4 June 2015, Alternet, WikiLeaks Releases Secret Documents Related to Controversial US Trade Pact: Document dump regarding Trade in Services Agreement comes day after organization put $100,000 bounty on documents from series of US trade treaties…Among the text leaked on Wednesday are Tisa’s annex on telecommunications services, an amendment that would standardize regulation of telecoms across member countries, according to WikiLeaks. Other documents in the batch of files relate to e-commerce, transportation of living people and regulation of financial services corporations. Read More here
Category Archives: People Stress
2 June 2015, UN experts voice concern over adverse impact of free trade and investment agreements on human rights: A number of free trade and investment agreements, such as the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) and the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP), are currently being negotiated. A group of UN experts* have issued the following statement to express concern about the secret nature of drawing up and negotiating many of these agreements and the potential adverse impact of these agreements on human rights: “While trade and investment agreements can create new economic opportunities, we draw attention to the potential detrimental impact these treaties and agreements may have on the enjoyment of human rights as enshrined in legally binding instruments, whether civil, cultural, economic, political or social. Our concerns relate to the rights to life, food, water and sanitation, health, housing, education, science and culture, improved labour standards, an independent judiciary, a clean environment and the right not to be subjected to forced resettlement. Read More here
14 May 2015, Truthdig: Migration Is an Act of Desperation, Not a Crime.….The Norwegian Refugee Council and Internal Displacement Monitoring Centre released a report in early May revealing that there were 38 million internally displaced people last year alone, nearly 5 million more than the year before. The record-breaking number includes 11 million refugees who were newly displaced and clustered in the Middle East and Africa, including Syria, South Sudan, Nigeria and the Democratic Republic of Congo. Council Secretary-General Jan Egeland said, “These are the worst figures for forced displacement in a generation, signaling our complete failure to protect innocent civilians.” Read More here
12 May 2015, IIASA, Linking population and climate change: Population growth and changes in demographic structure are a key factor influencing future climate change, as well as people’s ability to adapt. People’s lifestyles and consumption habits make a huge difference in climate change projections. In a new article published in the journal Population Studies, IIASA demographers Wolfgang Lutz and Erich Striessnig describe new research linking population change with climate change scenarios. The research relies on new IIASA population projections, which include not just the numbers of people, but also the composition of populations by age, sex, and educational attainment for a number of different scenarios designed for climate research, the Shared Socioeconomic Pathways (SSPs). Read More here