IPS: 2012 in Review

	First Burning Homes, Now Border Patrols  Naimul Haq  In late August, Mohammad Saifuddin (not his real name), together with his wife, three daughters and son, fled the carnage of communal violence in western Myanmar’s Rakhine province and headed for the border of neighbouring Bangladesh. Horrified by attacks on the minority Rohingya Muslims by the ...MORE > >
	Haiti's Two-Million-Dollar Ghost Town  Correspondents  Just months after the Jan. 12, 2010, earthquake killed over 200,000 Haitians and drove another 1.3 million into squalid camps, the Building Back Better Communities (BBBC) project got the green light from the Interim Haiti Reconstruction Commission (IHRC), headed by former U.S. president Bill ...MORE > >
	“Operation No Back Way to Europe” Keeps Young Farmers at Home in Gambia  Saloum Sheriff Janko  Mohamed Ceesay, a 20-year-old farmer from the Central River Region in the Gambia, is a high school dropout. But thanks to an initiative to discourage local youths from emigrating to Europe, he earns almost half the salary of a government minister from his rice harvest. The Gambian government ... MORE > >
	Small-scale Fisherfolk in Rio de Janeiro – a Vanishing Species  Mario Osava  "My sons will be anything, but never fishermen,” said 32-year-old Maicon Alexandre, the youngest of the leaders of Ahomar, a union of small-scale fisherpeople on the outskirts of Rio de Janeiro. That determination is shared by his colleagues, like the president of Ahomar (the Association of Men ... MORE > >
	"We Tripantu", the Mapuche people's new year celebration  Fernando Fiedler  "We Tripantu" means "rising of the new sun," and is the new year celebration of the Mapuche people, held over the shortest days of the year in the southern hemisphere, coinciding with the winter solstice. MORE > >
	In Limbo in the Saharan ‘Free Zone’  Karlos Zurutuza  The road vanishes under the sand just after the border crossing at Tindouf, western Algeria. Another 20 kilometres into the desert, a billboard welcomes us into the Sahrawi Arab Democratic Republic. From a house surrounded by shell cases, a man in camouflage checks our passports without stamping ... MORE > >
	U.S.-Afghan Pact Won't End War – Or SOF Night Raids  Gareth Porter  The optics surrounding the Barack Obama administration's "Enduring Strategic Partnership" agreement with Afghanistan and the Memorandums of Understanding accompanying it emphasise transition to Afghan responsibility and an end to U.S. war. But the only substantive agreement reached between ...MORE > >
	Jamaica's Food Security Hinges on Shaky Agricultural Fortunes  Zadie Neufville  Like its Caribbean neighbours, Jamaica is looking for outcomes that will address its food security challenges when world leaders meet in Rio de Janeiro for the United Nations Conference on Sustainable Development Jun. 20 to 22. World Trade Organisation (WTO) rules have opened up Jamaica's small ...MORE > >
	Rural Women Are Leading the Way – Will the World Follow? – Part 1 IPS Correspondents  Agriculture currently provides a livelihood for roughly 1.3 billion smallholder farmers and landless workers, of which nearly half – close to 560 million – are women. A vast majority of these women are living on a precipice, where small changes in their environment could result in chronic hunger ... MORE > >
	PAKISTAN: Wanted: A Revolution For Girls  Zofeen Ebrahim  Sixteen-year-old Noor Bano believes nothing short of a revolution will convince the men in Malangabad – her remote village in the Khairpur district of the Sindh province, some 460 kilometres from the southern port city of Karachi – to treat women as equals. Young girls in the village of Sonu ... MORE > >