U.N. Women's Agency Being "Strangled at Birth" (OneWorld.net)

UNITED NATIONS, June 30 (IPS) - When the United Nations inaugurated a landmark special agency for women last January, Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon set an initial target of 500 million dollars as the proposed annual budget for the new gender-empowered body.

But nearly six months later, the voluntary funding for U.N. Women (UNW) from the 192 member states has remained painfully slow.

Ambassador Hardeep Singh Puri, India's Permanent Representative to the United Nations, expressed disappointment over the funding shortfall.

Nearly six months after its operationalisation, the actual contributions and pledges received are modest and only around 80 million dollars, he said.

"This is not commensurate with the aspiration and ambition assigned to U.N. Women," he complained.

Addressing the first regular meeting of the 41-member executive board of UNW early this week, he said: "We must not be oblivious of the fact that activities enumerated in the Strategic Plan need resources."

The Strategic Plan envisages financial requirement of nearly 1.2 billion dollars in 2011-13.

"If we have to ensure that U.N. Women stands for action, the donor community has to make generous contributions to U.N. Women," said Ambassador Puri.

Stephen Lewis, a former deputy executive director of the U.N. children's agency UNICEF and co-founder of the international advocacy organisation AIDS-Free World, has been one of the strongest advocates of UNW since long before its creation.

In an interview with IPS, Lewis said total funding raised so far - anywhere between 80 million and 126 million dollars - is "hopelessly, pathetically below what's needed and was expected".

"I gather that UN Women has now lowered its sights to a target of 250 million dollars. That's a travesty ... barely more than the cumulative total of the four small entities that were rolled into UN Women at its formation," he said.

The four women's entities that were folded into UNW were: the U.N. Development Fund for Women (UNIFEM); the Office of the Special Adviser on Gender Issues; the U.N. Division for the Advancement of Women; and the International Research and Training Institute for the Advancement of Women (INSTRAW).

The extended title of the new UNW is: 'the United Nations Entity for Gender Equality and the Empowerment of Women', and it is headed by the former president of Chile Michelle Bachelet.

Lewis said the secretary-general's target was 500 million dollars, which he described as "ridiculously low".

The target set by non-governmental organisations (NGOs) was one billion dollars ("barely enough").

"At the moment, UN Women is being strangled at birth by a coalition of the wealthy," said Lewis, a former Canadian ambassador to the United Nations.

"All the misogynist countries, from Pakistan to Sudan, must surely be laughing behind the scenes. They never wanted UN Women and now the Western donors are doing the dirty work for them," he said.

"It's an ugly business and shows, yet again, that when it comes to women, the U.N. can never get its act together," declared Lewis.

"As always, we and others will give Michelle Bachelet the benefit of the doubt. She's quite superb as an under-secretary-general (USG, the rank she holds in the U.N. totem pole)," he added. "But even Michelle Bachelet cannot change the world for women without the resources to do so."

Antonia Kirkland, legal advisor at the New York-based Equality Now, told IPS that without a significant increase in funding by member states, UN Women risks being as sidelined as the previous four entities it replaced that focused on women's empowerment.

"We must ensure that governments fulfill their legal obligations to protect women's rights".

Kirkland said the UN Women's Executive Board must concretely implement commitments made by its members and must devote adequate resources and projected funds to this entity, whose creation was a result of tireless efforts and advocacy by the international women's movement, and in particular the GEAR campaign.

A coalition of over 300 international non-governmental organisations (NGOs) led a global campaign for Gender Equality Architecture Reform (GEAR) in the U.N. system resulting in the creation of UNW.

The coalition included Women's Environment and Development Organisation (WEDO), Center for Women's Global Leadership, International Planned Parenthood Association, Asia Pacific Women's Watch, African Women's Development and Communication Network and Development Alternatives with Women for a New Era, among others.

Kirkland said member states have already invested precious time and money to establish UN Women. It is now time to urgently implement programmes that will benefit women and girls around the world, and give them the promised opportunity to achieve equality and enjoy their full human rights.

Meanwhile, Ambassador Puri told the executive board that to ensure that UN Women stands for action, "We would support all efforts to ensure that scarce resources are not diverted from programme activities in the field to administrative expenditure at U.N. Headquarters."

He said UN Women will be measured by what and how it delivers in the field, not just by what it symbolises.

The first challenge of resource mobilisation to fulfill its ambitious agenda is critical and would demonstrate the trust the international community bestows on UN Women. This needs a sound plan and a committed senior management, he said.

"I am happy to see that the revisions which have been made in the support budget late last week are the right steps in the right direction," Puri noted.

The Indian envoy described the initial target of 500 million dollars as reasonable as well as modest.

"Although I do want to point out here that the Secretary General last year had actually proposed that UN Women should be created with the initial corpus of one billion dollars," he said.

This was also the demand of the developing countries and civil society.

"This might sound ambitious, but the lower target of 500 million dollars should not make us complacent and limit ourselves," he said.

Instead, "We should be prepared to revisit this target later this year, and consider upward revision, in a realistic and practical manner."

"I would like to inform you that the Government of India is seized of the need to make appropriate contribution to UN Women," he added.

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Libyan fallout hits Chad (OneWorld.net)

DAKAR, 29 June 2011 (IRIN) - Chadian families are facing worsening food insecurity, becoming more indebted, and selling off personal possessions as they try to cope with the loss of remittances from relatives who have returned home from Libya.

Remittances, which half of the households in Chad's western and southwestern regions of Kanem and Bahr el Ghazal used to receive, are down by 57 percent, according to a survey by NGOs Oxfam and Action Against Hunger (ACF). Households on average were sent US$220 per month.

Most families in the two regions have reduced the number of meals they eat; 70 percent are eating less nutritious foods, while just under a third are resorting to wild foods such as leaves and berries.

One in five households interviewed had sold possessions to raise money; while most said they had taken out loans to get by.

At the same time, families are struggling to feed returning members: Some 43,000 migrants have returned in trucks from Libya to Chad over the past three months, according to Craig Murphy, operations officer at the International Organization for Migration (IOM). In Bahr el Ghazal family size has increased by as many as 13 people, according to the Oxfam/ACF survey.

"These people are going home to zones which already experience food insecurity even when there is no `crisis', said Philippe Conraud, head of humanitarian operations at Oxfam in West Africa. "They need food, water - the basics, to get by."

Chronic hunger

People in the Sahel are chronically food insecure: In 2010 some 10 million people were at risk of hunger due to prolonged drought and poor harvests; almost one in five children were chronically malnourished, and 5 percent severely, according to the UN Children's Fund (UNICEF) and the World Food Programme (WFP).

A minority of families are looking to new income sources: begging, sending children out to work, travelling to other towns and cities in search of work, or harvesting their crops early, according to ACF and Oxfam.

Many returnees are determined to find any work they can. Seventeen-year-old Moussa (not his real name), who just returned home to Faya, the largest city in northern Chad, after working on a farm in Libya, told IOM he would try to find work in a salt mine now that he is home

Agencies - including IOM, the World Health Organization (WHO), WFP, UNICEF, and NGOs including Oxfam and the International Rescue Committee (IRC) - have been helping provide returnees with food, medicine and water at transit centres and in major destination towns such as Faya. Nutritional support, which is urgently needed, will soon be put in place, said WHO programme coordinator Thomas Karengera.

Measles

Many migrants arrived with measles, leading IRC, WHO and UNICEF to launch vaccination campaigns for children aged six months to 15 years. A national measles vaccination campaign will soon be launched to contain the spread of the disease. As of 19 June some 5,311 people had contracted the disease across 20 of Chad's 22 regions since the beginning of the year, with 63 deaths thus far, according to Chad's Health Ministry.

"We are vaccinating children as soon as they arrive at transit centres, so the disease should not spread further," Felix Leger, IRC Chad country director, told IRIN. Many migrants are arriving run-down, malnourished and dehydrated, he said, increasing their receptiveness to the disease.

Cash

Oxfam is considering cash distributions to vulnerable families but first needs to ascertain if traders have enough capacity to supply the markets.

Cash in fragile markets will not work. "We don't want to be in a situation where cash distributions cause prices to rise, so those without cash cannot afford the high prices. That could have a harmful impact," Conraud told IRIN. Only 46 percent of traders in Kanem and Bahr el Ghazal had over two months of stocks, according to their research.

Prices of some basic foods have risen: In Kanem's capital, Mao, imported wheat was 43 percent higher in April 2011 compared to April 2010; peanut oil was up by 44 percent, and rice 6 percent; millet prices had dropped.

It is still unclear how many Chadians are likely to return from Libya said IOM's Murphy, who estimates tens of thousands remain. The number of arrivals has declined in recent weeks, "but this could just be a lull," he said.

Persecution

Migrants who had recently arrived told IOM they are being driven out not only by ongoing fighting and instability but also the loss of employment and fear of being persecuted. Fighters from the Sahel were reportedly hired early on to support Col Gaddafi, leading to fears among migrants that they will be targeted.

Some migrants may plan to return to Libya as soon as fighting stops, said Murphy. This may be the reason why migrants were left stranded on the road by trucks in Zourake near the Niger border, he said.

Donors and aid agencies need to step up, warned Conraud. "If more migrants need to leave Libya, and arrive in the vulnerable Sahelian zone, then households' ability to get by will be seriously compromised. Very few actors from the international community are aware of this situation; everyone is looking at the Libyan side of the border, but more need to look at the Mali, Niger and Chad sides," he said.

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Mauritania Could Lose Its Capital City to the Sea (OneWorld.net)

NOUAKCHOTT, June 28 (IPS) - For the past five years, water has been seeping out of the ground beneath parts of Nouakchott, undermining foundations and transforming some areas of the Mauritanian capital into uninhabitable marshes.

Tabara Gaye, a widow living in the Socogim PS neighbourhood of this coastal city, told IPS that her neighbours' house collapsed on Jun. 20. She is demanding urgent help from the government before this year's rainy season to pay for pumps and the cost of building embankments against the rising waters.

In 2007, limited flooding was observed in several places during the rainy season. But in January 2011, residents were forced to flee their homes when water began invading several neighbourhoods, including Socogim, Bagdad, Sebkha and Las Palmas. Murmurs of discontent gained strength until the clamour for compensation from the government and private developers who laid out the now-flooded sites spurred the government to act.

Mauritanian president Mohamed Abdelaziz personally visited the sites in April and set up an inter-ministerial committee to look into the problem, but the committee is yet to report back.

Retiree Moktar Kane, a victim of the flooding, says, "I spent 35 millions ouguiyas (around 138,000 dollars), to purchase a flood-prone plot. My neighbours and I, a total of 476 families, need a drain to drain waste water and runoff... or we want substantial compensation."

Compensation for Kane and his neighbours is out of the question, according to the developers, Iskan (the name means housing in Arabic). "The lots were allocated in 1982, and the water table then was at two metres," says Iskan's technical director, Med Ali. "All of Nouakchott finds itself below the water table. Only the government can settle this."

Recent studies by the government suggest that nearly 80 percent of the overall surface area of Nouakchott could be submerged in less than a decade - in 20 years at most. One scenario predicts the disappearance of the city by around 2050.

The director of environmental services, Ould Lefdal, explains it simply, "Nouakchott is located in a depression 50 centimetres below sea level. The sea is advancing towards the city at a rate of 25 metres per year."

Banimou Tlayor, from the local non-governmental organisation Action for Rational Management of the Environment, says that the city's port has changed the shape of the coast and that any rise in sea levels exposes Nouakchott to flooding.

In addition, the pumping of water from the Senegal River, a rise in the water table corresponding to rising sea levels in the Atlantic, and the absence of proper drainage are all playing a role.

Bamody DiakitA©, the coordinator of Nouakchott's Special Programme to Safeguard the City, says that 120,000 cubic metres of water from the river is treated for the city's fresh water supply, but a large part of this is lost to leaks in the antiquated pipe network. He says this, alongside the absence of a system of sewers and storm drains, is aggravating the phenomenon of the waters rising beneath the city.

The other contributing factor comes from the use of beach sand for construction, which - according to DiakitA© - has opened up 18 breaches in the coastal dune that protects inland areas from high seas.

The government has spent eight million dollars on the programme, the money going towards restoring the coastal dune as well as planting a green belt of protective vegetation.

Several studies have been carried out to assess how best to plug the gaps in the coastal dune. "The most feasible project - dredging the sea floor to reinforce the dune - will soon be put out to tender," says Diakite. He also acknowledged the serious deterioration of the natural environment near the Port of Nouakchott where 15 kilometres of the coastal bar has been destroyed by wind erosion; a Chinese firm is building a protective dike.

But Dr Marico Demba, head of the U.N.-financed Adaptation to Climate and Coastal Change Project in West Africa, fears that responding to the changes will call for resources greater than Mauritania possesses.

The situation - its gravity realised very late - is precarious. Residents of Nouakchott fear for the future of their capital. Everything depends on the evolution of the climate and the warming of the planet, says Lefdal.

More background from OneWorld

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Mauritania Could Lose Its Capital City to the Sea (OneWorld.net)

NOUAKCHOTT, June 28 (IPS) - For the past five years, water has been seeping out of the ground beneath parts of Nouakchott, undermining foundations and transforming some areas of the Mauritanian capital into uninhabitable marshes.

Tabara Gaye, a widow living in the Socogim PS neighbourhood of this coastal city, told IPS that her neighbours' house collapsed on Jun. 20. She is demanding urgent help from the government before this year's rainy season to pay for pumps and the cost of building embankments against the rising waters.

In 2007, limited flooding was observed in several places during the rainy season. But in January 2011, residents were forced to flee their homes when water began invading several neighbourhoods, including Socogim, Bagdad, Sebkha and Las Palmas. Murmurs of discontent gained strength until the clamour for compensation from the government and private developers who laid out the now-flooded sites spurred the government to act.

Mauritanian president Mohamed Abdelaziz personally visited the sites in April and set up an inter-ministerial committee to look into the problem, but the committee is yet to report back.

Retiree Moktar Kane, a victim of the flooding, says, "I spent 35 millions ouguiyas (around 138,000 dollars), to purchase a flood-prone plot. My neighbours and I, a total of 476 families, need a drain to drain waste water and runoff... or we want substantial compensation."

Compensation for Kane and his neighbours is out of the question, according to the developers, Iskan (the name means housing in Arabic). "The lots were allocated in 1982, and the water table then was at two metres," says Iskan's technical director, Med Ali. "All of Nouakchott finds itself below the water table. Only the government can settle this."

Recent studies by the government suggest that nearly 80 percent of the overall surface area of Nouakchott could be submerged in less than a decade - in 20 years at most. One scenario predicts the disappearance of the city by around 2050.

The director of environmental services, Ould Lefdal, explains it simply, "Nouakchott is located in a depression 50 centimetres below sea level. The sea is advancing towards the city at a rate of 25 metres per year."

Banimou Tlayor, from the local non-governmental organisation Action for Rational Management of the Environment, says that the city's port has changed the shape of the coast and that any rise in sea levels exposes Nouakchott to flooding.

In addition, the pumping of water from the Senegal River, a rise in the water table corresponding to rising sea levels in the Atlantic, and the absence of proper drainage are all playing a role.

Bamody DiakitA©, the coordinator of Nouakchott's Special Programme to Safeguard the City, says that 120,000 cubic metres of water from the river is treated for the city's fresh water supply, but a large part of this is lost to leaks in the antiquated pipe network. He says this, alongside the absence of a system of sewers and storm drains, is aggravating the phenomenon of the waters rising beneath the city.

The other contributing factor comes from the use of beach sand for construction, which - according to DiakitA© - has opened up 18 breaches in the coastal dune that protects inland areas from high seas.

The government has spent eight million dollars on the programme, the money going towards restoring the coastal dune as well as planting a green belt of protective vegetation.

Several studies have been carried out to assess how best to plug the gaps in the coastal dune. "The most feasible project - dredging the sea floor to reinforce the dune - will soon be put out to tender," says Diakite. He also acknowledged the serious deterioration of the natural environment near the Port of Nouakchott where 15 kilometres of the coastal bar has been destroyed by wind erosion; a Chinese firm is building a protective dike.

But Dr Marico Demba, head of the U.N.-financed Adaptation to Climate and Coastal Change Project in West Africa, fears that responding to the changes will call for resources greater than Mauritania possesses.

The situation - its gravity realised very late - is precarious. Residents of Nouakchott fear for the future of their capital. Everything depends on the evolution of the climate and the warming of the planet, says Lefdal.

More background from OneWorld

Climate Change in Mauritania

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Human Barricade Stops India's Big Ticket Steel Project (OneWorld.net)

BHUBANESWAR, Jun 24 (IPS) - Fourteen-year-old Satikanta Sahu loves going to school, but these days, he would rather spend his time manning the barricade and facing down policemen in the sandy coastal village of Govindpur in India’s eastern state of Orissa.

While his mother and their neighbours lie on the ground hugging the sands to form a round-the-clock human barricade, Sahu runs errands, bringing them drinking water and occasionally shouting slogans.

His slogans rebuke the Orissa government for plotting to wipe out their village to give way to a 12- billion-dollar steel plant. The plant, to be built and run by South Korea’s Pohang Steel Company (POSCO), will have a capacity of four million tonnes and is touted to be the largest Foreign Direct Investment (FDI) in India, Asia’s third largest economy.

The Orissa government says the plant needs a total of 3,719 acres, of which only some 150 acres are private land, the rest being forest and government land. But it is the 150 acres that are highly contentious, because they are home to 613 families whom the plant will displace.

These families are concentrated in Govindpur and the neighbouring village of Dhinkia, where they make a living growing betel leaves.

At the forefront of the protest are women and children, Sahu among them. "I love going to school. But I have been here for many days now, because this is our livelihood," he says. "We want POSCO to go back. We will not allow the designs of Naveen Patnaik (Orissa’s chief minister) to succeed."

As India tries to industrialise and attract foreign investment, it faces resistance from villagers and farmers reluctant to part with land on which they are rooted. According to a study last year by leading business chamber ASSOCHAM, delays in land acquisition are threatening investments worth 100 billion dollars, while at least 22 major steel projects worth 82 billion dollars are stalled because of protesting farmers and activists.

As the protest of more than 2,000 people against POSCO continues, the Orissa government has deployed over 800 police to the site.

The villagers, under the umbrella of POSCO Pratirodh Sangram Samiti (PPSS, which means Group to Resist POSCO) have formed a three-tier barricade at the entry to the village and keep a round-the- clock vigil.

The Orissa government has called the acquisition move a peaceful process. Protesters and activists say, however, that the government is coercing them into giving in by deploying a huge number of police officers to the area.

"Of the total 3,719 acres needed for the project, 2,958 acres is forest land for which we have got required clearance from the federal government’s environment ministry," Orissa Industry Minister Raghunath Mohanty told IPS.

"About 608 acres are revenue land (government land). We need to acquire only 152 acres of private land where about 613 families will be displaced," informs Mohanty.

While the government decided to temporarily halt land acquisition in the face of protests, the villagers say they will fight to their last breath and keep continuous vigil. From Jun. 8 onwards, over 400 students have joined the protest meetings, along with more than 2,000 women and elderly members. Now, the activists are planning to hold classes on the frontlines, so that students can keep protesting and not miss their studies.

"The government calls it a peaceful land acquisition programme, while the truth is that meetings are on in the administration and a blue print is being prepared to enter Govindpur forcefully," says PPSS leader Prashant Paikray.

The activists fear the government is planning a repeat of Kalinganagar, another area in Orissa’s Jajpur district. There, in January 2006, tribal people protested the construction of a steel plant by India’s iconic Tata Group and were fired upon by police, resulting in the death of 12 people.

"Why is the government and the state upset over the so-called biggest FDI, when we for generations to come could remain happy and prosperous with our vibrant economy of pan (betel), mina (fish) and dhan (paddy) without any such project which promises only to destroy everything around us?" asks Abhay Sahoo, one of the leaders of the protest movement.

"This is one area in the country where the Forest Rights Act (FRA) 2006 has been grossly violated and various government appointed committees even corroborated that," says Sahoo.

Earlier this year, India’s Union Environment Minister Jairam Ramesh gave clearance to the POSCO project on certain conditions. Yet a panel set up by the ministry itself suggested last October that the project violated coastal regulations and forest rights laws.

The four-member panel, headed by India’s former environment secretary Meena Gupta, probed the issue and differed in their views. But a majority of three panel members recommended the revocation of the environmental clearance given to POSCO in 2007.

The majority of the panel said POSCO-India Pvt. Ltd has not been able to address all the issues relating to Coastal Regulatory Zone notifications, and identified a number of serious lapses and violations, including suppression of facts.

Later, in a press statement, POSCO said it "never violated any law or procedure for obtaining any governmental clearance whatsoever required for the Project."

"After five long years of MOU (Memorandum of Understanding), we have not been able to commence any operation, owing to our commitment to obtain all necessary statutory clearances before commencing any operation," POSCO said.

While POSCO seems to have overcome the environmental clearance hurdle despite the views of the panel, for now, only the human barricades and steely resolve of the villagers stand in POSCO’s way.

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Human Barricade Stops India's Big Ticket Steel Project (OneWorld.net)

BHUBANESWAR, Jun 24 (IPS) - Fourteen-year-old Satikanta Sahu loves going to school, but these days, he would rather spend his time manning the barricade and facing down policemen in the sandy coastal village of Govindpur in India’s eastern state of Orissa.

While his mother and their neighbours lie on the ground hugging the sands to form a round-the-clock human barricade, Sahu runs errands, bringing them drinking water and occasionally shouting slogans.

His slogans rebuke the Orissa government for plotting to wipe out their village to give way to a 12- billion-dollar steel plant. The plant, to be built and run by South Korea’s Pohang Steel Company (POSCO), will have a capacity of four million tonnes and is touted to be the largest Foreign Direct Investment (FDI) in India, Asia’s third largest economy.

The Orissa government says the plant needs a total of 3,719 acres, of which only some 150 acres are private land, the rest being forest and government land. But it is the 150 acres that are highly contentious, because they are home to 613 families whom the plant will displace.

These families are concentrated in Govindpur and the neighbouring village of Dhinkia, where they make a living growing betel leaves.

At the forefront of the protest are women and children, Sahu among them. "I love going to school. But I have been here for many days now, because this is our livelihood," he says. "We want POSCO to go back. We will not allow the designs of Naveen Patnaik (Orissa’s chief minister) to succeed."

As India tries to industrialise and attract foreign investment, it faces resistance from villagers and farmers reluctant to part with land on which they are rooted. According to a study last year by leading business chamber ASSOCHAM, delays in land acquisition are threatening investments worth 100 billion dollars, while at least 22 major steel projects worth 82 billion dollars are stalled because of protesting farmers and activists.

As the protest of more than 2,000 people against POSCO continues, the Orissa government has deployed over 800 police to the site.

The villagers, under the umbrella of POSCO Pratirodh Sangram Samiti (PPSS, which means Group to Resist POSCO) have formed a three-tier barricade at the entry to the village and keep a round-the- clock vigil.

The Orissa government has called the acquisition move a peaceful process. Protesters and activists say, however, that the government is coercing them into giving in by deploying a huge number of police officers to the area.

"Of the total 3,719 acres needed for the project, 2,958 acres is forest land for which we have got required clearance from the federal government’s environment ministry," Orissa Industry Minister Raghunath Mohanty told IPS.

"About 608 acres are revenue land (government land). We need to acquire only 152 acres of private land where about 613 families will be displaced," informs Mohanty.

While the government decided to temporarily halt land acquisition in the face of protests, the villagers say they will fight to their last breath and keep continuous vigil. From Jun. 8 onwards, over 400 students have joined the protest meetings, along with more than 2,000 women and elderly members. Now, the activists are planning to hold classes on the frontlines, so that students can keep protesting and not miss their studies.

"The government calls it a peaceful land acquisition programme, while the truth is that meetings are on in the administration and a blue print is being prepared to enter Govindpur forcefully," says PPSS leader Prashant Paikray.

The activists fear the government is planning a repeat of Kalinganagar, another area in Orissa’s Jajpur district. There, in January 2006, tribal people protested the construction of a steel plant by India’s iconic Tata Group and were fired upon by police, resulting in the death of 12 people.

"Why is the government and the state upset over the so-called biggest FDI, when we for generations to come could remain happy and prosperous with our vibrant economy of pan (betel), mina (fish) and dhan (paddy) without any such project which promises only to destroy everything around us?" asks Abhay Sahoo, one of the leaders of the protest movement.

"This is one area in the country where the Forest Rights Act (FRA) 2006 has been grossly violated and various government appointed committees even corroborated that," says Sahoo.

Earlier this year, India’s Union Environment Minister Jairam Ramesh gave clearance to the POSCO project on certain conditions. Yet a panel set up by the ministry itself suggested last October that the project violated coastal regulations and forest rights laws.

The four-member panel, headed by India’s former environment secretary Meena Gupta, probed the issue and differed in their views. But a majority of three panel members recommended the revocation of the environmental clearance given to POSCO in 2007.

The majority of the panel said POSCO-India Pvt. Ltd has not been able to address all the issues relating to Coastal Regulatory Zone notifications, and identified a number of serious lapses and violations, including suppression of facts.

Later, in a press statement, POSCO said it "never violated any law or procedure for obtaining any governmental clearance whatsoever required for the Project."

"After five long years of MOU (Memorandum of Understanding), we have not been able to commence any operation, owing to our commitment to obtain all necessary statutory clearances before commencing any operation," POSCO said.

While POSCO seems to have overcome the environmental clearance hurdle despite the views of the panel, for now, only the human barricades and steely resolve of the villagers stand in POSCO’s way.

Want to Know More?

» OneWorld Guide: India - Poverty, Food and Energy in a Changing Climate

ALL THE LATEST GLOBAL HEADLINES

Yahoo! News

Human Barricade Stops India's Big Ticket Steel Project (OneWorld.net)

BHUBANESWAR, Jun 24 (IPS) - Fourteen-year-old Satikanta Sahu loves going to school, but these days, he would rather spend his time manning the barricade and facing down policemen in the sandy coastal village of Govindpur in India’s eastern state of Orissa.

While his mother and their neighbours lie on the ground hugging the sands to form a round-the-clock human barricade, Sahu runs errands, bringing them drinking water and occasionally shouting slogans.

His slogans rebuke the Orissa government for plotting to wipe out their village to give way to a 12- billion-dollar steel plant. The plant, to be built and run by South Korea’s Pohang Steel Company (POSCO), will have a capacity of four million tonnes and is touted to be the largest Foreign Direct Investment (FDI) in India, Asia’s third largest economy.

The Orissa government says the plant needs a total of 3,719 acres, of which only some 150 acres are private land, the rest being forest and government land. But it is the 150 acres that are highly contentious, because they are home to 613 families whom the plant will displace.

These families are concentrated in Govindpur and the neighbouring village of Dhinkia, where they make a living growing betel leaves.

At the forefront of the protest are women and children, Sahu among them. "I love going to school. But I have been here for many days now, because this is our livelihood," he says. "We want POSCO to go back. We will not allow the designs of Naveen Patnaik (Orissa’s chief minister) to succeed."

As India tries to industrialise and attract foreign investment, it faces resistance from villagers and farmers reluctant to part with land on which they are rooted. According to a study last year by leading business chamber ASSOCHAM, delays in land acquisition are threatening investments worth 100 billion dollars, while at least 22 major steel projects worth 82 billion dollars are stalled because of protesting farmers and activists.

As the protest of more than 2,000 people against POSCO continues, the Orissa government has deployed over 800 police to the site.

The villagers, under the umbrella of POSCO Pratirodh Sangram Samiti (PPSS, which means Group to Resist POSCO) have formed a three-tier barricade at the entry to the village and keep a round-the- clock vigil.

The Orissa government has called the acquisition move a peaceful process. Protesters and activists say, however, that the government is coercing them into giving in by deploying a huge number of police officers to the area.

"Of the total 3,719 acres needed for the project, 2,958 acres is forest land for which we have got required clearance from the federal government’s environment ministry," Orissa Industry Minister Raghunath Mohanty told IPS.

"About 608 acres are revenue land (government land). We need to acquire only 152 acres of private land where about 613 families will be displaced," informs Mohanty.

While the government decided to temporarily halt land acquisition in the face of protests, the villagers say they will fight to their last breath and keep continuous vigil. From Jun. 8 onwards, over 400 students have joined the protest meetings, along with more than 2,000 women and elderly members. Now, the activists are planning to hold classes on the frontlines, so that students can keep protesting and not miss their studies.

"The government calls it a peaceful land acquisition programme, while the truth is that meetings are on in the administration and a blue print is being prepared to enter Govindpur forcefully," says PPSS leader Prashant Paikray.

The activists fear the government is planning a repeat of Kalinganagar, another area in Orissa’s Jajpur district. There, in January 2006, tribal people protested the construction of a steel plant by India’s iconic Tata Group and were fired upon by police, resulting in the death of 12 people.

"Why is the government and the state upset over the so-called biggest FDI, when we for generations to come could remain happy and prosperous with our vibrant economy of pan (betel), mina (fish) and dhan (paddy) without any such project which promises only to destroy everything around us?" asks Abhay Sahoo, one of the leaders of the protest movement.

"This is one area in the country where the Forest Rights Act (FRA) 2006 has been grossly violated and various government appointed committees even corroborated that," says Sahoo.

Earlier this year, India’s Union Environment Minister Jairam Ramesh gave clearance to the POSCO project on certain conditions. Yet a panel set up by the ministry itself suggested last October that the project violated coastal regulations and forest rights laws.

The four-member panel, headed by India’s former environment secretary Meena Gupta, probed the issue and differed in their views. But a majority of three panel members recommended the revocation of the environmental clearance given to POSCO in 2007.

The majority of the panel said POSCO-India Pvt. Ltd has not been able to address all the issues relating to Coastal Regulatory Zone notifications, and identified a number of serious lapses and violations, including suppression of facts.

Later, in a press statement, POSCO said it "never violated any law or procedure for obtaining any governmental clearance whatsoever required for the Project."

"After five long years of MOU (Memorandum of Understanding), we have not been able to commence any operation, owing to our commitment to obtain all necessary statutory clearances before commencing any operation," POSCO said.

While POSCO seems to have overcome the environmental clearance hurdle despite the views of the panel, for now, only the human barricades and steely resolve of the villagers stand in POSCO’s way.

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Human Barricade Stops India's Big Ticket Steel Project (OneWorld.net)

BHUBANESWAR, Jun 24 (IPS) - Fourteen-year-old Satikanta Sahu loves going to school, but these days, he would rather spend his time manning the barricade and facing down policemen in the sandy coastal village of Govindpur in India’s eastern state of Orissa.

While his mother and their neighbours lie on the ground hugging the sands to form a round-the-clock human barricade, Sahu runs errands, bringing them drinking water and occasionally shouting slogans.

His slogans rebuke the Orissa government for plotting to wipe out their village to give way to a 12- billion-dollar steel plant. The plant, to be built and run by South Korea’s Pohang Steel Company (POSCO), will have a capacity of four million tonnes and is touted to be the largest Foreign Direct Investment (FDI) in India, Asia’s third largest economy.

The Orissa government says the plant needs a total of 3,719 acres, of which only some 150 acres are private land, the rest being forest and government land. But it is the 150 acres that are highly contentious, because they are home to 613 families whom the plant will displace.

These families are concentrated in Govindpur and the neighbouring village of Dhinkia, where they make a living growing betel leaves.

At the forefront of the protest are women and children, Sahu among them. "I love going to school. But I have been here for many days now, because this is our livelihood," he says. "We want POSCO to go back. We will not allow the designs of Naveen Patnaik (Orissa’s chief minister) to succeed."

As India tries to industrialise and attract foreign investment, it faces resistance from villagers and farmers reluctant to part with land on which they are rooted. According to a study last year by leading business chamber ASSOCHAM, delays in land acquisition are threatening investments worth 100 billion dollars, while at least 22 major steel projects worth 82 billion dollars are stalled because of protesting farmers and activists.

As the protest of more than 2,000 people against POSCO continues, the Orissa government has deployed over 800 police to the site.

The villagers, under the umbrella of POSCO Pratirodh Sangram Samiti (PPSS, which means Group to Resist POSCO) have formed a three-tier barricade at the entry to the village and keep a round-the- clock vigil.

The Orissa government has called the acquisition move a peaceful process. Protesters and activists say, however, that the government is coercing them into giving in by deploying a huge number of police officers to the area.

"Of the total 3,719 acres needed for the project, 2,958 acres is forest land for which we have got required clearance from the federal government’s environment ministry," Orissa Industry Minister Raghunath Mohanty told IPS.

"About 608 acres are revenue land (government land). We need to acquire only 152 acres of private land where about 613 families will be displaced," informs Mohanty.

While the government decided to temporarily halt land acquisition in the face of protests, the villagers say they will fight to their last breath and keep continuous vigil. From Jun. 8 onwards, over 400 students have joined the protest meetings, along with more than 2,000 women and elderly members. Now, the activists are planning to hold classes on the frontlines, so that students can keep protesting and not miss their studies.

"The government calls it a peaceful land acquisition programme, while the truth is that meetings are on in the administration and a blue print is being prepared to enter Govindpur forcefully," says PPSS leader Prashant Paikray.

The activists fear the government is planning a repeat of Kalinganagar, another area in Orissa’s Jajpur district. There, in January 2006, tribal people protested the construction of a steel plant by India’s iconic Tata Group and were fired upon by police, resulting in the death of 12 people.

"Why is the government and the state upset over the so-called biggest FDI, when we for generations to come could remain happy and prosperous with our vibrant economy of pan (betel), mina (fish) and dhan (paddy) without any such project which promises only to destroy everything around us?" asks Abhay Sahoo, one of the leaders of the protest movement.

"This is one area in the country where the Forest Rights Act (FRA) 2006 has been grossly violated and various government appointed committees even corroborated that," says Sahoo.

Earlier this year, India’s Union Environment Minister Jairam Ramesh gave clearance to the POSCO project on certain conditions. Yet a panel set up by the ministry itself suggested last October that the project violated coastal regulations and forest rights laws.

The four-member panel, headed by India’s former environment secretary Meena Gupta, probed the issue and differed in their views. But a majority of three panel members recommended the revocation of the environmental clearance given to POSCO in 2007.

The majority of the panel said POSCO-India Pvt. Ltd has not been able to address all the issues relating to Coastal Regulatory Zone notifications, and identified a number of serious lapses and violations, including suppression of facts.

Later, in a press statement, POSCO said it "never violated any law or procedure for obtaining any governmental clearance whatsoever required for the Project."

"After five long years of MOU (Memorandum of Understanding), we have not been able to commence any operation, owing to our commitment to obtain all necessary statutory clearances before commencing any operation," POSCO said.

While POSCO seems to have overcome the environmental clearance hurdle despite the views of the panel, for now, only the human barricades and steely resolve of the villagers stand in POSCO’s way.

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Supreme Court Tells Working Women, You're on Your Own (OneWorld.net)

Jun 21 (New America Media) - Sitting in the majestic paneled courtroom in the U.S. Supreme Court three months ago, it did not take long to get that dreaded sense that Betty Dukes and 1.5 million other current and former women employees at Wal-Mart were not likely to prevail in their epic 10-year battle against the nation's largest private employer.

On Monday, that premonition came true. The Supreme Court threw out several lower-court rulings and declared that the women’s claims of massive, persistent sex discrimination were not sufficiently similar to merit class-action status. Ladies, you are on your own!

In order to get the case certified as a class action, Dukes and her fellow plaintiffs had introduced vast amounts of evidence supporting their claims of discrimination. Women made up two-thirds of the Wal-Mart work force, yet held only one-third of management jobs. Wal-Mart had a far smaller proportion of women managers when compared to the other major retailers. Indeed, in 1999 (the most recent date for which data were available) Wal-Mart had a lower percentage of female managers than its top competitors had in 1975.

Other evidence from Wal-Mart’s own personnel records showed that women were paid less on average than their male counterparts in all job classifications, despite having higher performance ratings and more seniority than their male co-workers.

This evidence, along with more than 100 declarations from women employees around the United States, convinced a San Francisco federal court to certify the class in 2004, allowing the women to sue en masse and giving them a fighting chance against the corporate giant. The Ninth U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals upheld the class certification three separate times, albeit by a narrow majority. Wal-Mart was thrilled when the pro–big business Supreme Court agreed to hear its appeal.

To no one’s surprise, the court sided with Goliath. Where Wal-Mart’s women workers and their lawyers see group inequality in the form of common practices and policies that place women in a disadvantageous position, the Supreme Court’s conservative, all-male majority could only see 1.5 million individual women with specific, unrelated gripes about how much Wal-Mart pays them, and individualized complaints about promotional opportunities they may have been denied.

In my notes of the hour-long oral argument this past March, the conservative majority’s skepticism comes across loud and clear. Justice Kennedy: “Let’s suppose that experts’ testimony, sociologists and so forth, establish that in industry generally and in the retail industry (in particular), women still are discriminated against by a mathematical factor of X. You have a company that has a very specific policy against discrimination, and you look at their — the way their employees are ... treated, and you find a disparity by the same mathematical factor X. Does that give you a cause of action?” Translation into common English: If everyone else does it, how in the world can a woman claim there’s discrimination at Wal-Mart?

This same question was asked, in one form or another, by each of the conservatives (except Clarence Thomas, who asked no questions during oral argument, as is his custom). In the end, they decided to give Wal-Mart a€” a company well known for its union-busting policies and for profitting off the backs of its low-wage workforce a€” the benefit of their doubt. In a corporation with 3,400 stores located in 50 states, with an express policy forbidding discrimination, and where managers had substantial discretion as to how much employees were paid or who was promoted, the court's majority held that the plaintiffs could not establish that their claims of discrimination had enough in common to warrant suing en masse.

The dissenting justices — Ginsburg, Sotomayor, Kagan and Breyer — strongly disagreed. They found the evidence convincing that “gender bias suffused Wal-Mart’s corporate culture” and noted that the company’s policy of giving supervisors great discretion to make personnel decisions “has long been known to have the potential to produce disparate effects.” The justices (three of whom are female) argued that the suit should go back to the lower court for further determination as to whether the class action could proceed. The majority dismissed the class altogether.

On March 28, 2011, the night before the Supreme Court argument, the American Association for University Women and the Alliance for Justice hosted a reception for Betty Dukes and the other Wal-Mart plaintiffs. These working-class women were thrilled to be in Washington and proudly introduced their family members, who stood by them on the eve of the most public day in their otherwise ordinary lives. The women had spent a decade fighting Wal-Mart because they had tired of second-class status in the workplace, and they refused to watch while their daughters and nieces and another generation of women were paid less and passed over for well-deserved promotions. Whatever happened, they had fought the good fight a€” and the support they felt that night sustained them, despite the odds.

After the oral arguments, the women of Wal-Mart stepped into the crisp Washington sunshine with their heads held high. Win or lose, their case had already brought about some major changes at the retailer. Two years after the lawsuit was filed, the company finally began posting management opportunities, and the “tap on the shoulder” system of promotions that had clearly favored male employees was eliminated. Later, the company restructured its pay system, erasing some (but not all) of the wage disparity. It also put in place training programs aimed at increasing the number of women managers. Only when it felt the heat of the class action was Wal-Mart willing to mend its ways.

What will happen to the women of Wal-Mart now that their class action has been disbanded? As a lawyer who was once part of the legal team that represented Betty Dukes, Chris Kwapnoski, Edith Arana and the other plaintiffs in this case, I can’t help but find the Supreme Court’s decision deeply disappointing, not just for the women but for all people who band together to challenge corporate practices that inflict widespread harm.

I know the plaintiffs are disappointed, too. But they haven’t come this far to give up now. The evidence of discrimination at Wal-Mart is not wiped out by this ruling, and although the case cannot proceed as a nationwide class action, these resourceful and determined women will regroup and continue their fight for justice and equality. They have no other choice.

NAM contributor Irma Herrera is a civil rights attorney who spent almost 15 years as executive director of Equal Rights Advocates, one of the main law firms in the Wal-Mart case.

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Supreme Court Tells Working Women, You're on Your Own (OneWorld.net)

Jun 21 (New America Media) - Sitting in the majestic paneled courtroom in the U.S. Supreme Court three months ago, it did not take long to get that dreaded sense that Betty Dukes and 1.5 million other current and former women employees at Wal-Mart were not likely to prevail in their epic 10-year battle against the nation's largest private employer.

On Monday, that premonition came true. The Supreme Court threw out several lower-court rulings and declared that the women’s claims of massive, persistent sex discrimination were not sufficiently similar to merit class-action status. Ladies, you are on your own!

In order to get the case certified as a class action, Dukes and her fellow plaintiffs had introduced vast amounts of evidence supporting their claims of discrimination. Women made up two-thirds of the Wal-Mart work force, yet held only one-third of management jobs. Wal-Mart had a far smaller proportion of women managers when compared to the other major retailers. Indeed, in 1999 (the most recent date for which data were available) Wal-Mart had a lower percentage of female managers than its top competitors had in 1975.

Other evidence from Wal-Mart’s own personnel records showed that women were paid less on average than their male counterparts in all job classifications, despite having higher performance ratings and more seniority than their male co-workers.

This evidence, along with more than 100 declarations from women employees around the United States, convinced a San Francisco federal court to certify the class in 2004, allowing the women to sue en masse and giving them a fighting chance against the corporate giant. The Ninth U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals upheld the class certification three separate times, albeit by a narrow majority. Wal-Mart was thrilled when the pro–big business Supreme Court agreed to hear its appeal.

To no one’s surprise, the court sided with Goliath. Where Wal-Mart’s women workers and their lawyers see group inequality in the form of common practices and policies that place women in a disadvantageous position, the Supreme Court’s conservative, all-male majority could only see 1.5 million individual women with specific, unrelated gripes about how much Wal-Mart pays them, and individualized complaints about promotional opportunities they may have been denied.

In my notes of the hour-long oral argument this past March, the conservative majority’s skepticism comes across loud and clear. Justice Kennedy: “Let’s suppose that experts’ testimony, sociologists and so forth, establish that in industry generally and in the retail industry (in particular), women still are discriminated against by a mathematical factor of X. You have a company that has a very specific policy against discrimination, and you look at their — the way their employees are ... treated, and you find a disparity by the same mathematical factor X. Does that give you a cause of action?” Translation into common English: If everyone else does it, how in the world can a woman claim there’s discrimination at Wal-Mart?

This same question was asked, in one form or another, by each of the conservatives (except Clarence Thomas, who asked no questions during oral argument, as is his custom). In the end, they decided to give Wal-Mart a€” a company well known for its union-busting policies and for profitting off the backs of its low-wage workforce a€” the benefit of their doubt. In a corporation with 3,400 stores located in 50 states, with an express policy forbidding discrimination, and where managers had substantial discretion as to how much employees were paid or who was promoted, the court's majority held that the plaintiffs could not establish that their claims of discrimination had enough in common to warrant suing en masse.

The dissenting justices — Ginsburg, Sotomayor, Kagan and Breyer — strongly disagreed. They found the evidence convincing that “gender bias suffused Wal-Mart’s corporate culture” and noted that the company’s policy of giving supervisors great discretion to make personnel decisions “has long been known to have the potential to produce disparate effects.” The justices (three of whom are female) argued that the suit should go back to the lower court for further determination as to whether the class action could proceed. The majority dismissed the class altogether.

On March 28, 2011, the night before the Supreme Court argument, the American Association for University Women and the Alliance for Justice hosted a reception for Betty Dukes and the other Wal-Mart plaintiffs. These working-class women were thrilled to be in Washington and proudly introduced their family members, who stood by them on the eve of the most public day in their otherwise ordinary lives. The women had spent a decade fighting Wal-Mart because they had tired of second-class status in the workplace, and they refused to watch while their daughters and nieces and another generation of women were paid less and passed over for well-deserved promotions. Whatever happened, they had fought the good fight a€” and the support they felt that night sustained them, despite the odds.

After the oral arguments, the women of Wal-Mart stepped into the crisp Washington sunshine with their heads held high. Win or lose, their case had already brought about some major changes at the retailer. Two years after the lawsuit was filed, the company finally began posting management opportunities, and the “tap on the shoulder” system of promotions that had clearly favored male employees was eliminated. Later, the company restructured its pay system, erasing some (but not all) of the wage disparity. It also put in place training programs aimed at increasing the number of women managers. Only when it felt the heat of the class action was Wal-Mart willing to mend its ways.

What will happen to the women of Wal-Mart now that their class action has been disbanded? As a lawyer who was once part of the legal team that represented Betty Dukes, Chris Kwapnoski, Edith Arana and the other plaintiffs in this case, I can’t help but find the Supreme Court’s decision deeply disappointing, not just for the women but for all people who band together to challenge corporate practices that inflict widespread harm.

I know the plaintiffs are disappointed, too. But they haven’t come this far to give up now. The evidence of discrimination at Wal-Mart is not wiped out by this ruling, and although the case cannot proceed as a nationwide class action, these resourceful and determined women will regroup and continue their fight for justice and equality. They have no other choice.

NAM contributor Irma Herrera is a civil rights attorney who spent almost 15 years as executive director of Equal Rights Advocates, one of the main law firms in the Wal-Mart case.

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G20 urged to deliver pledges for world hunger (OneWorld.net)

June 19 (OneWorld.net) - Evidence continues to emerge that the release of international donor funds to support global food security is matching neither the scale of the promises nor the urgency of the situation.

According to its June report, grants have been awarded to a total of 12 developing countries by the Global Agriculture and Food Security Program (GAFSP), a key multilateral fund established to support national hunger plans by G20 leaders at the Pittsburgh summit in 2009.

But 20 countries have been turned away, according to Lael Brainard, under-secretary for international affairs at the US Treasury. And GAFSP administrators say that new proposals must remain on hold, "pending availability of funding."

Only six of the richer countries, together with the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, have so far made pledges to GAFSP. The total of $925 million includes offers from Spain and Ireland whose economies are facing exceptional difficulties.

Lael Brainard has emerged as a cheerleader for GAFSP fundraising. "Without swift support from the rest of the G8 and the G20, the global fight against hunger could be put at great risk," she wrote in the UK Guardian last week.

This is a bold position for the under-secretary to adopt because the current gap between funds received by GAFSP and funds promised is almost entirely attributable to the US. Of $475 million pledged, only $167 million has been approved by Congress.

Ms Brainard did acknowledge the embarrassment in a recent speech at the Chicago Council of Global Affairs. "Without greater progress on our pledge, it is difficult for the United States to convince other development partners to contribute. That's why it will be critical for Congress to fund the Administration's request of $308 million in FY2012," she said.

This funding tension comes at a time of rising concern about hunger and malnutrition in developing countries. Escalating global prices of staple grains combined with persistent extreme weather conditions in vulnerable regions have driven an additional 44 million people into poverty, according to the World Bank.

Fearing a possible repeat of the 2008 food crisis, agriculture ministers from the G20 group of countries will assemble for an unprecedented meeting in Paris on Monday.

Recent days have witnessed a deluge of advice from international development agencies on action that ministers should take to protect global food security in general and the poor in particular.

Top favourite is a curb on speculative trading of food commodities. In its role as G20 chair, the French government is known to be sympathetic to this call but may be forced to rule the matter as the business of finance rather than agriculture ministers.

Shenggen Fan, Director General of the Washington-based International Food Policy Research Institute, is amongst those who have published advice on food security. But he prefers not to lose sight of the underlying financial imperative.

"Before the international community issues any new recommendations, they first need to make good on previous commitments," he says, referring to the 2009 pledge by G8 leaders to raise an additional $20 billion for agriculture in poor countries. Less than a quarter of this amount has been disbursed, according to the G8 accountability report published last month.

Ethiopia is a key country to monitor for progress on agriculture. Already seriously affected by the drought in the Horn of Africa, the country has over 10 million people in need of food assistance.

For longer term development of its farming sector, Ethiopia is one of the fortunate few countries to be funded by the GAFSP program. The grant totals $51.5 million.

But this figure may only scratch the surface. Ethiopia's Policy and Investment Framework, its ten-year plan for agriculture, estimates the funding gap that will have to be sought from international donors. It totals $6.2 billion.

* More Information:

Food Security in Ethiopia, a OneWorld briefing

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By Boat to Lampedusa and a New Life (OneWorld.net)

LAMPEDUSA, Jun 16 (IRIN) - When Sonny Johnson left Tripoli for the Italian island Lampedusa in a wooden fishing boat, he feared he might never set foot on dry land again. But for Johnson, from a small village in eastern Sierra Leone, it was worth the risk.

"I had been working in Tripoli for four years, after travelling there overland from Freetown [Sierra Leone capital]," he told IRIN shortly after arriving on the island. "I had a well-paid job, but when the situation broke down in Libya, I started to suffer abuse because I was African. I started to get tired in my soul. Then I knew I had to leave, and I decided to try to come by boat.

"On the boat, nobody talked about where we were going," he said. "I don't think anyone wanted to jinx our arrival. We talked about other things, like family and football. All we knew was that we were going to Italy."

Johnson left on a boat with 110 other migrants, among them several women and children, at 4am on 11 June. After being tracked by Lampedusa's coastguards, the boat was escorted into port at midday the following day. "The sea was a little bit rough," he said. "But I believed we would arrive."

Johnson paid US$800. The boat captains are usually also migrants who have paid a slightly reduced rate to agents who ask them to operate the boats. Often they have limited experience at sea and are treated like the other migrants. The boats are often impounded and a "boat graveyard" is appearing by the port.

There is also a small museum on Lampedusa where local artists have turned belongings that were previously owned by migrants - shoes, korans, photos, letters, fuel containers, life jackets - into an art collection.

Lampedusa's sandy shores have been a landing point for migrants from North Africa for centuries. But the island was overwhelmed by a surge of more than 30,000 migrants between February and April this year. Aid workers based on the island say the situation, although difficult, has since improved.

"Lampedusa's two processing centres are crowded but the situation is not critical," said Barbara Molinario, spokesperson for the UN Refugee Agency (UNHCR) in Lampedusa. "But logistically it is difficult when we receive large influxes."

In the 10 days prior to 12 June, Lampedusa had received no boats from North Africa, but on 12 June UNHCR registered 1,500 migrants in seven boats during a 12-hour period.

As each boat arrived at the port, anxious smiles were clearly visible on the faces of the migrants. Some dropped to their knees and prayed on the edge of the dock. "There is a kind of euphoria," said Johnson. "We cannot believe we have arrived."

But arriving on Lampedusa is only the first step in a registration process that can take up to one month. Of this week's 1,500 new arrivals, 1,000 departed on 12 June after undergoing registration by Italian immigration officials and police.

"The two processing centres on Lampedusa are quite small and people need to be identified by police in a short period of time," said Molinario. "For the migrants, that usually means long waiting hours. It can be quite harsh for them when they have to wait for an entire day to shower and change their clothes, after coming by sea all the way from Libya."

Migrants are first processed by Italian police at Lampedusa's two centres and are given hot meals, access to showers and beds. A designated ferry then transports migrants from Lampedusa to Sicily several times a week. Next, they are allocated to holding centres in places such as Mineo, Naples or Bari, where it takes 7-30 days to receive a six-month visa.

New shoes

Italian police on Lampedusa told IRIN that migrants are issued with new shoes and clothes before they leave the holding centres. According to personal choice, they are separated into groups and driven to Italian towns and cities. After six months, if they have not left the country, been sponsored for work or applied for refugee status, they become illegal immigrants.

A small number of Libyans are also among those travelling to Lampedusa. Thirty-six-year-old Babacar told IRIN he left Tripoli after being treated badly because he is of African descent.

"I hid my identity card inside my shoe in case Libyan authorities stopped me from leaving," he said. "They are happy for the African workers to leave. But I was afraid they would ask for my documents, find out I was Libyan and send me back. Or something worse," he said.

Aid workers say the number of Tunisian migrants has decreased dramatically in recent months, largely due to an Italian government policy which now states that Tunisian migrants should, in most cases, be repatriated rather than processed on temporary visas. According to Italian police on Lampedusa, those who do arrive from Tunisia are usually sent back by chartered plane from Lampedusa airport.

Molinario said most of the boats that arrive are now coming from Libya, carrying migrant workers mostly from African countries trapped in Tripoli and other western cities.

According to Ennio Ciuffi, Lampedusa spokesman for the Italian Red Cross, the humanitarian situation on Lampedusa has improved since April. "Then, the whole island was full of migrants looking for food and a place to sleep. With 7,000 migrants here it was very difficult to organize everyone," he said.

Risky journey

Among the Red Cross's 22-strong team of medical staff is Ivo Crosato, a doctor. Most cases he treats at the port are not serious. "Generally I see one or two patients from each boatload of new arrivals," he said. "The most common problems are dehydration, hypothermia, sunstroke, seasickness and fainting, which are usually straightforward to treat. More serious cases are referred to Lampedusa Hospital or to Sicily by helicopter transfer."

The journey has its risks. In April, 213 migrants travelling from Libya drowned off the coast of Lampedusa when their boat stalled without fuel and later capsized in rough seas. Some 47 passengers, including a pregnant woman, were rescued from the water and brought to Lampedusa by the island's search and rescue team.

On 8 May, a boat carrying migrants crashed onto rocks on Lampedusa. The Italian Red Cross, which has set up a temporary hospital at the island's main port, was able to pull some people from the sea. Three passengers were crushed to death between the underside of the boat and the rocks. They are buried in the island's main cemetery.

Ciuffi said the captains of boats carrying migrants are now only travelling in exceptionally calm waters. Numbers, he said, swell on days when the sea is calm. When there is a strong cross-wind there are usually no boats at all.

"People are paying more attention to the weather and sea forecast before travelling," he said. "They usually leave in the early hours and take about 16 hours to arrive, and their coordinates are relayed to us by the police and coastguards, so we have time to prepare for possible medical emergencies."

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Child labour and youth unemployment pose dilemmas (OneWorld.net)

LONDON, June 13 (OneWorld.net) - As global youth unemployment hits record levels, adolescents are increasingly presented with a choice between undertaking hazardous work or no work at all.

Children in hazardous work, a report published by the International Labour Organization to coincide with yesterday's World Day Against Child Labour, finds that 62 million youths aged 15-17 years were engaged in hazardous occupations during 2008. This figure represents about half of all employment undertaken by this age group.

Furthermore, this proportion of unacceptable work is rising sharply, up 20% since 2004. The ILO also warns that recent years of economic recession may have exerted further downward pressure on conditions experienced by young workers.

Produced by the ILO's International Programme on the Elimination of Child Labour, the report draws evidence from a range of sectors, including agriculture, fishing, construction and mining, the latter regarded as posing the greatest risks. It observes that hazardous child labour is not confined to developing countries.

The biological metabolism of growing adolescents increases their vulnerability. For example, young people absorb toxic pollutants into their bloodstream at a greater rate than adults. They also need more sleep, rendering long working hours or night shifts a risk to normal development.

Permanent damage to health is acknowledged by international law to be an unacceptable price for finding a job. The 1999 ILO Convention 182 for the Elimination of the Worst Forms of Child Labour, of which hazardous work is part, commits countries to make plans for achieving this goal by 2016.

Including children aged under 15 years, the numbers in hazardous occupations in 2008 totalled 115 million. The Convention has been ratified by 173 out of 183 ILO member countries and the new report aims to revive the necessary sense of urgency amongst them.

On the day before Children in hazardous work was released, the ILO's annual conference in Geneva conducted a high level debate on "Global Youth: Leading Change." The focus was on 81 million in the 15-24 age group who are unemployed, the highest level ever recorded.

ILO Director-General, Juan Somavia, was scathing on claims by economists that a global recovery is under way. "There is no recovery if we lose a generation of young people," he said. "It is an inefficient model of growth where young people are being squeezed out."

By inviting a special panel of young speakers from Arab countries currently embroiled in constitutional upheaval, the conference made a pointed connection between youth unemployment and political protest.

In his report marking the 100th annual session of the International Labour Conference, Somavia writes: "youth unemployment is highest in the very regions where social unrest has recently erupted. It would be hard to consider this to be a coincidence."

In proposing solutions to these closely related problems - the search for work by young people, and the conditions of work for those successful in finding it - the ILO adopts very different philosophies.

Children in hazardous work positions adolescent workers as passive victims of misfortune, in need of protection and support from governments, employers and their communities, responding to the paternal directive of Convention 182.

By contrast, the zeitgeist tone of the conference envisaged young people as masters of their own destiny, provoked by exclusion from global economic progress into dissent. High youth unemployment "demands a new era of peaceful social and popular mobilization that can project the voice and demands of people into the heart of political decision-making," Somavia asserts in his report.

The authors of Children in hazardous work acknowledge the awkward dilemma between "those promoting work (youth employment programmes) and those trying to end it (child labour programmes)."

A repeated reflection at the ILO conference was that "older children have become the problem area."

* More Information:

World Day Against Child Labour 2011

OneWorld Child Labour Guide

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Cote d'Ivoire: Free Health Care Window Highlights Challenges (OneWorld.net)

DAKAR, Jun 10 (IRIN) - The Ivoirian government has extended a special period of free health care to help a population reeling from months of turmoil. But in a country where cost recovery for health services has long been the policy, an abrupt change to free care is posing challenges.

“If we are to provide quality care for the population, we must take a step back, study this and reorganize,” said Fabrice Ble, a doctor at a community health centre in Port-Bouet in the main city Abidjan.

Shortly after Alassane Ouattara took power in April 2011, he announced that public health services would be free until the end of May as a way to help people in the aftermath of widespread unrest and economic stagnation.

On 8 June, after a few days of uncertainty about this policy, the Health Ministry announced free care would be extended “until further notice”.

In recent years some countries in West Africa have made health services free for certain groups like women and under-five children, but Cote d’Ivoire has maintained health user fees; offering free care in public hospitals was for the current exceptional circumstances only. The system is not set up for free health services.

Doctors reported 20-30 times the number of patients after free care was announced. Advocates of free care say the explosion of patients indicates that cost is one of the biggest barriers to access.

But even advocates say a shift to free care is not like flicking a switch. “This is not something that changes overnight,” said Ina Bluemel, senior health coordinator with Save the Children, which is calling for universal health care.

Cote d’Ivoire would have to determine additional staff and supply requirements, reform tax and insurance systems, mobilize additional funding from the national budget and inform the public of the policy change, Save the Children says in a communique.

“Even though the temporary waiving of fees has benefited people across the country, it remains a short-term solution to a much deeper problem.”

Rob Yates, health economist with the UK government’s Department for International Development, says several "supply-side" reforms are necessary when a government removes fees, including increasing health workers' salaries and benefits, ensuring they are paid regularly and improving accountability mechanisms.

It is not clear whether the Ivoirian government is considering waiving fees for good.

Taking stock

Health officials are evaluating how the initial phase went, said Ousmane Aidara, communications officer in the Health Ministry. “We are looking at what worked and what didn’t and the public’s take on this approach. We are studying whether it should be extended again and if so for how long.”

In April, just as the heaviest fighting subsided, several aid agencies provided supplies and support to health facilities, and medicines to the central pharmacy. But emergency aid is not part of a sustainable health system.

Save the Children has welcomed the extension, saying it and other NGOs continue to meet Health Ministry officials to help develop a long-term solution to accessible health care.

Meanwhile, health workers are struggling to absorb the high number of people coming through and navigate in the new no-fee mode. Ble, the doctor in Port-Bouet, said under cost recovery the money patients pay goes into state coffers. “If now the government figures it can offer free health care to the population, fine and good. But health workers then must have all the means at their disposal to offer quality care.”

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Oxfam charts brave new world of activism (OneWorld.net)

LONDON, June 6 (OneWorld.net) - A campaign to end global hunger launched in over 40 countries last week by the international aid agency, Oxfam, may signal new levels of ambition for movements pursuing social and environmental reform.

The GROW campaign rejects the traditional approach of channeling protest into a single objective, such as reducing European farm subsidies or withdrawing targets for biofuel production. Instead, it gathers up all such issues into the bigger picture, pressing governments to see that the world's agriculture system is not fit for purpose.

Oxfam believes that future demand for food may overwhelm the ecological capacity of the planet, especially as climate change takes its increasing toll on crop yields. Already, one in seven of the world's population lacks access to sufficient food.

"The System's Bust," exclaims the banner headline of the Oxfam UK website. "Join the GROW campaign to fix the system."

The implied goal of food revolution rather than evolution was reinforced by Jeremy Hobbs, Executive Director of Oxfam International. "G20 Governments meeting in France this year must now kick start the transformation of our global food system," he said at the launch of the GROW campaign.

The campaign's accompanying report, Growing a Better Future, casts the wishlist net still wider. "International governance of trade, food aid, financial markets, and climate finance must be transformed to reduce the risks of future shocks," it demands.

Oxfam's Head of Research, Duncan Green, outlines why the GROW campaign bar is being raised so high. "It marks a significant shift in thinking about how public campaigning brings about change," he writes in his blog, From Poverty to Power. "It moves from a focus on specific policy changes (e.g. on trade rules or debt relief), to something much deeper - changing the way people think."

Oxfam is not the only non-profit group in the UK to be overhauling its expectations of supporters and governments. Forum for the Future, a respected environmental agency which assists the corporate sector in implementing sustainability plans, unveiled a new strategy in April.

Chief Executive Peter Madden explains: "it is clear that if we want to tackle problems such as climate change or vulnerable ecosystems, we can't take a piecemeal approach. Doing a bit here and a bit there won't change things at the speed or on the scale we need."

In engaging with the complexity of areas such as finance, food and energy, Forum for the Future will search for "strategic tipping points, where interventions have the most chance of transforming the whole system."

In mainland Europe, too, there are signs of frustration that "single issue" campaigns achieve too little in relation to the depth of social and environmental problems.

Last week in Geneva the International Labour Organization celebrated its 100th annual conference. ILO Director-General Juan Somavia opened the event with a powerful call for a new era of social justice to address mounting "turmoil" in the world of work.

Somavia expressed his fears for social unrest, deriving from the level of youth unemployment endemic in the existing economic system. "The sum of economic, social and environmental options and priorities that have dominated policy-making for the last 30 years must change," he said.

These bold visions of change have one overwhelming obstacle in common. Strong political leadership which compromises national interest for the greater good is conspicuous by its absence.

Rich country groupings such as G8 and G20 are in no mood for radical reforms. And UN negotiations on climate change and trade threaten to fade into insignificance.

That explains why so many hopes are pinned on the 2012 UN Conference on Sustainable Development. Otherwise known as Rio+20, this conference will mark the 20th anniversary of the renowned 1992 Earth Summit in Rio de Janeiro in which the language of sustainable development was established.

Campaigners want to believe that the powerful symbolism of the event will inspire world leaders to cast aside their reticence on progressive reforms. They are encouraged that the UN has chosen the concept of the "green economy" as one of two major themes of the conference.

The current paradigm of consumption-based economic growth is viewed by the green movement as socially divisive and environmentally unsustainable. Transition towards a more sensitive measure of economic progress is top of the reform agenda for many international NGOs.

"Green economy: a pathway to sustainable development" was the subject of last Thursday's informal UN General Assembly thematic debate. The purpose was to advance preparation for Rio+20.

Unfortunately, the real political preparations for Rio+20 are in crisis and the "green economy" is the central problem.

Last month, the 19th session of the UN Commission on Sustainable Development aimed to build global consensus around the agenda for the 2012 Rio conference. But the talks collapsed ignominiously.

The IISD reporting service for CSD19 described the green economy as a "hate object" for the G77/China group of developing countries. They fear that it will be a proxy for protectionist rules on trade and intellectual property rights.

Campaigners may have to settle for the traditional pace of reform, one small step at a time.

* More Information:

GROW campaign from Oxfam International

OneWorld Food Security Guide

Yahoo! News

Population experts demand funding for international family planning (OneWorld.net)

LONDON, May 30 (OneWorld.net) - A high-level population conference has appealed to international donors to step up financial support for family planning and reproductive health services in developing countries.

This call comes at a time when foreign aid for international family planning is one of the most divisive topics for US Congress to resolve in its FY2012 budget considerations. The US is the key global donor in this field.

Described by its organizers at University College London as the largest conference on population issues to be held this year, Population Footprints examined the capacity of the planet to sustain a human presence which is due to reach seven billion in October.

The six billion threshold was passed just 12 years ago. Earlier this month, the UN published an upward revision of its long term projections of global population.

Academics, campaigners and politicians attending the conference from around the world discussed what strategies might encourage a lower population trajectory. They addressed the troubling contexts of food security, climate change, migration and a skewed demographic profile in which richer countries have too few people of working age whilst the poorer countries have too many.

The debates were marked by disagreements between the participants, a point acknowledged in the closing summary by Professor Anthony Costello, Co-Director of the UCL Institute for Global Health.

"That doesn't matter," he said, "because what unites us is much greater. What unites all of us is that funding for women's health, maternal health, child health, fertility reduction, family planning - all the drivers for moving towards a stable population - is desperately needed."

Describing current global funding as "derisory", Professor Costello deplored that "the World Health Organization has seen its budget halved for reproductive health and family planning."

A downward trend in this area of funding was indeed a feature of the April compromise which saw Congress approve the US budget for FY2011. International aid for family planning and reproductive health was cut by 5% to $615 million.

The battle now turns to FY2012. President Obama's original request for $769 million will be subject to forces pulling strongly in both directions.

The objective to provide universal global access to reproductive health services by 2015 is included in the Millennium Development Goals, a set of commitments agreed by world governments.

There are 215 million women in developing countries with an unmet need for contraception. The cost of fulfilling this area of reproductive health alone is estimated at $3.6 billion.

Campaigners say that it is impossible to achieve the MDG target without significant new donor funding. They advocate that US support should rise towards $1 billion per annum.

However, many Republican members of Congress considered the FY2011 compromise to be too generous. They will press for further cuts for FY2012.

The UN Population Fund is a favored target. Its US support for FY2011 was slashed from $55 million to $40 million. Republicans are under lobby pressure to revert to the days of the Bush Administration when UNFPA was denied funding altogether.

The new Executive Director of UNFPA, Dr Babatunde Osotimehin, was a leading participant in the Population Footprints conference. Whilst he maintained a diplomatic silence on his budgetary relationship with the US government, Dr Osotimehin was unambiguous in his views about priorities for population policies. "If we protect women's rights, their ability to make choices, we will see a lot of difference in population," he told the conference.

The Ugandan Minister of State for Finance and Planning, Professor Ephraim Kamuntu, presented the same opinion in language designed to appeal to politicians, hard-pressed on delivering budgetary value for money. "We have done a study in Uganda which shows for every $1 you invest in reproductive health it saves you $3 eventually in health costs that result from non-spacing of children and complications in giving birth," he said.

Africa's rate of population growth is the highest of the world's continents, its numbers projected to double to 2 billion by 2050. But attitudes are changing, according to Eliya Zulu, Director of the African Institute for Development Policy.

"Unlike 15-20 years ago, more African people now want to limit their family size but they are not doing that because they do not have access to family planning," he said in a BBC World Service interview at the conference.

Several speakers referred to the long term decline in foreign aid for family planning. This trend was evidenced in a scrupulously factual presentation by Hania Zlotnik, Director of the UN Population Division. She demonstrated that, since 1996, donor assistance for family planning programmes has fallen by at least 50% in nearly all African countries.

"In most high fertility countries, contraceptive prevalence is increasing by less than 1% per year," she said. "At that rate it's going to take something like 30-40 years for them to meet the unmet need they already have."

Dr Mairo Mandara, a gynecologist from Nigeria, highlighted the extremes that exist in the poorest regions of the continent. In northern Nigeria, the average age at which girls are married is just 15. Only 3% have access to contraception. Nigeria's population of 158 million is the highest in Africa.

The Nigerian government has taken the initiative of embarking on its own programme of free family planning services. "Africa should fund family planning, not rely only on donors," Eliya Zulu told his followers on Twitter.

The share of funding between potential donors was not tackled in any detail but speakers were unwavering in their view of the priority for spending. Siri Tellier, former Director of UNFPA in Geneva, summed it up in population numbers: "the use of family planning will be the most important determinant in whether we go to 11 billion in 2050 or whether we go to 9 billion in 2050."

The Population Footprints conference was sponsored by The Leverhulme Trust and The Lancet medical journal.

* More Information:

Population Footprints - archived videos of the UCL conference

OneWorld Population Guide

OneWorld Gender and Development Guide

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Cote d'Ivoire: Reluctant to Return Home (OneWorld.net)

ABIDJAN, May 24 (IRIN) - While outright conflict has abated in Cote d’Ivoire’s commercial capital, Abidjan, many of the thousands of displaced people there are still too fearful to return to once conflict-ridden neighbourhoods.

Fear of men in uniform, fear of continued arms flows, and of unexploded ordnance (UXO) is keeping Abidjan residents from returning home, displaced people told IRIN.

Arms are still circulating in some neighbourhoods, residents of Abobo and Yopougon told IRIN. These neighbourhoods saw some of the heaviest fighting between President Alassane Ouattara’s Forces Republicaines de Cote d’Ivoire (FRCI), ex-President Laurent Gbagbo’s fighters, and other militia groups.

UXO has been identified by the UN Operation in Cote d’Ivoire (UNOCI) in 60 sites around the city, including near hospitals, schools, businesses and in people’s homes.

On 21 May UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon visited the Union of Evangelical Churches, which is sheltering 160 displaced people in Cocody, an eastern Abidjan neighbourhood. Cecile Bla, 48, fled to the shelter from Yopougon.

Bla’s home and business - she sold cosmetics - were pillaged, leaving her with nothing. She is now baking tarts for sale to support her five children.

“I lost everything… I know I need to start a new life, but that will not be before I can be guaranteed better security.” Life is slowly returning to normal in Yopougon, and the streets are filling up, but Bla’s neighbours regularly ring her with reports of armed men turning up to the compound unannounced, leaving her scared. There have been some reports of continued, sporadic aggression committed against civilians in Yopougon and Abobo, according to the UN.

Members of the FRCI still man checkpoints in Yopougon, to keep the peace; and mixed patrols of UNOCI, French Licorne forces and ex-President Laurent Gbagbo’s gendarmerie patrol the streets of the capital; but many residents still fear, rather than trust, men in uniform.

Still traumatized

Some who witnessed violence are still traumatized by it. Habiba Kante, 36, stayed in the Abobo neighbourhood amid heavy fighting before fleeing to the church shelter. She now jumps in fear every time she hears a car horn.

“It’s like reliving the war. I know I need to restart a new life and that I must return, but I can’t do that until I get a guarantee that it is safe, and that guns are no longer in circulation in the streets,” she told IRIN.

Pastor Michel Loh, who is running the church shelter, is trying to help children recover by setting up a temporary school for them. Schooling can be instrumental in the psychosocial recovery of children in conflict. Kane’s seven-year-old daughter, Aisha Diakite, may make up the school year rather than having to skip a year, said Loh.

Clearing UXO

To enable people to return home, a joint UNOCI and FRCI team is trying to clear sites of unexploded bombs, grenades and mines, according to UNOCI spokesperson Hamadoun Toure. Some 40 sites have been cleared out of a total of 60 reported thus far, though sightings continue to rise, said UNOCI’s Col Rayes Koshavsky.

The team will clear sites outside Abidjan once they have cleared the commercial capital of ordnance, said Toure.

Ban Ki-moon and local UN Refugee Agency head Jacques Franquin stressed that in the meantime, there is no hurry to return. “No one will be forced to return until they are ready,” Ban told displaced families. “Many of you have lost everything, and have witnessed terrible atrocities. You must heal so that you can try to relive a normal life.”

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Young and Homeless (Part I): Finding Stability at School (OneWorld.net)

EDITOR'S NOTE: This story was produced with support from a New America Media fellowship to report on children in poverty in California, and is part one of a three part series exploring youth homelessness and education.

FRESNO, May 21 (New America Media) -- Every morning, Anissa Gutierrez leaves her home at the Fresno Rescue Mission Emergency Family Shelter, located in an industrial area of central Fresno, and walks her three children to Lincoln Elementary School.

Along their brief journey, Gutierrez , 8 year-old Lily, 7 year-old Gavien, and 5 year-old Deon pass the homeless shelter Poverello House, and a lot filled with small sheds that also house the homeless, called Village of Hope. They continue past the scattered tents and makeshift shelters that comprise the city's homeless encampments, and walk along the Highway 99 overpass.

Once they arrive at Lincoln Elementary, Lily and Gavien wave goodbye to their mother and then scamper toward the schoolhouse, blending in with their classmates.

Gutierrez, 35, lost her apartment days before Christmas, and moved into the Rescue Mission shelter last January. School, she said, provides her kids with a few hours of ”normal life” during a period of uncertainty.

"I want them to go to school and stay in school for the rest of their lives," said Gutierrez, a Fresno High School graduate who said that growing up, "I didn't know college was something I could actually do."

No matter how much Gutierrez “hates” walking out the shelter’s front doors and facing the wretched surroundings, nothing will stop her from making the daily pilgrimage to Lincoln Elementary with her kids. Prioritizing their education, said Gutierrez, means ensuring that “they don't end up here" later in life.

With 2,400 homeless students (more than 60 percent of them Latino), Fresno Unified School District has the second highest number of homeless students in the state, trailing only the Los Angeles school district.

"School is a sanctuary, and education represents hope and a way out of poverty for a lot of these kids," said Joe Martinez, community relations and outreach manager for the Fresno County Economic Opportunity Commission's Sanctuary and Youth Services, which provides shelter and resources to homeless youth.

"This is a place where they can come and have dreams and goals,a€

But even though many homeless youth and their families prioritize education, and despite federal and local resources intended to help them, barriers still exist. Only about 60 percent of homeless students in Fresno’s school district graduated from high school last year. Nationally, about 38 percent of homeless people have achieved less than a high school degree by age 18, according to the National Law Center on Homelessness and Poverty.

With the recession leaving increasing numbers of families homeless a€“ and with education widely regarded as a cornerstone to future success and stability a€“ this adds up to a crisis that could have ramifications for decades to come.

In 2008, 224,249 California students attending grades K-12 -- or 3.6 percent of all public school students -- were reported to be homeless, according to KidsData.org. And according to the National Center for Homeless Education, the number of homeless students enrolled in California schools is rising at an alarming rate: 29 percent between the 2007-2008 and 2008-2009 school years alone. Neither figure includes children, or youth, whose lives are so chaotic they don’t even make it to school.

The troubles for Gutierrez began late last fall, when she unexpectedly found herself covering the cost of rent and utilities for an apartment she and her children shared with a relative. Even with financial support from the county, she could not shoulder the full bill, and she lost the apartment in late December. The family was homeless by Christmas.

During that rough time, she and her three youngest children crashed at the homes of various friends and family members, always leaving before they had worn out their welcome. Despite their mobility, Gutierrez did her best to keep her kids in school. "I was just trying to keep them on a stable track," she said.

When a room finally opened up at the Rescue Mission’s family shelter in January, Gutierrez and the kids moved in. After constantly moving, Gutierrez was grateful her children could go to school each morning knowing they had a steady place to return to in the evening.

"They get to go to school every day and I know they ate, I know they have somewhere to go home to," said Gutierrez, who wears baggy sweatshirts and sunglasses pushed into her dark ponytail, and hopes to someday become a car mechanic.

Susan Cavazos was also thankful to have secured a room at the shelter for herself and her three sons. They had moved into the shelter after their apartment burned down, and they had lost everything.

Cavazos shares Gutierrez’ faith in education. Her oldest son is enrolled in the Gifted and Talented Education (GTE) program and her middle child is an avid basketball player. "My hope is to get them through school, to get them through college, and I'm going to stick with them 100 percent," she said.

And like Gutierrez, living at the shelter has only underscored the importance of education for her children. "Look around at where we are -- is that what you want?" Cavazos said she reminds her children.

Though the shelter is situated in a gritty part of Fresno, the interior is welcoming. There are nine bedrooms, each with its own bathroom, plus a front room that doubles as a chapel, and a kitchen with laundry machines. Much of the shelter is decorated with colorful murals, flowers and biblical verses.

"When you come in, it's comforting, it's relaxing," said shelter manager Robin Bump. "We want them to feel like they are safe and everything is going to be OK."

Demand has increased in recent years, Bump said. The number of families aided by the non-profit shelter increased from 154 in 2008 to 179 in 2010, and according to Bump, "there are more out there that need help."

Most of the families in the shelter are single women with children. Over the past year, at least 10 families landed in the shelter after the home they were renting was foreclosed upon.

Gutierrez's challenges didn't end once she found a room at the shelter. Under the federal McKinney-Vento Act - the primary piece of federal legislation aimed at supporting homeless students - homeless youth can remain at their original school regardless of where they are staying, and travel there using bus tickets provided through the school district. They can also enroll at a school without having a permanent address.

But getting Lily and Gavien to their original school meant waking up at 5 a.m and taking two buses. Despite her commitment to maintaining stability in her children’s lives, Gutierrez faced a tough choice. Eventually, she decided to transfer them to a school more nearby, Lincoln Elementary.

"It hurts my heart that I had to swoop them out of school and take them away from their little friends that they've made," Gutierrez said.

It was a Monday night, and the kids had stayed home from school that day as they recovered from a hacking cough that was going around the shelter. Gutierrez’ daughter Lily was bundled in a pink down jacket, even as she sat in the shelter's kitchen. Changing schools wasn’t easy, she chimed in.

"I have to make new friends," she said in a small voice.

To ensure that Lily and Gavien didn't fall behind at their new school, Lincoln Elementary and the Fresno school district provided assistance to Gutierrez and her kids: A tutor helped Lily with her homework before school each morning, and Project ACCESS -- which assists homeless Fresno Unified students with enrolling, attending, and succeeding in school -- provided the kids with backpacks, supplies, snacks, and jackets.

Relatively speaking, Lily and Gavien have a lot of support: They have a warm, clean shelter with their own room; they live in a district that is recognized for its outreach to homeless students; and, perhaps most importantly, they have their mother. Will this be enough to help them meet the challenge of succeeding in school when they lack something as fundamental as a home of their own?

"Overall, children that are homeless are not performing as well as other students in their district, or as well as the economically disadvantaged subgroup," said Diana Bowman, program director for the National Center on Homeless Education.

But, Bowman said, there is still hope for talented, motivated homeless students. "Generally, for strong students, the impact (of being homeless) won't be quite as bad," she said. "If they are weak, struggling students, and have a history of school mobility and homelessness, it's more difficult to achieve."

It was evident that being homeless prevented Lily and Gavien from experiencing school as many of their classmates might.

Asked where he does his homework, Gavien responded simply, "I do mine in the car." Gavien, a goofy kid who enjoyed making silly faces for the camera, is still young and adaptable enough to think nothing of that.

"Sometimes we just go out (to the parking lot) and sit in the truck," Gutierrez explained. "We just get tired of being here. We listen to the radio out there."

The kids also don't participate in school sports or other after-school programs while at the shelter. "Because we are here (at the shelter,) it is hard to get them into stuff like that, because there is no telling if we will be able to keep them in that school, once we leave here," Gutierrez said. “That (hurts), but it has to be done. It's just easier for me, and for them, if they don't start stuff like that here."

It’s a concern that Cavazos shares. On that Monday night in January, Cavazos wore bright pink lipstick and a large, silver cross around her neck, but her mood was cloudy. “I don’t want to mess up my kids’ education,” she said. “That’s what they have. That’s the only thing they have.”

It was almost 7 p.m., so Gutierrez and Cavazos led their children to the Rescue Mission's nightly chapel service, which, as shelter residents, they are obligated to attend. During the service, the residents prayed that Lily, Gavien and Deon would recover from their illness, and that everyone would soon find a home of their own.

"I just want them to be happy," Gutierrez said of her kids. "I just want to take care of them. I can't spoil them, or give them everything in the world, but I want them to be happy."

Want to Know More?

» VIDEO: Inside the Fresno Rescue Mission

» Read Parts II and III of this series at NewAmericaMedia.org

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