human rights
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Droves of confused, well-meaning kids giving candy back this Halloween
This Halloween, thousands of little boys and ghouls are expected to be roaming the streets, handing candy back to houses they visit. Are they confused? Not really. It's just part of a choc-and-awe campaign designed to turn trick-or-treaters into trick-or-fair-traders.
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This Labor Day, will Trader Joe's finally do right by farmworkers?
Trader Joe's is among the most recent targets of the Coalition of Immokalee Workers' Fair Food Campaign. But if Joe is feeling the heat, he ain't showing it.
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Imminent UN vote on the right to water
On July 28, after years of grassroots pressure, the United Nations’ General Assembly will consider and debate a resolution supporting the right to “safe and clean drinking water and sanitation”. Maude Barlow, former Senior Advisor on Water to the President of the United Nations General Assembly described the denial of access to clean water as […]
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Is the population bomb ever going to explode? [AUDIO]
Environmentalists and human-rights advocates regularly point to a growing world population as a potential source of strife. But one environmental journalist doesn’t agree. Fred Pearce, author of The Coming Population Crash, argues that fears of a population explosion are overblown. His recent post on Grist sparked a sharp rebuttal from Robert Walker, executive vice president […]
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BP oil spill highlights our broken immigration system
A Health Safety and Environment (HSE) worker collects pieces of an oiled snare boom on Port Fourchon beach in Louisiana.Photo: U.S. Coast GuardFeet in 2 Worlds reports that Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) is searching for illegal immigrants among people working to clean up the BP oil disaster. ICE conducted two investigations in May at […]
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Louisiana environmental racism case gets hearing from Inter-American Commission on Human Rights
For the first time in history, an international human rights body has agreed to review a case involving allegations of environmental racism in the United States. The Inter-American Commission on Human Rights (IACHR) will hear a complaint filed by the New Orleans-based Advocates for Environmental Human Rights (AEHR) on behalf of the people of Mossville, […]
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Youth and Indigenous activists rally for vulnerable nations at climate talks
COPENHAGEN — Echoing the words of Maldivian President Mohamed Nasheed (We will not die quietly!) and the African negotiator Ambassador Lumumba, (No to climate colonialism!) hundreds of youth created a loud and energetic “climate storm” today inside the Copenhagen climate talks at the Bella Center. It was the largest demonstration at COP15 yet — and […]
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‘Sweet Crude’ documents oil exploitation in the Niger River Delta
Picture in your mind the Niger River Delta. What do you think of? Water, mangrove trees, fishing boats? Wrong. Try brown sludge-filled waterways flanked by constantly flaring gas stacks. Welcome to Oporoza, Nigeria — the place where 10 percent of U.S. oil imports originates. When filmmaker Sandy Cioffi traveled to Oporoza in 2006 to make […]
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Think of the children, or think of your ski trip: Two ways to tell the climate story
Forty-five million people go hungry or undernourished because of droughts and disasters wrought by climate change, according to a recent report by the Global Humanitarian Forum. Climate change leads to 300,000 deaths a year, the organization concludes, a toll that will reach 500,000 by 2030. Many of those who starve will be children. Of course, […]