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Category: World Touch
Vatican

Slavery: Hidden Crime of the 21st Century

In 2003, Ms. A paid a job broker to smuggle her from Myanmar into Thailand where she was promised work as a maid in Bangkok. She did not know that the broker had sold her to her Thai employer for five years during which she would be paid no salary, and be effectively a slave in a strange country where she did not speak the language. It would be comfortable to think that Ms. A’s was an isolated case but it is not. Every year, an estimated 2.4 million people are sold into slavery, although today we call the crime trafficking.

Augustinian Father John Murray
Oslo

Obama Receives Nobel Peace Prize

Barack Obama defended America’s involvement in Afghanistan as a just war as he received last December the Nobel Peace Prize in Oslo. Addressing head-on the incongruity of receiving the prize days after announcing a military “surge” in Afghanistan, the US said American forces were in Afghanistan, in a conflict that he did not start.

www.guardian.co.uk
Iraq

Iraqi Parliament Approves Electoral Law

The Iraqi Parliament has approved almost unanimously the new election law, paving the way for the vote in 2010. The green light came during an emergency session that ended shortly before the deadline for an agreement. It should put an end to a period of political deadlock. Sources in Baghdad have called it a “truce” between political factions, but warn that “tension remains high.”

Asia News
Global

The Link Between Undernutrition and Climate Change

Seven children die of hunger every minute because they do not have access to treatment, but the impact of climate change on the drivers of undernutrition – food insecurity, health threats and water stress – could push up this number, the UN Standing Committee on Nutrition (UNSCN) said at the UN Conference on Climate Change in Copenhagen (COP15).

Irin News
Philippines

Illegal Weapons are a Plague in Mindanao

Among civilians in Cotabato and neighboring provinces, there is great fear and indignation at what they call, in Mindanao, “war road”: violence between paramilitary groups and the proliferation of various militia groups. These armed forces belonging to clans with strong political or ideological-religious reference (defined by “Muslim” or “Christian” antagonism), are often manipulated by the interests of powerful men in local areas or by corrupt members of the army.

www.fides.org
Asia

Global Recession Boosts Child Prostitution

Commercial sexual exploitation of children is booming in Southeast Asia, with governments failing to do enough to protect young people. “The recent economic downturn is set to drive more vulnerable children and young people to be exploited by the global sex trade,” said Carmen Madrinan, executive director of End Child Prostitution, Child Pornography and Trafficking of Children for Sexual Purposes (ECPAT). “The indifference that sustains the criminality, greed and perverse demands of adults for sex with children and young people needs to end.”

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Philippines

Illegal Firearms Compound Mindanao Insecurity

A .45 caliber pistol is tucked into the waistband of a tricycle driver as he speeds along a desolate stretch of highway that cuts through a Muslim rebel stronghold in the southern Philippine town of Datu Piang in Mindanao. “I can get attacked by bandits, rebels or my enemies, and my gun spells the difference between life and death,” he explains.

Irin News

Priests and the Digital World

“The priest and the pastoral ministry in the digital world: new media at the service of the Word” is the theme chosen by Benedict XVI for the 44th World Day for Social Communications (that will be celebrated on the Sunday before Pentecost, which in 2010 falls on May 16). Commenting on the theme chosen by the Pope, the Pontifical Council for Social Communications said “the main task of the priest is to proclaim the Word of God made flesh, man and history, thus becoming a sign of the communion that God makes with man. The effectiveness of this ministry then requires that the priest lives an intimate relationship with God, rooted in a deep love and deep knowledge of scripture, written ‘witness’ of the Word of God.”

Asia News
India

Gandhi: A Man of Peace in the Footsteps of Jesus

In an era marked by “growing” conflicts in “our beloved land,” as in “many parts of the world,” today, more than ever, there is a need to promote the “powerful message of non-violence” or “ Ahimsa, as the Father of the nation called it.” These were the words of Msgr. Thomas Menamparampil, Archbishop of Guwahati, to mark the 140th year of the birth of Mahatma Gandhi on October 2, which is also International Day of Non-violence.

Nirmala Carvalho
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