Category: World Touch

Mindanao Is The Worst Place For Children

In the Autonomous Region for Muslim Mindanao, only 40% of children complete primary school, against the national average of 75%, while younger-than-five mortality remains three times as high as the national rate. In August 2008, renewed hostilities between government forces and the separatist Moro Islamic Liberation Front (MILF) broke out when a memorandum, that would have given the MILF control over land they claimed as ancestral domain, was declared unconstitutional by the Supreme Court, resulting in more than 700,000 displaced. According to the International Organization for Migration, close to 83,000 people remain displaced due to conflict or clan violence, also known as Rido.

www.irinnews.org

Unemployment Triggers Social Unrest

The ILO fears global employment will not recover until 2015. This is two years later than its earlier estimate that the labor market would rebound to pre-crisis levels by 2013. About 22 million new jobs are needed – 14 million in rich countries and 8 million in developing nations. “Fairness must be the compass guiding us out of the crisis,” said the ILO Director-General. Quoted by The Guardian, Juan Somavia added: “People can understand and accept difficult choices if they perceive that all share in the burden of pain. Governments should not have to choose between the demands of financial markets and the needs of their citizens. Financial and social stability must come together. Otherwise, not only the global economy but also social cohesion will be at risk.” Also quoted by the British newspaper, Raymond Torres, lead author of the ILO’s annual World of Work report, said there were two main reasons for the bleaker outlook facing many countries: “The first is that fiscal stimulus measures that were critical in averting a deeper crisis and helped jump-start the economy are now being withdrawn in countries where recovery, if any, is still too weak. The second, and more fundamental factor is that the root causes of the crisis have not been properly tackled.” The ILO said the global economy had started growing again, with encouraging signs of employment recovery, especially in some emerging economies in Asia and Latin America. But it added: “Despite these significant gains … new clouds have emerged on the employment horizon and the prospects have worsened significantly in many countries.” Since the crisis started in 2007, some 30-35 million jobs have been lost worldwide. The ILO forecasts that global unemployment will hit 213 million this year, a rate of 6.5%. For the United States, the number of jobs still needed to regain pre-crisis levels is 6.9 million. Many countries that experienced employment growth at the end of 2009 are now seeing the jobs recovery weaken. Even among people with jobs, satisfaction at work has deteriorated significantly. “The longer the labor market recession, the greater the difficulties for jobseekers to obtain new employment,” the ILO report said. “In the 35 countries for which data exists, nearly 40% of jobseekers have been without work for more than one year and, therefore, run significant risks of demoralization, loss of self-esteem and mental health problems. Importantly, young people are disproportionately hit by unemployment.”

www.guardian.co.uk / Julia Kollewe

Priests Must Recover The “Lost Mysticism”

In a exclusive interview with AsiaNews, Archbishop Menamparampil explained: “When I speak of a mystic, I am not necessarily referring to a person who withdraws from the field of action, but one who moves into the thick of events to assist and save, to suggest and guide, to inspire and lead, to suffer and, if need be, lay down his or her life. In challenging times, we need, not pedestrian pragmatics who think ready-made solutions will spring from their ideological formulae like from a magician’s hat, but heroes and heroines who stir human hearts, hold out ideals, and hitch their wagons even beyond the stars. We need priests of this caliber. It is this kind of mystics that will give hope to those who seem to have lost all hope. Their contemplative starting points are often the slums, the hovels of the poor, places where the young are at risk, and conflict zones.” And speaking about India, where a reflection about the Year for Priests proclaimed by Benedict XVI is under way, he gave an example: “Amazingly, mystics transcend cultures and sectarian belief systems as Mother Teresa did. They quickly discover the common ground with people of other beliefs and try to build on it. They have an unexplainable ability to come on the wavelength of persons who are different. There is an inbuilt sense of self-confidence in them that enables them to reach out to those who differ from them most. They have developed their power of intuition that opens out new vistas to them. Could our priests be men of this category, deeply rooted in prayer but ready to confront the storms of life along with the rest of humanity? If they are, they will be needed in our country and in every other part of the world.” In India, he continued, “we are rightly anxious about the widening gap between the rich and poor. But any strategy that I would suggest to address this problem would be inclusive, fostering a sense of mutual belonging and interdependence. Any form of justice that I would propose would insist on being humane, concerned for the other, committed to the common good, with a holistic understanding of human and historic processes. Millions have died at the hands of people who wanted to make the ‘world flat’ by force.” Msgr. Menamparampil reminded: “Our Church is multicultural and multiethnic;” it “mirrors the Church Universal […] We may have in Guwahati people from 40 ethnic groups in the church on a festive occasion, and they interact as members of one family. This sort of relationship itself is a form of evangelization. When a human group as diverse as ours meets regularly on a Sunday and plans things together for the betterment of society, people can see that there is a faith-and-love-bond among the members.” Indeed, “people are more open than we often think. […] Cultural doors are opened only through cultural approaches, personal doors through personal approaches; not through cold, legal, dogmatic, and excessively

Sophia Nicole Garcia

Panda Diplomacy

Tai Shan, a four-year-old male, and Mei Lan, a three-year-old female, beloved by zoo-goers in Washington and Atlanta zoos, where they were born, departed for their ancestral homeland, Chengdu, capital of the south-western province of Sichuan. Here, they will join China’s panda breeding program, whose experts are desperately trying to encourage mating by one of the world’s most endangered species to ensure their survival. The pandas’ departure turned into a major event in the United States. Their last days on U.S. soil saw a flood of visitors who wanted to say farewell to the two animals. “I just hope they can have a good time in China and be able to make their own families,” 10-year-old Kelly Davis from the District of Columbia is quoted as saying in China’s official news agency Xinhua Zoo officials in Washington and Atlanta, who twice postponed the pandas’ departure, expressed mixed feelings. “We’re very proud to have shared Mei Lan’s life to the point where she can now begin making her own contributions to the world’s population of giant pandas,” Atlanta zoo official Rebecca Snyder said. Dozens of media reporters and members of the American public gathered outside the FedEx building at the Dulles International Airport to bid a final adieu to the pandas. Panda toys and pins were especially made for the event, with Tai Shan and Mei Lan’s images on them, along with Chinese and American national flags painted on the plane’s fuselage. Dubbed the “FedEx Panda Express,” the flight was weeks in the making with and about a hundred staff members involved. The pandas’ luggage included water, 75 kg of bamboo and other items as well as a box of farewell letters from the American public.

www.asianews.it

No More Dog Or Cat Meat On The Menu

In an interview with The Mirror, Chang said that, over the last four months, he has received a great deal of support, but some people are still unwilling to grasp the concept of animal welfare. He, therefore, decided to focus on pushing for legislation on torture first, and hoped to be able to pass the draft to the relevant government department for consideration in April. In recent years, animal welfare has attracted growing attention in mainland China. For instance, the government’s decision to cull stray dogs across the country as a means to combat rabies drew fire from critics. In response, the authorities cited, in their defense, China’s ancestral traditions and culinary practices. But many others still remember the SARS outbreak caused by eating masked palm civet meat. “Banning consumption of dogs and cats should not have much impact. Given the improvement in our standard of living, the number of people eating dogs and cats is minimal,” Chang said. Still in southern China, dogs and cats remain a culinary delicacy. Ten million dogs and four million cats are sold as food for human consumption every year. In Guangzhou, capital of the rich southern province of Guangdong, staff at one of the restaurants known for serving such meats remember North Korean leader Kim Jong-il ordering take-out dog meat.

www.asianews.it and Agencies

Shazia’s Story And The Reality Of Child Labor

In a joint statement issued in Lahore, Chairperson of Catholic NCJP, Archbishop Lawrence John Saldanha, and Peter Jacob, the Executive Secretary, said that this is not a lone incident of violence, because the domestic servants are usually subjected to extreme violence. Identifying the growing poverty and unemployment as the primary contributor to this situation,” they demanded that the Government “proceed with legislation on the ‘Domestic Violence Bill’ immediately.” For example, in the Sialkot District (which, in 2009, was the site of anti-Christian violence), where thousands of Christian families live and work, there are children who work in the production of balls, shoes, clay bricks, and carpets destined for Western markets. The sports balls, in particular, made for the major brands of sports goods, are the work of 5,000 Pakistani children, who constitute 80% of the workers. In the past, the murder of the young Iqbal Masih, sold by his father to a carpet manufacturer when he was 4 years old, drew public attention to children working in Pakistan. Killed at age 12, after having told his story, along with that of his young friends, to a union leader, Iqbal has become a kind of symbol. The reality of child labor in Pakistan has other consequences: the infant mortality rate for children under five years is 136 per thousand and the illiteracy rate reaches 62%. Twenty-one percent of boys are not even registered in an elementary school and the same goes for 50% of girls.

www.fides.org

The Disease’s Map

Leprosy is a very contagious infectious disease and manifests itself through skin lesions and lesions of peripheral nerves. If undiagnosed in its advanced stages, it can lead to paralysis and death. A cure has existed for some years, but, for it to be effective, it must be administered before the stage of paralysis. However, in poor countries, the population is uninformed and often seek the help of the health services when it is already too late. This renders the drugs useless and untreated patients may infect others, contributing to the spread of leprosy. According to members of the Italian Association Amici di Raoul Follereau (Aifo), to eradicate the disease, research is required into early diagnosis, training of health personnel in most countries affected by the disease and, especially, effective public awareness campaigns. The Church operates 521 leprosy colonies in the world: Africa: 186; America: 38 (total), Central/North America: 4, Central America Antilles: 7, South America: 27; Asia: 293; Europe: 3; Oceania: 1.

www.asianews.it and www.fides.org

210,000 New Cases Of Leprosy Every Year

In the text, addressed to the presidents of Bishops’ Conferences and bishops responsible for pastoral care in health, he reminds: “The disease is an ‘ancient’ disease, but not for this is it less devastating physically and often also morally. In all epochs and all civilizations, the fate of people with leprosy has been that of being marginalized, deprived of any kind of social life, condemned to seeing their own bodies disintegrate until death arrives. Unfortunately, still today those who suffer from it or – although they have been cured of it – bear its unmistakable mutilations, are far too often condemned to loneliness and fear, to live as though they were invisible to the eyes of other people, of society and of public opinion.” Msgr. Zygmunt Zimowski notes: “Amongst the factors that favor its perpetuation, there is certainly individual and collective acute poverty which far too often involves a lack of hygiene, the presence of debilitating illnesses, insufficient alimentation if not chronic hunger, and a lack of rapid access to medical care and treatment. At a social level, there persist, at the same time, fears which, usually generated by ignorance, add a heavy stigma to the already terrible burden which leprosy involves, even after a person has been cured of it. I thus appeal to the international community and to the authorities of each individual State and invite them to develop and strengthen the strategies that are needed in the fight against leprosy, making them more effective and capillary, above all, where the number of new cases is still high. All of this should be done without neglecting campaigns of education and sensitization that are able to help the people who are afflicted and their families to move out of exclusion and obtain the treatment that is necessary.”

www.asianews.it and www.fides.org

Blasphemy Law To Be Revised

Bhatti, a longtime Catholic activist whose position was given full-cabinet status for the first time, said he was speaking with political parties to present revisions to the blasphemy law by the end of 2010. “This is a democratic government which has a commitment to repeal all the discriminatory laws affecting the rights of minorities,” Bhatti told AFP in an interview in Washington. “We are using military action to fight terrorism and we are using economic opportunities, but another thing which is important is that we are pursuing interfaith harmony,” he said. The Minority Affairs Minister affirmed that, while he did not envision an immediate repeal of blasphemy laws, the revision would require judges to investigate cases before they are registered – creating oversight of the police, who are often accused of abuse. The revised law would also assign punishment equivalent to that under the blasphemy laws for anyone who makes a false complaint, he said.

War Is Irrational And Inhuman

An official from the Pontifical Council for Justice and Peace, Tommaso Di Ruzza, told the Conference participants that disarmament is an ethical question that involves everyone, not just governments. Though each person must cooperate according to his role and responsibilities, the Vatican aide encouraged the faithful to work for peace, in a world where arms expenditures in 2008 were almost $1.5 billion, and where there are some 16 to 20 medium- to high-intensity conflicts ongoing around the globe. Bishop Giovanni Giudici of Pavia, president of Pax Christi-Italy, cited Pope John XXIII in affirming the basic tenet of the situation: “War goes against reason and against humanity.” And, as the Holy See constantly encourages, disarmament is fundamental, he recalled. The Holy See, in fact, will take up its exhortation again at the conference for the revision of the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, which will be held in New York next May. This effort, Bishop Giudici observed, goes beyond a fight to eliminate nuclear and chemical weapons. “There must be another strong ‘no’ to conventional and light arms,” he contended, due to the large number of people killed with these weapons. What the Italian Episcopal Conference, Caritas-Italy and Pax Christi proposed, ultimately, is a serious reflection on Christian nonviolence: not a giving in to evil – according to a false interpretation of ‘turning the other cheek’ – but rather responding to evil with good. Conference contributors called for rejecting the logic of armament, and choosing nonviolence as a social and political project. A spirit of reconciliation can have concrete consequences in, for example, investing or banking only with institutions that do not benefit from the arms trade. Pastors, too, must become involved in a spirit of peace, the Conference contributors asserted. They suggested dedicating resources and time to the elaboration of precise educational itineraries that give space to the witness of prophets of nonviolence, and invigorating Justice and Peace Commissions at the national, diocesan and local levels. “Peace is the new martyrdom to which the Church is called today,” Bishop Giudici reflected. “The arena of the trial is the scene of the global village that runs the risk of burning in a holocaust without precedents. And as in the early times of Christianity, the martyrs astounded the world with their courage, so today the Church should silence the powerful of the earth with the pride with which, despite persecution, she proclaims – without toning down gradually as in Gregorian chant – the Gospel of peace and the practice of nonviolence. It is clear that, if instead of silencing the powerful, she is silent, she would be a resigned accomplice to an atrocious ‘war crime.’”

www.zenit.org

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