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Here is a sample of just some of the things we learned this week as Thomson Reuters Foundation correspondents reported on humanitarian issues, women’s rights, corruption, climate change and social innovation for our AlertNet and TrustLaw news services.
G8 nations have reached a “historic” agreement to end rape as a weapon of war.
From Bosnia to Congo, rape has been used against hundreds of thousands of women and girls, inflicting unimaginable suffering, destroying families and fuelling conflict. This week, the world’s eight richest nations agreed to work together to end sexual violence in wars, reports Katie Nguyen. The agreement comes with $35.5 million in funding from G8 states and calls for an international protocol setting out benchmark standards for investigating sexual violence and increasing prosecutions.
Meanwhile, Katy Migiro has written a lovely profile of Zainab Bangura, the second U.N. Special Rapporteur on Sexual Violence in Conflict, whose own life story makes her confident we can consign rape as a weapon of war to the dustbin of history.
Syria’s war is fuelling child marriage among refugees.
The desperate plight of refugees fleeing Syria’s civil war is forcing some parents to marry off their daughters as child brides, reports Emma Batha. In some cases, landlords in Jordan are exploiting the situation by offering to waive a family’s rent in exchange for marrying their daughter. We also have reports of men from Saudi Arabia and other Middle Eastern countries looking for young Syrian brides among refugee communities.
Meanwhile, Human Rights Watch has released shocking video footage it says proves the Syrian air force has repeatedly carried out indiscriminate – and in some cases deliberate – air strikes against civilians. That would be a serious violation of international humanitarian law.
“Disruption” is the mother of social innovation.
If you want to make the world a better place, the first step is to disrupt the status quo so new and creative ways of doing things can flourish. If that sounds dangerously anarchic, don’t be alarmed – it’s a message from this year’s Skoll World Forum on Social Entrepreneurship, which brings together almost 1,000 influential thinkers. We’ve live-streamed and live-blogged the three-day event from Oxford, while correspondents Astrid Zweynert and Laurie Goering have been scurrying around interviewing thought leaders. Here are just three of the stories and blogs they’ve produced so far:
- Sweden tops new 50-nation social progress index
- If sci-fi spurs technology, can “social fiction” spark change?
- Climate impact on kids, home and the modern family?
Signs are emerging of ethnic cleansing in central Myanmar.
Ethnic hatred has been unleashed in Myanmar since 49 years of military rule ended in March 2011. And judging by this special report by Reuters Southeast Asia Bureau Chief Jason Szep, it is spreading, threatening the country's historic democratic transition. We sent our own reporter to document for AlertNet signs of ethnic cleansing in central Myanmar, where Buddhist mobs armed with knives, sticks and petrol have torched Muslim homes. Among the devastation, we also uncovered tales of heroism and hope.
Separately, our reporter discovered that it was the rape and sexual harassment of three stateless Rohingya Muslim women that caused last week’s deadly brawl between Burmese and Rohingya refugees at an immigration centre on Indonesia’s Sumatra island, dispelling any suggestion that sectarian violence was behind the fighting.
North Korea can put a nuke on a missile – maybe
A U.S. government agency says North Korea has a nuclear weapon it can mount on a missile, adding an ominous dimension to tensions on the Korean peninsula – although the assessment by the Pentagon's Defence Intelligence Agency was swiftly dismissed by several U.S. officials and South Korea.
Meanwhile, I’ve been exploring how the diplomatic tensions of recent weeks could affect the limited flow of humanitarian aid into North Korea, where hunger is chronic and acute. Find out more in my video talking point.
Conflict in northwest Pakistan has displaced almost 50,000 people.
Clashes among militant groups and an army operation to flush them out have uprooted nearly 48,000 people, including 22,000 children, from the Tirah Valley in Pakistan's northwestern Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province in the past month, Megan Rowling reports. Many of those displaced by the fighting are staying with host families, not in camps, and badly need food, money for rent, healthcare and clean water, aid agencies say.
Drought threatens millions in western India with hunger.
Millions of people in India's western state of Maharashtra are at serious risk of hunger after two years of low rainfall, coupled with poor management of water resources, have left dams empty, farmland parched and cattle emaciated, reports Nita Bhalla. Maharashtra – one of the country's biggest producers of sugar, pulses, cotton and soybeans – is reeling from the worst drought in more than four decades after receiving less than 50 percent of the average rainfall during the last two monsoon seasons.
Illicit money flows cost poor countries about $1 trillion a year.
The developing world loses around $1 trillion every year through practices like tax evasion, corruption and money laundering, mainly by multinational corporations, according to a global coalition of transparency advocates. That explains why many charities are now expanding from their traditional development work to focus more on the economic rights of the poor and campaigning against wrongs such as graft and tax dodging, forging closer links between aid, poverty alleviation and the need to boost poor nations’ revenues, Nita Bhalla reports.
India has begun setting set up special fast-track courts for rape cases.
The Indian government has set up 73 fast-track courts across the country since January to try cases of sexual violence against women following unprecedented public protests after the gang rape and murder of a young woman in the capital almost four months ago. These are among 1,800 fast-track courts the authorities plan to set up and run for three years, focusing on violent crimes and other serious offences against women, children and the elderly, as part of broader judicial reforms. Nita Bhalla has the story.
Europe has finally signed up to transparency in oil, gas and mining.
European Union negotiators reached a deal this week on a law that will make oil, gas, mining and logging firms declare payments to governments, as part of efforts to end poverty in resource-rich nations by ensuring the wealth is shared out. That’s a big step forward, as our instant views from experts show. But, as Luke Balleny discovered in an interview with the European lawmaker who led the negotiations, the deal was anything but easy. Contrary to public rhetoric, Britain attempted to undermine European attempts to make extractive companies report their payments on a project basis, says Arlene McCarthy.
Papua New Guinea’s latest “witch hunt” has led to torture and beheading.
Alisa Tang has the distressing story of how the death of a respected former teacher in South Bougainville district prompted villagers to grab firearms, knives and axes and track down the “witches” they held responsible. One woman, a retired schoolteacher and prominent women’s advocate, was beheaded, while another suffered a severe laceration to her neck and is coughing up blood, according to Amnesty International. Others remain captive or have been hospitalised after experiencing violence. Sadly, this is far from the first time such witch hunts have led to bloodshed.
U.S. aid spent in Haiti remains as “opaque as ever”.
The United States government needs to do more to improve how billions of dollars of American quake aid to Haiti is tracked and accounted for in the Caribbean nation, according to the Washington-based Centre for Economic and Policy Research. In a report, the think-tank blames a lack of transparency in how the U.S., the largest foreign aid donor in Haiti, is spending money on the ground there. Anastasia Moloney has the story.
New anti-corruption laws are eroding lawyer-client confidentiality.
The growth of anti-corruption legislation has imposed new responsibilities on lawyers to report corrupt practices, eroding some of the traditional security in the client-lawyer relationship, Stella Dawson reports. While there is no universal approach to the requirement for lawyers to disclose questionable activities by their clients, a study of 17 countries found that all except Pakistan hold lawyers accountable for directly carrying out a corrupting act and legal professionals could face criminal prosecution if they have a high level of personal involvement.
Mali refugees are living in “deplorable” conditions in a camp in Mauritania.
Tens of thousands of Malian refugees are living in "deplorable" conditions in a camp in the Mauritanian desert where international aid agencies have been slow to respond to their needs, Katie Nguyen reports. Medecins Sans Frontieres says conditions are so poor in Mbera camp, in a remote region by the border with Mali, that many people are getting sick and malnourished after they arrive there.
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