This story is part one of a three-part series on the challenges faced by people living with disabilities in a world where intense storms and other natural disasters are expected to become the “new normal”.
NEW YORK, Aug 14 2013 (IPS) – Like many people living in the path of Hurricane Sandy last fall, Lauren Scrivo needed more battery power. Despite a call offering help from the mayor of Fairfield, New Jersey, where Scrivo lives with her family, her concerns went far beyond extra water bottles and flashlights.
A resident in the Palestinian Yarmouk camp in Damascus prepares to slaughter a dog to feed his family as food supplies run out under siege. Credit: Mutawalli Abou Nasser/IPS.
DAMASCUS, Oct 25 2013 (IPS) – Acute food shortages have reached desperate levels in the Yarmouk refugee camp in Damascus. Leading religious figures in the camps have issued a fatwa permitting the killing and consumption of cats, dogs, mice, rats and donkeys.
“We have been under siege for three months. There is nothing left to eat. This is what has become of us,” said a resident of Yarmouk as he prepared to kill a dog for his family following the fatwa (religious ruling).
Residents a…
SPOKANE, Washington, Feb 3 2014 (IPS) – Moral Monday, the populist movement in North Carolina that saw a diverse coalition of thousands of progressive activists descend upon the state legislature, is now spreading throughout the U.S. South.
“I think it’s a sign the body politic is healthy in the U.S. One of the cheap benefits of U.S. citizenship is the right to petition your government and protest unjust laws. I think it’s a sign of health, I expect that it will spread,” Janice Mathis, vice president of the Citizenship Education Fund, told IPS.
Young Bangladeshi women raise their fists at a protest in Shahbagh. Credit: Kajal Hazra/IPS
WASHINGTON, Apr 3 2014 (IPS) – Although half the world’s population is under 25 years old, young people in more than two dozen countries feel that their opportunities for educational, economic and societal advancement are limited, according to new research released here Thursday.
Researchers say the results should help to drive and prioritise both public and private investment in services.“The youth bulge can become a security, economic and humanitarian worry, and even maybe a disaster, or it can become a resource for development and change.” — William Reese
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Gaza is running out of drinking water. Credit: Eva Bartlett/IPS
UNITED NATIONS, May 19 2014 (IPS) – The United Nations, which is trying to help resolve the widespread shortage of water in the developing world, is faced with a growing new problem: the use of water as a weapon of war in ongoing conflicts.
The most recent examples are largely in the Middle East and Africa, including Iraq, Egypt, Israel (where supplies to the occupied territories have been shut off) and Botswana.
Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon last week expressed concern over reports that water supplies in the besieged Syrian city of Aleppo were deliberately cut off by armed groups for eight day…
Translator Serge Tian in village of Gueyede in south-west Côte d’Ivoire. He translates sub-prefect Kouassi Koffi’s message about the spread of Ebola in West Africa and how people can recognise the virus and avoid infection. Credit: Marc-Andre Boisvert/IPS
GUEYEDE, Côte d’Ivoire, Aug 16 2014 (IPS) – The whole village of Gueyede in south-west Côte d’Ivoire gathers under the tattered roof of a shelter as the rain drizzles outside, and listens carefully as sub-prefect Kouassi Koffi talks.
“We are not allowed any complacency. You might not know Ebola. And it is better that you don’t,” says Koffi, the highest governmental authority of the area, through trans…
Joeva Rock is a graduate student in the Department of Anthropology at the American University in Washington, DC, focusing on colonial legacies in West Africa.
First shipment of the ramped-up U.S. military response to Ebola arriving in Liberia. Credit: US Army Africa/CC-BY-2.0
WASHINGTON, Sep 28 2014 (IPS) – Six months into West Africa’s Ebola crisis, the international community is finally heeding calls for substantial intervention in the region.
On Sep. 16, U.S. President Barack Obama a multimillion-dollar U.S. response to the spreading contagion. The crisis, which began in March 2014, has , an alarming figure that if the disease is not contai…
Filipino rice farmers claim that national heritage sites like the 2,000-year-old Ifugao Rice Terraces are threatened by the looming presence of genetically modified crops. Credit: Courtesy Diana Mendoza
MANILA, Nov 26 2014 (IPS) – Jon Sarmiento, a farmer in the Cavite province in southern Manila, plants a variety of fruits and vegetables, but his main crop, rice, is under threat. He claims that approval by the Philippine government of the genetically modified ‘golden rice’ that is fortified with beta-carotene, which the body converts into vitamin A, could ruin his livelihood.
Sarmiento, who is also the sustainable agriculture programme officer of PAKISAMA, a nati…
NEW YORK, Mar 11 2015 (IPS) – The somber face of a young man from Sierra Leone has become the emblem of Ebola’s living survivors, suffering in silence without families, papers, or homes.
A photo of Jimmy Thoronka appeared this week in local British papers. An undeclared refugee, he went missing after competing in last summer’s Commonwealth Games in Glasgow. The 20-year-old was a star sprinter but fell apart as Ebola took his uncle, then his adoptive mother and four siblings. He had already lost his birth parents in the country’s civil war.
Scared to go back, he decided to stay on after his visa ran out.
Thus began a seven-month spell of ‘living rough” on the streets. There were days without meals, sleeping in parks or night buses in London. When his whe…
School children in Nepal’s Matatirtha village practice an earthquake drill in the event of a natural disaster. A 7.8-magnitude earthquake in Nepal on Apr. 25, 2015, has endangered the lives of close to a million children. Credit: Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade/CC-BY-2.0
UNITED NATIONS, Apr 27 2015 (IPS) – The death toll has now passed 3,300, and there is no telling how much farther it will climb. Search and rescue operations in Nepal entered their third day Monday, as the government and international aid agencies scramble to cope with the aftermath of a 7.8-magnitude earthquake that struck this South Asian nation on Apr. 25.
Severe aftershock…