IPS week: June 7 2013

	Sierra Leone’s Child Trafficking to Blame for Street Kids  Tommy Trenchard  On a street corner in downtown Freetown, Sierra Leone’s capital city, 12-year-old Kaita sits with a friend on a peeling steel railing watching the headlights of motorbikes cruising through the otherwise silent streets. It is after midnight, and motionless human forms lie curled up in doorways or ...MORE > >
	Mexico’s Institutions Overwhelmed by Scale of Forced Disappearances  Daniela Pastrana  Mexican police officer Luis Ángel León Rodríguez disappeared along with six other officers and a civilian on Nov. 16, 2009, in the western Mexican state of Michoacán. Six days later, his mother, Araceli Rodríguez, began her ceaseless ... MORE > >
	Gezi Park Highlights Years of Destructive Urban Development  Jillian Kestler-D'Amours  Few imagined that the symbolic act of standing in front of bulldozers in Istanbul's Gezi Park in an effort to block a development project near the city's central square would have caused the reaction it did. The defiant act – and the Turkish police's violent response – pushed thousands of Turks ... MORE > >
Turkey's Excessive Neo-liberalism Threatens 'Peace at Home'  Jacques N. Couvas  "Peace at home, peace in the world" is the official motto of the Turkish Republic. Coined in 1931 by the republic's founder, Mustafa Kemal Ataturk, it implies a causal relationship, but the events this week in Istanbul and dozens of other cities of Turkey suggest that causality can work in reverse ... MORE > >
	Overcoming “Strategic Suspicion” - Goal of Obama-Xi Summit  Jim Lobe  This week’s relatively informal and unscripted summit between the presidents of the United States and China on a private estate in southern California is being welcomed by most analysts here as a virtually unprecedented opportunity for each side to gain a better understanding of the strategic aims ... MORE > >
	U.N. GA Cold Shoulders International Day Against Homophobia  Thalif Deen  The 193-member U.N. General Assembly (UNGA), in its supreme wisdom, has declared over 100 commemorative "days" dedicated to peacekeepers, refugees, children, migrants, girl children, rural women and indigenous people, among others. And then there is also World Water Day, an International Day of ... MORE > >
	Good Health Lies Just Across the Border  Ashfaq Yusufzai  Muzaffar Shah, a shopkeeper from Kabul, sits in a hospital waiting room, desperate for news. He has travelled nearly 300 km to get to the Khyber Teaching Hospital in Peshawar, capital of northern Pakistan’s Khyber Pakhtunkhwa (KP) province, where his wife is now in intensive care. Just a few ... MORE > >
	Reactions to Gay Marriage Contradict French, Portuguese Stereotypes  Mario Queiroz  The heated reaction to the legalisation of same-sex marriage has run counter to the widespread image of France as the cradle of the modern republic and equal rights since the 1789 revolution. In contrast, Portugal with its reputation for prudishness, has shown itself to be much more open and ...MORE > >
	Mexico’s Desaparecidos: Unspoken, Unseen, Unknown  Emilio Godoy  The last time Enrique Rangel heard his brother Héctor's voice was on the night of Nov. 10, 2009, when he called and said “they’re coming, they already stopped me and asked for money, and I already paid, but they’re coming.” "We never heard from him again," Enrique Rangel said, in one of the 13 ...MORE > >