HIV/AIDS foundation working with a regime that locks up AIDS activists?
On 10 May, the Foundation for AIDS Research (amfAR) was one of many organisations that signed a public letter to US and UN officials protesting the Uzbek government's wrongful imprisonment of Maksim Popov, an HIV prevention educator, psychologist, and dire
Forgetting a Massacre
Tomorrow, 13 May, marks the fifth anniversary of the Andijan massacre in Uzbekistan, when state security forces opened fire on mass demonstrations, killing some 750 civilians. The regime in Tashkent would like everyone to forget about it, of course, and th
Aid agencies in danger of forgetting Haitis poorest
Alex Haxton is CEO of World Emergency Relief UK (WER), an international relief and development organisation working to protect poor children all over the world. He recently visited Haiti to evaluate the ongoing WER response to the earthquake. Poor sanitati
Helping people back to their fields in Myanmar
By Si Thu, Myanmar Red Cross, and Lasse Norgaard, IFRC Cyclone Nargis was named after the Urdu word for daffodil. In Myanmar, the name of the devastating cyclone has a more mortal meaning. "Nar" means pain, and "gis" means messed up. Millions of lives were
Todays Unknown Dissidents
In the Boston Globe today, columnist Jeff Jacoby asks an interesting question: "Why aren't democratic dissidents as well-known in the free world today as the dissidents who challenged the Soviet empire were in the 1970s and 1980s?" But the answers offered
Sierra Leone: A momentous day - free healthcare at last
This blog is written by Nouria Brikci, Health and Policy Advisor April 27, 2010, will be remembered as a special day in, and for, Sierra Leone. Not only because April 27 is independence day, but also and most importantly because it is the day that going to
I have lost my friends and cant go to school
Ishbel Matheson is director of media at Save the Children and is blogging from South Sudan over the election period. Saturday, April 10, 2010 On our trip to Mvolo, we heard that families that have fled recent tribal fighting are camped in the forest about
Haiti relocations: From dusty plot to home in under a week
This post is written by Katie Chalk, Communications Specialist for World Vision in Haiti. 11th April 2010. Today, as curtains rose on the first large scale relocation of displaced communities in Port-au-Prince, I was in the audience - along with two ragged
Dwindling Easter Candles for Christians in the Holy Land
The candles clutched in the hands of Palestinian Christian families, that used to flicker by the thousands during the Easter Festival of Lights, have now dwindled down to a few hundred. The number of candles, along with the local Ch
South Sudanese get ready to vote
Ishbel Matheson is director of media at Save the Children and is blogging from South Sudan over the election period. Juba election fever? Tuesday April 6, 2010 We are flying above a scrubby desert, then suddenly close to a large rocky outcrop. There's the