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Wednesday, May 16, 2012 20:16 GMT

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Occupy Wall Street - A Citizen's Movement Spreads Like Wildfire

Rio+20
European Parliament Absent in Sustainability Summit
By Julio Godoy
BERLIN - The decision by the European Parliament (EP) to renounce its participation in the Rio+20 United Nations Conference on Sustainable Development next month on the grounds that hotel costs are exorbitant has provoked sharp criticism from civil society organisations.
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Post-Quake Haiti Severely Dependent on Private Sector
By Carey L. Biron
WASHINGTON - More than two years after the January 2010 earthquake in Haiti, NGOs and private contractors are continuing to provide 80 percent of the country's social services.
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"We Are Living As If We Had One and a Half Planets"
By Isolda Agazzi
GENEVA - The new WWF Living Planet Report warns of a significant decline in biodiversity, particularly in low-income countries, and a huge increase in the ecological footprint of high-income countries.
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EU Backs Aid Through Budget Support
By Daan Bauwens
BRUSSELS - In an unprecedented move, all 27 EU development ministers championed budget support Monday as an effective way of reducing poverty in developing countries. At the same time they gave the green light to a new ground-breaking initiative to prevent new humanitarian crises in the Horn of Africa.
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U.S.
Occupiers Reclaim Land for Sustainable Farming
By Judith Scherr
ALBANY, California - With hoes, shovels, some 15,000 seedlings and a bolt cutter to break the locks that kept them out, students, community members and participants from nearby Occupy movements have laid claim to an undeveloped 10-acre parcel since Earth Day, Apr. 22, in Albany, California.
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Building Libya's New Media "From a Void"
By D. Parvaz*
TRIPOLI - Going from being a country with a highly controlled press to one that has free, independent and functioning media in roughly a year is a tall order.
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French Environmentalists Want ‘Green’ Without the ‘n’
By A.D.McKenzie
PARIS - As France’s president-elect Francois Hollande prepares to form a new government, many environmentalists are calling for the appointment of an ecology minister with real power who can deliver on promises to reduce the use of nuclear power as well as cut carbon emissions.
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Round One to Radical Left, Round Two to Europe?
Analysis by Apostolis Fotiadis
ATHENS - Kosmas Bitros (29) didn’t "believe in politics and in elections as a way of changing society". Still, he showed up at the ballot boxes for the first time last Sunday to cast a vote against austerity in the Greek national elections.
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Spain’s "Indignados" Take to the Streets Again
By Inés Benítez
MÁLAGA, Spain - A filthy vacant lot is now sprouting strawberries, tomatoes and carrots. This small community garden in the centre of the southern Spanish city of Málaga was created by the "Indignados" protest movement, which is celebrating its first anniversary Saturday by taking to the streets across the country.
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Indonesia Galvanises Youth Ahead of Rio+20
By Kanis Dursin
JAKARTA - Clutching a plastic bag containing a tree sapling in his right hand and a slim notebook in his left, 11-year-old Rizki Fauzi is the picture of a young climate change expert.
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War Widows Turn to Sex Work in Sri Lanka
By Feizal Samath
COLOMBO - On May 18, some 800 women in Sri Lanka’s northern region will hold Hindu religious ceremonies for the welfare of thier husbands who disappeared or surrendered to the military as it moved in to mop up nearly three decades of armed Tamil separatism.
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U.N. Warns of Social Fall-Out from Spain's Austerity Plan
By Gustavo Capdevila
GENEVA - An expert body of the United Nations has warned the Spanish government that the severe budget cutbacks it is applying must not undermine its commitment to upholding the economic, social and cultural rights of the country's people.
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Q&A
Mother Earth Should Not Be "Owned, Privatised and Exploited"
Aline Jenckel interviews, TOM B.K. GOLDTOOTH, executive director of the Indigenous Environmental Network
UNITED NATIONS - For centuries, indigenous peoples and their rights, resources and lands have been exploited. Yet long overdue acknowledgment of past exploitation and dedicated efforts by indigenous peoples have done little to end or prevent violations of the present, stated indigenous leaders in the Manaus Declaration of 2011.
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Tunisia's Revolution is Just Beginning
By Isolda Agazzi
GENEVA - Lingering violence, intolerance and oppression in Tunisia, following the ousting of former dictator Zine el-Abidine Ben Ali in January 2011, tells the revolutionaries who sparked the Arab Spring that their work is just beginning.
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Islamists Stall Gender Equality Bill
By Kafil Yamin
JAKARTA - The fate of a gender equality bill pending in Indonesia’s parliament and aligned with the United Nations convention on the elimination of all forms discrimination against women (CEDAW) has become uncertain after falling afoul of powerful Islamist groups.
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U.S.
Ethnic Minority Youth Lead New Wave of Student Activism
By Gabriel Schivone
TUCSON, Arizona - In December 1985, The New York Times reported on what was believed to be the first anti-apartheid conference of U.S. high schools discussing divestment from corporations operating in South Africa.
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NGOs participation
social movements trade unions grassroots advocacy charity faith-based MOBILISATION groups COLLECTIVE ACTION social capital democratic expression dissent INNOVATION

The real challenge for Rio+20
By Don de Silva

Water, water everywhere and not a drop to drink?
By Mikhail Gorbachev

Victory of Hollande a Cause for Hope in Europe
By Mario Soares

Improving Tense U.S.-Pakistan-Afghanistan Relations
By Johan Galtung

"Crowdfunding" 2.0?
By Hazel Henderson

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World Social Forum

Int'l NGO Accountability Charter

Choike.org - Portal on Southern Civil Societies

CIVICUS - World Alliance for Citizen Participation

CONGO - Conf. of NGOs at UN

Ubuntu - World Forum of Civil Society Networks

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