News stories by Helda Martínez, page 3

'It sounds nice, but it’ll be tough to implement'; 'the most important thing is to translate into reality': These statements by rural women leaders in Colombia sum up the reaction of activists to the government’s decision to revive and refinance a special fund for projects in the countryside led by women.

During the eight years that Álvaro Uribe governed Colombia, annual economic growth averaged 4.3 percent. Nevertheless, President Juan Manuel Santos, who was sworn in on Saturday, has taken over a country with the highest unemployment rate in Latin America.

Colombian President Álvaro Uribe ends his second consecutive term Saturday with 75 percent approval ratings and strong international support reflected by his designation this week as vice chair of a United Nations-appointed international panel to investigate Israel's attack on a flotilla of ships carrying humanitarian aid to Gaza in May.

'There are alarming links between increased reports of extrajudicial executions of civilians by the Colombian army and units that receive U.S. military financing,' John Lindsay-Poland, lead author of a two-year study on the question, told IPS.

In Colombia, western medicine has nearly succeeded in pushing midwives -- 'parteras' or 'comadronas,' as they are known in Spanish -- out of existence. But some tenacious practitioners are pushing for a law to formalise the role of midwife as a health worker.

Football, the most popular sport in Colombia, has been subject to heavy pressures from drug trafficking since the mid-1970s. A new study shows that the illicit trade continues to tarnish the upper echelons of this sport.

Colombian civil society organisations gathered more than two million signatures to ask Congress to hold a referendum on a constitutional amendment that would make access to water a fundamental human right.

More than 380 families -- some 2,000 people -- in this vast working-class district on the fringes of the Colombian capital that is home to hundreds of thousands of people displaced by the armed conflict are to be relocated after landslides caused by leaking water pipes.

'Loss of freedom should not mean loss of fundamental rights,' Diana Sánchez, a lawyer with the Political Prisoners Solidarity Committee (CSPP), told IPS. 'But in Colombia prisoners are punished twice over: with a prison sentence, and with restrictions on their other rights.'

Hopes that a humanitarian prisoner-for-hostage swap may be negotiated in Colombia before August added to the emotion over the release of Sergeant Pablo Emilio Moncayo by the FARC guerrillas Tuesday and his reunion with his family after more than 12 years in captivity in the jungle.