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A 13th-century letter from Genghis Khan’s grandson demanding homage from Pope Innocent IV, and another from 20th century Japanese Emperor Hirohito are among a collection of documents from the Vatican’s secret archives that have been published for the first time. The Holy See’s archives contain scrolls, parchments and leather-bound volumes with correspondence dating back more than a thousand years.
Thirty-seven priests, nuns and missionaries were killed worldwide in 2009, nearly twice as many as in 2008 and a record high for a decade. Most deaths occurred in Latin and North America, where 23 of the Catholic workers were killed, 11 died in Africa, 2 in Asia and 1 in Europe.
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.
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.
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.”
The world celebrated recently the 20th anniversary of the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child, approved on 20 November 1989.
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).
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.
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.”
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.
