IPS-Inter Press Agency stories

There was a sarcastic laughter when a civil society representative expressed his “admiration for the delegate of the United States, who with one insensitive, ill-timed, inappropriate and diplomatically inept intervention” had “managed to dispel the considerable goodwill the U.S. had garnered by its decision to participate” in the Vienna Conference on Humanitarian Impact of Nuclear Weapons.

The speaker was Richard Lennane, who prefers to call himself the “chief inflammatory officer” of “Wildfire”, a Geneva-based disarmament initiative. 

He was making a statement at the two-day conference which concluded in the Austrian capital on Dec. 9 – the third after the Oslo (Norway) gathering in 2013 and Nayarit (Mexico) earlier this year. …  MORE > >

Civil society groups are urging the U.N. General Assembly to pass a resolution declaring nuclear strikes on cities to be a clear-cut violation of international humanitarian law. At the Dec. 8-9 Vienna Conference on the Humanitarian Impact of Nuclear Weapons, supporters of the proposed resolution …  MORE > >

Nearly two dozen health, advocacy and faith groups are calling on President Barack Obama to take executive action clarifying that U.S. assistance can be used to fund abortion services for women and girls raped in the context of war and conflict. The groups gathered Tuesday outside of the White …  MORE > >

Tuesday’s release by the Senate Intelligence Committee of its long-awaited report on the torture by the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) of detainees in the so-called “war on terror” does not go far enough, according to major U.S. human rights groups. While welcoming the report’s release, the …  MORE > >

Authorities in Azerbaijan took steps Dec. 5 to muzzle Khadija Ismayilova, an investigative journalist who is the country’s most vocal government critic. A Baku court granted a motion to hold Ismayilova in jail pending a criminal trial, while her Facebook page mysteriously went dark. Observers …  MORE > >

Just half of major global banks have in place a public policy to respect human rights, according to new research, despite this being a foundational mandate of an international convention on multinational business practice. Further, of the 32 global banks examined, researchers found that none has …  MORE > >

Even as the presence of major oil and gas corporations is nearly ubiquitous at the U.N. climate talks in the Peruvian capital known as COP20, fossil fuel divestment campaigns have gained ground in various countries and are moving to counter the influence of the “dirty energy” lobby here. As the … MORE > >

(GIN) – It may not be clear who is running Somalia these days but energy companies appear to know who to call as they conduct onshore and offshore seismic surveys which could make the Horn of Africa an oil giant within six years. Exxon Mobil, Royal Dutch Shell, BP and Chevron are all …  MORE > >

(GIN) – A misguided effort to quietly hike up the paychecks of Malawi’s President Peter Mutharika and his VP roundly backfired, forcing them to cancel the generous gift to themselves “until a more appropriate time.” “The Head of State and his deputy have suspended their new salaries,” a …  MORE > >