(image by Chris Coady)
There’s real hope for Haiti, and it’s not what you’d expect
From Johann Hari and The Independent/UK:
When people live so close to the edge, even small price increases can break them.
In the weeks after a disaster like the Haiti earthquake, journalists always search for an upbeat twist to the tale. You know it [...]
Archive for the ‘policy’ Category
Make the connections: Debt, action, and the “free” market
Posted in activism, debt, global, global economics, haiti, make the connections, natural disasters, policy on February 8, 2010 | Leave a Comment »
Make the connections: Exploitation, consumption, and change
Posted in activism, awareness, consumption, global, make the connections, policy, production chains, video on February 6, 2010 | Leave a Comment »
From Annie Leonard and Yes Magazine:
I’ve spent much of the past two decades visiting factories where our stuff is made and dumps where it is disposed of around the world. After years of seeing firsthand the often hidden environmental, social, and health impacts of all the stuff we consume, I’ve developed a sort of neurosis: [...]
Before the quake: The roots of Haiti’s destruction
Posted in americas, global economics, haiti, natural disasters, policy, refugees, video on January 19, 2010 | Leave a Comment »
While earthquakes are acts of nature, extreme vulnerability to earthquakes is manmade,
Tracy Kidder wrote in The New York Times, referring to last week’s cataclysmic quake in Haiti. Kidder, who has written about the work of the legendary Dr. Paul Farmer in rural Haiti, explains in his article what many others have also voiced about the [...]
Circus Slaves
Posted in asia, awareness, children, families, human goods original reporting, india, labor, nepal, policy, sex on November 9, 2009 | 2 Comments »
Dutch filmmakers Chris Relleke and Jascha de Wilde’s 2002 film, Starkiss, depicts a young girl gripping a rope with her teeth as she is spun several meters in the air in front of a mesmerized audience. The film explores the enslavement of children in Indian circuses, what the filmmakers describe as “a world hidden [...]
Children of Industry: South Asia’s child labor dilemma
Posted in asia, bangladesh, children, consumption, india, labor, policy, prevention, production chains, prosecution on November 5, 2009 | 1 Comment »
These are the hands of an 8-year-old …
Child laborer in a Dhaka garment factory (photo: G.M.B. Akash – click for more)
The ubiquitous smile of the poor should not be taken at face value; it conceals inexhaustible grief,
Jeremy Seabrook cautions in his September piece in the New Internationalist. The longtime reporter on poverty in South Asia [...]
Promising heaven, giving them hell: On pimps and runaways in America
Posted in americas, awareness, children, families, policy, prevention, prosecution, sex, united states, video on November 2, 2009 | Leave a Comment »
(photo: Monica Almeida/The New York Times)
On Halloween this year, the little mountain town of Ashland, Oregon reverberated with the rhythms of drum circles and laughter. Following the annual Halloween parade, the streets were throbbing with Little Bo Peeps and Buzz Lightyears, offbeat zombies and chuckling middle-aged women in street clothes.
I sat in a small cafe [...]
Ruchira Gupta on the failure of India’s anti-trafficking efforts
Posted in asia, india, policy, prevention, prosecution, sex on October 30, 2009 | 1 Comment »
“As long as there are customers, there will always be other little girls that can be bought,” a teenager rescued from an Indian brothel told Ruchira Gupta.
This month in the Wall Street Journal Gupta, founder and president of the anti-trafficking organization Apne Aap Women Worldwide, identified curbing the demand for trafficked and underage prostitutes as [...]
Sweet Dreams: The battle for the chocolate trade
Posted in africa, awareness, children, corporate responsibility, cote d'ivoire, families, food, global economics, labor, policy, prevention, production chains, video on October 24, 2009 | 1 Comment »
Democracy Now! interviewed Free the Slaves founder Kevin Bales, a lifelong abolitionist and author of several pivotal works in the corpus of today’s anti-slavery literature, including Disposable People: New Slavery in the Global Economy, and the recent The Slave Next Door: Human Trafficking and Slavery in America. He defined slavery for interviewer Amy Goodman as,
“One [...]
The system or the girl: IJM and the raiding debate
Posted in activism, asia, cambodia, children, global, india, philippines, policy, prevention, prosecution, sex, video on October 18, 2009 | Leave a Comment »
This month, The Nation publishes the second in a two-part series on attempts to combat sex trafficking in the U.S. and abroad. The first article, published in September, profiles (oftentimes quite critically) the work of the Christian NGO, International Justice Mission (IJM).
IJM works on a variety of issues, including not only the pursuit of freedom [...]
Calling it slavery: John Miller reflects on Wilberforce
Posted in awareness, global economics, labor, policy, prevention, prosecution, sex on September 15, 2008 | 1 Comment »
“Victims of slavery tend to be isolated, relatively poor, and badly educated,” former U.S. ambassador at large on modern-day slavery John Miller writes in the current Wilson Quarterly. “They don’t hold press conferences.”
Miller gives an outline of the nuanced topography of today’s fight against slavery founded in both global policy and personal experience. He [...]
