News headlines in May 2012, page 30

By the time small island developing states (SIDS) arrive at the Rio+20 conference in Brazil in June, they will have worked hard to co-ordinate their message to the rest of the world about the importance of sustainable development for their countries.

The exclusion of certified labour union delegates from the official opening ceremony of the Asian Development Bank (ADB) meeting here on May 4 revealed a wide gap between the Manila-based development bank’s promises and practices on labour rights.

The Brazilian government of Dilma Rousseff is taking firm steps towards stronger relations with Africa, such as the creation of a special fund to finance development projects together with multilateral lenders like the World Bank.

Hailed as a development success story for lifting millions out of poverty and staying on track to meet all its Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) by 2015, Vietnam's future progress is severely threatened by the impact of global climate change.

With Nicolas Sarkozy’s swerve to the far-right ending in failure, French Socialist voters say they are looking forward to a more egalitarian and unified France.

It's called 'the bearing of the body' in Burkina Faso: when a death is deemed suspicious and a group of men carry the corpse through the community, believing the deceased will guide them towards the person responsible for the death. The accused - almost always women — are then chased out of their homes.

Social activists say that attempts to rehabilitate sex workers in this former monarchy call for special efforts to uplift the Badi, a Hindu caste that has for centuries been associated with entertainment and prostitution.

The voting out of conservative governments in France and Greece this weekend heralds the end of harsh European austerity programmes and ushers in an era of new economic, investment, and social policies aimed at restoring growth and employment across the continent.

Rightwing President Otto Pérez Molina is keeping his promise to take a hard line on soaring crime in Guatemala, but his government is neglecting prevention measures. Analysts warn the strategy, along with upcoming legal reforms, may jeopardise human rights.

In a world where governments are increasingly subservient to global finance capital, multinationals are gaining ground in the fight against state regulations that aim to protect the environment, public health or social policies.