A report released today by ETC Group, reveals that the world's largest seed and agrochemical corporations are stockpiling hundreds of monopoly patents on genes in plants that the companies will market as crops genetically engineered to withstand environmental stresses associated with climate change - including drought, heat, cold, floods, saline soils, and more.
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The United Nations Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities entered into force one month after the required twentieth country ratified the landmark treaty which guarantees the rights of some 650 million people worldwide. The Convention does not create any new rights, but aims to ensure that the benefits of existing rights are fully extended and guaranteed.
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A new report from the Arab Association for Human Rights documents the danger of eviction facing the Palestinian residents of the Ajami neighborhood in Jaffa and reveals the true motives behind this process. For these residents, ethnic cleansing did not end in 1948. It continues to this day, albeit by different means. The process being implemented in Jaffa (and in other locations in Israel) amounts to the "quiet transfer" of the Palestinian residents.
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The Parties to the Convention on Biological Diversity recognized the unique risks that genetically engineered organisms pose to the conservation and sustainable use of biological diversity when they adopted the Cartagena Protocol on Biosafety. A necessary component of a global biosafety regime is rules and procedures on liability and redress. The Fourth Meeting of the Parties to the Cartagena Protocol on Biosafety is set to conclude negotiations on liability and redress when it meets in Bonn, 12-16 May.
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The emergence of alternative international development institutions, new sources of development funding, and alternative mechanisms for financing development are occurring in the context of two major international processes relating to aid: the Accra meeting on the Paris Declaration on Aid Effectiveness, and the Doha meeting on Financing for Development.
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Certification alone cannot guarantee that agrofuels are being produced sustainably. Creating sustainable levels of demand is the only way of guaranteeing sustainable production. The discussion of biofuels in South America may be helpful in the African context. Attempts to use certification schemes to reduce widespread environmental and social problems caused by growing crops for fuels and animal feed are bound to fail, according to a new report released today by Friends of the Earth groups.
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Somalia: 40 children and youth seized by Ethiopian troops risk torture or execution
Play fair at the olympics
Selected news
Disabilities
- Tue May 13 2008
Major milestone to promote Human Rights of desabled people
The Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities received its 20th ratification on 3 April 2008, triggering the entry into force of the Convention and its Optional Protocol 30 days late.
Source:
U.N. Enable
Biodiversity
- Tue May 13 2008
No to the privatization of biodiversity!
Via Campesina's position paper on the Protocol on Biosecurity and the Convention on Biodiversity calling on signatory governments to recognize the ancient role of peasant/community based farmers and warning them against the false solutions.
Source:
Via Campesina
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Its aim is to work for a society that is peaceful, free, equal, just and sustainable by a process of empowering people and building a mass movement to uphold human rights. Malaysia.
