Oxfam activists pose as ancient Romans in masks of G8 heads of state in Rome

Two million people live in a human rights black hole in the slums of Nairobi

Amnesty International released its report on Friday, into the dire conditions and gross human rights abuses endured in Nairobi’s informal settlements. The Unseen Majority: Nairobi’s Two Million Slum Dwellers describes how half of Nairobi’s population live in informal settlements, but are crammed into only 5 per cent of the city’s residential area and just 1 per cent of all land in the city.

The report is the first launched under the organization’s groundbreaking new global campaign, Demand Dignity, which aims to expose and combat the human rights abuses that make and keep people poor…

Click here for detail of AI report

Dance of Life

Global Peace Index 2009

The results of the Global Peace Index for 2009 suggest that the world has become slightly less peaceful in the past year, which appears to reflect the intensification of violent conflict in some countries and the effects of both the rapidly rising food and fuel prices early in 2008 and the dramatic global economic downturn in the final quarter of the year. Rapidly rising unemployment, pay freezes and falls in the value of house prices, savings and pensions is causing popular resentment in many countries, with political repercussions that have been registered by the GPI through various indicators measuring safety and security in society.

GPI has been tested against a range of potential “drivers” or potential determinants of peace – including levels of democracy and transparency, education and material wellbeing. The GPI brings a snapshot of relative peacefulness among nations while continuing to contribute to an understanding of what factors help create or sustain more peaceful societies…

Click here for detail

10 Degrees Hotter by 2100? Odds Are Good, Unless We Act

by Emily Gertz,

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The future impacts of global warming may be twice as worse as we thought just a few years ago.

If current emissions trends continue, there’s a very high probability that by century’s end, the Earth’s median surface temperature may increase 9.3 degrees F (5.2 degrees C) over average temperatures between 1981-2000, according to a team of MIT researchers .

In the Arctic, where climate changes are amplified, temperatures could rise as much as a median 20° F — at which point the death knell for the Arctic ice cap and the Greenland ice sheet will have long sounded.

This is an update to a 2003 study made using the MIT Integrated Global System Model, which predicted an increase of 4.3 degrees F (2.4 degrees C). Initially released in February, yesterday the new research was published in the American Meteorological Society’s Journal of Climate.

for detail read the article, by Emily Gertz.

G8 Agriculture Ministers admit failure on hunger

Political leaders have admitted that they will probably fail to deliver on promises to halve world hunger by 2015, said international agency Oxfam at the close of a G8 Meeting on Agriculture in Italy today.

“G8 Ministers have made an extraordinary admission of collective failure. This would be a sack-able offence in any other arena,” said Chris Leather, Oxfam International’s Senior Food Advisor. “The G8 has failed the world’s one billion hungry people.”

Click here to read full article by Chris Leather, Senior Food Advisor, Oxfam International

Building Peace: Practical Reflections From the Field, Edited by Craig Zelizer , Robert A. Rubinstein

Even though international peacebuilding has rapidly expanded in the last two decades to respond to more multi-faceted and complex conflicts, the field has lagged behind in documenting the impact and success of projects. To help address this gap, the Alliance for Peacebuilding, one of the leading networks in the field, has brought together 13 stories of innovative peacebuilding practices from around the world in Building Peace.

While the projects covered are diverse in nature, together they demonstrate the significant impact of peacebuilding work. Contributors created new institutions to prevent and manage conflicts at the local or national levels, helped restore relationships in conflict-affected communities, and empowered citizens to work for positive change in their societies across ethnic, religious, and political divides.

It’s clear that there is no quick fix for violence but this volume will go a long way in providing inspiration and practical tools for policymakers, academics and practitioners who seek to make significant and valuable contributions towards achieving peace.

Building Peace Practical Reflections From the Field