News headlines in March 2011, page 15

As a U.N. conference on water opens in South Africa today, the country's Council for Scientific and Industrial Research has repeated warnings that the country faces a water supply crisis. Experts attending the three-day conference will consider the challenges posed by growing demands, migration and water resources potentially limited by careless use and climate change.

Concina Haajila was only a year old in 1991 when Zambia turned from 27 years of autocracy and dictatorship to political pluralism and democratic governance. During the past 20 years she and millions of her peers have grown to adulthood and become disenchanted with the politics of their nation which have swung from an issue base to hero worship and personal purse enlargement.

The market can do better: a sanitation and hygiene campaign to be launched in Malawi plans to apply this tenet to improve cleanliness and public health the country's cities.

There is still no apparent solution to the unsatisfied demand for drinking water in Cochabamba, 11 years after this central Bolivian city made international headlines with a popular uprising that halted the privatisation of water service.

For one day, civil servants are trading their desks for the chilly highland plains in a rural community 3,500 metres above sea level on the outskirts of the Ecuadorian capital, where they are helping to plant native trees.

Canadian Kevin Freedman is celebrating World Water Day Tuesday by living on 25 litres of water a day, instead of the North American average of 330 litres per day. And he has enlisted 31 others in his 'Water Conservation Challenge' to go water- lean, using just 25 litres per day for cooking, drinking, cleaning, and sanitation for the entire month of March.

Vietnam’s race to build nuclear power plants has barely skipped a beat despite the troubling scenes unfolding in Japan, where a nuclear nightmare has gripped the country for over a week. It places the Southeast Asian nation at odds with its regional neighbours who have similar plans but are urging caution.

Part of the delay in the finalisation of the economic partnership agreements (EPAs) is due to the so-called non-execution clause that gives the EU the power to take steps against its African, Caribbean and Pacific (ACP) trading partners if they violate human rights, democracy and good governance principles.

Several top Yemeni army commanders have declared their support for anti-government protesters seeking the resignation of the country's president, Ali Abdullah Saleh.

Eleven years ago, 192 countries — all the United Nations member states — agreed to step up the integration of women in international peacebuilding and security processes, a promise that has remained largely unmet.