News headlines in March 2012, page 11

As the UN Human Rights Council (UNHRC) voted in, Thursday, a resolution asking Colombo to act on recommendations made by its own Lessons Learnt and Reconciliation Commission (LLRC), Buddhist prayers reverberated through the Sri Lankan capital.

Kokpa Pascale Moangue, a Baka Pygmy in southeastern Cameroon, has given his children the one thing he always longed for, but his parents could not give him — an education. And he was able to achieve it by obtaining a simple piece of paper: a birth registration certificate.

It’s more than two years since French police demolished the migrant squatter camp in Calais known as the Jungle in September 2009. At the time the widely-publicised demolition was hailed by the French and British authorities as a major blow to the smugglers or passeurs who facilitated illegal immigration across the Channel.

Spiralling violence, demands for justice voiced by victims of child sexual abuse at the hands of Roman Catholic priests, and ordination of women priests are issues that, in the view of experts and activists, Pope Benedict XVI will not be able to evade in his visit to Mexico.

A thick fog flows over the eastern range of the Colombian Andes. Here and there, the constant wind lifts the clouds to reveal lagoons, cloud forests, and páramo, an Andean alpine ecosystem known as a 'mountaintop sponge' for its massive water-holding capacity.

With illegal loggers clearing the equivalent of a football field of the world's most valuable forests every two seconds, local and international law enforcement systems should target the criminal operations that profit most from the trade, according to a new report released here Tuesday by the World Bank.

'We shouldn't have to live in fear. We're citizens and voters of Chile, we have jobs, and yet we live in daily fear of being attacked,' said 33-year-old Carla Oviedo, a victim of discrimination on the grounds of her sexual orientation.

The increasing influence of a conservative circle within President Hamid Karzai's palace has impeded progress in signing a crucial strategic agreement with the U.S. to chart the relationship beyond 2014, officials and analysts have said.

In Peru, where over half of the national territory is covered by forests and the logging industry is marred by corruption, transparency and good forest management are closely linked.

Security concerns appear to have stymied the growth of community radio (CR) in India, a vast and diverse country of 1.2 billion people, the bulk of them living in remote, rural areas.