Japanese NGOs feel that Prime Minister Naoto Kan's categorical statement in parliament on Monday that his government would not under any circumstances be party to a continuation of the Kyoto Protocol, which was signed in that historic city in 1997, went 'beyond irony'.

As negotiators meet in Cancùn to discuss how to mitigate the worst effects of climate change, the impacts of the oil spill disaster that unfolded earlier this year on the other side of the Gulf of Mexico are still rippling through Washington.

Reports of human rights abuses committed during the police and military occupation of several favelas in this Brazilian city are jeopardising local residents’ newfound support for the security forces and posing challenges within the police.

A diplomatic cable published by Wikileaks corroborates images released earlier by Amnesty International (AI) showing that the U.S. military carried out a missile strike in south Yemen in December 2009 that killed dozens of local residents, including women and children, the rights group says.

As the countries of Latin America and the Caribbean get back on track with the economic growth and poverty reduction they were achieving prior to the global economic crisis, improvements in education and cash transfers to households with children are emerging as key tools to begin to defeat inequality.

As immigrant advocate groups held marches, demonstrations and hunger strikes across the U.S. and feverishly lobbied lawmakers in Washington, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, a Nevada Democrat, announced he would file a motion Wednesday to permit the Senate to take up the DREAM Act, thus setting up a showdown over the controversial immigration bill.

As the dust settles following contract negotiations with foreign oil companies, Ecuador is looking at a new map for its petroleum industry and trying to determine what it will mean in economic terms for this OPEC-member nation.

During the last phase of Sri Lanka’s civil war in 2008, information on the intensified fighting had slowed to a trickle. But in their November 2010 submissions to a government commission looking into the final days of the conflict, a group of doctors who served in the war zone have shed light on living conditions that were 'not fit for even animals'.

An unusually strong controversy has broken out in Cuba over a vote by the delegation from this Caribbean nation in favour of an amendment that left out the specific mention of sexual orientation in a United Nations General Assembly resolution on extrajudicial, arbitrary or summary executions.

The U.S. has rejected an Egyptian proposal for a 'confederation' between northern and southern Sudan, insisting that a Jan. 9 referendum - which will determine the fate of the south - go ahead as scheduled. According to Egyptian analysts, the move proves Washington's determination to see Africa's largest country split in two.