverty in another section, unless we work for a one-world family and a one-world government, classes among people will prevail only to disturb the delicate equilibrium of the humanity.

The USA and African Union have held their first direct talks, which have ended with a commitment to strengthen cooperation and ‘institutionalize’ high-level summits with annual frequency. In a communiqué, which highlights some of the discussions held between Wednesday and Thursday, the AU and USA have faced a wide variety of topics such as the promotion of democracy, opportunities for African peoples, improving living conditions and environmental issues. Led by the president of the AU Commission, Jean Ping, the African delegation met several key figures in the US administration, noting that he has noted a different course in foreign policy and greater conviction in wanting to contribute to African development. For their part, the USA have stressed the decisive role of the AU in promoting democracy and good governance, referring to the organism’s positions toward such countries as Mauritania, Guinea, Niger and Madagascar, which have recently witnessed coups or extra-constitutional government shifts. “It is obvious – says Ping – that Africa and USA have had a long cooperation history and are still tied by social, cultural and economic ties; however, this cooperation has been bilateral for the most part. Now, in an evidently different world… there are many issues that cannot be confined or resolved among single countries…that is why Africa has the duty and responsibility to confront, united, new challenges going from poverty to the development of infrastructure and the management of conflicts.”[AB]

According to UN human rights chief, it is time for region to overhaul local legal framework. Current laws discriminate against women, who are prevented from making choices about themselves and their country, and against immigrants who are at the mercy of employers.

United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights Navanethem (Navi) Pillay called on Gulf states to change rules that restrict women's and foreign workers' rights. In her view, women should have greater control over their own lives and foreign workers should not be subject to the current sponsorship system, which leads to abuses by employers.

In a press conference held at King Abdullah University for Science and Technology in Jeddah, Ms Pillay tackled two of the most contentious issues in the region. However, her statement about women's rights found little coverage in local media.

Speaking about women, who are tied down by a tradition that treats them as incapable of conducting any activity that is legally relevant, Pillay said, "Discriminatory barriers continue to hamper women's right to shape their own lives and choices, and fully participate in public life and be part of public debates that influence the direction of a nation". For her, "These barriers must be removed."

Some Muslim states have already improved women's rights via "dynamic interpretations of Islamic traditions." In these countries, governments and Islamic legal experts have "demonstrated that far from being innovations, such legislation was compatible with Islamic jurisprudence and, indeed, stemmed from it." In view of this, the practice of requiring women to have a male guardian-father, brother or husband-should be "put to rest." Women should be able to go out as they please.

Speaking about the sponsorship, or kafala, system, she said changes were necessary. Under the system, work permits are conditional on contracts.

What is more, "Reports concerning this region consistently cite ongoing practices of unlawful confiscation of passports, withholding of wages and exploitation by unscrupulous recruitment agencies and employers," she said.

"Some [foreign workers] are held in prolonged detention after they escape abusive employers and may be unable to obtain access to judicial recourse and effective remedies for their plight," she added.

The rich Gulf States have attracted tens of millions of mostly blue-collar migrants from Asian countries, many of whom work in construction or as domestic workers.

Under the sponsorship systems, local employers and companies can hire large numbers of migrants who are dependent on them for food and shelter. Violence against employees is not rare.

Local governments have been debating the issue for some time. In some countries, plans are underway to overhaul existing labour laws to grant workers some rights.

Regional integration and opposition to external inference, especially from a political point of view, are the prospects from which to look at the start of the talks that begin in the Algerian town of Tamanrasset involving a joint committee of the heads of the armed forces of four countries from the Sahel. In a note issued in Algiers by the ministry of defense it is underlined that through the new organism, Algeria, Mauritania, Mali and Niger will commit to operate “in respecting a common strategy” on the matter of “security” and “struggle against terrorism”. The creation of the committee follows two separate meetings, which, between March and April, were attended by the ministers of foreign affairs and heads of the armed forces of the countries from the region, including Algeria, Mauritania, Mali, Niger, Libya, Burkina Faso and Chad. During these meetings the desire to strengthen the Sahel’s political and economic integration, contrasting at the same time the attempt by some European countries and the USA to put pressure on the basis of an alleged terrorist threat. The foreign affairs ministers of the Sahel had also reiterated their “firm condemnation of terrorism” and the “determination to eradicate this phenomenon to return to the region its vocation of trade, peace, stability and cooperation”.[BO]

South Asia to chart collective response to climate change by Shahidul Islam Chowdhury

The South Asian countries are expected to chart a course for collective response to environmental degradation and climate change and their impacts on the region at their summit-level meeting in the Bhutanese capital of Thimphu at the end of the week.

'Bhutan will propose [at the SAARC summit] a roadmap for collective response to this [environment and climate change] problem,' Daw Panjo, foreign secretary of Bhutan, said at a reception for journalists on Saturday evening.

He hoped that the heads of state and government will give a direction for future at the summit for improving the living standards of 1.6 billion people of South Asia.

The eight-member South Asian Association for Regional Cooperation will sign separate agreements on environment and trade in presence of the heads of state or government on Thursday, he said.

In the 38th meeting of the SAARC programming committee on April 24, 'the SAARC member-countries discussed, among other issues, the preparations for signing separate agreements on environment and trade, which are expected to be inked in presence of the heads of state or government on April 29,' a senior Bhutanese foreign ministry official said Saturday.

The provisions in the agreement on environment include creating scope for mutual cooperation between public and private organisations of the region to share their experiences and information and for transfer of technology to help the people and the authorities to protect natural environment.

Bhutanese foreign ministry director and chairman of the programming committee Sonam Tshong presided over the meeting.

The eight countries are likely to accept the host country's development philosophy of Gross National Happiness as a possible development model for the region.

The committee also discussed about signing a ministerial convention on climate change, he said.

The committee also weighed the idea of accepting Bhutan's development philosophy of Gross National Happiness as a possible development model for the region, a Bangladesh foreign ministry official said in Thimphu.

It also discussed the preparations for establishment of a South Asian University in New Delhi and a permanent secretariat of the SAARC Development Fund in Bhutan and appointment of a chief executive for the fund, they said.

The regional grouping is, however, unlikely to sign an agreement on developing a SAARC natural disaster response mechanism as Pakistan is not willing to sign the deal at the moment.

Programming committee, an ad hoc body of the regional grouping comprising joint secretary-level officials of the foreign ministries of the member countries, prepared the Thimphu declaration, scrutinised the secretariat budget and finalised the calendar of activities prepared by the technical committees comprising representatives from the member states, a Bangladesh foreign ministry official said.

In a two-day meeting beginning today (Sunday), the standing committee comprising the foreign secretaries will finalise the draft of the Thimphu declaration, approve the calendar of activities and the modalities of financing, determine inter-sectoral priorities, mobilise regional and external resources and identify new areas for cooperation.

The summit declaration, the principal outcome of the summit, will provide crucial policy directives from the top leaders of the member states for the future direction of the regional body.

The heads of state or government of all eight member states of the regional body will attend the summit in Thimphu on Wednesday and Thursday. High level dignitaries representing nine observer states will also attend the regional meeting.

The 16th summit coincides with the 25th anniversary of the association's founding.

The SAARC summit is the highest authority of the South Asian Association for Regional Cooperation comprising Afghanistan, Bangladesh, Bhutan, India, the Maldives, Nepal, Pakistan and Sri Lanka.

The Jesuit Refugee Service (JRS) is calling for people to support a treaty banning cluster munitions ahead of it becoming international law on Aug. 1.

As of April 21, a total of 30 states from a total of 106 signatories had ratified the Convention on Cluster Munitions, allowing it to become binding under international law.

The convention bans the use, production and transfer of cluster munitions, sets strict deadlines for stockpile destruction and clearance of contaminated land, and obliges states to support survivors and affected communities.

The JRS has been a major campaigner in support of the treaty. It is now campaigning to have more countries sign and ratify the treaty as well as for people to celebrate the Aug. 1 event by holding prayers or meditation sessions in places of worship that day, according to campaign material from JRS Asia Pacific.

It is also calling for people and groups to organize drumming and dance sessions beginning April 23, the start of the 100-day countdown to Aug. 1.

JRS Asia Pacific is calling for global moral solidarity so that all nations will fully support a complete ban on the production, stockpiling, transfer and use of cluster bombs, according to an April 19 letter signed by its regional director, Jesuit Father Bernard Hyacinth Arphuthasamy.

In Asia, the countries most affected are Cambodia, Laos and Vietnam, the letter notes. According to Pentagon figures, the United States dropped around 285 million cluster bombs on these countries in the 1960s and 1970s.

Cluster bombs dropped from aircraft, delivered my rockets or shot from artillery pieces release numerous small bomblets over a large area. Many of these fail to explode on impact and remain a fatal hazard long after a conflict ends.

In the Asia-Pacific region, only Japan and Laos have signed and ratified the treaty.

Although other issues have taken center stage recently, it is possible to discern in Moscow's policies across Asia a renewed emphasis on the sale of nuclear reactors to interested Asian partners. This emphasis, of course, is not new. During 2007-2008 Moscow offered nuclear reactors to 13 Arab states that were obviously concerned (and clearly remain so) about Iran's nuclear program. The more recent sales combine both old clients, such as India, and new customers like Pakistan and Vietnam in interesting ways that reflect some of the driving forces in Russian foreign policy.

First, it is clear that a robust foreign demand exists for nuclear reactors in general, as seen from South Korean, French, and US sales abroad. This leads foreign governments to seek to buy nuclear reactors and associated know-how and technology quite openly. For example, Vietnam's government has recently confirmed that it is asking Russia to build its first nuclear reactor with the help of Russian specialists. Similarly, Pakistan's military attache in Moscow, Brigadier-General Tahir Siddiq, openly invited extensive Russian arms sales (military-technical cooperation) to Pakistan. In return, the Russian consul general in Karachi, Andrei Demidov, said that Russia can help Pakistan in various ways, especially in nuclear energy, but Pakistan must devise a program outlining how it will benefit from Russian technology and economic potential. Demidov clearly made his remarks in the context of exploring ways through which both states' businessmen could expand bilateral trade.

In other cases, Russia is building upon pre-existing contacts or sales, as in the cases of Jordan and India. In March, Jordan's King Abdullah visited Russia and the bilateral discussions he conducted focused on outstanding issues in the Middle East, like the peace process. Also, and quite typically, these talks concentrated on arms sales to Jordan and Moscow's interest in investing in key strategic projects at a regional level (not only in Jordan), such as nuclear energy, railways, and water desalinization.

Similarly, during Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin's trip to India in March he signed numerous agreements with the Indian government relating to arms sales, energy cooperation, and nuclear energy. Typically, India wants to expand its previous level of nuclear cooperation with Russia by importing more uranium and eliciting Russian cooperation to help it build at least five new nuclear plants, while continuing its assistance for existing plants like one in Kundukulam. Indeed, according to Russian officials, India may seek to build up to 20 nuclear reactors and produce over 20 gigawatts of nuclear energy by 2020, and consequently, Russian assistance to India might not stop at just five reactors.

Moscow's renewed emphasis on such sales is not surprising. Recently, Deputy Prime Minister Sergei Ivanov, who bears responsibility for overseeing the defense industrial sector, including atomic energy, boasted about the expanding geography of Russian dual-use exports and admitted that the top priority fields for such exports include, among others, nuclear power exports.

Moreover, Ivanov's remarks indicate the increasingly visible links among Russian customers for nuclear power whereby they also are buying substantial amounts of Russian arms as well as oil and gas. Putin's deals with India involved allowing it to participate in Russian energy projects and energy sales. Vietnam was its largest single buyer of weapons in 2009, and King Abdullah's visit was clearly devoted in part to discussions concerning future Russian weapons sales.

Thus, Moscow has begun to emulate the Chinese pattern of linking arms sales abroad and energy deals with the significant difference that China has to import energy in return for its arms sales. Nonetheless, the effort to link the two fields, and now nuclear energy together, is suggestive of new innovations in Russian foreign policy.

The nuclear proliferation dimension of this new trend also merits some attention. Pakistan clearly needs energy, but it also evidently has the autonomous capability to produce nuclear energy. Indeed, Russian analysts, until now, were virtually unanimous in stating that they and the government believe that Pakistan is the principal nuclear proliferation threat. While opinions may be shifting to Iran in the current climate as the candidate for this dubious honor, they are all very mindful of the threats connected with Pakistan's past record of nuclear proliferation and future potential for repeating those actions. Indeed, Alexei Arbatov, chairman of the Non-Proliferation Programme of Carnegie Moscow Center and a former deputy chairman of the Russian parliament's defense committee, has publicly stated that he cannot imagine Russia turning to Pakistan like the US did with regard to its nuclear deal with India. Moscow also recognizes that any contribution it makes to Pakistan's military capability will undermine Russia's relationship with India. Yet, there are signs that such a relationship is beginning to emerge.

Therefore, the interest in selling it nuclear reactors makes sense only according to Moscow's belief that its interest in acquiring a new market, and leverage (or so it might believe) on Pakistan outweighs its concerns about proliferation and further Pakistani nuclearization.

Yet, these straws in the wind signal some interesting implications for future Russian policy, as it is unclear as to why Vietnam and Jordan need reactors, but it is clear that they both fear nuclear neighbors or partners, Iran and China. Finally, in the context of President Barack Obama's international conference on nuclear nonproliferation this month, Moscow's eagerness to sell nuclear power, while technically legal under existing treaties, suggests more than a little skepticism and resistance to his ideas about nonproliferation, global zero, and the new "reset" policy.

Dr Stephen Blank is a professor at the Strategic Studies Institute of the US Army War College at Carlisle Barracks, PA. The views expressed here do not represent those of the US Army, Defense Department, or the US government.

Business and tourism in South Asia are increasingly being hit by airline inactivity caused by the spread of volcanic ash from Iceland.

The export of garments and perishable goods from the region to Europe has been severely affected, as has the tourism industry in South Asia.

But officials say the priority is dealing with thousands of people across the region who are unable to fly.

A spokesman for Pakistan International Airlines told the BBC that he expected the company to lose up to $25m because of flight cancellations to Europe.

"Already 65 flights have been cancelled," he said, "which has cost us something in the region of $10m. This cost will continue to escalate - even if normal services are resumed soon - because of the interruption to our schedules."

The airline estimates that 16,000 passengers are stranded in Pakistan and Europe.

Tourism in India, Nepal, Bhutan, Sri Lanka and the Maldives has also been badly damaged. For Nepal and Bhutan the crisis is even more serious because this time of the year is peak season.

Officials say that at this time of the year Nepal can expect in excess of 40,000 tourists for the climbing season, about half of those from the US and Europe.

Many will not have arrived at pre-booked hotel rooms, meaning that hotels and guest houses in Kathmandu and Pokhara - which make their core income at this time of the year - will be without guests at a time of good weather and relative political stability.

At this time of the year tourism in the cooler north of India is also hugely popular.

According to figures from the Indian Directorate General of Civil Aviation (DGCA), 41,435 passengers have been affected by the flights crisis and it will take several days to clear the backlog.

All flights from India to London and Paris were cancelled on Monday, but Air India and Jet Airways resumed services to the US and Canada through Cairo and Athens respectively.

Many passengers whose visas have expired have been unable to leave the airport premises while several airlines are reported to have stopped paying for food and accommodation - arguing that they are not obliged to do so in the event of a natural calamity.

Meanwhile, exporters in Bangladesh, India, Pakistan and Sri Lanka have borne the brunt of exporting losses.

Huge consignments of garments in Dhaka and Colombo are waiting to be loaded onto aircraft. In Bangladesh an estimated 350,000kg of garments is stockpiled at the airport.

"We are worried that buyers may reject these shipments because they are so late," Bangladesh Garments and Manufacturers and Exporters Association President Abdus Salam Murshedy said.

Perishable exports from those countries in the region exporting products such as tea, spices and fish have also been badly hit.

Malaria, which poses a risk to 77 percent of the South-East Asian population and claims thousands of lives each year, needs more commitment and greater funds for successful interventions from donors and states, the World Health Organisation (WHO) said today.

Calling it a disease without borders, Samlee Plianbangchang, WHO regional director for South-East Asia said in a statement: "Increasing funding for effective interventions could significantly reduce malaria deaths in many countries".

"In WHO's South-East Asia Region, several countries have made good progress and demonstrated that support for malaria control is working," he said ahead of World Malaria Day on April 25.

For instance, Sri Lanka and South Korea have both reached the elimination stage in malaria. Bhutan has also made good progress and is now aiming towards malaria elimination. Reported malaria deaths have decreased significantly in Bangladesh, Thailand and Myanmar with improved case management, the statement said.

"Nevertheless, malaria is endemic in all the countries in the South-East Asian region, except the Republic of Maldives, and the situation is becoming increasingly difficult to control due to several technical and managerial problems," Plianbangchang added.

Said Jai P. Narain, director, communicable diseases, WHO: "Repeated focal epidemics are common due to socio-environmental changes. Many cases are due to population migration. There is no doubt that malaria adversely affects economic development, particularly the livelihood of the poor."

"It is well understood that to achieve the Millennium Development Goals (MDG) we have to reduce the impact of malaria significantly. But to do so, we need to address the social, economic, environmental and behavioural factors that contribute to the disease's occurrence and its impact," he added.

Plianbangchang said: "World Malaria Day is an opportunity to remind the world that though progress has been made in malaria control, this ancient disease remains a threat to humanity. It is time to increase our effort and work together to vanquish malaria once and for all."

According to WHO, there are approximately 2.5 million confirmed malaria cases reported annually, but the actual figures are much higher. Estimates are that there are at least 20-30 million cases and 100,000 deaths each year. (IANS)

Last week Europe found itself helpless against the wrath of Eyjafjallajökull No this is not a typing error on my part nor one made by the The Star Magazine. In fact this is the name of the volcano that erupted in Southern Iceland last week and caused havoc not just in its surrounding areas where hundreds of locals had to evacuate their homes but also throughout the whole of Europe. The volcanic ash spewing from Eyjafjallajökull was said to be drifting in a cloud extending up almost 30,000 feet and stretching across much of northern and central Europe. Sitting thousands of kilometers away in the UK, even we were not spared.

Mankind may have flown to the moon and back, made huge technological advances and scientific progress, in fact generally we may believe ourselves to be superior to all other living creatures but in spite of this when Mother Nature speaks, we listen. She does not discriminate against colour or creed or race or religion. Maybe every now and then we need a lesson in humility and this is just the latest in a long spate of natural disasters occurring across the globe in recent years. Though it must be said although it has caused widespread misery for travellers and passengers, I have not read or heard of any fatalities either in Iceland or elsewhere due to the eruption.

However, what has occurred is that the force of the eruption from Eyjafjallajökull, has carried the volcanic ash, upwards into the North Atlantic jet-stream that passes over the island near one of the world's busiest flight paths disrupting thousands of flights across the continent and leaving millions of people stranded, some unable to return home and others unable to leave for weddings, honeymoons, funerals, family reunions, or just holidays. The volcanic ash is said to be a potential threat to plane engines and in the UK and other countries all flights were cancelled for almost a week. To give you an idea, the Guardian reported there were an estimated 40,000 Britons stranded around the world and that is not taking into account any other nationals from other European countries!

Some people have taken extreme measures and taken any possible form of transport and made their way back. British actor John Cleese was said to have taken a taxi all the way from Norway back to the UK which cost him in the region of £3000 and Singer Whitney Huston ended up taking a public ferry to get to Ireland for a concert.

A group of students from my daughter's school were on a field trip in Greece and ended up having to stay indefinitely as they still have no idea when they will be allowed to fly back. There are numerous schools in the same predicament where students and teachers have been unable to return home. Needless to say that as with thousands of travellers, extra nights in a foreign country is an expense that not everyone can afford. Some schools have also had to close in the UK as many of their teachers (and students) are stranded abroad.

I have read about numerous transplant patients who have been unable to receive treatment as the donor organs need to be flown to the UK. This included a toddler who was waiting for a bone marrow transplant but was unable to get the necessary treatment as the donor cells had to come from Canada.

There was a story about a couple who had their dream wedding planned but had to get married over the internet as they could not be with each other on their big day.

This whole situation is unprecedented and according to the British Airline Pilots' Association (Balpa), "This is not the first volcanic eruption that there has been in the world, but it is the first time that there has been the closure of so much airspace, for such a prolonged period and with no end in sight".

Even when the flight ban is lifted, it is going to be a Herculean task to try and get the backlog of passengers to their rightful destinations.

It is quite daunting to think that in an economy which is still struggling to get back on its feet, this is yet another devastating blow considering that the flight ban is estimated to have cost the European travel industry more than £1 billion.

It is not just the travel industry that has been affected. In Kenya farmers are unable to export their flowers and vegetables to Europe which is affecting their livelihood. Other perishable produce such as cheeses are also not being shipped from within Europe. FedEx, DHL and other shippers are also grounded throughout much of the Europe. These are just a few examples of the extent of the chaos culminating from the volcanic eruption. The smoke plumes rising from Eyjafjallajökull have had far reaching consequences that extend beyond just its local inhabitants.

I think Eyjafjallajökull has shown us how helpless we are in the face of natural disasters and all the that can be done is for the European Governments to try and get people back home to their respective countries safely and begin to clean up the mess caused by the volcanic ash both metaphorically and literally...

The global environmental crisis requires replacing the existing capitalist model of production with one that promotes "selective degrowth" of the economy and the restricted and responsible exploitation of natural resources, according to European experts and activists.

The movement led by French economist Serge Latouche, Swiss political scientist Marie-Dominique Perrot, the Climate Justice Action (CJA) association and the monthly "La Décroissance" (Degrowth), among others, calls for different forms of consumption, the redistribution of wealth, and technology transfer towards developing countries.

Alexis Passadakis, CJA representative in Berlin, told Tierramérica that "the goals of this restructuring of the economy are the conservation of natural resources and the democratisation of their use in favour of the peoples who live in the zones of exploitation, like the Amazon or the Congo Basin."

He also said it is necessary "to break away from the market logic that characterises the current instruments for fighting climate change, such as trading the rights for emissions of greenhouse-effect gases."

This carbon market is intended to manage and redistribute greenhouse gas emissions, when its main objective should be to reduce emissions at the source, such as from transportation or energy production, both in the industrialised world and poor countries, he added.

CJA will participate in the World People's Conference on Climate Change and the Rights of Mother Earth, taking place Apr. 19-22 in Cochabamba, Bolivia. The association will lead a workshop on creating inter-continental connections between grassroots movements for climate justice.

Climate Justice Action is a federation of environmental groups and activists that joined forces in 2009 to coordinate actions during the United Nations Climate Summit in Copenhagen last December.

Its members share Perrot's critique of "sustainable development" and Latouche's proposal for selective economic degrowth, which in turn are based on thermodynamics theories applied to environmental analysis of the global economy, put forth in the 1970s by Romanian economist Nicholas Georgescu-Roegen.

In his book, "The Entropy Law and the Economic Process," published in 1971, the "founder" of the economy of degrowth utilised the concept of entropy and its related laws of thermodynamics to analyze the irreversible environmental degradation caused by the consumption of raw materials.

Following Georgescu-Roegen's argument and taking into account the worsening of the global ecological crisis, Latouche advocates economic degrowth as an indispensable condition for the survival of humanity.

"The logic of economic growth applied since the 18th century has led us to far surpass the planet's physical capacity," Latouche, professor emeritus of economics at the University of Paris-Sud 11, told Tierramérica.

As such, degrowth emerges as the only economically viable formula, not just in benefit of nature but also "to restore a minimum of social justice, without which the world is condemned to destruction," he said.

In parallel with degrowth, Latouche promotes values like frugality, sobriety and austerity - in other words, he calls for renouncing the uncontrolled consumerism of contemporary capitalist societies.

A notion shared by those who promote degrowth is the right to development of the emerging nations, such as China, India and Brazil. But they also share criticism of many of those governments' measures for promoting growth.

Passadakis emphasised reducing consumption of imported goods as a way to promote regional products. "In that sense, the CJA has adopted the Vía Campesina (an international peasant movement) programme to ensure food sovereignty of the people through encouraging consumption of what they themselves produce."

Passadakis suggested that activists promoting these alternatives should focus on two levels: the national level, to foment a vision that is ecological and entails economic degrowth, "for example, through opposition to new carbon-based power plants and in favour of reducing the workday in order to redistribute employment and income."

At the international level, Passadakis pointed out that for the negotiations leading to the 16th Conference of Parties (COP-16) to the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change, "our vision should be to prevent the worst... We have to convince the governments that the World Bank has no role to play in the fight against climate change."

Furthermore, "civil society and indigenous peoples should make it clear that they won't accept it if the conference approves the REDD plan as another market-based instrument that is supposedly useful against global warming," he said.

REDD (Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and Degradation) involves putting a monetary value on tropical forests in order to incorporate them into market mechanisms, just like the trade of emissions credits.

(*This story was originally published by Latin American newspapers that are part of the Tierramérica network. Tierramérica is a specialised news service produced by IPS with the backing of the United Nations Development Programme, United Nations Environment Programme and the World Bank.)

An opinion survey of Afghanistan's Kandahar province funded by the U.S. Army has revealed that 94 percent of respondents support negotiating with the Taliban over military confrontation with the insurgent group and 85 percent regard the Taliban as "our Afghan brothers".The survey, conducted by a private U.S. contractor last December, covered Kandahar City and other districts in the province into which Gen. Stanley A. McChrystal is planning to introduce more troops in the biggest operation of the entire war. Those districts include Arghandab, Zhari, rural Kandahar and Panjwayi.

Afghan interviewers conducted the survey only in areas which were not under Taliban control.

The decisive rejection of the use of foreign troops against the Taliban by the population in Kandahar casts further doubt on the fundamental premise of the Kandahar campaign, scheduled to begin in June, that the population and tribal elders in those districts would welcome a U.S.-NATO troop presence to expel the Taliban.

That assumption was dealt a serious blow at a meeting on Apr. 4 at which tribal elders from all over Kandahar told President Hamid Karzai they were not happy with the planned military operation.

An unclassified report on the opinion survey was published in March by Glevum Associates, a Washington-based "strategic communications" company under contract for the Human Terrain Systems programme in Afghanistan. A link to the report was first provided by the website Danger Room which reported the survey Apr. 16.

Ninety-one percent of the respondents supported the convening of a "Loya Jirga", or "grand assembly" of leaders as a way of ending the conflict, with 54 percent "strongly" supporting it, and 37 percent "somewhat" supporting it. That figure appears to reflect support for President Karzai's proposal for a "peace Jirga" in which the Taliban would be invited to participate.

The degree to which the population in the districts where McChrystal plans to send troops rejects military confrontation and believes in a peaceful negotiated settlement is suggested by a revealing vignette recounted by Time magazine's Joe Klein in the Apr. 15 issue.

Klein accompanied U.S. Army Captain Jeremiah Ellis when he visited a 17-year-old boy in Zhari district whose house Ellis wanted to use an observation post. When Ellis asked the boy how he thought the war would end, he answered, "Whenever you guys get out from here, things will get better. The elders will sit down with the Taliban, and the Taliban will lay down their arms."

The Kandahar offensive seems likely to dramatise the contrast between the U.S. insistence on a military approach to the Taliban control of large parts of southern Afghanistan and the overwhelming preference of the Pashtun population for initiating peace negotiations with the Taliban as Karzai has proposed.

Ironically, highlighting that contradiction in the coming months could encourage President Barack Obama to support Karzai's effort to begin negotiations with the Taliban now rather than waiting until mid-2011, as the U.S. military has been advocating since last December.

Obama told a meeting of his "war cabinet" last month that it might be time to start negotiations with the Taliban, but Defence Secretary Robert Gates and Secretary of State Hillary Clinton have opposed any move toward negotiations until Gen. McChrystal is able to demonstrate clear success in weakening the Taliban.

The Taliban ruling council has taken advantage of the recent evidence of contradictions between Pashtuns in Kandahar and the U.S. military over the Kandahar offensive by signaling in an interview with The Sunday Times of London that Taliban leader Mullah Omar is prepared to engage in "sincere and honest" talks.

In a meeting in an unidentified Taliban-controlled area of Afghanistan reported Sunday, two Taliban officials told the newspaper that Omar's aims were now limited to the return of sharia (Islamic law), the expulsion of foreigners and the restoration of security. It was the first major signal of interest in negotiations since the arrest of Mullah Omar's second in command, Mullah Baradar, in late January.

The report of the Glevum survey revealed that more people in Kandahar regard checkpoints maintained by the Afghan National Army (ANA) and Afghan National Police (ANP) and ANA and ANP vehicles as the biggest threat to their security while traveling than identified either Taliban roadside bombs or Taliban checkpoints as the main threat.

Fifty-eight percent of the respondents in the survey said the biggest threat to their security while traveling were the ANA and ANP checkpoints on the road, and 56 percent said ANA/ANP vehicles were the biggest threat. Only 44 percent identified roadside bombs as the biggest threat - the same percentage of respondents who regard convoys of the International Security Assistance Force - the NATO command under Gen. McChrystal - as the primary threat to their security.

Only 37 percent of the respondents regarded Taliban checkpoints as the main threat to their security.

In Kandahar City, the main target of the coming U.S. military offensive in Kandahar, the gap between perceptions of threats to travel security from government forces and from the Taliban is even wider.

Sixty-five percent of the respondents in Kandahar City said they regard ANA/ANP checkpoints as the main threat to their security, whereas roadside bombs are the main problem for 42 percent of the respondents.

The survey supports the U.S. military's suspicion that the transgressions of local officials of the Afghan government, who are linked mainly to President Karzai's brother, Ahmed Wali Karzai, the head of the Kandahar province council and the main warlord in the province, have pushed the population into the arms of the Taliban.

An overwhelming 84 percent of the respondents agreed that corruption is the main cause of the conflict, and two-thirds agreed that government corruption "makes us look elsewhere". That language used in the questionnaire was obviously intended to allow respondents to hint that they were supporting the Taliban insurgents in response to the corruption, without saying so explicitly.

More than half the respondents (53 percent) endorsed the statement that the Taliban are "incorruptible".

"Corruption" is a term that is often understood to include not only demands for payments for services and passage through checkpoints but violence by police against innocent civilians.

The form of government corruption that has been exploited most successfully by the Taliban in Kandahar is the threat to destroy opium crops if the farmers do not pay a large bribe. The survey did not ask any questions about opium growing and Afghan attitudes toward the government and the Taliban, although that was one of the key questions that Gen. Michael T. Flynn, the head of intelligence for Gen. McChrystal, had sought clarification of.

*Gareth Porter is an investigative historian and journalist specialising in U.S. national security policy. The paperback edition of his latest book, "Perils of Dominance: Imbalance of Power and the Road to War in Vietnam", was published in 2006.

BANGLADESH

Co-operative assists migrant Catholics

Father Patrick Gomes (extreme right) speaking during the program

A Dhaka-based co-operative society for internal migrants is helping Catholics from a northwestern parish overcome challenges they face.

The Mothurapur Multipurpose Co-operative Society (MMCS), for migrant Catholics from Mothurapur St. Rita’s Church in Rajshahi diocese, was formed in 2009 with the aim to raise savings among migrants and assist those who live and work scattered in the capital and adjacent cities.

About 200 migrant workers and students, along with two priests and a nun, attended a day-long program at the Church-run Bottomley Girls’ High School grounds in Tejgaon, Dhaka, on April 16.

The event featured speeches from guests, sharing of life experiences, open discussions and offered help to migrants facing challenges.

Participants, mostly uneducated people, told UCA News they face numerous problems while living and working in a non-Christian environment.

“At my workplace I couldn’t tolerate dishonesty. I had serious clashes with [some] non-Christians and eventually was forced to leave my job,” recalled Ronald Costa, 25, a garment factory worker.

“Living with and interacting with non-Christians, I forgot my family at home even though I was the only breadwinner. I eloped and married a non-Christian girl,” he said but added, “later I realized my mistake and came back to my family with help from the Church.”

Similarly, Sagor Costa, 28, who works at a garment factory near Dhaka said, “Once I became seriously ill and needed money for treatment. But I failed to get a loan because I was unfamiliar to the people around me.”

Lipon Rozario, 35, a cook, said it is painful that he and his family cannot go to church on Sundays because there are no churches where he lives and works.

However, organizers said they are ready to help migrants with religious, socio-economic and even legal assistance.

MMCS chairman Tarcisius Palma, told UCA News, “Our society will look for updates about the situation of migrants regularly.”

He said his organization will help unemployed workers find a job, provide emergency assistance in times of financial crisis, manage education for lower-income people, supply religious books, and arrange seminars, Masses and prayer meetings.

Father Patrick Gomes, pastor of Mothurapur parish, applauded this initiative for building solidarity among migrants.

“It helps people from different backgrounds and professions interact with each other and solve their problems,” said the priest who is also chancellor of Rajshahi diocese.

THE need for proper and, more particularly, corruption-free utilisation of funds in the education sector, as stressed by the education minister recently at a seminar, cannot be over-emphasised. And since, the sector is considered prone to corruption and the allocation to it is increasing by the year, especial attention is to be paid to see that the funds allocated in this sector are not misused or wasted.

It is worth mentioning that the teachers, especially in primary education, are not paid well and this important sub-sector is in a quandary, although timely distribution of textbooks has been a marked improvement. That brings to the fore the need for rationalisation of allocation with a focus around this level of education.

But before ensuring proper utilisation of educational funds, it is important to identify the loopholes through which the corruption takes place. And as in every other case of corruption, it is again the administration that handles educational funds should be brought under closer scrutiny.

So, as the first step towards ensuring a corruption-free education system, it would be necessary to overhaul the education administration from the ministry level down to the managing committee of the primary schools. Unless the managing committees are staffed with professional people instead of partisan elements, removal of corruption and other forms of malpractices will remain a far cry.

One cannot but agree with this lofty goal of the new education policy as conceived by the government and spelt out by the education minister. But how is the government going to achieve that?

It is only through addressing systemic lacunae in the educational administration that the slogan of eradicating educational corruption can be materialised.

Since corruption or mismanagement of funds starts at the top level of the administration, the first task would be to ensure that the leadership at the top cannot be touched by corruption or any partisan interest.

Obviously, mere exhortations and expression of pious wishes will not do. Appropriate institutional reforms will have to be carried out to make the system foolproof. There are volumes of recommendations awaiting implementation in this regard. The government should now prioritise the goal for a new, need-oriented, dynamic and corruption-free education system.

Christian leaders and students have taken part in a peaceful demonstration on the streets of Dhaka to condemn an attack on Catholics in Dinajpur diocese.

"It's so painful and shameful for a nation that fought for freedom and gained it in 1971," said Elder Michael A. Shah, 65, a veteran freedom fighter.

The Protestant and president of Bangladesh Christian Freedom Fighters' Family Welfare Society (BCFFFWS) was speaking to 200 Christian and non-Christian leaders, activists and students on April 17.

The half day demonstration took place at Central Language Martyrs' Memorial and was followed by a peaceful rally on the adjacent roads.

Among the participants were leaders and activists from Bangladesh Christian Association (BCA), Bangladesh Hindu Buddhist Christian Unity Council (BHBCUC) and members of Dhaka University Christian Students' Association (DUCSA).

They demanded proper investigation and punishment of culprits responsible for attacks on mostly tribal Catholic villagers of Boldipukur parish on March 20.

On that day, local Muslims armed with sticks, bricks and knives attacked villagers who had gathered around noon to watch construction work taking place on a piece of land the parish owns.

The attacks left about 50 people injured, with 10 in serious conditions. Some of the victims were women and children.

It is believed the attack was connected to a seven-year land dispute in which a local court gave a ruling favorable to the parish. Part of the Church land had previously been occupied by a Muslim-run high school.

In addition, false allegations in connection with the attack were made against 44 Catholic villagers, including two priests from the parish, said Nirmol Rozario, BCA general secretary.

Rozario, a Catholic and president of Christian Co-operative Credit Union Ltd of Dhaka, said he wanted the Home Minister to conduct a proper investigation. "We'll organize a larger movement to claim justice," he said.

Nirmol Chaterjee, a Hindu and secretary of BHBCUC, a minority rights forum said, "There is no community in the country that serves the country as dedicatedly as the Christians. Still they are attacked and it is a shame!"

"Those who were attacked and hospitalized are now living in the houses of relatives, fearing to stay in their homes," said Dominic Khalko, 24, a tribal Oraon Catholic.

"We are afraid to go ... even to the marketplace to buy and sell goods," said local tribal leader Lolit Kujur, 46.

Kujur said there were two days of police protection after the attacks, but that has been withdrawn.

Father Leo Desai, the local parish priest, said, "The fence we constructed around the land was destroyed the same day," adding that the sub-district chairman had urged them to "settle the dispute with negotiations."

Bangladesh Mohila Parishad holds a seminar preceding the budget every year to advance their concerns and propositions to stakeholders. Right's activists will inform you the significance of the national budget in advancing the agenda for gender equality. Budget allocates funds crucial for women's empowerment and in a world dominated by capitalism, finance takes precedence for addressing most issues; gender equality is no exception. So it was no surprise that the Mohila Parishad braved the scorching April heat to organise a seminar at the National Press Club amidst the all too familiar electricity crisis which hindered the proceedings of the otherwise well organised programme.

Dr. Fahmida Khatun, Senior Research Fellow at Centre for Policy Dialogue presented the main document of the conference. Dr. Khatun enlightened us on some key aspects that hinder gender equality, points that we often tend to overlook. The measurement of the Gross Domestic Product takes into account only the market value of products and services produced within a country and these facts belittle the contributions of women. While more men in our country are formally employed, many women spend almost eighteen hours doing household work. Household work is almost impossible to measure in terms of economic output. But we all know that without women's contribution to household work, family and society cannot function and economic activity would come to a standstill. When we view events in this light, women's contribution to the economy equals that of men. The statistics on the other hand, tell a different story. Women's under representation in economic activities is one of the root causes of their inability to achieve equal status in our society.

Dr. Khatun also emphasised on last year's budget where specific funds were allocated for four ministries- the ministry for education, health and family welfare, social welfare and food and disaster management. Previously, gender responsive budget policies were more or less non-existent. However in spite of such subsidies, women lag behind in higher education and tend to be the worst sufferers of natural disasters to name a few. Monitoring the funds allocated to the ministries is not properly implemented largely due to corruption among officials. These are barriers that have to be overcome for properly implementing gender responsive policies that shall ensure women's equality.

Ayesha Khanom, Chairperson of Bangladesh Mahila Parishad elaborated on an issue that might be the underlying factor in ensuring women's rights. We can work on gender responsive budgets, we can allocate as many funds required for women's empowerment but one fundamental change has to occur before gender equality can be achieved- the philosophy has to change. Otherwise there can be numerous seminars, and campaigns but if we do not think differently and learn to respect women, the desired objectives cannot be achieved.

In a bid to involve the male population in the movement for gender equality Mohila Parishad invited men as both the special and the chief guest - renowned academics Dr. Mostafa Kamal Mujeri and Mohammeed Forashuddin. Dr. Mujeri called for proper implementation of women friendly policies that are outlined in the national budget. Md. Forashuddin complained about the sorry state of female garments workers who contribute more than any other segment of the population in the exports sector of the economy but receive little in return. He also said that whenever he spoke about the low salaries of garments workers, some industrialists rebuke him and often asks why he has to care for them so much.

Bangladesh Mahila Parishad took a novel and I might add noble initiative by inviting an ordinary garments worker to take part in the conference. She sat besides the other speakers of the conference. Most members of Mahila Parishad come from middle or upper-middle-class backgrounds. However, if the organisation is serious about striving for women's rights, they must be more serious about involving more unprivileged women who bear the brunt of social inequality. This particular woman earns TK 600- 1000 per month for working from 6am- 10pm. Begum was understandably nervous as she never been in front of a camera before. This was met by jeers from some sections of the crowd. It is very sad that even in a conference for the rights of women, there are a few people who are not cultured enough to treat deprived women with respect.

The other speakers at the conference were Farah Kabir, Country Director of Actionaid Bangladesh, Farida Parvin, Member of Parliament, and Sanjida Khanom, Member of Parliament.

Textbook woes that have consistently plagued our education sector for years still continue to remain a persisting problem as this year too a large number of secondary school students will have to sit for their first term exams without full supply of textbooks, so says a New Age report of Monday.

The Awami League government after assuming power decided to distribute free textbooks among the students of class I to class IX earlier, which used to be up till class V. Their decision was indeed a laudable one; yet it was a gigantic task for the authorities to meet. It required close monitoring and inspection from the authorities concerned all the year round. The government, as has appeared, has failed in the task even though the education minister assured the people from time to time that the printing of textbook would be done on time and books would reach the respective institutions before the classes of the 2010 commenced. Now with four months into the academic year, the respective ministry is yet to fulfil its pledge in line with the academic calendar prepared by the education ministry. More than 18000 schools throughout the country will have their first term exam held with a significant number of students ill prepared due to non-availability of textbooks by the time.

Failing to distribute textbooks on time has become almost a yearly woe for us. All the successive governments in some way or other have failed to provide the educational institutions throughout the country with textbooks at the beginning of academic years. As a result thousands of students' academic activities get hampered and the activities in educational institutions get affected. Each and every government pledged to solve the problem of textbook distribution, yet everyone failed eventually or failed to look into the real problem and eradicate it in a constructive manner.

Years of accumulated ailments, corruption and negligence by the relevant authorities have pushed this problem so far that it has now become an annual woe. While there is a constant worry over the timely publication and distribution of textbooks, there is the added problem that a number of these textbooks find their way to the local markets where these are sold commercially. Then there is also an allegation against the government that it does not float the tender in time. Another reason that usually makes textbook crisis all the more acute is the government's irresponsible outlook and slack monitoring in handling the so-called group of publishers and printers entrusted with the responsibility of printing textbooks. It's been alleged that more often than not the government assigns those with the task who could grease the palm of the authorities concerned sufficiently enough.

The government needs to investigate into all these allegations if they are at all sincere in resolving the textbook crisis. But first and foremost they need to take urgent steps so that all the remaining educational institutions receive textbooks as early as possible. Once the task is complete, they need to come up with mechanisms to clear the hurdles in the way of smooth and easy availability of textbooks for the students and plan for the next year as early as possible. The society and the government are duty-bound to make arrangements and provide facilities for all to acquire basic education. And they must discharge their duty with utmost seriousness. There are no two ways about it.

THE response of the successive governments to any damning report on Bangladesh - be it on corruption or human rights violation - by any international organisations has been somewhat typical. More often than not, whenever such a report comes out, one of the first things that the government - be it led by an apolitical individual or a political party - does is to question its methodology or source of information. And, of course, there is the sadly familiar practice of blaming whatever has gone wrong on its predecessor. In respect of the '2009 Human Rights Report: Bangladesh', released on March 11 by the Bureau of Democracy, Human Rights and Labour of the US state department, the incumbent Awami League-led government's response seems to have been all these and a bit more.

According to a report front-paged in New Age on Monday, the home affairs ministry has not only questioned the reports of the local human rights organisations, which, needless to say, constitute along with media reports and the bureau's own investigations the source of information for the human rights report, but also asked these organisations not to term deaths in 'crossfire' or 'encounter' or 'gunfights' as extrajudicial killings by members of the police, Rapid Action Battalion and other security and law enforcement agencies of the state. While the US remains the topmost violator of human rights, at home and abroad, its political, military and economic mettle usually lends weight to whatever report its government agencies come up with and thus puts pressure on wrongdoing countries and governments, to adopt remedial measures. Regrettably, in the AL-led government's case the pressure seems to have had a dramatically different result; it seems to have espoused a repressive tact to cover up a repressive act. The reaction, however, is hardly surprising.

Although the Awami League did condemn vociferously extrajudicial killing when in opposition and pledged to put an end to such killings in its election manifesto, the AL-led government's resolve in this regard proved to be somewhat short-lived - the first couple of months or so into its tenure. As the number of extrajudicial killings increased, the government shifted its stance from 'zero tolerance' to feeble justification to outright denial, betraying in the process its inability and/or unwillingness to rein in the trigger-happy members of the law enforcement agencies. Now, it seems, the government wants the local human rights organisations to chant its mantra of denial - 'see no evil, hear no evil, speak no evil'. One wonders how ludicrous it can get.

The government's apparent attempt at browbeating the local human rights organisations into not terming deaths in 'crossfire' or 'encounter' or 'gunfight' extrajudicial killings in their reports tends to underline, once again, its inability and/or unwillingness to rein in the trigger-happy members of the police, RAB and other law enforcement and security agencies of the state. It could also be construed as its inherent inclination to repression as a means to cover up its failure. Be that as it may, the government needs to realise that whatever tact the government employs, be it browbeating or arm-twisting, the politically conscious and democratically oriented sections of society will continue to condemn extrajudicial killing, which is a major impediment to establishment of the rule of law and protection and promotion of human rights. Hence, if it really wants to see no damning report on human rights violation, it needs to go after the perpetrators of such violations, and not those who merely report them.

Primordiality: Primordiality is not a state of timelessness, but of time itself. A nation, when imagined, the core concept of primordiality is likely to date back to history of mankind ranging from homo habilis to homo erectus to homo sapiens to the present state.

As the human race started to spread and develop, variations also occurred in terms of ethnicity, culture and geoterritory.

In recent years we have seen integration and disintegration of nation states in keeping with the conceptualisation evolved through process of time in progressions of primordiality that has taken place over a long and extended time scale. Examples of East and West Germany as integration and USSR as disintegration into the original cluster of states are the cases in point. What is emphasised here is that the individual characteristics of the nation-state and its independence must stay put as they are and similarly nation-states own characteristics and independence must have to be adhered to in the case of SAARC states.

Human rights and Fundamental Freedoms: In the Articles 26 to 47 of our Constitution fundamental rights have been meticulously conceptualised.

In reality, the fundamental rights in most cases turn turtle for more of violations than of observance.

The ideas that 'rights are prior to the state' and that every citizen must enjoy certain inalienable and fundamental rights which even the state authorities can not or should not encroach upon are not new phenomena, they are as old as humanity itself. The Doctrine of National Law has always been enriched by documents like the Magna Carta of 1215, the Petition Rights of 1628, the Habeas Corpus Act of 1679, the Bill of Rights of 1689 in the UK, the USA Declaration of Independence of 1776 and the French Declaration of the Rights of Man in 1789. International recognition and status through the Declaration of Human Rights adopted by the United Nations in 1948, the European Convention on Human Rights entered into force in 1953 have thus become guiding factors.

The Great Charter of Magna Carta of 1215 is the most famous, if not the most effective of those restraints upon political authority which is the essence of constitutionalism. The Magna Carta Charter was wrested by the Barons from the King to secure advantages for themselves. It was in no sense a people's charter, but subsequent traditions transformed it into a Charter of English liberties. That no freeman might be arrested, imprisoned, dispossessed, outlawed or exiled, or harassed in any other way save by lawful judgment of the law of the land provided a cause for the democratic interpretation and application than its sponsors might have thought.

The Great Charter of Magna Carta did lay down two fundamental principles. These, when derived, translated and conceptualized in today's terms, will be tantamount to the following:

First, there exist in the state certain laws so necessarily as the basis of the political organisations of the time that the Government must obey them.

Secondly, even if the Government refuses to obey these laws, the nation has the right to force it to do so, even to the point of overthrowing the Government and putting another in its place.

Before we proceed further, the in-depth knowledge as to the aspects of civil liberties is to be comprehended. The first question is to determine what is meant by civil liberties. There is a great deal of terminological inconsistency in this area, with a number of terms frequently used - human rights, civil liberties, fundamental rights - often referring to the same thing. To add to the confusion, many of these often referred to rights or liberties are neither rights nor liberties at all, but merely aspirations or standards to be applied or followed. The rights and liberties may be divided into two kinds. On the one hand, there are social and economic rights - the right to employment, healthcare, housing and income maintenance during periods of ill-health, unemployment or old age. On the other hand, there are the classical civil and political rights - the right to liberty of the person, the right to form the above are seldom made clear, and seldom the illiterate accused understands the implications. In reality most confessional statements are obtained under duress.

Unfortunately Bangladesh has so far failed to appropriately and adequately amend the unkind Act V of 1898 (Cr. PC 1898), though over 100 years have passed by and meanwhile substation amendments and modifications to contain violation of human right have taken root in the UK through Police and Criminal Evidence Act (PACE) 1984 and further improvements made thereafter. Violations of human rights in Bangladesh have been taking place here and there, every nook and cranny, every now and then by all the successive Governments, law enforcing agencies, commercial and industrial enterprises, families and individuals at a rampant scale mainly due to, inter alia, policies and interferers and interferences of the Governments, ill-equipped and inadequately trained Law Enforcing Agencies, lack or absence of water-tight binding laws and abuse in implementation so on and so forth.

Human Rights Convention: Salient features of UN Human Rights Declaration: The General Assembly of the United Nations adopted and proclaimed in 1948 the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. Following this historic act the UN called upon all Member Countries to publicise the text of the Declaration and to cause it to be disseminated, displayed, read and expounded principally in schools and other educational institutions, without distinction based on the political status of countries or territories. The Universal Declaration of Human Rights consists of 30 articles as a common standard of achievement for all peoples and all nations, to the end that every individual and every organ of society, keeping this Declaration constantly in mind, shall strive by teaching and education to promote respect for these rights and freedoms and by progressive measures, national and international, to secure their universal and effective recognition and observance, both among the peoples of the Member States themselves and among the peoples of the territories under their jurisdiction. The theme is 'All human rights for all".

Regional Convention (of European Union Human Rights Convention): While the UN's Declaration of Human Rights to protect rights and freedoms globally has proved to be a slow process, the protection of human rights on the regional level among groups of states sharing common ideas and standards has been more effective. Thus one of the most highly regarded of the regional Conventions for the protection of human rights is the European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR) of 1953. The provisions in the form of 18 articles and 8 protocols in the ECHR highlight various issues.

The European Court of Human Rights is an international judicial body, established under the European Convention on Human Rights of 1953 to monitor respect of human rights by states. The European Convention on Human Rights, or formally named Convention for the Protection of Human Rights and Fundamental Freedoms, is a Convention adopted by the Council of Europe. All 47 member states of the Council of Europe are parties to the Convention. Applications against contracting parties for human rights violations can be brought before the Court by other states, other parties or individuals.

SAARC was mooted in 1980 by President Shahid Zia and finally it came into being in 1985. However, the progress of SAARC has hitherto been not much. As a matter of fact it has moved at a snail's pace.

The contributing factors of slow progress may be found, inter alia, in the following: the factors, both economic and security concerns, equally contributed in the establishment of SAARC in 1985; the Charter of the South Asian Association for Regional Cooperation as initially signed by the seven member states also discarded issues of bilateral interest upon insistence by India.

Hence, denial of bi-lateral issues increased bi-lateral insecurity, antagonism, distrust and misgivings. Inter-state conflicts and disputes have thus been hammering the region not so infrequently.

The area of mistrust has now spread to encompass apprehension of dominance by the bigger and powerful member states to the smaller member-states on account of security as well as trade and economic domination, lack of exercise in equity towards sharing of common natural resources (e.g. Berlin Rules on International Water Resources, 2004, asserts the right of access of every individual to the water to sustain life without harming the ecology, even in times of war regardless of location of the water and whether or not the water source is shared.), rampant indiscriminate killings across the borders by the border security forces and so no.

While fear of domination by the bigger states appears to be the major apprehension of the smaller states, those smaller states, in turn, should also show depth of mutual cooperation towards forging ahead greater interests.

What is needed is a synchronisation of "big needs a big heart as small needs to look beautiful" to effectively benefit member states of SAARC.

To strengthen and cement the cooperation in the arena and umbrella let the mistrust, misgivings, misunderstandings and misconceptions be done away with and let there trust come ever droppings from the blue.

The incidence, impacts and perceptions of human rights may occur and be felt at variable gear from country to country, race to race, culture to culture, region to region, society to society and so forth, let the whole gamut be put in a nut shell to project through the following opposite poles of perceptions.

English Poet Samuel Johnson's - "Liberty is, to the lowest rank of every nation, little more than the choice of working or starving", or

"For, my stomach was full of food,/ The beatings, all that meted out, my back withstood."

"Sparrow whilst boasts of its pakka habitat,/Prides a weaver-bird in its self-made tat"

The above have been mentioned briefly in order to show the great extent and magnitude of diversity in a concise way as short as possible.

In order to cool and calm down the volatile irritations, conflicts and problems, and henceforth strengthen and harmonise SAARC, the paramount precondition may be to bring about a catalyst like in the format and framework of EUHR Convention and European Court of Human Rights through immediate steps to institute SAARC Human Rights Convention and SAARC Court of Human Rights.

This may, inter alia, peg down many loopholes to help take care of terrorism to a degree, to enable in bringing about an environ of non-aggression and wide range of other areas. Since the issue brooks no delay, the proposal to institute SAARC Human Right Convention along with SAARC Court of Human Rights may be included in the agenda of the upcoming Summit of SAARC to be held from 28th to 29th April, 2010 up in the high altitude of Thimpu, the capital of Bhutan, though much way down the peak altitude of the Everest, albeit with an expectation of higher tones of hopes and aspirations.

As part of a series assessing whether Bangladesh is on track to meet the UN Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) by 2015, the BBC's Alastair Lawson discovers that it is not hard to find children working on the streets - even though achieving universal primary education is one of the seven key targets.
Meandering through some of the thickest traffic jams in Asia, Mohammed Shahin, 11, sells cigarettes to motorists in Dhaka.
He works an eight-hour day six days a week, earning about $2 a day.
Mohammed is one of the 1.5 million children in the country estimated by the UN never to have enrolled in school.
Early each morning his father - a bicycle rickshaw puller - drops him off in the busy streets of central Dhaka from the Mogh Bazaar slum where the family lives.

'No sympathy'
"It's a tough job," Mohammed tells me. "I have to concentrate hard. If I don't watch out I will either be run over or motorists will take the cigarettes - which I sell individually - without paying for them."

“ I feel desperate about it, but I have no choice but to send my son to work ”
Mohammed Olil, Mohammed's father
It's not difficult to see just how tough his job is. I caught up with him in the middle of a busy dual carriageway, negotiating his way around the hazards of the road.
These included vast trucks with bald tyres belching out smoke, taxis notorious for their scant regard for pedestrians and auto-rickshaws which show no sympathy should any hapless person get in their way.
"I don't really get much thanks for doing this job," Mohammed said. "If people disagree with the amount I am charging them for their cigarettes, they will have no hesitation in hitting me."
Mohammed has become adept at avoiding being hit by cars and by humans.
It's a tough enough job for any adult to do, let alone for a child aged 11. Yet Mohammed is seldom to be seen without a smile on his face even though he is a child trapped in an adult's job.
Mohammed's father, Mohammed Olil, says the family would struggle to survive without his son's earnings - which are only marginally less than the amount he earns as a rickshaw puller.
"His mother - my wife - is sick," Mr Olil said.
"I have two daughters and his baby brother to care for and without the money he earns we would not have enough to eat."

Hazardous conditions
The economics of the family show just how pushed Mohammed's family is to make ends meet.
Mr Olil has to pay 50 taka (70 cents) a day out of his 200 taka ($2.80) earnings to hire his rickshaw in addition to paying 1,000 taka ($14.40) a month to rent their home in Mogh Bazaar.
"I feel desperate about it, but I have no choice but to send my son to work. It's a matter of survival.
"I used to beat him up when he didn't go to school but felt really guilty about doing so, especially when he was pleading with me to allow him to go to work.
"We moved to Dhaka from Bhola district four years ago to make more money and that is what we are doing."
UN figures show that millions of children like Mohammed are forced to work - sometimes in equally hazardous conditions - to help support themselves and their families.
As Mr Olil explains: "It's a very difficult life. Its hurts our feeling when overweight people get onto our rickshaw and won't pay their fares.
"If I had an opportunity I would love to run my own business so that my son would not have to work."
Dhaka UN Development Programme spokesman Sakil Faizullah says that most working children cannot afford the time to attend regular schooling.
"Because these girls and boys do not have access to education, they become trapped in low-skilled, low-income jobs, which further push them into the vicious cycle of inter-generational poverty," he said.
"Many occupations involve working in hazardous conditions that endanger the child's physical or mental health and moral development."

THE EIGHT MILLENNIUM DEVELOPMENT GOALS
* Eradicate extreme hunger and poverty
* Achieve universal primary education
* Promote gender equality and empower women
* Reduce child mortality
* Improve maternal health
* Combat HIV/Aids, malaria and other diseases
* Ensure environmental sustainability
* Develop a global partnership for development

The Urban Health Survey 2006 of the National Institute of Population Research and Training tends to quantify what conscious and conscientious sections of society have known and talked about all along. According to a report published in New Age on Saturday, the survey has found that 49 per cent of urban slum-dwellers have no access to health-care services, only 15 per cent use sanitary latrines and more than 58 per cent depend on exterior sources of water. The survey report also shows that fertility rate is higher in the slums at 2.46 than other city areas (1.85). These are just one side of the story.

The life of the urban slum population is marked by multiple paradoxes. First, while their income is generally not adequate even for two square meals a day, they often pay more than other sections of the urban populace for water and electricity. Second, while they live in unhygienic conditions, as the NIPORT study points out, they have very limited access to even primary healthcare services. Third, while the many slums in urban areas are horribly overcrowded, the fertility rate in the slums, again as pointed out in the urban health survey, is higher than any other urban areas. The list may go on and on.

The slum dwellers are also often the subject of apathy and antipathy of the ruling quarters. Whatever goes wrong in the cities, their fingers are invariably pointed at the slums. Rise in crime, spread of drugs, so on and so forth. It is not to say though that the slums are not used as havens by criminals and drug peddlers and that some slum dwellers do not engage in crime and drug peddling. Indeed, they are and they do; however, in most cases, the retribution that the slum dwellers face as a whole is often woefully disproportionate. While petty criminals and small-time drug-peddlers end up facing the wrath of the law enforcers, the crime and drug lords who actually use the slums as conduits more often than not stay clear of the supposedly long arm of the law.

Moreover, the slum dwellers routinely become the first victims of the whims and wishes of the ruling quarters as well as the influential people of society. Successive governments have displayed a curious inclination to undertake beautification of the city as one of their first tasks upon assumption office. Needless to say, it is the slums that bear the brunt of such beautification exercises. When the authorities initiate drives to free government lands from encroachment, again the slum dwellers pay the price. Then, of course, there are the curiously regular outbreaks of fire in slums, which many suspect are actually acts of arson to facilitate land grabbing.

Be that as it may, the NIPORT report highlights an issue that involves the fate of not only the slum dwellers but also the residents of the city as a whole. If such a significant section of the city population remains out of the primary health-care coverage, it is bound to affect the overall public health of the city. Needless to say, it is the government that needs to play the central role in this regard, if not as the service provider, then certainly as the facilitator of services.

Billboards at strategic points of the city, 4,000 booklets in English and Khmer on sex tourism, publishing the phone numbers dedicated to the protection of children, training for 50 managers of hotels and guest houses and 100 drivers of tuk tuk (typical of the area mostly used by tourists) on guidelines to combat sex tourism...These are just some of the tools to end the silence over a drama lived out by hundreds of street children, orphaned or responsible for supporting their family economically. Thanks to the organization “Intervita,” already working in Cambodia to help child victims of sexual exploitation, a new program of awareness and information is now underway. In addition to strict local regulations, in fact, the most effective instrument in combatting this serious problem is the active involvement of tourists, local authorities, and the population. In 2010, in collaboration with ECPAT Cambodia, Intervita will raise awareness among 20% of international tourists visiting the country and 10% of Cambodians through a network of 100 drivers of tuk tuk, introducing into the Cambodian tourism industry a code of ethics against sexual exploitation, and strengthen the child protection tools that already exist in Cambodia, in particular the services of telephone "hotlines" to report cases of exploitation. Moreover, in the city of Battambang, Intervita maintains a reception and recovery center for child victims of human trafficking and street children at risk for exploitation. Here, a safe haven is offered to around 120 children between the ages of 5 and 18, who are offered care and living conditions appropriate to their growth and, when the family is a safe place to reintegrate the children, the beneficiaries project also seeks to economically support parents, as well. In Svay Rieng, the organization provides professional training to youth over 16 years at risk of sexual exploitation, helping them to find a job or start a small business. (AP)

The dam will rise to 3,260 meters, on Yarlung Zangbo River (Brahmaputra, for Indians) using special materials and techniques. But India notes that the river is essential to the lives of millions of people and calls for assurances that Beijing does not seem to want to give. For that zone a war was fought that has never officially ended.

China has admitted that it is building a dam on the Yarlung Zangbo River. The river originates in Tibet, but then flows into India where it is called Brahmaputra and is a major water source for millions of people. Moreover, the dam will be built in the area near the border disputed between the two countries.

China outlined the project this month, in a private meeting with Indian Foreign Minister S M Krishna. The dam will be built in Zangmu at a height of 3,260 meters, in the Shannan Prefecture in Tibet and nearby four other dams will also be built in the valley between Jiacha and Sangro counties. Official sources said yesterday that the overall capacity of the dams will be "several times" more than the gigantic Three Gorges Dam. Because of its altitude, the area is often subjected to extreme weather conditions and special materials and technologies will be used, developed by the Chinese space agency. For example special cement made at the laboratories of the Xichang satellite launch Centre.

Beijing plans to draw from the Dangmu dam no less than 500 megawatts of electricity to meet the growing demand for Guangdong and Hong Kong and sell it to neighbouring countries like Myanmar, Thailand, Bangladesh, Laos and Cambodia.

India is however very worried about the plan, fearing a decrease in the flow of the river water in India and the destruction of the Himalayas ecosystem. Above all the agriculture and industry of the north-eastern states of India depend heavily on the Brahmaputra river.

In addition, with this project China will directly control more than 90 thousand square meters of land the sovereignty of which is disputed between India and China, who fought a war that has never formally ended and who still station armed forces in the area. China responds that the dam will allow it to develop clean energy and reduce carbon dioxide emissions resulting from coal fired power plants.

Experts say that, however, Beijing has not responded to Indian concerns over the decline of the Brahmaputra river. Indian sources have observed that even if the dam is located in Chinese territory, however, international law provides that the work should not diminish the course of the river. Similarly, Beijing has never responded to the concerns of Thailand, Laos, Vietnam and Cambodia over the Chinese dams on the Mekong River in Yunnan.

Two lawyers face the permanent revocation of their license because they defended activists, political prisoners and members of Falun Gong. The police place under house arrest eight activists, arrest 20. Last year, 18 other legal staff have had their licenses revoked.

About 200 people, including lawyers and activists demonstrated today in front Municipal Bureau of Justice in Beijing (Umgp) in support of two lawyers who face the permanent revocation of their license. The two, Liu Wei and Tang Jitian are targeted for defending human rights activists, political prisoners and members of Falun Gong. If the waiver is applied they will never be able to practise law again. The Umgp have long asked for the removal of the two from the bar. Today, a hearing was held, but so far there has been no verdict.

The charge relates to a trial held on April 27 2009 in Luzhou (Sichuan), during which the two left the courtroom in protest against the conduct of Chief Justice and other judges.

The justice system in China must obey the Party and its decisions - especially those against political prisoners - are decided before trials even begin.

While the two defended themselves within the Umgp, the demonstration outside the building was under tight police control. At least eight lawyers and activists could not participate because they were forced under house arrest today. Among them: Li Fangping, Li Xiongbing, Li Subin, Li Heping. Twenty protesters were arrested.

Faced with corruption and violence that dominates Chinese society, many people turn to lawyers who, defying the orders of the party seek to have the law enforced. For some years real groups of "human rights lawyers" have arisen, willing - often for free - to defend people who have suffered injustices.

As the cases continue to increase in number, the government sees no other way to stop them other than by revoking their licenses. In 2009, in addition to Liu Wei and Tang Jitian, 18 other lawyers have had their license revoked. Among those who have suffered the measure are famous personalities such as Zheng Enchong and Gao Zhisheng.

New acquittals for people who attacked Christians in Orissa by Nirmala Carvalho

Fr Edward Sequeira, a Verbite priest who saw anti-Christian violence firsthand and was almost burnt to death during the 2008 pogrom, tells AsiaNews that a big organisation is working against Christians. He is certain that the Church will return to the areas where its institutions have been laid waste. The archbishop of Cuttack-Bhubaneshwar says the Church is ready to appeal the acquittals.

A court in Orissa acquitted five Hindu extremists charged with attacking Christians in Orissa and ordered the release of 17 more for lack of evidence. Speaking to AsiaNews, Verbite priest Edward Sequeira said, "Kandhamal is still simmering with communal tension and hostilities. Many of our people have not gone back as they are afraid that they will inevitably be forced to go back to Hinduism." However, the clergyman, who experienced firsthand the violent pogrom when he was almost burnt alive (see Nirmala Carvalho, "Fr Edward, survivor of arson in Orissa: the Hindu radicals are terrorists," in AsiaNews, 4 September 2009), said that he was "going back to his lepers" because "they need the love of the Church." Currently, the priest lives in a parish on the outer edge of the district.

"Thousands of people are still displaced, living in shanties outside the district," he said. "Many people have had to go to other states. Getting back to normal appears difficult. Housing is a priority but construction is rather slow. Churches or other facilities are not being rebuilt, and security remains a big issue for Christians."

At present, health reasons have kept Fr Sequeira away from his community. "I am here under medical advice as my lungs are not improving and my breathing problem still persists," he said. However, "I am also living here in secret" because of "threats to my life."

Still, "I make unannounced visits to the leper colony in Padampur," he added, because "I am willing to risk everything for the lepers; they are the people who most need our services. They are the poorest of the poor and are ostracised by mainstream society. Therefore, I often visit in order to provide them with whatever services I can offer. With love and dignity, the Church has always helped them, all of whom are Hindu."

As for the most recent verdicts, he said, "In my case, I saw my attackers get out on bail. It must be said but there is a big organisation, powerful, violent and hostile to Christians. It is understandable that witnesses might have second thoughts or become hostile towards the victims. These people have to live every day alongside the people they have to accuse. Other witnesses are simply dismissed by the courts because they are poor or come from the low castes. Even in the courtroom, people can be threatened by rightwing nationalist extremists."

"We are deeply concerned about the high rate of acquittals in the Fast Track Courts," said Mgr Cheenath, archbishop of Cuttack-Bhubaneshwar. "Church authorities are studying the judgments and investigating into the frequent acquittals. On the merits of our findings, we will appeal to the High Court." Altogether, some "3,232 complaints were filed in various police stations in Kandhamal. Of these, the police registered cases in only 832 instances." Making matters worse, "the whole atmosphere inside and outside the court is communalized".

"The credibility of those tasked with carrying out investigations is questionable," said Sajan K Gorge, president of the Global Council of Indian Christians. "Rightwing ideology is deeply ingrained in local officials. Only 89 people have been convicted so far, against as many as 251 who have been acquitted and set free for lack of witnesses."

Samandar Singh killed a nun in 1995. After that, he converted to Christianity and today he is a different man. He helps Tribals and for him Sister Rani's family has become his own. Sadly, he agrees that a climate of anti-Christian hatred is currently sweeping across India. He urges his compatriots to see the truth in the presence of missionaries in the country.

"I accept full responsibility for my heinous murder of Sr Rani Maria. I cannot say that I was instigated, because my own hands stabbed her repeatedly and for this I will regret my actions till the day I die," Samandar Singh told AsiaNews. He is the man who on 25 February 1995 stabbed to death Sister Rani Maria. The diocese of Indore, where she worked, has ended the diocesan leg of the inquiry into her death. Now the Vatican will have to decide whether she died a martyr of the faith or not.

Whatever the outcome of that will be, Sister Rani Maria has already accomplished a miracle. Her assassin has repented and has become a member of her family. "In my own small way," he said, "I try to follow her example, helping those who are less fortunate than me, like Tribal Christians and all those who are marginalised."

After his arrest in connection with the nun's murder, he was tried and sentenced to prison, where he spent 11 years. During that time, his wife divorced him and his first son died.

Behind prison walls, he began plotting how he could take revenge against the man who pushed him to kill the nun. But he also received a visit from another nun, Sister Selmi Paul, who happened to be the murdered nun's own sister.

She hugged him and called him brother. He was profoundly touched by it, so much so that from this embrace his journey of repentance began. He gave up plans for revenge and accepted the sorrow caused by the murder.

Eventually, Samandar war released because of a petition signed by Sister Rani's family, the provincial of the Clarist congregation and the bishop of Indore.

When his release was slow in coming, a delegation went to see the local governor to plead his case. "Only you Christians can truly forgive," the latter said. "You are a great example. Go, I shall do all I can to get him released."

Once he was free again, Samandar began to treat Sister Rani's family as his own. "I regularly visit her tomb," he said. "For me, it is like a sanctuary of peace and strength."

"I want everyone to know that Christians work to make India great. The missionaries give us hope through their service, which is to make us a strong and independent people."

He does realise though that India's rightwing hate Christians. "Before they drove me to kill, I heard so many hate-filled lies about the missionaries and Christians. They used to tell me that Christians converted people through tricks and that their work with the poor was only for show. Now however I can say without a doubt that the missionaries do nothing but work and help the poor and the marginalised. They have not secret design, other than serve God."

“The Role and Identity of the Priest in Iraq Today: this was the theme of a recent meeting organized by the Babel College for Philosophy and Theology, the Chaldean Seminary in Ankawa, Erbil.

The seminar, which lasted for three days, was attended by 170 people including bishops, priests, and laity, as well as seminarians. Opening the sessions was Cardinal Emmanuel Delly III, Chaldean Patriarch of Baghdad, promoter of the initiative, who explained how the meeting intended to provide useful tools for analysis and new pastoral suggestions to Iraqi priests, during the Year for Priests proclaimed by Benedict XVI.

The key issue - a priest present at the seminar told Fides - was that of the ministerial priesthood, examined in a human, spiritual, theological, and biblical sense, and all lived within the reality of Iraq today, which has among its most pressing challenges to face: violence, forced emigration of Christians, and the critical security conditions of Christian communities.

The conference also stressed the importance for the Church as a whole to accompany the priests during their journey of formation and during their pastoral life, as every priest needs to feel the community's support in the form of concrete aid and prayer.

The Chaldean assembly, upon the completion of the sessions, recommended organizing such a seminar every two years and to prepare and propose an annual retreat for the clergy. Furthermore, in order to promote and protect the seeds of vocations, they also hope to organize a spiritual encounter for Catholic families, so boys and young men can become aware of and discern possible vocations to the priesthood. (PA)

As he drops his last purification tablet into a pail of swirling, murky water, Sergio, 26, stares out toward the desert. Recently deported from Arizona, where he has a young child and where he has lived for the majority of his life, he explains, "I have to return, it's my home."

Lacking official U.S. documentation, Sergio, like other undocumented migrants is unable to get a driver's license. Using a fake ID, he was originally deported to Mexico after being pulled over in a routine traffic stop and jailed for four months.

In fluent English, he explains that immediately upon his deportation he attempted to cross the desert but was captured by U.S. border patrol agents and jailed for another eight months. He has no family ties in Mexico's frontier states, he explains, his life is in Arizona.

On Apr. 13, the harshest anti-immigrant bill in the country, SB 1070, passed through Arizona's state legislature. Criminalising people for not having proper identification, the bill requires police to check the legal status of anyone they suspect of being undocumented.

Just two days later, a huge operation with 800 agents and officers from nine federal and local law enforcement agencies arrested 50 people working in the shuttle service sector, in what U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) officials described as including "unprecedented cooperation with Mexico's Secretariade Securidad Publica", in an investigation that has "implicated high-level members of human smuggling organisations".

On the same day, members of the anti-immigrant Tea Party organisation held a few rallies in Arizona's Maricopa County. Former Republican congressman Tom Tancredo blamed undocumented migrants for committing murder and pointed to the case of an unsolved killing last month of an Arizona rancher named Rob Krentz.

"The blood of those people is on the hands of every politician who runs a sanctuary city," said Tancredo, speaking in Tempe.

On Pacifica Radio, Isabel Garcia, co-chair of the Tucson-based Coalition for Human Rights, said that she "put the onus and blame on the federal government, in addition to the state government, for funneling and purposely creating Arizona as the laboratory for all of these anti-immigrant measures".

With urban border crossing points such as Nogales heavily fortified, migrants deported to Mexico and wanting to return to their families in Arizona make dangerous treks across the desert.

According to U.S. civil rights groups, the number of migrants who die each year attempting to enter Arizona increased from nine in 1990 to over 200 by the mid-2000s. The Barack Obama administration has continued its predecessors' policy of using death as a deterrent, which under U.S. and International law has been deemed illegal.

In 1994, with the passage of the North American Free Trade Agreement, then President Bill Clinton officially militarised the border with 'Operation Gatekeeper' and 'Operation Hold The Line'. By redirecting government resources to the major U.S./Mexico urban crossing sites - Tijuana/San Diego, Nogales/Nogales, El Paso/Juarez - where water, food, and shelter are more readily accessible, successive U.S. administrations have explicitly used open desert conditions as an immigrant deterrent.

Engracia Robles, a nun with Sisters of the Eucharist, helps run a small volunteer walk-in centre for deportees.

With no money, a location to sleep is hard to find, she says, and "people often sleep in the cemetery" just a few hundred feet away.

"People come in with their feet blistered, cuts on the face and bruised. They are hungry, destitute; shoes are broken from walking in the desert for days," she said.

IPS witnessed an emotional family reunion at the centre, as two children separated from their parents for months were finally brought together again. Wiping away their children's tears, the parents embraced their children for nearly half an hour before letting go.

Nearby, at the Mariposa port-of-entry, hundreds of trucks pass fuming up the hill crossing the border.

"This is a NAFTA border," explains Connie Romero, a volunteer with Arizona-based No Mas Muertes. "Money moves freely, people with money do too, but the poor are pushed into a dangerous cycle of crossing the desert."

On the Mexico side of the border, sitting beneath a tree near a bus bench across from the local cemetery, one group of deportees spoke with IPS about the dangers of desert crossings.

Garcia Augustin, a construction worker, explained, "We have been in the U.S. for the last 18 years but we were shipped back by [Joe] Arpaio [referring to the sheriff of Maricopa Country, where Phoenix is located]. We have no family here. We have nothing here."

Another labourer, deported recently, could not understand why a country so large and with so much opportunity would not allow him to work, as he was breaking no laws. "Sheriff Arpaio does not like people with brown skin. John McCain, the senator of Arizona, hates me because I'm brown. But Obama is a black man, he should understand, but he also hates me. Why?"

Corey Jones, a local kindergarten teacher, undergoing a training seminar with Samaritans Patrol, a migrant advocacy organisation, says, "Arizona is the site of a social struggle. On one hand you have very powerful wealthy people that benefit from the labour of a super-exploitable class of workers, and on the other hand you have some of the poorest people in North America seeking to make a living any way they can."

THE notorious Population Registration Act, enacted by an all-white nationalist party of South Africa in the early 1950s, which scattered and shattered the native Bantu population of South Africa, is back again. It's almost like a remake of an old movie, not only with a new set of producers and actors, this time with an even better marketing policy, only a continent across. This time in Israel.

The Population Registration Act of South Africa in the 1950s, that required each South African to be classified by race, fiercely marginalised its black population by shoving them into the impecunious ghettos, and heavily curbing their movement and labour in their own homeland. It was indeed the most iniquitous pillar of the apartheid era that denied the Bantu people their historical acquaintance with their own African soil. It split apart families, cut off communities and led to a cautiously premeditated economic and social mechanism of dispossession and inequity.

A recent military order of Israel just as accurately mirrors the apartheid era of that time. Human rights organisations across the region have claimed that the order is not only deliberated to confine the right of free movement of the Palestinian population even within the 'Israel-approved legitimate boundary', appallingly, it also makes it a criminal offence to do so.

1. Palestinians, living within the boundary of Palestine, can be deported or prosecuted on the grounds of being without valid residency (in Israel's term) of a particular province. For instance, an original inhabitant of Gaza can be arrested if found in West bank, and if failing to show a valid ID of West Bank.

2. Deportations from the West Bank can be carried out within 72 hours and suspected 'infiltrators' (a jargon used for people not having right ID in the right place) could also be jailed for up to seven years.

3. Anyone being removed might also have to pay for the cost of their own deportation!

Doesn't it sound like a practical joke? It is almost like starving a population for long and detaining them for being skinny and bony. And then defend the detention by arguing that being skinny is not a good thing for one's health. And at last, charging the skinny man for the handcuff and the food served in the prison!

Amusingly, Israel, as usual, has defended such hysterical order with utterly wowing nonsense. According to an Israeli spokesperson, Mark Regev, this order is actually indented to strengthen the rights of people who face such deportation, as it creates an independent judicial oversight mechanism that in turn ensures the checks and balances and protect the legal rights of Palestinian people.

This jargon-crammed argument (merely an argument) has once again exhibited the customary sham of Israeli propaganda engine.

Firstly, it should take one's mammoth wickedness to declare that Israel's military is actually so sweetly and genuinely concerned with the security of Palestinian. How could a 'right mind' with a sense of a minimal sensibility ever swallow such conviction? Have we forgotten the 2010 Gaza massacre ('Gaza campaign' is the term cautiously used by CNN to avoid a phrase like 'massacre') which left Gaza a rabble with the corpse of nearly 13,000 Palestinian men and women amid 300 children, exposing bluntly the helpless defencelessness of the Gaza population in the hands of the so called 'security-concerned' Israeli Defence Force?

Secondly, it is almost impossible to endorse the logic that the order is actually intended to safeguard the Palestinians right. This is rather a shameless façade, under which a very basic human right of the Palestinians will be fettered at a hefty scale, the very right of the Palestinians to be able to work and earn, in any province, any city, any municipality, any community, and in any corner of the street, within the boundary of their own homeland.

Thirdly, Gisha, an Israel based human right organisation claimed that Israel, no longer issues new permits/ID or updates old permits to Palestinians, which could have been at least lawfully obliging, in preventing any such prosecution or deportation in the first place.

It is crucial to bear in mind that Gaza and the West Bank were to be considered a single entity under the Oslo Accord which has been endorsed both by the Arafat-led Palestinian authority and Yitzhak Rabin-led government of Israel in 1993, and was greeted with a Nobel Peace Prize in 1994. This recent military order does not only invoke the possibility of illegal prosecution and deportation of Palestinians, it will undoubtedly aid the long intended process of sheer criminalisation of an entire nation, since around 70,000 Palestinians (original inhabitants of Gaza) are sprinkled through out various provinces of Palestine (within the boundary of Oslo Accord affirmed 'single-entity' zone) including Ramallah, Nablus and East Jerusalem.

It must be understood that the human fleet from Gaza to West Bank is no tourism. This is not a convoy of people in holiday packages on in summer vacations, in a mission of tanning their skins. These are people with wiped out homes and bulldozed heart, merely trying to make an earning, while the strip of Gaza has been stripped notoriously, by the most ignominious blockade of our time, resulting an economy sickeningly paralysed, businesses knocked out, agricultural export shrunken, and human beings without medicine, fuel, electricity, access to piped water and even a minimal means of earning. According to the UN, the blockade has caused the economy 'irreversible damage', leaving as much as 80 per cent of its population plainly poor.

Now, under such cataclysmic living condition, if one requires a 'permit' to stay and work within his/her own homeland, the next thing we know is Palestinians lining up for permits to be able to colour their own hair, paint their own walls, conceive their own child, or even to put themselves into a diet?

It is important to understand that such antagonising military order is barely an accidental move by Israel. It is indeed a consciously carried out rudiment of apartheid, accompanied by a highly mercantile approach of sustaining and nourishing the everlasting turmoil in the region. Such state of affair is well documented in award-winning journalist Naomi Klein's recent volume 'Shock Doctrine'. According to Klein, 'A rapid expansion of the high-tech security economy created a powerful appetite inside Israel's wealthy and most powerful sectors, for abandoning peace in favour of fighting a continuous War on Terror.'

Klein has exposed an overwhelming number of almost scandalous data and documents that indicate how Israel in recent decade had fashioned a raw money-making security industry that positioned itself as the crude foundation of Israel's blossoming economy.

This simply means, the more there are security threats the more the security industry embellishes, consequently, hyping up the stock price of security related companies (surveillance cameras, counter-terrorism training and software etc) and leading to a swelling growth rate.

Klein claimed that the Israeli state's decision to put 'counterterrorism' at the centre of its export economy has corresponded precisely with its abandonment of peace negotiations, as well as a clear strategy to 'reframe' its conflict with the Palestinians.

If Israel, by any means, truly feels involved in the peace agenda and genuinely determined to sketch out an end to all violence, it should not have any aspiration to fabricate and embed an order that has no practical necessity whatsoever, instead, is clearly competent of spawning the breeding ground of violence and sadism itself.

Thus such reincarnation of South Africa's apartheid is no shocker. If hullabaloos cease to exist, if terrorism diminishes, if peace takes over, the multi-billion dollar security industry of Israel that accounts as much as 50 percent of its export economy, will stagger, excruciatingly.

Therefore, peace must not be triumphant over the preservation of Israel's security industry!

And therefore, a gruesomely apathetic world and its citizens, us, once again, approve and embrace the malice of another apartheid era. Amicably!

Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas on Saturday rejected the establishment of a Palestinian state within temporary borders, an idea he said was recently proposed for restarting peace talks.

In a speech to leaders of his Fatah movement, Abbas urged Israel to resume serious negotiations on the terms of full Palestinian statehood, adding that such talks should wrap up within two years.

Israel and the Palestinians remain far apart on the framework for such talks, and US Mideast envoy George Mitchell returned to the region on Friday for a new push to narrow the differences.

The US has proposed indirect talks in which Mitchell would shuttle between Israeli and Palestinian leaders. However, the Palestinians say they won't engage unless Israel agrees not to start new housing projects for Jews in traditionally Arab east Jerusalem, claimed by the Palestinians as a capital. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has repeatedly rejected a building freeze in east Jerusalem.

The Palestinians want a state in the West Bank, Gaza Strip and east Jerusalem, areas Israel captured in the 1967 Mideast War. They also seek a freeze of all settlement construction before a resumption of peace talks.

In his speech, Abbas referred to recent proposals - apparently from Israel - for a temporary state but did not elaborate. "Frankly, we will not accept the state with temporary borders, because it is being offered these days," he said.

He said the Palestinians were being asked to "take a state with provisional borders on 40 or 50 percent, and after that we will see."

Israeli government officials were not immediately available for comment on Saturday, the Jewish Sabbath.

However, a Palestinian academic said Israel offered Abbas such a state on more than 50 percent of the West Bank. The academic said he served as a go-between for the two sides and spoke on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to brief reporters.

A Palestinian state with provisional borders is part of the U.S.-backed "road map" peace plan as an interim step toward full independence.

The temporary state would only be established on parts of the territory the Palestinians want for their state. However, the road map never got off the ground and the Palestinians have repeatedly rejected provisional statehood, fearing the temporary borders would become the final ones.

U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton also brushed aside the notion when asked about it Friday. "So there's a lot of ideas that have been floated around, but at the end of the day it's only the Israelis and Palestinians who can make decisions for themselves," she said.

Abbas, meanwhile, called for an open dialogue between Israelis and Palestinians, saying time for a so-called two-state solution is running out, despite strong support on both sides.

"I call for an open dialogue with all Israeli factions, leaders, an open dialogue," he said. "We are ready for dialogue, because we know the overwhelming majority of Israelis support the two-state solution."

AFP report adds: Palestinian president Mahmud Abbas called on Saturday for an "open political dialogue" between Palestinian groups and both Israeli and Jewish organisations around the world.

"I call for an open political dialogue between Palestinian and Israeli forces, and we are ready to undertake them without exception," Abbas told a meeting of the Revolutionary Council of his Fatah party. Such talks would be based on the acceptance by both sides of a proposed Palestinian state living side by side with Israel, he said.

"We are ready to engage in a responsible dialogue, because we know that 84 per cent of Israelis want peace ... and that the large majority of Palestinians and Israelis want true peace," he said.

“The occupation must end. Israel must understand that the world will not accept for decades that the authorities in Tel Aviv will govern Palestinians’ lives”, said an unusually frank Israeli defense minister Ehud Barak, who has spoken of a “growing disappointment” in the United States for the impasse in which the US administration’s attempts to re-launch the peace process is left. “Whether we like it or not, there are no other solutions than to allow Palestinians to govern themselves”, said Barak, according to whom “the solution should be sought in a diplomatic initiative “which does not fear confronting the stumbling blocks in the issue” and remembering that “even if it remains militarily strong, Israel needs international legitimacy to govern”. Having joined along with the labor party – by many considered the only ‘moderate’ element in the current executive – the government coalition led by Benjamin Netanyahu, Barak has been the target of harsh criticism by those who accuse him of not having put pressure on the prime minister and his ‘hawks’, demanding an end to the construction of settlements in the Occupied Territories, which has raised Washington’s concerns. [AB]

More than 300 Christian and Muslim leaders pray for a free and fair election

The prayer vigil was held this morning in front of the Election Commission in Manila. National elections scheduled for 10 May might fail if electronic voting machines are not secure. Demonstrators accuse the government of trying to benefit from the situation to stay in power.

This morning, more than 300 people, including Christian and Muslim religious leaders as well as activists, students and members of various civil society groups, took part in a prayer rally in front of the Commission on Elections (Comelec) in Manila, to express their concern for next month's elections.

On 14 April, Pacific Strategies & Assessments (PSA), a leading business risk consultancy, released a report, listing all the risks associated with electronic voting, including the lack of controls over voting machines by independent agencies and the use of registration memories that are highly vulnerable to cloning. In addition, only 70 per cent of polling stations have phones and computers that can send secured voting results. There is no certainty of protection for the 50 million ballots that could be cast.

One of the rally organisers, Mgr Oscar Cruz, retired archbishop of Lingayen-Dagupan, said that the prayer vigil was meant to tell the election commission and others who want the automated elections to fail that people are watching and are ready to act if necessary.

Demonstrators believe that President Arroyo and her administration want to take advantage of the situation to rig the election in order to stay in power.

For organisers, the march is a symbolic attempt to tear down "walls" that could prevent the country from having credible, honest, and peaceful elections.

On the eve of her eightieth birthday, the religious sister who has been in Seoul since 1959, can not go into "retirement" because she was asked to answer a new call Missionary: Mongolia.

Fifty years ago in Italy when you wanted to summarize a dilapidated region we used to say 'its a Korea'. Today South Korea at all levels is among the most developed nations of the Far East. The energy which allowed the then unimaginable "economic and democratic miracle" is not so much the product of external aid so much as the result of the spiritual and cultural potential of its people.

Park Jung-hee (1917-79) knew this well, who despite having ruled with a dictatorial heavy hand for about twenty years, loved the nation, and was honest and politically farsighted: for him culture and education, side by side, were the main pillars of reconstruction. The people are grateful to him for this. However, what is little known is the indirect but no less significant contribution of missionaries. An interview with Adriana Bricchi an Italian nun, a missionary in Korea for fifty years, has revealed as much.

Adriana does not want to talk about her. "I do not want to steal the glory to the Lord," she would tell me whenever I tried to express some admiration.

But without precise biographical references we would not be able to appreciate what she has become: an icon of a faith that generates culture. If the philosopher Benedetto Croce had met this Salesian sister, he would have been very careful not to define the theology "words that relate to things the existence of which is unknown". The life of our mission is anything but "a thing not known to exist" rather, God rest the Italian philosopher, it can only be expressed in theological terms. Adriana was 17 years old when, during a moment of prayer she felt a strongly inspired to devote her whole life to the religious ideal. Catholics call this kind of experience "vocation", ie a calling.

"That experience - says the missionary - was not a generic religious inspiration, but an open invitation from a living Person: the Lord.

Not that I was indifferent to marriage. The happy environment of my family was the image of my future. But I responded to the divine proposal, free and strong, with joy. "

Looking back at the events that followed, but without change of direction, she has been led to believe that this experience was the very core of her life as a missionary nun.

Let us say a missionary post factum, because Adriana only become a religious sister to follow the Bridegroom. She never thought of foreign missions. But Providence, we say, led her to this path. His parents, though not affluent, chose for her and her sisters not a state school but a school run by the Salesians, the female branch of the religious order founded in the nineteenth century by a priest in Turin (Italy), Giovanni Bosco, who was a genius as well as a saint.

He devoted himself to spiritual, cultural and professional education of young people integration, a charisma which, thanks to the two institutions that were born at his initiative, has spread worldwide, and with it, we dare say, even the influence of Italian culture. On the pediment over the entrance to the building complex of the Salesian sisters in Seoul, under the title written in Korean, there is also written in Italian, " Istituto delle Figlie di Maria Ausiliatrice" [Institute of the Daughters of Mary Help of Christians]. In Salesian convents English is not the main spoken language but Italian. Given the long period of intellectual and moral formation in Salesian schools, the religious order Adriana chose could only have been one: the Daughters of Mary Help of Christians.

In 1959 the young nun was assigned to mission in Korea. The shock of parents and family was great. "But must they send you to Korea " they said. Adriana, however, recalling the religious experience of 10 years before, responded with interior humour, repeating to herself that a typical saying of the Lombardy: "I reached 30, I might as well make it to 31".

In 1957 the Salesian Sisters in Japan, celebrating the 30th anniversary of their stay in the country of the Rising Sun, had decided to open a mission in Korea, the result of requests from some bishops, sending a group of religious sisters as a vanguard. Sister Adriana with four other Italian nuns reached them in December 1959.

The fratricidal Korean War (1950-53) had decimated the population (two million dead) of the peninsula and destroyed infrastructure. "In Seoul - Adriana recalls - there were only four buildings worthy of the name: the railway station, city hall, bank and Catholic hospital. The rest was just a jumble of huts with thatched roofs and sheet metal, the mighty Han River, then without banks, swept them away periodically".

Thanks to the farsighted policy of Park Jung-hee that city has become an efficient and orderly metropolis of over 11 million people, the neighbourhoods south of the river have majestic gardens and the roads are the envy at the same Tokyo. But on those streets tens of thousands of women have worked. In this context, the Salesian sisters, well received by the government for their educational work have worked hard to instil courage in mothers and to give an education to children.

In 2007 the Daughters of Mary Help of Christians (Salesian) celebrated the 50th anniversary of their presence in Korea. Adriana on that occasion must have felt peace and even satisfaction. The suffering of the initial community was not in vain. They became the "overseers" of 240 Korean sisters distributed throughout 28 centres in major cities. Their centre in Seoul is particularly expressive of their identity: a complex of four "houses" that, apart from the residence of the sisters are all used for the education of women who have had no education. It is a "cultural center" in which free education is offered to 240 mothers; a psychology clinic to help mothers, a playground for children who have no place in state kindergartens.

Currently there are no more women working the streets, but in the last decade two other categories of excluded women have emerged: the foreign immigrants who come in search of work or marital ties and refugees from the north. These, as incredible as it may seem, have not fled the north in search of a paradise in the south, but simply to avoid starvation. Proud, they do not easily accept the company of "sisters" in the south and vice versa. They Salesian sisters offer them a house and care for free.

Sister Adriana, on the eve of her eightieth, can not go into "retirement" because she has been asked to answer a new call: Mongolia. It became an independent nation after the collapse of the Soviet Union and has found itself in need of everything, especially education. The Holy See has asked some missionary institutes to send members there. Three years ago, the Salesian sisters in Korea during the celebration of the fiftieth anniversary (1957-2007) of their arrival on the peninsula, have decided to accept the invitation by sending some sisters to Ulaanbaatar (pictured). The difficulties they must overcome are far from minor. To help them, the Order's superiors have dared to ask the elderly nun to put her experience, kindness and organizational skills at the service of the young "Mongol" community, for some months. So, in less than a weeks time, Sister Adriana will take off on another "mission trip" pleased to continue to generate culture through faith.

Following the elections, dominated by the ruling party, a prominent political analyst talks about the present and the future of the country. How "a miracle" really can take place

Sarath Fernando, a well known political analyst and moderator of Reforms for Territories and agriculture, evaluates the elections on 8 April. The vote saw the victory of the United People Freedom Alliance, which supports President Mahinda Rajapaksa, who won the previous presidential elections, which had 4,846,388 votes and 144 seats out of 225, compared to the United National Front with 2,357,057 votes and 60 seats. Yesterday, the new parliament was sworn and elected spokesman Shomali Rajapaksa, younger brother of the president.

There were some special features that were visible [in these elections]. The percentage of the people who cast their votes was much less than the trends that were seen in general elections in the country on previous occasions. This may be because there was very little that people could expect from the results of these elections. Every one knew that the government was going to win with a very high majority. There were no key issues that were debated at the elections either.

What is important to note from these experiences is, the rather drastic change that had taken place in the entire political system in the country over the last few decades. In Sri Lanka since time of the beginning of the parliamentary system in the 1940s, campaigns that were launched in the country to win over many social reforms for the poorer sections of society. Thus Sri Lanka adopted a free system of education, a free system of health, a policy of government intervening to protect the poor with low food prices (with a rice subsidy and controlled prices for all essential food and other services ), and also a system of intervention of the government in protecting the interests of the people against the exploitative interests of the rich businesses. Thus, the government sector was strengthened and expansion of private capital was in a way obstructed by Government policies.

This policy of the organized interventions of the people, the workers, the farmers, the poorer consumers further advanced in bringing further reforms in the systems of social welfare was the pattern. These reforms generally contributed in strengthening the democracy in the country. These victories created high aspirations among the youth. The armed rebellions that were launched by the youth both in the South ( 1971 and 1988 ) and in the North ( since 1976 and 1983 ) were violently suppressed wit Governments strengthening their military power as well as the legal instruments of suppression such as the Prevention of Terrorism Act and emergency regulations.

Since then, governments have used political power to suppress the political rights of the population and the intervention of the working classes. Priority was given to the private sector, whose interests were favoured in government policy.

Among the political parties emerged a tendency to promise more pro-poor reforms during election campaigns, but to forget about them after being elected. This is what happened after the election of Chandrika Kumarathunga in 1994 and Mahinda Rajapakse in 2005.

These elections clearly showed that even such false promises were not needed for him to come to power. The private sector capitalists can have enough confidence [in such candidates] to know that they would not go against the capitalist interests. The promise of Mahinda to make the country the "Miracle of Asia" is alarming looking at what this implies. The policy of inviting big foreign companies to come and make use of cheap labour and of natural resources to make and take away all their profits. In practice for 30 years we have seen use the poor to benefit the rich rather than reduce poverty.

The present situation is that to be elected one must have sufficient financial strength and some other means of sufficient publicity. The most corrupt business leaders become the best candidates to be elected such as in the case of Duminda Silva, Thilanga Sumathipala or some other popular characters such as Sanath Jayasuriya. Or some other unfaithful politician such as Jonstan Fernando who crosses over from one side to the other and gets the largest number of preferential votes, with no confidence about being faithful to the policy of the party.

The task ahead is very big. The poor people must develop their own strategy of formulating their own policy framework. This can be done by the organisations of the people, the workers, the farmers, the fisher people, the plantation people, the women, the youth etc have been voicing themselves to some degree. These have to be brought to an alliance.It is possible, if we see people opposed to local and foreign powers, against the privatization of state enterprises. Now health has been largely privatized. And the poor have no access to health services. The cost of medicines, doctors and health care are too high for the poor.

Similarly education has become something that people have to buy for a child from their very youngest upto the highest levels. About a hundred thousand students who qualify to enter universities are not admitted to them due to lack of space. There should be educational arrangements that could help them to utilize their abilities in improving the potentials of the people in alternative approaches in economy such as ecological agriculture. Utilizing similar approaches in policies it is possible to make Sri Lanka the miracle of Asia, not by competing with the rich in rich countries but in strengthening the poor to increase their creative potential in transforming nature and its resource to regenerate itself. A new vision is needed and politicians should be such new visionaries. "

THAILAND, the land of smiles, has been in chaos for sometime. At the heart of the matter is the demand of the Red Shirts -- the followers of convicted former Prime Minister Thaksin Sinawatra -- who demand immediate dissolution of the Parliament and the resignation of Prime Minister Abhijit Vijjajiva. The government, in the face of mounting and unremitting agitation by the Red Shirts, had initially agreed to assemble a dissolution in nine months, which was later reduced to six.

This is indicative of the softening of the government stand on dissolution. Meanwhile, the protestors, officially known as United Front for Democracy and Against Dictatorship, by abandoning the venue of their earlier protests and agreeing to make their stand at one place, have shown their willingness to negotiate despite their call for the prime minister to resign and leave the country.

The question that baffles many minds is how a billionaire politician, convicted and exiled from the country, can enthuse so many people, particularly in rural areas, to assemble together in such massive protests -- goading some commentators to describe the agitation as a "class struggle."

Thaksin's popularity in rural areas lies in promising and delivering universal health care, a farm debt moratorium, village micro-credit program, one-product entrepreneurial program and pledge to increase the price of rice (Thailand is one of the largest exporters of rice in the world).

Like in many developing countries, only a minority of the population reaps the fruits of development. According to a Bank of Thailand report, the top 20 percent of the population control more than two-thirds of the country's household assets, savings and property.

The Gini coefficient -- the tool to measure income disparity where zero represents absolute equality and hundred total inequalities -- is 42.5 percent in the case of Thailand. The top 20 percent own 69 percent of the national wealth, while the bottom 20 percent own only 1percent of the national wealth.

If education, identified by Nobel Laureate Paul Krugman as the most important element in the United State's economic growth in the twentieth century, is taken as a guide, then 30 percent of Bangkok's labour force has college degrees as opposed to 7 percent in the north and 10 percent in northeast of Thailand.

A prominent Thai development economist, referring to Irving Laszio's book The Chaos Point: The World at the Crossroads, pointed out the glaring difference in income and living standards of the poor and the rich, and feared that Thailand was fast being controlled by politico-business oligarchies -- who, by using business connections through corruption in the past, have recently taken control of the political process itself.

He says that Thailand "is now practically divided into fiefdoms controlled by shady people with money. The conflict of the last few weeks reflects disagreements among them as well as with some politicians who are a little more idealistic and thus not willing to accommodate their wishes."

The Thais have an incredible ability to come back from the brink. In the highly revered King Bhumibol Adulayadej -- revered for his generosity, humility and devotion to the people -- they have a fatherly figure, who has now reigned for sixty years and has been an unbreakable thread binding Thailand together.

But the king is now 82 years old, and as all men are mortal it will be difficult for the yellow shirts -- the monarchists -- to maintain their grip on authority if the future monarch lacks mass devotion.

One must also ponder the possibility, in a country that has seen 18 coups since 1935, of witnessing the emergence of a young, charismatic leader from the Red Shirts calling for an end to "the double standards in Thai society." But then, societal conflict is not unknown in many developing countries.

The demise of communism has ensured that civilisation conflicts a la Samuel Huntington may come to the fore but ideology-based struggle would remain a far cry. Perhaps Francis Fukuyama's End of History is not fable after all.

The international community is worried over the instability in the second largest economy in Asean. The Hanoi Asean summit, held after the failure of the summit at Pattaya, expressed the hope that good sense would prevail and that the parties involved would continue to talk.

Bill Clinton echoed President Obama and Hillary Clinton's sadness at the recent violence and loss of lives in Bangkok and called for both the government and the protestors to come to an agreement to strengthen democracy and law.

Neither Asean nor the West, and most importantly the Thais themselves, will side towards chaos and instability. That a solution to the current crisis will be found is without a doubt. One can only hope that the Wall Street versus main street conflict would be resolved through a more egalitarian and distributive justice in Thailand.

In some areas of Uzbekistan any Christian meeting is deemed illegal even to throw a birthday party or hold a soup kitchen. Judges and police pursue Christians with seizures and exorbitant fines for having prayed together. Permitted by a law banning everything that is not authorized.

Police raids during prayer meetings, threats, costly fines, confiscation and destruction of religious material and even religious texts. In many regions of Uzbekistan the systematic persecution of Christians by police and authorities continues, "guilty" of meeting in private homes to pray together to the point that even a birthday party is considered an "illegal meeting".

Persecution is increasing in the north-western region of Karakalpakstan. Forum 18 news agency reports that on 8 April in Nukus, the capital of Karakalpakstan, the police questioned the Protestant Aimurat Khayburahmanov and asked him to sign a declaration that he will not meet with other Christians and does not have Christian books at home. Upon his refusal, he was threatened with prosecutin. Khayburahmanov had already spent three months in jail for "teaching religion without permission" and was released through an amnesty in September 2008. Local sources report that many Christians have been threatened in a similar way under Article. 244-3 of the Penal Code, which punishes with imprisonment for up to three years the "illegal production, possession, importation and distribution of religious literature." They complain that the police carries out thorough raids for religious literature, and that once they come across it the report the owner, even though at times the police themselves plant the texts in the homes of Christians and then report them for possession". The religious books are later confiscated and burnt.

Students in the region are kept under close watch and told to not get involved with "foreign religions, extremist influences and low level cultures of mass". Those who do, risk being expelled from school and art. 240 Part 2 of the Administrative Code can be applied, which prohibits "attracting believers of a confession to another (proselytism) and other missionary activities." For 2010 various meetings with young people have been organised, to explain to them the evil influence of foreign religions.

Christians are affected even if they organize football or basketball matches or any other mass gathering or social activity. On April 10, police interrupted a meeting of young Protestants in the village of Baraja, Bostanlik District, Tashkent. On the arrival of many young police was playing football or basketball. The officers led 43 participants and organizers to the barracks, taking their photographs and fingerprints. Many of them, like as Alexander Lokshev were punished for taking part in an unauthorized mass event and charged with having held a religious activity.

On the afternoon of April 12, police inspected the premises of the Protestant Church of Eternal Life Tahskent, Yakkasarai district, where the faithful have a canteen for the poor and homeless. Those present were interrogated; the pastor and others were taken to police headquarters and charged with having held an unauthorised activity "not in conformity with their statute".

In practice, any meeting of the faithful can be punished. Also in Tashkent Surgeli district, 10 Pentecostals were reported on March 10 for an illegal meeting, for having gathered to celebrate a birthday. The 10 - 8 of them pensioners - were sentenced to fines of about 100 times the average monthly wage.