Latin America

Judges and other judicial officers in Argentina have begun to receive training on gender equality and women’s rights, as part of a broad programme that could serve as a model for similar initiatives in the rest of Latin America.

The catastrophic floods in Pakistan have added urgency to a high-level United Nations summit this week, with delegates from mostly South Asian nations convening Tuesday to call for increased technology transfer from richer countries and to compare strategies to avert the worst effects of climate change.

While officials meeting in Montreal, Canada failed to finalize a key protocol to the Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD) Tuesday, biodiversity is scheduled to be at the top of Wednesday’s agenda of the U.N. General Assembly in New York.

Controversy is building up over a 91-year-old man, his 17-year-old grandson and a 20-year-old neighbor, all farmers, who were killed by Israeli shelling and gunfire as they tried to tend their land 700 meters from northern Gaza’s border with Israel.

A small fishing community in the northern Argentine province of Chaco is pressing for a sustainable development program to preserve their simple way of life and the natural habitat, rather than a mega-investment project that would draw upscale tourism instead of the people who now come to seek peace and quiet on the weekends.

Genetically modified ‘terminator’ mosquitoes are the latest weapons that the Malaysian government wants to use against the deadly dengue fever, but activists and environmentalists say the public health risks of introducing a new ‘artificial’ strain of mosquito are far too high.

Hershey, one of the largest chocolate manufacturers in the U.S., is lagging behind other companies in taking steps to ensure decent working conditions in its supply chain, charges a new report prepared by Global Exchange, Green America, the International Labor Rights Forum (ILRF), and Oasis USA.

Organizations working for the rights of undocumented immigrants are using the crisis triggered by the massacre of 72 migrants a few weeks ago near the U.S. border to press for in-depth changes in Mexico.

When Brazilian President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva addresses a meeting of world leaders next week, he is expected to proudly claim that his country has already met – and exceeded – one of the key U.N. development goals: reduce by half the proportion of people living in extreme poverty and hunger.

Traveling without documents to the United States from Latin America can turn into an odyssey, in which migrants have to elude common criminals and drug traffickers along the way, not to mention the laws on migration. But now another obstacle is emerging: a wall between Guatemala and Mexico.