News stories by Silvia Boarini

GAZA, Palestine, May 18 (IPS) - "We don't want charity, we want a long-term solution."

RAMALLAH, Occupied West Bank, Apr 28 (IPS) - Despite formally adopting progressive laws, such as Law Number 4, and ratifying the UN Convention on the Rights of People with Disability, Palestinian authorities still struggle to get beyond rhetoric when it comes to supporting the 7 to 11 per cent of the population that is affected by disability.

UMM AL-HERAN, Southern Israel, Apr 22 (IPS) - Despite ostensibly freezing the Prawer Plan -- a proposed bill to 'regulate Bedouin settlement in the Negev'-- in 2013, Israel continues to push for forced closure of unrecognised Bedouin villages in this southern region. The village of Umm al-Heran, near the Bedouin township of Hura, is amongst those slated for demolition.

GAZA, Palestine, Mar 11 (IPS) - In the safety of his sister's bare flat in Beit Hanoun, Gaza, 42 year-old Iyad Yusef still shakes his head in disbelief when he recounts the journey that from war-torn Syria, brought him and his family to the relative safety of the blockaded strip.

ZARQa, Jordan, Jan 11 (IPS) - Emelline Mahmoud Ilyas is an outgoing 35-year-old mother of three from Syria. Sitting in a community centre in Zarqa, Jordan, where she just held a meeting with Jordanian and Syrian parents on the subject of childcare, she remembers the 'journey of death' that led her family to the Hashemite Kingdom.

LEEDS, England, Aug 31 (IPS) - A new grassroots initiative born in the northern England city of Leeds has set itself the ambitious goal of ending food waste, once and for all.

GAZA CITY, Jul 31 (IPS) - Thirteen-year-old Hula Khadoura sits on a large sofa in her grandfather's home in the neighbourhood of Tuffah, Gaza City, her one-year-old twin brothers Karam and Adam on her lap. "I am so happy they arrived," she beams, holding the babies' feeding bottles in her hands.

BRISBANE, May 30 (IPS) - Every year since 1998, Australia has marked ‘National Sorry Day' on May 26, a day to remember the tens of thousands of indigenous children who, between the 1890s and 1970s, were forcibly removed from their communities by government authorities and placed into the care of white families or institutions to be assimilated into settler society.

JERUSALEM, Apr 04 (IPS) - There was a symbolic dimension to a recent four-day march from the periphery of Israel to the corridors of power in Jerusalem to seek recognition for Bedouin villages.

AL ARAQIB, Negev Desert, Israel, Feb 20 (IPS) - Lehavim Junction in the northern Negev in Israel has been the backdrop to protests against home demolitions in Bedouin localities for the past four and half years.